Summer projects - where to start?

I've come to realize that boat yards are dirty places.  With inevitable steel cutter on your port side griding out some rust and the fiberglass cruiser to your starboard sanding on bottom paint, your dear vessel is destine to be covered in foul dust.  So my practice is to throughly wax all painted surfaces and polish all metal as soon as the keel settles onto the blocks.  With a fresh coat of wax most of the dust will disappear after a simple fresh water rinse.

Painting the deck and topsides is one of our summer projects so the last thing I want on those surfaces is a fresh coat of wax.  This cut down surface area needing attention.  I have knocked out waxing the hull and polishing the steel in the last couple days.

Now I'm turning my attention projects that will require outside contractors / labor.  Starting from the bottom up, I removed the rudder shoe this afternoon so that the bushing that keeps the rudder fitting snugly in the shoe can be replaced.  In the image included I am pointing to the bushing.

 The "play" created by wear on this high density plastic bushing can be felt in the tiller. As the bushing continues to wear the play can be heard in the hull in rough seas.  We last replaced this bushing in summer 2006.  So it looks like a 5 year life span.  Last time I only had the shop make one bushing.  This time around I'm going to have the shop make a few of the bushings.

Fortunately, I've never had difficulty removing the shoe which on C'est la Vie is held in place by four 1/4 inch bronze machine screws.  The screws pass through a solid fiberglass section of the keel and into threads on the opposite side of the shoe.  The screws are set in opposition with two heads on each side.  It is important to snugly block out the rudder so that when the shoe is removed the full weight of the rudder assembly is not hanging from the fittings above.   The image to the right is of the hull with the shoe removed. Moving left to right (forward to aft) are the four pilot holes for the bronze screws, the rudder stock, and the wood used to block up the rudder.

My plan is to take the shoe into the machine shop along with a measurement of the diameter of the rudder stock (1" on C'est la Vie) and have them machine the new bushing plus a couple spares.