FITTING OUT
APPUSKIDU
ON DECK
Appuskidu came
from Ullswater where she was used for day sailing only
and was therefore pretty much as the maker (McNulty Boats) had supplied her a couple of years before. She had no spray hood and
apart from rather nice patterned Dacron bunk cushions, cockpit floor boards, a hollow mast and a swinging cradle trailer, the
only extra she had was anti-fouling which was removed as soon as I could
arrange it.
Fitting her
out for cruising and rallies has occupied the weekends of three Spring fitting
out seasons and as I have learned from the boats of many other Drascombers (with particular mention of Tom Richardson),
so in turn others may wish to see what has been done to Appuskidu.
Outside, starting from
the front :
Forestay
fixing
At the very
front of the boat is a snap shackle on the stemhead
fitting which engages the eye at the bottom of the forestay. When I am standing
on the foredeck and hauling the mast up I don’t want to be messing around with
shackle pins. If I could do only one mod on a Coaster or Lugger it would be
this one. The extra length is taken care of by shortening the adjuster at the
top of the forestay. However, this mod is not so easy if the bottom of the
forestay is a fork instead of an eye. It is possible to specify a forestay from
Churchouse boats which ends in a pelican clip which
is better still.
Anchor &
Rally cleats
I fitted the
usual bulls-eye fairleads to take the crosswise rod part of the of the Danforth
anchor flukes. A bungee over the top prevents sideways movement when trailing.
In a steep chop the blades would bang up and down so iroko
blocks were stuck to the deck with bathroom silicone sealant. I shall use sikaflex or similar next time as the bathroom sealant only
sets around the edge. The iroko block that the top of
the stock sits in has a bungee tie down and the block for the blade tips has a
turnbuckle. You will see that the anchor is stowed at an angle to the
centreline of the boat. This keeps the centre cleat free and allows more
foredeck space. If you are not into DIY, Churchouse
boats list a modestly priced ready made anchor stowage
block in teak.
When rafting
up to lots of other Drascombes at rallies it is helpful to have extra cleats
available so I fitted a teak cleat on either side at the bow and another pair
at the stern. These are bolted through the gunwale with 6mm stainless machine
screws. The ones at the bow are most useful as the
single original cleat also has to cope with the bitter end of the anchor rode.
This subject
has been updated as I now have a different anchor and kedge. Details are in the
Drascombe Projects “On
Deck – Later Changes” page. The anchor rode remains unchanged.
Anchor Rode
The main
anchor rode is 10 metres of 6 mm chain and 35 metres of 10 mm anchorplait. It is all contained in a plastic box whose
original use was to soak pre-glued wallpaper. The box is cut down to the same
level as the gunwale and located on the forward end of the side deck where it
is placed to allow the oars to lie inboard next to the cabin top. The bottom is
drilled for drainage and the side is screwed to the gunwale with large penny
washers spreading the load. A couple of bungee sail ties around the box keep
the rode in place. When I retire I shall make a nice wooden box but for the
moment this one serves very well and as you can stand on the top of the rode it
actually makes the side deck easier to walk on.
Number two
anchor is a plough type which lives with its rode in the cabin in front of the
centreplate case where its weight is as far forward as I can get it. A piece of
plastic drain pipe cut down one side lives in the
lazarette. This protects the gunwale in the event that either anchor has to be
deployed or recovered from the cockpit.
Both anchors
have since been changed – see the “On Deck Later Changes” pages.
Breakwaters
The scuppers
on fibreglass Drascombes are rather small and if green water comes on board it
takes a long time for the water on the cockpit seats to drain overboard. When
Jim Hopwood was helming Appuskidu on the way back to Falmouth from the Helford
river, beating hard into a choppy sea on a breezy day, water came onto the
forward decks a couple of times and then sloshed back onto the cockpit seats.
The scuppers could not cope and a lot ended up in the cockpit well and was
pumped out. The water on the cockpit seats took a long time to drain out. I
remembered that some Longboat Cruisers have a breakwater on the side decks at
the aft end of the cabin. Thinking about this in discussion with Jim it was
apparent that such a breakwater on a Coaster might be a good idea. If it had a
hole smaller than the scupper, the water could be kept on the foredecks and
allowed back only as fast as the scupper could let it out. Appuskidu now sports
a fine pair of such breakwaters. They are fitted near the aft end of the cabin
on the side deck just before it slopes down to the cockpit. These have worked
well so far but a possible future job is to improve the scupper arrangements.
