I've concocted a shade tree mechanic's version of the elegant Swiss adjuster. It's made of some delrin rod tapped with left hand and right hand threads, 10-32, to fit the ball socket. With it I get about 20 mm of throw and it seems to work well with the boat on its side in the backyard. The whole shebang fits under my bonnet out of the way. Right now it's not led outboard. I want to try it first sailing so that when the Mod 1 (and 2 and 3) come along, as they inevitably do, I'll have a sense of where the leads should go without getting underfoot.
A new trick for me is to use a rope eyestrap. The turning blocks are fastened with some high tech line that's frayed at the ends, wetted out with some epoxy and taped down to the deck. We'll see if the method holds in the heat of battle. Another trick I learned from the latest issue of
Epoxyworks (the Project X fairing technique article) is to mix G5 five minute epoxy with some regular 105/205 mixture at 30% by volume to accelerate the cure. It seemed simple to do; the mixture kicked solid in about 20 minutes.
No sailing today as we're under a large high pressure dome and the breeze is pretty light. Maybe tomorrow?
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