I’ve finally done it, a job I’ve been meaning to have done since I first bought Kudu in 2008 has actually been completed. Well, almost.

You see, the standard Mk1 Corribee had small tufnol winches, screwed on to a playwood laminate shaped block which was in turn bolted to the wooden cockpit combings. In fact, a picture is worth a thousand words…

To be honest, this configuration was probably ok but I decided early on that I would improve on it. The plywood blocks you can see in the picture had begun to soften a bit, and the whole set up was a bit flimsy, and meant the thin combing would take all the force of a large genoa. I think I only ever sailed the boat using these winches on one occasion, and that was the day after the above picture was taken (Essex Marina, August 2008 by the way).

It turns out that my haste to improve the boat was a mistake, and by the time I set off for the big sail in 2009, I still hadn’t replaced the winches and so had to resort to using the spinnaker blocks and cleats to control the headsail.  Of course, it can be, and has been argued that this is fine on such a small boat, and it was usable, but I often found I couldn’t easily get enough tension on the sheets, and frankly, it was a bit of a pain in the backside to have to face aft to deal with the sheets while tacking.

I did buy some small Harken winches before I set off in May 2009, but I later fitted these to the coach roof while on the river Deben to allow better control of the lines that lead to the cockpit, and the job has remained incomplete ever since.

At the Southampton Boat Show this year, I bought a new set of harken winches, this time slightly bigger in order to fit the Barton adaptors to turn them in to self tailers, but again the new winches sat in a bag hidden away and gathering dust.

Not now though, now they’re in their proper place. The owner of the largest Riva motorboat I’ve ever seen was having some stainless fabrication work done in the yard, and I while the guy was here with all his welding gear, he offered to sort them out for me for a price I just couldn’t pass up on. If I was ever going to get this job completed, now was the time. I couldn’t, can’t, afford it, but never mind, it’s done now, and I’m glad.

What a job it is too! 6mm plate steel, 10mm bolts, and a 6mm backplate under the deck. I reckon you could lift the boat off these things. They need a dose of pickling paste, but once that’s done I’ll sikkaflex the things in place. Shame I’ve got no rig to go with them any more, isn’t it!

Nick is the chap who did it (he’s done some awesome, and BIG, stainless work on boats around here), so if you’re looking for a bloke to do some posh metal stuff in the North West, have a butchers at stainlessfurniture.co.uk

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