This breakwater mod has to be considered as experimental since I have yet to
plug the breakwater drains, totally fill the foredeck with water and test
stability. However, it has not proved a problem on real life rough passages
where the foredeck has been awash.
Mast
The picture of
the tabernacle shows the addition of both a purchase for the down
haul and a cowl over the exit of the masthead electrics cable. The
single downhaul purchase makes it easier to get a tight luff
for blowier days. The cowl, although it does look
pretty, is actually there, not for appearance but rather to protect the
masthead light cable from the yard parrels.
Cabin top cleats
Here the
standard horn cleats for Main Halliard and Downhaul have been replaced by
Barton cam cleats - because they make life much easier and quicker for single handed sailing. Since this picture was taken, these
two ropes have each been led through plastic tubes that are tied to the eyes
where the ropes pass under the front of the spray hood. The tubes protect the
hood, and in particular its window, from rope burn, since the mainsail is usually
raised or lowered with the spray hood down.
Spray hood
The spray hood
in cream acrylic canvas was supplied by Stewart at Churchouse
boats as none was fitted when I collected Appuskidu from her previous owner at Ullswater. It has proved to be a near essential extra for
coastal sailing and a couple of tweaks have improved it further. The first was
to use side entry style racing Clam cleats to secure the tie downs. This makes
it a breeze to quickly put the hood up and down - even with one hand on the
tiller. The second was the addition of a Grab Rail. This was prompted by the
loud splash in the dark when someone crossing the raft of boats at a Beaulieu
rally went into the water. To fair he was quite merry at the time and suffered
only a wetting. The rail however has proved a godsend as it provides a
comfortable handhold when stood up at the helm batting into a big chop or
surfing down following seas. It is also great when getting in and out of the
boat or undertaking the dangerous task
of going forward in the middle of the night when anchored with the cockpit tent
up.
The grab rail
is home bent from the same kind of 19mm aluminium that the spray hood frame is
made of. The ends are attached with readily available spray hood fittings and
the stand offs are made from cord lashings which collapse when the hood is
folded to allow the mast to lie over in its usual way.
A further mod
I would make to the spray hood is to change the way the hood is secured to its
frame above the window. It was suggested to me by another Drascomber that if
you use flaps with 50mm Velcro, the hood can be folded without creasing. This
will delay the eventual cracking of the window.
Update - Appuskidu’s spray hood now has this feature although it has
been implemented in a very professional way with a system that traps the frame
in a tube with Velcro closure. I can’t complain since this is very strong
arrangement and I am very pleased with it overall but it is not quite as quick
to open and close as it would be with simple Velcro flaps.
Bridge Deck cleats
I have uprated the centreplate sheave box and uphaul
rope to 8mm and fitted a cam cleat on an iroko block.
This has been very worthwhile and I understand from Stewart that this mod is
common in the
The Jib sheet
cleat has also been uprated to a Barton cam cleat
from the standard clamcleat. The reason in this case
is that my thicker than standard jib sheets fall out of the clamcleat
in light airs when they are flapping about. There is a down side which is that
in strong winds there is a knack to giving yourself the tiny bit of slack you
need to get the rope to engage in the cam cleat. The “keeper” for clamcleats is not yet available for this size but if it
does become available it may be worth trying that instead.
Compass Mounting
I am very
happy with the popular Plastimo Contest 101 compass I
have fitted. It lives on the back face of the cabin
bulkhead on the port side where it is readily visible from the helm.
Cockpit
stowage
There is a need
for keeping all sorts of bits and pieces to hand in the cockpit. My solution is
a plastic box designed for screwing to the back of kitchen cupboard doors. It
probably came from IKEA but I think it looks well on my cream boat mounted as
it is on the other side of the cabin door from the compass and I am not sure
that I will replace it with wood. It has keyhole shaped screw holes so it can
be lifted off its screws and put into the cabin with its contents (VHF, GPS,
Camera etc) when leaving the boat briefly unattended.
Cabin ventilation
& security
When the
washboards are in and the hatch shut, no air circulates in the cabin. This was
cured with a circular stainless steel louvered vent with a matching “hit and
miss” vent on the inside. There is also a small hasp and padlock to secure the
lid to the top washboard. This is still not very secure but it is a more
visible deterrent than the one at the top front of the hatch.
Lazarette Floorboards
The trick with
these is to make them so that they “lozenge” and will thus fit through the
lids. They have cut outs to fit around the log and depth transducers which are
fitted hard against the front bulkhead of the lazarette. They consume a
remarkable amount of wood which in my case is cheap(ish)
mahogany substitute from the local builder’s woodyard.
