Rope ladder
Our new harbour makes it difficult for my girls to enter the deck - one needs to climb quite high on Meritaten’s bow pulpit. To help them a bit - and make more eager to go sailing with me - I’ve made a simple rope ladder.
Steps should interlock with the bow so I started with cardboard profile matching the shape. Transferred this to bits of plywood to determine size of steps.
Once happy with the shape I cut all pieces - there will be 3 steps. Although one or two would make the trick I make three, maybe we can also use this as bath ladder?
Edges will be finished with a rope, to give it a nice look and protect the hull from bumps. Tablesaw cut groves on edges, to guide the rope.
Rounding all edges, to facilitate epoxy coating.
All steps should hang supported by 4 strakes of rope. I try to accommodate for curvature of the bow, so that lowest step is accessible and not hidden behind the top step.
Epoxy coating follows. Three layers, wet-on-wet, to get proper protection for harsh life this piece of equipment will have.
Next day when the epoxy was cured, I prepared pieces of rope to be glued and screwed into the steps. All components were taped, to ease up cleaning the mess of epoxy gluing.
I thickened epoxy into peanut-butter consistency so it does not run out of the groove while the rope is being screwed. WEST filleting blend gives mahogany/teak coloured paste, matching plywood’s colour.
This step took me longer than expected, making one batch of epoxy cure in the pot before I was done.
Once all was in place I taped the assembly for the glue to hold the rope. Left to cure overnight.
Finished components.
Simple rope work to assemble the ladder. Waxed twine makes this job a bliss.
All assembled and ready for tests.
It looks a bit like flower-pot shelves. If the ladder proves to be inconvenient it will serve as one, probably.