The Companionway Fiasco

Through trial and error. This whole episode was so painful that I had to ponder about writing it, so that I wouldn’t get annoyed again. Anyways, the idea was to make new companionway doors to replace the old frail ones without a lock. I fell in love with the ones made out of black polycarbonate that I saw in my friends boats sales add.

A manufacturer for the doors was found from online forums. The selected place was Muovikilpi Oy in Arabia, Helsinki. Measures from the old doors and off to Arabia.

The front doors were made of 10 mm polycarbonate plate, so you have to be Bruce Lee to be able to kick it in! Because the boat is self-made, some of the metrics are not exactly symmetric. The left side is a bit lower than the right side. Apparently the one sawing the door didn’t dare to make asymmetric door, so the first version didn’t fit.

When I got the door back cut according the measures, it was time to make the wooden parts and to think of how the lock should be mounted. Also this part went the hard way. After some odd brain fart I drilled a hole for the lock in a wrong place. Actually, the hole was in a perfect place, had it been the right spot. It was a pity that the correct place was a few centimeters below…

In order for case to be a total disaster I had also looked wrongly how the top door is moving in. Replacing the old bent one with a straight one was not going to work out. Bending the thick polycarbonate plate didn’t seem to work out anywhere and that was something I shouldn’t try to do myself. On top of that, at the back of the companionway there was a centimeter thick aluminum plate behind the wooded parts which I had missed. So just sawing the wooden parts straight wouldn’t be enough.

The Fiasco was crowned when the front door busted. Fantastic.

Getting the new doors done was important as there were no fences in the new dock at Merihaka. So I decided to renew atleast the front door. After sawing I made a new hole for the lock. I was rushing a bit too much and I used a wrong drill, which lead to crowning the fiasco with a broken front door. Fantastic.

With a good hobby one don’t count the hours spent. But in this case I have to say, I would have rather missed this learning experience.

 

Jussi

 

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