wrote in message
ups.com...
Made my post for a Furuno 1623 out of a 2 inch alloy pole found at a
sailing club - either a boom or spinnaker pole. I cut the platform
from 6mm marine alloy sheet together with some reinforcing corners.
Socket was made from a SS316 tube cut to make a clamp and bolted
through into superstructure. Painted with Hammerite primer and white
smooth paint Cost £very little. Seems to be prefectly rigid in use
with slight flexing in strong winds. May fit a brace to the
wheelhouse.

Looks you have a workable solution there, but I went back to image 1 of your
launch and delivery voyage and flipped through the whole album.. It looked
like a fun trip until you got to the canals. How much clearance was there
for the wheel in image 73, low bridge? I have a friend in northern England
and we have talked about the Yorkshire-Sheffield canal system
(http://www.penninewaterways.co.uk/sheffield/index.htm ) several times.

Leanne

The clearance was the thickness of the paint on the stem and on the
underside on the bridge beam - my stem has blue paint on it. Barge was
designed to go under that particular bridge!! I had to take the wheel
off - and had a car steering wheel to put on under the bridge.

wrote:
The clearance was the thickness of the paint on the stem and on the
underside on the bridge beam - my stem has blue paint on it. Barge was
designed to go under that particular bridge!! I had to take the wheel
off - and had a car steering wheel to put on under the bridge.


I guess the idea is that when the boat is fully fitted you don't need to
load bags of sand (?) ballast anymore :-)

--
Kees

The ballast shown is the permanent ballast that is under the floor. 10
tons of galvanised steel punchings.