PocketShip has a sturdy bow eye near the waterline which holds the bobstay for the bowsprit and is also used to haul the boat onto its trailer with a winch.
So it has to be very, very strong.
I have been thinking for a long while that it would be best to test fit the bow eye now rather than after the hull has been painted, because I am bound to make a mess in doing so.
The bow eye supplied in the hardware pack is actually a U bolt with two metal plates to hold it securely in place on the outside and the inside of the stem.
Except PocketShip does not have a stem. She has a fillet joining the sides together, so I would need to create a support pad on the outside of the bow to support the U bolt and its metal plate where they pass through the fillet.
First I marked in the location of the bow eye by scaling up measurements from the drawings.
I reckoned it should be 2' 4" from the top of the stem. Like this.
Then I glued 2 pieces of scrap ply either side of the bow at this location, to form some solid material from which I could fashion a support pad. Like this.
Next I trimmed the two pieces of ply with the block plane to provide a flat surface for the support pad, like this.
I marked up the location of the bolt holes and the metal plate, as here.
Then I drilled a 3mm hole in the centre of each bolt hole, as accurately as I could.
I poked a piece of wire through each hole to check that they emerged in the centre of the fillet inside the boat.
They did.
I also used the wires to the check that the holes were perpendicular to the support pad.
They were very slightly out so I made small corrections when drilling out the 8mm holes for the U bolt.
Then we had a test fit for the U bolt. It looked good.
Here it is, roughly applied.
And here it is, faired.
Lastly, a final test fit for the U bolt. Like this.
That looks like it will do the job.
I will do something similar inside the bow when I fit the bow eye.
Looking good!
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