Working on the bow

Last year at the OGA rally in Oban Robinetta 's bulwarks were damaged. We did a jury rig to hold them in place for the trip home which worked so well we forgot all about the need to repair them. Once Robinetta was out of the water I cleared the foredeck of the extra ropes, with only a vague memory of why they were there, and once I put the tarpaulin on the foredeck I forgot all about it again.

The need for repair suddenly became urgent when I got a launch date of Sunday 7th April. I was checking  the state of the rope on the bobstay when I put my hand on the bulwalk and felt it move slightly. As soon as I actually looked at the bulwalk area adjoining the stem post I could see that it had pulled away from the stem post. It needed to be pulled back into place and refastened.

The first step was to get the bowsprit out of the gammon iron (the metal hoop that the bowsprit goes through, which is bolted through the stem post). Then I removed the metal plate that reinforced the area of the bulwalks that the bowsprit goes through. The wood underneath it had not been painted in a while, and needed repairing or replacing before it could be re-screwed into the stem post. Once Julian had a look he decided on replacement, so he suddenly had woodwork to do, and not much time to do it.

Luckily (or not) the wind got up, and our launch date got pushed back to Wednesday 10th, giving us a little more time!