Hatches, cleats and fittings from Vetus
With the fun of the launch now a memory, it's back to work on MAIWAR.
The process of choosing, ordering and installing boat fittings is amazingly time consuming, even for a simple boat like mine.
With a vessel like this it's very easy to ruin the aesthetic with modern fittings, and very hard to find the right fittings to maintain a traditional look. On previous boats I have been a slave to authenticity, searching high and low for period correct parts, and only buying bronze fittings and fastenings, as opposed to stainless. This can be rewarding but overall it's expensive and headache inducing. It's most certainly the right thing to do for an old boat. But for a brand new boat like MAIWAR, I felt I had some leeway.
With this in mind I decided to use all stainless fittings. They’re cheaper, lighter, give me many more options and make it far easier to procure the right parts.
I would have liked to eliminate plastic components from my boat as they look cheap and out of place. However, with what I plan to do with the boat, and weight being an important factor, I felt I had no choice but to use plastic where necessary. For example, the 7 watertight deck spin-outs in the cockpit: These are made by Whale (the same company that made the two plastic bilge pumps) and are the only truly watertight spin-outs on the market. For me to make 7 separate wooden hatches, as an alternative to the plastic spin outs, would have been a lot of extra work and weight, for an end result that would have been average at best.
The main hatch is another example. It’s a fully watertight deck hatch made by Vetus. They make a wide range of components for boats, from hatches to water bladders to diesel engines and bow thrusters. Vetus were kind enough to give me a discount on the products they supplied to me. The hatch I bought is a nice lightweight unit with an acrylic top, making it easy for me to see out when I'm in the cabin. Once again, to make this out of timber would have been heavier and less practical.
Vetus also supplied me with the water bladders I’ll be filling to carry my drinking water. I bought two 220 litre rectangular bladders, and one 100 litre triangular bladder. The two larger bladders go under the cockpit in the forward two storage compartments. The volume of each of these two chambers is about 150 litres. The bladder will fill up and conform to the shape of the hull. The triangular bladder is positioned in the aft section of the boat, against the bulkhead. It is placed here to help trim the boat correctly. It’s strapped down to the keel so if the boat turns over the bladder will stay fixed. The straps can be tightened as the water is used up.
The two main bladders are plumbed to a three way valve inside the cabin that leads to a standard galley pump. This is how I will fill up my water bottle, alternating between the two main bladders each day.
The horn cleats are generous aluminium numbers, the bow being 250mm and the stern 200mm. These cleats are lightweight and very fine looking. I like large cleats as there's always a time when you want to tie more than one line to a cleat, or someone throws you a very large line.
That's all for this week. Next week I'll talk about the electrics, which are nearing completion.
