I am unduly proud of an improvement I made to my Oday 23. I have been frustrated with my roller furling line set up since I installed it 10 years ago. The furling line would interfere with the jib sheet, and it was always a pain to tie off the end to the small cleat I had installed on the edge of the starboard coaming. I was on someone else's boat a couple of years ago, and I saw that they used a swivel cam cleat to control the end of their furling line. I thought that was a great idea: you could stand or sit anywhere and snap the line in and out of the cams. No more awkward intereference with the jib sheets or leaning over the coaming. And, I already had a swivel cam cleat sitting in my basement gathering dust! It had been a gift to me to use as an upgrade for the mainsheet control on my Sunfish. Well, I sold the Sunny before getting around to installing the thing, so it was still available.
I thought about how to install the swivel, including a deck and coaming mounting. In the end, I decided the best and easiest thing to do would be to mount in on a board, then attach the board to a stantion. No holes in the deck or boat, and its out of way without being inconvenient.
A piece of scrap shelving gets cut to size and coated with epoxy, the swivel attaced via stainless screws and some 4200, and then mounted to the stantion, reusing the hardware from the stantion block it replaced. I tried it out last night, and I couldn't be happier with the results.
I thought about how to install the swivel, including a deck and coaming mounting. In the end, I decided the best and easiest thing to do would be to mount in on a board, then attach the board to a stantion. No holes in the deck or boat, and its out of way without being inconvenient.
A piece of scrap shelving gets cut to size and coated with epoxy, the swivel attaced via stainless screws and some 4200, and then mounted to the stantion, reusing the hardware from the stantion block it replaced. I tried it out last night, and I couldn't be happier with the results.
