Hanging the Rudder

We are for a few days up North.  Time to hang the rudder.

First issue was to select the necessary hardware.  As the Peapod is not a "classic" I don't want to use bronze but will stick to stainless steel.  Much cheaper.

The Peapod is a double ender and most available hardware is for the use on transoms. 

After some research and thinking I bought two sets of rudder hardware for the Optimist dinghy. 

For two of the gudgeons the pintles had to be removed.
A kind of gender change from male to female.......
Yesterday I visited my brother who has the equipment and the skills to perform this surgery.  He is more the metal type of guy.

All gudgeons had to be bend to fit the rudder and the stem.

As the stem is curved it takes some thinking to aline the pins.  If they would follow the line of the stem the rudder could not turn.

I used a 6 mm beech rod to aline the gudgeons at the stem. In the end this method turned out quite well.


After that the hanging of the rudder itself was relatively easy. 

The tiller is a bit close to the top of the stem  but it turns well.  If necessary a few millimeters can be removed from the stem.


In the upper pintle a hole is drilled to put in a cotter ring to block the rudder.

Today I also bought the lines for rigging the boat.

The spars are fully in Deks2 but are still back home. On the next trip up north I will try to get them in or on top of the car. The big question will be: does the mast fit in the masthole in the fore deck. I could not do a test fit so let's wait and see.

The continuing spar stock story

Again sometime since the last blog entry. 

The Easter days were to cold to launch the Pilot.  Two days ago the weather forecast showed no serious nightly freezing temps anymore so we went up North to launch the boat.  After attaching some muffling material on the underside, the engine hatch was put on the boat with a nice snug fit. We did not yet made a test run to see whether the noise insulation had improved.

Back home I continued with the spars. 

First I made a test fit of the sail on mast, boom and yard. With my previous built Fearing the upper part of the sail was larger than the yard.

Somebody not being me had screwed up in communicating dimensions with the sail maker...


Also this test fit was necessary to locate the holes for the various holes for rigging.

Next I continued sanding the mast with a reversed belt from my stationary band sander.
The mast is not exactly round but sufficiently fit for use.






Next I fitted a 38mm round dowel at the bottom of the mast to fit in the mast step.

Arch Davis uses spar varnish for coating.

After some thoughts I am going to use
Deks Olje.  Officially Deks is for use on hardwoods but I have used Deks on the Oregon Pine spars of my Fearing without any problems so on these White Pine spars I do not expect any problems.

To be honest I hate applying varnish with all these layers....