Two big projects this week: the removal of a blockage in the mast conduit and the interior lights. The lights are on-going but the removal of the blockage took three days and was only achieved by Moo’s brainwave.

Weekly Video Round-Up

Watch how Jamie burns himself on a white-hot weld!

Mast Conduit Blockage

As I said in last week’s video clip, one job normally means another five jobs and this week we spent three days just trying to clear a simple blockage.

The old mouse (a piece of string running the length of the mast used to feed new cables) had broken free and dropped down inside the conduit. Over a number of years this became more and more wedged into a tight, knotted ball, preventing us from feeding up the new VHF cable.

We spent three days using all manner of tools, instruments, cables and rods. We even resorted to heating up rods with a blow torch and sending them up the conduit to try and burn through the string, to no avail.

On the second afternoon Moo came up with the idea of welding a 25mm drill bit to a 5m rod, and attached that to an electric drill. It worked, but not before adding another 2m to the rod and burning myself in the process.

Esper’s main mast, near completion

Interior Lighting

Dang, the varnisher, was tasked with spraying the lighting conduits in black.

In the following image you can see a close-up of Dang’s painting and Dean’s wiring.

The over-all effect is shown in the following photograph, with both the main strip light and the red nightlight in the chart-table area. We’re pretty pleased with the results!

What’s Next?

It’s taken Moo and me two weeks to refit the main and mizzen masts, so next week we’ll continue with the booms and the spinnaker pole. We hope to see the ceiling completed along with the lights. Once done, we’ll take the ceilings down and start the job of creating new through-deck fittings.