I've been listening to Furled Sails, a sailing podcast produced in Florida. Listening to the podcasts has inspired me to go back to work on Odyssey, so tonight after dinner I headed out to the barn to get back to work.
The first thing I need to do now that I have the new winch installed is put the bulkhead back in under the bridge deck. This piece of 3/4-inch plywood is the only support the front of the cockpit has. The bridge deck has the main sheet pulling up on it and the keel winch pulling down; there's a lot of stress in this location. Most of the weight of the 900-lb keel is supported by this bulkhead when winching keel up and down.
And of course something this important doesn't go in easily. Oh no, it takes time and thought and my 14-year-old daughter coming out and saying "What you need is a crow bar."
So I grabbed a crow bar.
And popped the bulkhead right in.
After that it was a simple matter to put in the screws and brackets that hold the bulkhead in place. While I worked on the inside of the boat Katie was on the outside with a scrub brush cleaning up the worst of the algae around the lip of the poptop. A couple more sessions like that and the boat might be close to clean...
Next up is getting something to put on the teak I've been cleaning and putting the wood back on the boat.
(While I was writing this entry I couldn't get "Fish Heads" out of my head. Except it was "bulk heads, bulk heads, laughing happy bulkheads... I'm a sick, sick man.)