Ship of Theseus
I’m going to admit it, until Jamie, one of our blog readers, made mention of it in his comment on this post, I had never even heard of the ship of Theseus, or Theseus‘ paradox. If you haven’t either, the basic question is, if we keep replacing pieces of a ship (or any object), at what point does it stop being the original item? If it does stop at some point, I have to think that we’re getting close!
Over the past few days, Rebecca and I replaced all of the shower fixtures on the boat with brand new ones matching the factory originals. That, along with the other items we’ve replaced, almost makes each of the four heads on One Love brand new.
Today, we tackled installing the new trampoline that we ordered from South Africa. While the original one was still in OK shape, Michael opted to order a new one as opposed to repairing the small tears that had begun to show up. The job went quicker than most would have expected. We had the old one removed and the new one secured in just about two hours. We plan to let it rest and stretch a bit overnight and then take a crack at tightening up the lacing a bit more tomorrow.
We began by laying the new trampoline on top of the old one.
We started by unlacing the front (bow) edge of the old one,
and then securing the new one in the same fashion.
As we continued to unlace the old one, we tied off the corners so that it wouldn’t drop in the water.
Ready to remove the final lines securing the old tramp and pick it up in the tender.
It never touched the water.
Working to tighten the lacing.
What do you think? Pretty isn’t it?
It may be an optical illusion from the photograph, but the port side lacing looks much longer than the starboard. Is this just how it starts out before you re-adjust and re-tie? Or is it just a case of get it in, let the creases warm up in the sun and smooth out, then tension the port side as much as you want?
Mike
Not by design. It’s not too far off but we’ll try to trim it in equally after it stretches a bit.
looks great! A tip I’ve learned from years of tightenng Hobie 16 tramps is to use a pair of vise grips on the line as you work along the lacing so you can maintain the tension on the parts you’ve already done. Pull, clamp, repeat.
Likely better than using my hands to hold the line stationary. Thanks.
Better yet, use a rope grab (Jumar, like those used for climbing the mast) for pulling, and vise grips for locking off what you’ve got. This combination will get them WAY tight with no hand fatigue. I’ve done it this way many times.
Do they make Jumars that hold line (cord) that small?
I’m sure it varies. My old Jumars (original, long out of production) were good down to 6mm (1/4″), since that is a common haul line diameter. Now I notice that many are only rated to 8mm. Of course, that does not mean they will not hold on smaller line, they just won’t hold at the rated strength at that diameter. But there is a huge difference between lacing a tramp and ascending a 6mm line over the void!
I lace with 7 mm accessory cord (I had a spool left over from a prior business, and it seems to be holding up very well). The Jumar works fine.
The Jumar trick might not work on Amsteel; I suspect the teeth would cause both messy fraying and fuzzing on single braid.
No doubt!
nothing to do with boats, but there was a very popular TV series in the UK called Only Fools and Horses. One of the characters was a road sweeper called Trigger. He was in the pub proudly proclaiming that he had been using the same broom for 20 years. “Yep” he said “…and it’s only had six new heads and three new handles!”
Exactly! 🙂
I think it’s on the page that I linked that they tell a similar story of George Washington’s Axe.
Looks nice. Having recently restitched and reinstalled my trampoline, I can say getting the new one was probably the right idea. 😉
My trampoline (Leopard 38) was definitely laced differently than yours (knots around each D ring)…took forever to do it the way it was on my boat.
Glad your charters are going well guys.
-Mike
ThisRatSailed
Care to send me a pic of your lacing job?
Will send you a picture in a few minutes. My best guess as to why they did it this way is to possibly prevent a larger section of the lacing from unraveling in case a line were to break…but it is just a guess. I just “did it like it was already done” since I didn’t really know any better. 🙂 They seemed to also have a trick for the side with the posts so you didn’t have to “lace” it on the sides with the posts…instead feeding loops through the eyes of the trampoline. Tensioning was…shall we say…interesting.
🙂
Looks good. Also looks as though it might have taken all day! Well done.
Nope, two hours.