Rare bird - A Beneteau First 260 resource

 The 2023 version of the so-called ‘Summer Series’ is over at WYC, culminating with the last race of the ‘T’ Series. The 7 races of that series, added to the 8 races from the earlier ‘G’ series, determine the winner the the ‘Sunset Series’, the most prestigious series  of the WYC season. BlueJ had won the ‘G’ series, but the lighter air of the T is always an issue for the 260. But this year we hung tough and were tied on points with the perennial winner, a lightweight Olympic-class Soling 27. We owned the tie breaker, but that didn’t matter. Who ever finished better would take the overall. Our plan was simple. Sail fast and solid, zero mistakes, and apply loose cover to the Soling. Here we are going down-wind after catching up the fleet that started 3 minutes in front of us. The Soling is out of frame, just off our leeward bow. On the last upwind to the finish  of the 5-leg W/L, the two lead boats (the Soling and an Impulse 26) split, and we were forced to pick. As we cou...

 OK here we go with part 2. As previewed in part 1, this post is about replacing the fixed hatch in the head with an opening hatch. You can read about the foredeck hatch replacement   HERE . The hatch for the head compartment is a Lewmar Low Profile Model 41. As it was an option on the First 260, it should drop right into the hole under the fixed hatch. I’ll say it right now -  this job took over two times the expected time to compete, but was also more than two time as satisfying. The satisfying part is easy to understand; its not just a replacement, it is a full upgrade. The extra time? I’ll explain now. Here is the old fixed port before I started. I’m not sure, but I’m guessing that this lens is a Lewmar part that they sold to boatbuilders to install when a opening hatch was as option. It was highly engineered, not just a piece of acrylic. On BlueJ it was actually loose and seemed ready to fall out. But looks were deceiving. While parts of the port were ‘loose’, u...

Like I assume most of the First 260s, we have a Whale Gusher bilge pump mounted in the cockpit. It’s a solid pump, the sole flaw being the vulnerable lid. Ours got kicked and snapped off during a race a few years back. As the actual performance was not effected, I resisted the immediate urge to replace the pump, having seemingly been unable to find just the lid. But it looked terrible, and I also knew that the sun and UV were not good for the rubber boot over the pump lever. So this year I put my google-fu to work and was able to find the part: Whale Deck Plate with Lid - DP8904 . The part is only about US$30, and comes with a new boot as well, making it a great deal. The install is rather straight-forward, but a bit of a trick if you are doing this single-handed. The pump body is suspended on the cockpit wall by the same screws that hold the plate on. The ‘trick’ is to remove two screws, and then place them in backward to hold the pump body and allow it to rest on the fiberglass ‘lip’...

 It was easy to tell that the sun and UV had effected the acrylic lenses of the Lewmar hatches on BlueJ. While mostly cosmetic, the surface crazing made the windows look old, and they were hard to see through.   And while visually bothersome, they never made it to the top of the maintenance priority list until a guest foredecker stumbled on a maneuver during a race and fell on the foredeck hatch, cracking both the lens AND the frame. As we have crew up there all the time, it created a major safety issue and had to be dealt with ASAP. We added some tape to keep the water out and hold things together after the race, and started to look for solutions.  First up was to identify the correct part. Based on specification the hatch is a Lewmar ‘Low Profile’ hatch, model 30. That’s the key information. Lewmar Low Profile model 30. And while you can replace just the lens or the lid assembly, I went for the whole hatch to get full benefit of the upgrade. That 25 year old original ha...