Nothing left but to re-install the refinished windlass

Thanks to a great deal of assistance from friends and family our Sea Tiger 555 windlass is completely restored.
Bud assisted me with removing the windlass.  Here is the starting point...

 I struggled to disassemble the windlass so a local friend took the windlass the his workplace, a local Naval Yard.  The assembled windlass returned it looking like this...

I then transported the windlass to my family's home and with more help from Bud we stripped down the windlass into its component parts. Degreasing and inspecting the mechanism we relaized one spring was missing, a couple bolts were nearly stripped, and all the o-rings required replacing.

 I located SL Spares, a UK based vendor that supplies replacement parts, via the internet.  The new parts arrived as ordered from the UK in under 2 weeks.  Bud took on reassembling, priming, and applying the finish paint.  The Lovett's are in town visiting for a day and delivered the windlass.

 All that remains is adding some additional grease and bolting the windlass back to the deck.

More images and comments on this project can be found in our photo album: Refinish Windlass - 2011

Thanks for all the help to everyone that pitched in on this project.

Projects preempting posts

Daily showers here in Beaufort, NC have not prevented long hours of boat projects from preempting blog posts.  By the time I finally come to rest at the end of the day all energy for updating the blog has gone into laying up the mast step or refinishing the trim in the vee berth or completing the new counter top for the head or...

This morning's rain shower only allowed me to apply three layers of mat to the new mast step so after securely tarping over the curing epoxy and cleaning up around the cabin I drove home for lunch.  Over lunch I checked in on the C'est la Vie blog and realized that the last update was on Sept 17th.

While the blog  has not received daily updates, I have continued to add images and captions to the web albums chronicling the evolution of to our two primary projects underway.  If you are looking for more detail on our progress please check out these albums...

Rigging Repairs and Modifications - 2011  - We are currently fairing out our modifications to the interior / original mast step;  building up layers of mat, 18 layers of 25 layers complete, on what will be the base of our deck mast step; and waiting on the machine shop to weld up our compression post assembly.

Refinishing the head - 2011   Most of the headway on this project in the last couple days has focused on refinishing the wood trim in the head and vee berth area.  We have also made progress on the new counter top and will hopefully be applying the final coats of bristol finish to it this afternoon.