We found a whole load of goodies up in the cockpit from one of our subscribers so we set to making good use of what we found.

I was waking back from the marina offices when I found a hole load of stuff had been left in the cockpit, so I brought it aboard along with the wood and some pipes that were up in the cockpit too. We asked around and we found out that the stuff had come from one of our subscribers. He doesn't want to be named but I really want to thank Mr. K for all the nice stuff that he left us.

In addition to the bag, I also found some bits of wood and some rather sturdy pipes which I'm sure we will put to good use. Inside the bag I found:-

• A big reel of 2 core wire
• Silver Tape
• Tyvek Suit
• Red Cable ties
• Yellow Cable ties
• LED Strip light
• Dust Sheet
• Making Tape
• Lubricant
• Shackles
• Anchor Swival
• Swival

So with all this great stuff, then there was only one thing to do and that is use it.

Improving the Solar Arch

Seeing as we had got some metal poles, I decided that I would add the cross braces that I wanted to our solar arch. So I bought a variety of ends so that I did not need to take the arch apart to add the poles. so all in all the ends cost £100. so quite expensive when you consider that the Dyneema was doing a really good job. So once I had got all my ends, it was time to cut up the poles to fit. I thought that it would be a very simple job, but as with all things you have to do at least 10 jobs before you start and this was no exception, as I had to clean all the chrome work first, but luckily we had just received a dust sheet which was soon converted into a cleaning cloth. I found some chrome cleaner from the previous owner that worked in about 20°C and it being about 10°C it did work and soon all my chrome work was nice and shiny. Once that was done I measured the pipe and marked which side was which on the pipe. I measured each side because painful experience has taught me to never measure once and cut both pipes. When you make things yourself, things are never symmetrical. Once the pipes were measured I used our angle grinder to cut them as the pipe was heavy duty stainless and our jigsaw struggles with this grade of steel. Once I got that all sorted, it was just a case of screwing it all together. I had hoped to remove Beverley's Dyneema but in the end we replace just the one strut, as the Dyneema gave stability as well. The steel pipe does look better though.

Socket Boxes

We used the bits of wood we found to make socket boxes. Beverley cut the wood at a 45° angle using our circular saw. That meant that the bits of wood we cut had great angles so that they could be stuck together with Epoxy, sanded down and then varnished. It looked really nice once it was all done.

Lighting

With the strip light and the cable that Mr K bought us, we created some mood lighting in the back berth. The one tip that we have to offer, is have a stiff bit of plastic which you can thread through your boat, it makes mousing cables so much easier. The job didn't take too long at all and soon we had a nice bit of mood lighting in our back cabin.