The weather is much nicer now that spring has arrived. While setting sails on a testsail a few days ago, a local motorboat came over to say hello. They kindly took some pictures of us.

The easy part was cutting off the old bowsprit with an angle grinder. Then, without the bowsprit in the way, I could see how the anchor could be made secure.

I had some stainless steel pipes bent to the angle of the plates where the bow rollers were, and welded them on (the anchor shank and chain run between them). At first I used my wire-feed ReadyWelder, which is a device that runs on batteries–12, 24 or 36 volts. I welded the first pipe on with 24 volts, and, after doing some hammering, it broke off, as the penetration wasn’t good enough. I had better results from adding another battery to get to 36 volts, but even better results when a neighbor on the dock lent me his stick welder (which plugged into shore power). Another neighbor who was a former pipeline welder helped me get the machine setup correctly.

I tried to bend the old pulpit into shape to be able to use it, but was not successful, so put a piece of blue, reinforced plastic hose in place for now.

The anchor is now held in place by the windlass holding the chain, a safety chain hook, and by turnbuckles on either side that attach to shackles in holes drilled into the anchor. I think the anchor will stay securely in place well when the waves push across it.

Final painting is still to be done.

Last year, friends moved the jibstay off Issuma’s bowsprit so the bobstay could be removed (the bobstay was taking a real beating breaking ice). I wanted to test-sail the boat for a while before removing the old bowsprit (which was then just excess weight in a bad place).

It has taken me a while to get around to doing this job. For the Northwest Passage trip, the bowsprit proved a useful place to store the grapnel anchor I carried for use as an ice anchor.

Here is Issuma with the bowsprit still on.

This is a similar “dinghy” to the one in the previous post. Note the large propeller and how well it is protected from getting caught in nets.

The “dinghy” in the picture has a big diesel engine. It is used for bringing the end of the net back to the bigger boat, which is why it needs a lot of power.

It was nice to watch this fishing boat, Dryas, sail onto the dock. I didn’t get a chance to talk with them. The sailing-fishing boats that I have talked to say they don’t really fish under sail, but use sails if the wind is in the right direction, or to reduce rolling, or to go pleasure sailing with.

My old anchor chain was showing signs of wear (mostly in the first 10m which gets the most use), so I decided to replace it. This sounds simple, but really isn’t :).

I wanted to keep most of the old chain as a spare chain, so I built a new chain locker in the bilge to hold it (can’t just put the old chain in the bilge–if the boat ever rolled over, it could come out, so it needs to be held in place securely).

The old anchor chain is 12mm, which I could not find in the USA. So I went with 7/16″ chain, which is almost the same size. That meant that the 7/16″ chain wouldn’t fit the 12mm chain wheel. So I bought both a new chain wheel and a barrel (300’/90m) of 7/16″ chain (Grade 43, which means the steel is better quality than “proof coil”).

The new chain wheel, shown in the picture, was a different diameter than the old one, so the old chain stripper did not fit. The chain stripper is necessary to strip the chain off the chain wheel, so that it will fall down the hawsepipe. The old chain stripper was cut off the deck (it had been welded in place), and a new one made that would bolt on.

It took a few tries of cutting, then welding back up the chain stripper to get it functioning correctly (the part that strips the chain off the wheel is inside the chain wheel, so not visible in the picture), but it is now working.