2012-12-05 Davits – Stanchions – Lifelines & Blog Changes

Please let me interrupt the planned article for a quick PSA (Public Service Announcement). We have relocated the Magnolia and Seamless Sailor Blogs so you might notice a some small changes. In addition Magnolia now has her own Facebook Page (of course she would Smile) which you can subscribe to. That concludes the PSA, thank you for your attention!

This project started out as a simple Lifeline replacement and toss in re-bedding a couple of stanchions and davit mounts. No big deal right? Yes and then enters “Scope Creep” (Hear the organ music from Phantom of the Opera?) “Scope Creep, what the heck is that?” Scope Creep occurs when a project gets bigger than its initial plan. In the case of this project it was found that each stanchion was mounted differently. Some had threaded backing plates, some had no backing plates and some were not even through bolted!

In the case of the davit mounts the through bolts had some little wimpy washers that were deforming from the load. Before you get on me about the stainless next to aluminum ignore that. I am taking on some risk of bi-metallic corrosion but I am aware and will monitor. Since this is a DIY (Do It Yourself) project I opted to get some aluminum stock from Home Depot of various widths so I could use the widest possible for each individual instance. Believe when I say these pictures were the easiest thing to do with these plates. These things were a bear to get to even after a couple of small interior modifications! At least now they can be observed unlike they had been for the first 2o years of boat life and much better maintained in the future. My buddy Greg taught me, “if you take something apart on a boat, make sure you can take it apart a second time cause at some point you are going to have too!” With the davits more secure it was time to move on to the stanchions.

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The original plan was to remove the Port Gate Fwd Stanchion and Port Stanchion #3 and simply epoxy a crack in the teal cap rail, re-bed the hardware and be done. Unfortunately we were unsatisfied with method used to secure the gate stanchion so we decided we better remove all of them. As the chart below indicates we still have some data to gather but at least we will where stand and where we need to add plates and devise additional access below decks. When we get the stanchions and lifelines re-installed in the spring we will know everything will be installed as securely as possible. Capture

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