There is also a chock fitted which served to trap the fuel tank against the
rear bulkhead of the locker when the tank was stored in the lazarette. Sideways
movement of the tank was prevented by a stout bungee strap which conveniently
located through the slats of the floorboards. The 5L reserve container was
secured likewise. Note that the front of the lazarette is sealed (see ‘lids’
below) which prevented petrol fumes from migrating to the cabin but the
Lazarette required separate ventilation.
Lazarette
Lids
This subject
is a whole article in itself (See separate page for details and photos) but in
summary the lids are hinged at the outboard edge and secured with special latches.
Water ingress is prevented by self adhesive sealing
strip under the lids where the lids sit on the lip around the hatch opening.
The tubes to the cabin bilge (which also led the old lid securing cords
forward) are now redundant and are plugged.
Main Sheet
Horse
My Coaster has
the Barton track which is now standard in lieu of the old scaffold pole.
However, on this early McNulty boat, the mainsheet tail led over the top of the
track which did not work very well. Later boats had the moulding changed to
raise the track high enough to fit a bulls-eye fairlead underneath. To get my
track higher I steamed a length of 1.25” square teak and fitted it under the
track. This worked very well in use but getting it to fit the curve of the deck
was a devil of a job. (It was only later that Douglas Elliott told me that teak
doesn’t respond very well to steaming) It was apparent that my teak longbow was
trying to straighten out the deck so the next winter I had to replace it with
the laminated teak version which now graces the aft deck. Copper central
heating pipe (flared with a ballpein hammer into a
countersunk hole in the teak using the vice) serves in place of the bulls eye
fairleads. 22mm pipe for the mainsheet and 15mm pipe for the mizzen sheet.
Main Sheet Jammer
For the same
reason as the jib sheet cleat (see bridge deck cleats), I uprated
the clamcleat on the tiller to a cam cleat mounted on
a shaped Iroko block but in this case I used one of
the tufnol cleats I had bought to replace the lugger’s jib sheet cleats before I discovered that I could
“sharpen” the teeth on the old ones. I also moved the fairlead as far back as I
could get it on the bronze whilst still being able to screw through the bronze
into wood.
Tiller Extension
This is the same
style of teak extension that I made for my Lugger, planed into a curve to match
the curve of the tiller and with a little “T” piece at the end. The extension
is normally used to work the tiller from a position at the side of the cockpit
but this extension has an extra trick. The extension was held in the fully
forward position and then drilled through for a drop nose pin. When the pin is
in position, the tiller is in effect given a locked rigid extension to make it
easy to steer from the front of the cockpit, when you are beating to windward
sitting on the bridge deck and sheltering under the spray hood.
Tiller brake
This season my
tiller pilot failed (which is another story that shows the makers – Simrad - in an appallingly bad light) so I tried again to
organise a suitable tiller brake. The bracket for the tiller pilot prevents the
use of the dinghy cruising association preferred solution and I wanted finer
control than a “comb” would allow so I went into experimental mode. The first
idea was a piece of teak under the tiller shaped like half a dolly clothes peg
to jam an athwartships rope. This looked nice but it
broke after relatively little use. The next idea was to put a bulls-eye
fairlead under the tiller, oriented with its hole
pointing fore and aft so that the rope across the boat has to make two 90
degree turns to pass through it. Tensioned with a short piece of shock cord at
one end of the rope this worked well but I wanted to be able to get the rope
out of the way when not in use. One of Mr Holt’s open base nylon fairleads with
stainless steel liner solved the problem. First a piece of a Sea-Sure stainless
steel strap was secured under the tiller to protect the wood from the friction
of the rope. Over this the fairlead was screwed at one end only. Turned against
a stop at the other end it is “closed” with the hole in working position facing
fore and aft and the pull of the rope keeps it that way. Turned out to the side
of the tiller it is “open” to allow the rope to be inserted or removed. There
is a knack to getting the rope in the right way around but it is soon learnt.
P.s. When the stainless liner of this open
base fairlead came out I reverted to the simple fixed bulls-eye. Note that when
fitting this type of impeder the rope should lead back at forty
five degrees to the gunwale attachment points and not athwartships as otherwise it will go slack as the tiller is
turned. As you can’t make the rope lead follow a semi circle it will still not
work very well at extremes of tiller angle.
Mizzen Boom
On the Lugger
I found I could reach the Bumpkin reasonably well and in any case I usually had
family on board to take the helm whilst I shipped or unshipped it. When I got
the Coaster I found that when sailing single handed it
could be a dodgy process to leave the helm and crawl to the stern on my hands
and knees. Especially when I had only remembered at the last
minute to bring it in whilst I manoeuvred on to a crowded pontoon. The
result was to copy some other Coaster owners and fit a mizzen boom so that all
I have to do is to pull on the topping lift to scandalise the mizzen and
eliminate the overhang in one simple movement.
