Antikythera Mechanism

Long-time followers of the blog may recall the marathon efforts undertaken by Jon and later myself in getting all the winches back to operating condition after more than a decade of sitting around. Most were fine, and just needed some love, but the four foredeck winches (for spinnaker control) were in the saddest shape. Two we got working, but were in the "Must get back to that some time" category, while the other two were in the "Yuck, hide it, will deal to that when we have some serious time on our hands".

Now is the time.

We don't run a spinnaker - Minneys Yacht Surplus in Newport Beach has all our spinnakers...if you haven't sold them by now I'd be happy to take them back off your hands.  :-)   Because of that the need to tear the foredeck winches apart has not been great. But now we are doing the bulwarks, and I am going to remove the bronze stands that the outer winches sit on to have them stripped and recoated, so the first of the Evil Four has come off.

Here it is in all it's pre-service glory - and this is by no means the worst of them.

Nice, huh? To the machine shop, Batman!

A few hours later...

I could of gone further and bead-blasted all the bronze parts, but, you know, I'm trying to have a life...

One down, three to go.