Refurbishment of Centerboard Housing and Thwarts

Refurbishment of the Thwarts and Centerboard Housing

During the course of it’s life Tra Bhui has mainly been used for sail training and as such has had considerable fair wear and tear as well as some not so fair wear and tear! Sometime in the past the rear thwart (No 1) had been damaged to the extent that part of the teak had been replaced with a bit of soft wood spliced in and painted in wood stain. This as you can imagine looks pretty scruffy to say the least!

The rear section of the centerboard housing had also been modified and was capped in decking timber again stained in an attempt to match the rest of the wood trim.

Old cap made of Decking Timber

 

To bring Tra Bhui back up to a decent standard, I wanted to replace the damaged thwart and the decking cladding on the center board housing. I also wanted to mount a compass, a depth sounder and incorporate a fixed VHF radio and electrical witch panel into the whole assembly without creating a monstrous structure which was out of keeping with the boat or which looked like an after fit.

Center Board Housing stripped of timber

Thwarts

First things first – the thwarts and wooden trim around the center board was easily removed as all the bits were fixed in place with brass wood screws or stainless steel bolts. When removing No 1 thwart I also removed the cam cleats for the jib / genoa as these were mounted on to it.

The damaged thwart was set aside – the teak will be put to good use later and the soft wood relegated to the bin.

Old Thwart after sanding 1st of 5 coats of oil being applied

The remaining thwarts and center board capping were sanded to remove the grey weathering and expose fresh wood. Five coats of oil were applied with each coat being lightly sanded once dry prior to the next one being applied.

To replace the damaged thwart a new one was cut from iroko as the cost of teak unless found second hand is prohibitively expensive. While I have some teak beams which I have been ripping and sizing for other projects unfortunately I have nothing wide enough to make a thwart from.

Hopefully the iroko will quickly mellow when exposed to the air and it will provide a near match to the teak over the course of time.

Centerboard housing

To make sure everything fitted into the refurbished housing, I decided that I would build a mock up first. Rather than use sacrificial timber, I decided to use the Iroko that I would use for the final item, however everything would be assembled dry and with as few fixings as possible until I was satisfied that everything worked and fitted OK. 

Mock up of new housing

Of particular concern was the mounting of the compass and whether it would be affected by the centerboard and the nearby VHF radio depth sounder and switch panel. Until everything was dry assembled and the radio powered up I would be unable to measure any compass deviation. If any compass deviation proved too be excessive then I would be able to carry out some reworking without too much problem.

To replace the decking used to cap the centerboard casing from the 1^st thwart back towards the helm I cut similar sized pieces from new Iroko. These were then scribed to replicate the curves in the glass fiber molding which formed the centerboard housing.

To accommodate the compass I needed to create a wooden mount approx 200mm wide. This being roughly the same width as the existing short centerboard cap which runs between the 1^st and 2^nd thwarts it made sense to extend this to the rear of the center board casing and return it on to the cockpit floor. The new wider cap would be supported by the new Iroko fitted on either side in lieu of the recently removed decking timber. 

Using a cardboard template which I had previously cut to suit the compass, a suitable sized and shaped hole was cut in the new cap and the compass mounted.

The radio was set into the center board housing just under the cap on the starboard side. This would allow it to be easily accessed by either myself or the crew when we were sailing. I chose the starboard side as this would allow me to use it with my right hand and steer with my left. By mounting it as high as possible I was able to enlarge an existing rebate in the top of the glass fiber molding of the centerboard which allowed the depth of cavity required for the radio to be achieved.

The depth sounder was also set into the capping and the switch panel into the side of the housing with all the necessary wiring concealed under the capping.