The boom is
fabricated from a piece of Mk 1 Lugger yard but I made it a bit too slim. The
sheet attached in the middle causing the boom to bend when the wind approached
force 5. The bend was sufficient to give cause for concern. This problem was
effectively cured by a wire strop which spreads the sheet attachment load over
two points far apart and effectively doubles the strength of the boom whilst
leaving it still looking attractively slender. The gooseneck comprises a simple
S hook with a plastic bush to reduce the eye diameter where the pin goes
through, a couple of deck eyes with a bit of laminate to protect the mast where
the hook bears in the deck eyes and a couple of re-drilled Sea-sure stainless
straps to reinforce the slot in the mast end of the boom.
The tack of
the mizzen is attached to the gooseneck end of the boom and the luff is tensioned by a downhaul which acts upon the “S”
hook and is made off at the existing downhaul eye on the mast.
Mizzen Mast (length)
Normally the
foot of the mizzen sail can brush the top of the outboard motor when it is
tilted up for sailing. No harm comes of this with the normal bumpkin
arrangement. However, with a wooden boom swinging below the foot of the sail
the outboard would get a bad headache! To obtain the necessary clearance, the mizzen mast has to be lengthened. Eight inches seems to be
about right. Stresses on the top few inches of the mizzen
mast are not great so the scarf only needs to be of moderate length.
Some more of my Mk 1 Lugger yard was used. You may be able to see the scarf and
the difference in colour between the redder shade of the old Columbian pine and
the yellower colour of the current spruce spars.
Bumpkin heel
hole
If the
Lazarette was to remain dry now that the bumpkin is not in use, the hole that
the inboard end of the bumpkin buts into had to be sealed. To do this a
rectangle of iroko was placed inside the hole and
turned so that it would bridge the hole. A square of iroko
sized to cover the outside of the hole was backed with gasket material then
screwed into and against the first rectangular piece.
Fuel
My tank was
kept in the lazarette with appropriate precautions. My hose therefore needed to
pass into the lazarette from the outboard well. A hose was made up with enough
length so that the tank could be lifted onto the deck before disconnecting it
so that any spillage from the connections would end up above deck. To achieve a
good seal, the hole from the outboard well into the locker was drilled slightly
undersize. The end of the hose was then sliced at an angle to make a long point
and the hose (lubricated with washing up liquid) pulled through with pliers
before refitting the priming bulb.
If you make up
or modify fuel leads or have them made up for you, beware that there is a
problem with the metal rings that are used to crimp the ends of the hose onto the
connectors. Order some stainless ones from
Bosunsmate.co.uk. As
well as stainless, Andy also sells the black nylon ones if you don’t feel
confident to close the metal ones with side cutters. (Unfortunately Andy now seems to have
stopped trading, but the black nylon ones are getting easier to find and are in
any case simpler to fit with just a pair of pliers)
Don’t keep the
tank in the lazarette if you have any electrical connections in any airspace
where petrol fumes can get and in any case make sure that the area is well
ventilated. In fact the only really safe place for the fuel tank is on deck,
especially if you make the Lazarette lids seal and latch. After sealing my
lazarette I experimented with ventilators and a remote tank vent but this was
not successful and so I have now bowed to the inevitable and my tank now lives
on deck. – see the Drascombe Projects “On Deck - Later Changes” pages.
Sculling Rowlock
The overall cover
that I tow with fouls the sculling rowlock if I leave it shipped so the rowlock
has the traditional securing toggle and lanyard which is made long enough to
allow the rowlock to live in a couple of pipe clips fixed to the inside of the
transom. The regular rowlocks are also clipped into place to prevent movement
when towing.
Name Board
Now that she
has a mizzen boom, the holes in the Transom for the bumpkin and mizzen sheet were
redundant and unsightly. The solution was a name board in ¼” x 5” teak cut to a
pleasing shape and left over the winter cramped into a greater curve than the
transom. In the spring it sprung back partially but it held enough curvature to allow it
to easily be brought into the right shape on the boat. Its back was then pitted
and heavily abraded and the transom likewise. Some acetone was applied to
reduce the surface resins and after this dried the board was spread with epoxy
and cramped onto the transom. After applying the name I later treated it first
with Deks Olje 1, then Deks Olje 2 to give it a smart finish. The Deks Olje 2
has lasted very well.