Yet More Side Work..

I had a couple of weekday afternoons free and decided to go ahead and finish up some of the teak work and trailer work.  Previously I had sanded and refinished the tiller handle, grab rails, and companion way trim.  The old companion way hatch was an old piece of yellow pine plywood that had never even been sanded, much less stained or varnished.  The local hardware store had a few pieces of solid birch that looked like it would do the trick.  Using the original as a template, I made some straighter cuts, sanded it down, stained it with a moderate cherry mahogany, and replaced the hatch and trim to prevent any spillover from the onslaught of the rainy season ahead.

The new hatch and refinished trim definitely added to the classic look I was after in restoring the Clipper.  I knew the addition of the grab rails and tiller were definitely going to polish her off when we were finished.

Another annoyance on the list was the original trailer coupler.  This piece used an old style socket shield that slid over the coupler housing to lock onto the tow ball. 

Although it made for a strong grip around the tow ball, it became increasingly frustrating to unfasten the trailer from the tow ball at the end of a nice day of sailing.  It was finally time to replace this monstrosity with something a bit more.. modern?

A quick visit to Northern Tools yielded a galvanized butterfly style trailer coupler that I would use to attach to the trailer.  At first this seemed like a simple enough proposal.  But like many of the other upgrades I would like to perform on the boat, the path is not always straight nor easy.

The trailer extension that housed the original coupler had a couple of eyelets through which bolts were run to fasten the coupler.  These eyelets extruded almost a quarter of an inch on each side within the extension itself.  Since the new coupler was exactly fitted to the square stock steel tubing for the extension, these eyelets needed to be sheered off with an angle grinder.

My buddy Rob lent his expertise in metal works for this portion.  His proposal was to grind off the eyelets, shave some steel off the bottom of the extension, weld on the coupler, and then polish off and paint the new coupler and extension.

I have to say, the resulting product looked pretty damned good.

Though the photo above most likely does not do it justice, the old steel with the new coupler looked pretty nice again.

Rob even removed the old actuator arm for the old non-functioning surge brake unit, and rerouted the tow chains.  Now the Clipper was definitely ready to be moved for painting.

Stay tuned for more...