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Sometime yesterday, Erika had a problem getting one of her bunk lockers open. Peter was trying to open it and not having any luck.
So I came along and blurted out "Oh I have some experience with this!" and proceeded to explain to the boat owner why his latch was stuck. My theory was tested to no avail and Peter simply pulled the locker door hard enough to break the latch.
The latch was plastic and Peter had some spare plastic stock. Since I am the "engineer" of the group, he suggested that I give a go at manufacturing a spare by using another good one as a model. So he took off one from the aft cabin for the model.
So this morning after breakfast, I got into the tool locker and lined up all the tools I would need... Hacksaw, sandpaper, electric drill, sharp knife. It took me most of the morning but I managed to create a reasonable facsimile of the plastic catch given to me.
I was excited to fit it into the locker to see if it would.work. And I really wasn't that surprised when it didn't work because I expected to have to make minor adjustments.
Now, you have to understand that you cannot see this latch work as you close the locker. There is a finger hole just below the latch to pull the lever and release it from the catch. The latch is spring operated so when the door is closed, the latch rides up over the curved part of the catch until it pops up on the rear of the catch.
All I could do was feel with my little finger to try to figure out why it wasn't catching. It appeared that the catch was a bit too high. I didn't quite understand this until I finally looked at the properly working locker next to the broken one and found out that it was about an eighth of an inch longer then the catch from the aft cabin. Who would have thought there would be two size catches on the boat?
Well, it was 1:30pm and I was not about to try again today. I needed a break from the tedium of manufacturing small plastic parts so I turned my attention to organizing the tool box.
This of course, is one of my special talents. We had guests coming over for drinks at 6pm so I needed to finish my task, put everything away and clean up the considerable mess I created. But by the time our guests arrived, the salon was in "Bristol fashion" as Peter likes to say.
One of our guests was a very entertaining fellow of German origin named Marty who had obtained American citizenship and created a company based on several pattens he developed to remove fiberglass from boat hulls saving days of hard labor. Then he got bored with that and started buying Swans and fixing them up and reselling them. He owns houses in Cuba and Annapolis.
As the alcohol kicked in, the stories got better and better. We all had a great, fun night.
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