Monday, August 27, 2007

Refit: new deck hardware

The trouble with upgrading certain items on an old boat is that they have a habit of making other items, that you never originally intended to renew, look even more worn out than they really are. So, to match Arabella's shiny new cockpit winches, various other shiny items of deck hardware have now been added.









Most of these items are mere fripperies that just look nicer than the items they replaced, but the pop-up midships cleats are what I really wanted for practical purposes. Arabella lacked any midships cleats for spring lines or short-handed docking, but her narrow side decks meant that installing traditional cleats would have presented a tripping hazard for the unwary, myself included. These cleats are very low profile and are spring-loaded so that they pop up when you pull the latch.

Matters below decks are less bright and shiny, as the yard continue to grapple with the problem of getting the (now replaced) ST60+ Graphic to integrate with the other instruments. I live in hope...




On the positive side, the new latches and gaskets to the cockpit locker lids have successfully kept out the heavy rain of recent weeks, and Arabella's cockpit lockers and bilge are as dry as a bone throughout.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Downloads area added

I have added a small downloads area for anyone interested in accessing and downloading documents about Arabella or about the Pandora International generally. Look for Downloads in the list of Links in the right hand margin of this page, or click HERE.

Most of the documents are in PDF format, with a couple of exceptions that are in Word where they might be useful to others who might want to recycle them.

The documents added today are:

  • Pandora International: original sales brochure
  • 1973 Boat Test: Pandora International
  • 2000 Used Boat Test: Pandora Mark 1
  • Arabella's 2005 Survey (PDF)
  • Power Consumption Calculator (MS Word)