Playing detective
As mentioned in the last post, Jorvik Rose is now in the blue shed and work is progressing. The deck has been templated, as shown below and this has now been sent to the deck suppliers, Stazo, in the Netherlands for manufacture.
As with any project, there is always some scope creep, and Jorvik Rose is no exception. Some of this is our doing and some of it is due to her age. I mentioned the locker hatches earlier as an issue - unfortunately this also extends to the anchor locker hatch so these are undergoing repair at the moment.
The other issue that took significant detective work is related to the aluminium framed glass windscreen. When removed we found that there was significant corrosion to the aluminium framing where it had been mounted to the deck. The fixing rails were corroded beyond repair and the aluminium frames were showing significant corrosion in places, so we decided our best option was probably to source a replacement.... easier said than done!
Our first port of call was Medemblik Yacht Services, who are the spares division of Contest Yachts. Unfortunately back in the 1990's Contest had a yard fire so most of their records were lost, however they suggested a supplier in the Netherlands that may be able to help. This proved to be a dead end as they did not manufacture the type of windscreens we had, and in their correspondence they seemed very dour and unhelpful.
In the meantime we also found a potential UK supplier and contacted them for an estimate. They can make a similar windscreen but unfortunately some of the key features of our screen could not be replicated, so this turned into another dead end.
I checked the windscreen again carefully to see if I could identify a manufacturer but to no avail, so we were starting to search elsewhere to see what repair options were available.
The long glass saloon windows in Jorvik Rose were made by a now bankrupt company in Denmark so on the off chance I sent a sketch of what we needed to the successor company, Ertec Danmark and asked if they could help. Sam at Ertec wrote back and said, yes they could help and as a matter of fact they had the original drawings for the windscreen, with the last one being supplied to Contest in 1990, the year that Jorvik Rose was launched. Anyway, after a lot of back and forth correspondence, we now have a new windscreen being made for Jorvik Rose to the original specifications from Contest, as well as an electronic set of drawings for our files.
Right now, the next stage of work is to fix down the G10 deck mounting pads and to spray paint the coachroof & cockpit surround, all the new G10 pads and also the inside edge of the toerail upstand before the new teak toerail is fitted. We also decided to go for a taller guardrail around the deck to make it safer for us while at sea - most yachts have very low guardrails that hit us just above the knee and provide the perfect tipping point to throw us overboard. Our new guardrails and pushpit will raise the height so that the top rail will be at our hip height, making deck working at sea much safer for us.
With this extra work and the leadtime for the deck, she is likely to be in the shed until mid December, so at least she will be warm and dry.
After all of this work, the topsides of Jorvik Rose will make her look like a brand new yacht! We cannot wait to go sailing in spring, although we still have a long winter with lots of other internal work to complete.
