Shelter skelter

Was planning to do the third and final coat of epoxy on the gunwales, last weekend, but the weather had other plans.  A severe thunderstorm (news said 70mph gusts) came through and blew my boat shelter to bits.  This shelter survived a lot of thunderstorms last summer but the addition of the bug screen sides, in preparation for a bug free clearcoat session, must have added too much windage.  Fotunately no damage to The Goat but the shelter tore and the boat filled up with a lot of water.  A drain plug of some type may be in my future.  Two weeks ago we had to delay leaving for Cedar Key by about an hour in order to not drive The Goat through a downpour.  Boat with no drain plug is already getting old.  After buying another shelter, cleaning the mess up and and setting up the new shelter I had just enough time left to install the oarlocks.

Barely missed the boat!

This is water from just hosing the salt off.  I tilted the trailer back to make it easier to bail but still a pain.  On the plus side, the deck plates did not leak a drop.  I used vaseline on the seals which helps a lot.

The oarlock is located and temporarily screwed down to immbilize it so I could scribe an accurate outline onto the gunwale.  I'm using stainless oarlocks from West Marine.  Looked everywhere and these are the nicest ones I found.  Many of the bronze ones look very rough, like they were cast using 1800's technology.  While I like the look of weathered bronze it's not quite in line with the Goat's modern aesthetic.

After scribing the oarlock socket's outline onto the gunwale I set up my trusty Bosh router with adjustable fence and held my breath while routing out a pocket for the oarlock socket flange.  This is a DO NOT EFF UP MOMENT.  One spastic move and irreparable damage occurs.  Thankfully all went well. 

Router depth stop was set to the thickness of the oar lock socket flange.  The corner radii, from the router bit, had to be cleaned up with a small chisel.  I found an Xacto knife to be useful for this.

And we have flush mounted oarlock sockets.

Total time to date, not counting rebuilding the shelter: 440hrs