I should have done this when I was assembling the CB case

The randomness of the weather, children, Maths projects and life in general has slowed work on the boat.

I did manage to fit the Centreboard Case Cover, and the Centreboard Pin Covers. The Case Cover was easy. The Pin Covers not so.

It would have taken about 30 seconds to drill the pilot holes for the screws before the Centreboard case was installed in the boat. The Covers are very close to the hull, which is of course angled upwards.

Good luck getting a drill in there, or even a 90 degree adapter for your drill. In the end I used a 45 degree adaptor for a power screwdriver (much smaller) and a drill bit with a Hex Adapter built onto it, and I had to cut the drill bit short.

Then to get the screws in, I used a ratchet screwdriver with the 45 degree adapter. Using a power screwdriver risked making much of the screw head, and getting a messed up screw out from there was not going to be fun.

The first Pin Cover took about 2 hours ! It involved a lot of trial and error. Particularly the error part.

The second, about 20 minutes.

You can get ratchet offset screwdrivers and I see one of these going into my tool kit. Should there be any problem with the CB which required removing the cover, I'd be toast without one.

D

Experience is what you get just after you need it.

Or experience is what you get when you do something wrong....

Either way, now, I'm pretty good at dealing with poly-sulphide bedding. Now that the four coamings are in place:

I know that if the tape is too close to the wood for the radius of your bead, then the bedding will be quite thick on the tape and you leave a nice groove when you pull the tape out.

I know that for the brand I used, 5-8 minutes is about right to lift the tape, sooner and it's still to runny. Later and it tears.

I know that you should use 2" masking tape, not 1", as the bedding will surely get out over the 1" tape when you are not paying attention to something.

I know that you should not try to fix any problem once you have lifted the masking tape.

I know all these things now.

It would have made for a better job if I'd known them all at the start.

The unfortunate thing is that reading about these things only helps a little. There is no way to learn that is quite as good as Experience.

Also you will find that the notched spreaders used for spreading tiling cement are prefect for spreading bedding compound.

You can get them for close to nothing, which is good, 'cause I for one would not want to try to clean the poly-sulphide off them.

What was that old line? Son, if you're going to insist on making all your own mistakes, you'd better get cracking, you have a lot of work to do.