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The washboard moulding on my Mark 3 boat is fibreglass and hollow. I drilled holes for the reefing line through it on either side and bushed the holes with a piece of brass tubing (inside diameter about 3/8″) fixed with epoxy resin. A piece of small diameter line stretched taut from the drum is useful as a guide for marking the holes. The final result looks quite good. The line passes cleanly through the washboard and is cleated to a small cam cleat mounted on a mahogany block near the mast.
Bruce
At one point I seem to recall someone suggesting hiring a small child to crawl into the space above the buoyancy tank, but I suppose this could get you in trouble with the child protection authorities!
When faced with the same problem a few years ago, I ended up turning the boat over onto sawhorses. Using a spanner or socket/ratchet handle taped to long pole, gravity was now working with me instead of against, and it was relatively easy to get hold of the nut. I had an assistant turn the screw heads from outside the boat.
Good luck!
Bruce
To provide some additional perspective on Oliver’s excellent answers, many of the design features of the modern GP14 are oriented toward racing. The expectation from the design of the through-deck sheeting is that the boat will be sailed almost exclusively with an unreefed genoa. Oliver outlined options that improve sheeting of the genoa when reefed, but unless you are planning to do a lot of non-competitive sailing under reefing conditions, I suspect you will find (as I have) that occasionally having to live with a less than ideal sheeting angle is not a major problem. That said, traditional on-deck sheeting is probably a more versatile choice for cruisers who expect to reef often. Be forewarned that your crew, who would spend a lot of their time aboard sitting on the cars and tracks, might disagree with me on this!
Bruce
Wayfarers as designed had the foresail sheeted on the side decks. However, the Wayfarer is a much beamier boat than the GP, and with the original setup the sheeting angle when sailing close hauled was not very good. For this reason most modern Wayfarers have inboard sheeting, hence the tracks installed on the forward benches that you saw in the video.
Tracks of this type (typically Allen A4274 or something similar, approximately centred on the side decks) are used on GPs with on-deck sheeting but are not needed if the boat has through-deck sheeting.
The edges of the through-deck slots are indeed potential wear points. They might benefit from some type of reinforcement (I believe there have been some experiments with carbon fibre), and they can be repaired after the fact, if necessary (see attached photo).
Bruce
In my experience, Bourne Plastics moulding numbers for GPs usually follow the format year/month/hull number. However, in some cases (particularly for older boats), the numbers don’t seem to adhere to this pattern and are much harder to interpret. Here’s a very speculative interpretation for you to consider: “68” refers to the year, and the third character is a “7” which has been struck badly and is damaged along its top edge. Then the sequence “7055” would be the hull number, which would be valid for 1968. If this is correct, I’m not sure what the significance of the trailing “9” is, but I think I’ve seen this kind of moulding number sequence in a few older boats.
In any case, enjoy your boat.
Bruce
I suspect Oliver didn’t get a chance to look at the entire number in your photo. That number, 9946, is a plausible hull number for a Mark 2 GRP boat. The obvious care taken to produce the very neat characters suggests to me that this is very likely the true hull number. It would place the boat as having been produced in or around 1972, and probably moulded by Bourne Plastics.
Bruce
Welcome to the forum, and good luck with your new boat! I’m a bit puzzled about the “retro fitted buoyancy tanks” you describe. All GRP GP14s moulded in the UK had buoyancy tanks incorporated into their designs. Could you post a few photos to show us how the flotation in your boat is configured? Also, it would be helpful to know the age and hull number of the boat. In a GRP boat, this is usually engraved on a metal plate glued to the hull immediately abaft the centreboard case. You might have to lift up the floorboards (if they exist) to see this. Unfortunately, in many older boats these plates have come loose and are missing. You might also try looking around inside the hull for other identifying markers. For example, many older GRP boats have a moulder’s label, often located along the port side of the hull beneath the deck, that might hold some clues as to the age of the boat.
Bruce
