Additional Spinlock Rope Clutches
Tartan installed most of the deck hardware to support a Spinnaker. There are various blocks and bullseyes to guide the spin tack line toward the cockpit. However they left us short on deck organizer blocks and a rope clutch for the tack line.
We got even shorter with rope clutches because we redid the "German" sheeting on the main and brought the main sheet to the port side cabin-house winch.
The short version is that we need more rope clutches on the port side. The starboard side had two triple clutches, but the port side was fitted with two dual clutches. So I added another dual.
The surface for the spinlocks has a glassed-in aluminum backing plate. On Tartans, everything is tapped into these integral backing plates. So I had to buy a 5/16-18 Tap, A drill bit for the tap size for 5/16-18 (in aluminum) and a bigger tap handle than I had. According to the interwebs, an "F" sized drill bit was what I wanted.
So I started by drilling small pilot holes all the way through the glass and the backing plates
 |
| Initial pilot holes drilled. Spinlock does not provide a drill guide so you have to use the clutch itself to mark the hole locations. |
Then drilled the "F" sized tap holes through the glass and Aluminum. Then 5/16" clearance holes through the glass just down to the backing plate.
 |
| Ready for tapping. There is a good 3/4" of glass above the backing plate. Pretty strong boat. |
Tapping - trying very hard not to break the tap inside the hole. I only had WD-40 to use as tapping oil.
We love that the Tartans have removable headliners. I could have done this blind, but almost certainly would have drilled and tapped right through this bundle of wires! Removing the headliner also allowed me to not have aluminum chips bouncing around above the ceiling forever.
 |
| The backing plate is glassed in just above this area |
 |
| Headliner panel hanging |
A little Life-Calk and the new spinlock is mounted
Now we can have the spinnaker tack line come back to the cockpit. We can also shift the main sheet over so it lines up better with the winch.
Double-decker
Another bit missing for the spinnaker tack line was that there was no room in any of the deck organizer blocks for this line. This I fixed by adding a second level to the organizers on the port side
 |
| Upper level deck organizer added. Now room for two more lines |
The Winter Cover
Not really my project, but Argon got a nice new winter cover from Kinder Industries in Bristol, RI.
 |
| The Frame: 14 ribs, and 4 spine sections plus various supports |
 |
| This frame works with mast up or down |
