If you can dodge a wrench.....

That's right, I cannot play dodgeball according to Patches O'Hoolihan's training methods.  I had a bit of time after work so decided to go get a quick project done on the boat.  While I did get it accomplished, I also have a nice lump on my head from not dodging a wrench.  Ooops!

 I decided to put in the new cockpit drains.  I could have gone with plastic cockpit drains, but I have an aversion to plastic when it comes to drains and thru-hulls. Instead I went with bronze thru-hulls designed for below waterline.  The ones that were in the boat were of a very thin walled bronze, probably from a plumbing store, and not marine grade.  When I went to remove the old cockpit drain, I could not get the nut to move, which resulted in the lump on my head. Instead I took a screw driver and lightly hit the top of the cockpit drain.  It crumpled and split, which makes me very glad I replaced it.

 The only bad thing about using the thru-hulls is that they are not really flush.  They have a rounded flange, so it means that the cockpit may not entirely drain.  While this might be a slight annoyance, in the long run, it is not going to be a big deal.








In any case, after using 3M 4200 (the less permanent version of 5200), I think that they look pretty great.  I have yet to run the hoses so that the cockpit will actually drain somewhere other than the bilge, but that is a project for another day.

HALF SHELL NEWS!!!!

 I took some time on Monday to actually clean the bottom half of Half Shell.  Yes, I think that is going to be the dingy's name.  In any case, the dingy had something close to 20 years of growth from sitting on a beach upside down.  There was lichen growing on the bottom of the boat.  Just the pressure washer did a lot to clean the bottom of the boat, as the photo to the right illustrates.  Unfortunately it did not get the lichen off, because it had 20 years to cement itself to the gel coat.  I had to get a scrubbing pad out and go to town.  I know I took some gel coat off with the scrubbing pad, but darn the bottom of the dingy looks good.

I mean, come on, it looks almost as good as the freshly painted interior half of the dingy.  That is a great step though, because now I can put the dingy back together.  I have a new rub-rail and some stainless hardware to put it back together.  Hopefully this weekend it will be in one piece and ready for some bottom paint and oar locks.  We shall see though.

Dust in the wind....

First off, these last posts have been brought to you by Google Chrome.  Why?  Because Firefox is being a dink and not letting me post pictures.  This whole blogging of a major project does not work without pictures.  Sorry Firefox, but you're out.

So I might have gone a bit crazy yesterday.  I spent a lot of time sanding yesterday.  I also spent a lot of time messing with my shop vac to capture the dust my sander was creating.  Unfortunately, the shop vac's fine filter does not stay in place, so my system was not successful.  It was a classic grade A effort though.

When I started off yesterday, I was planning to sand the entire bottom of the boat.  I then realized that I was doing WAY more work then I needed to, because I only needed to sand the areas where the bottom paint was cracking and flaking off.  As you will see, that still meant a lot of sanding had to be done.  The plan was to paint the areas that had flaked off or been filled/repaired before painting the entire bottom.  This should make sure the bottom remains coated in bottom paint.  Mostly this post will be pictures with a little description, rather than a novel about yesterday's antics.

 If you're wondering about the Sea Monster shirt, when I was on the USM sailing team, we decided that we needed a new team name, because "Fightin' Sailin' Huskies" was just lame.  Even though we didn't win much, we certainly had a great sense of humor about our sailing, and had a lot of fun not winning.  One of my team mates silk screened these shirts for us.  If you're wondering about the skewed nature of them, he happened to do it on a Friday night when he was drinking.

 Two things about this photo:

One- Yes, of course I am flying a pirate flag from the boat.  If you know me, this should be no surprise to you at all.

Two- See all the red patches on the bottom of the boat?  Those are all spots that got sanded down because the blue bottom paint had cracked or flaked off.

It was even worse on the starboard side of the boat.  Unfortunately the weather is not cooperating with me today.  It is raining, so I am unable to paint the whole bottom today.  Maybe I will get some time this week after work to get a full coat of paint on the bottom.

A note about the bottom paint:  I am using a water based paint.  This means that it is not oil, epoxy, or solvent based.  It thins with water, it cleans up with water, and yet it still has 58% copper in it to keep stuff from growing on the bottom.  Even better, it is supposed to be a multi-season hard ablative paint.  It is designed to take the abuse of trailering, launching, and beaching, as well as being in the water more than one season.  It is also water activated, so no sanding the whole bottom after a long winter out of the water.  Throw it in the water and BAM, the bottom paint reactivates!  Pretty slick, right?  We will see how it pans out though.

 This is my toe-rail cutout.  I gel-coated it yesterday after a good sanding and trimming.  Once the gel-coat sets, I can sand it down, and hopefully it will look like it was like this the entire time.  Now I just have to do the other side and try to make it look exactly like this one.  Also, as soon as I was done putting the gel-coat on, a bunch of crap blew into the gel-coat.  Sometimes the wind is not your friend....

Jenny spent most of the time we were at the boat scraping paint, sanding, and priming.  The entire V-berth is now primed and ready for paint.  I did not even ask Jenny to come and help me, but she volunteered her day off to help me get the boat project off and moving.  Not only am I a lucky guy, but she does good work!  Also, with her working on the interior painting, it frees me up to work on glassing, bottom painting, thru-hull work, and other things.  I have to say thank you to her yet again for helping me out.

I FOUND IT........ oops!

"Oops?  What do you mean oops?  Do you mean what I mean when I say oops?"  Such a great line from Independence Day that I have been misquoting all these years, and yet it is still so fitting to so many situations.  Like my current oops.  I started going through the plumbing in the boat and found that my deck drains and cockpit drains are junk.  Some of them fell apart when trying to loosen the pipe clamps, others are still solid, but probably need replacing anyway.  Then comes the flaw of the original design.  The cockpit and deck drains flow through seacocks and thru-hulls that are below waterline.  Why would that be a problem?  It means that you are taking water that is on the outside of the boat and bringing through the interior of the boat to drain it off the boat.  Let me put this another way.  Instead of just shedding water off the side, they have to go through plumbing that can (and has) failed, which then fills the inside of the boat with water, with a possible outcome being the sinking of the boat.  Another outcome is that the boat is sitting on land and fills with water while on the hard and rots things like the port bunk, port bulkhead, and peels most of the paint off the interior.  That is how I got this boat so cheap, remember?  

Before I move on to other things, I would like to take a moment to stress that plastic thru-hulls are crap and should NOT be used below waterline.  Case in point: when I was looking at the boat, and before I purchased it, I took hold of one of the seacock handles to see if it turned.  To my dismay, instead of turning it separated from the boat and came away in my hand.  Oops!  I was not pulling exceptionally hard, nor in an adrenaline fueled panic, and yet the thru-hull parted.  Imagine if I had been on the water, had a hose rupture and had massive amounts of sea water rushing into the boat.  I don't know about you, but I am pretty certain that in that situation my heart rate would go through the roof and adrenaline would fill my veins.  When I was in the process of removing the other thru-hulls, I was under the assumption that they were all plastic, so wrenched on them to just break them off.  Not the smartest idea I have ever had, but it illustrates my point nicely.  The bronze thru-hulls did not, would not, could not separate like the plastic ones.  I'm not sure how old they were, but they were much thinner walled than the replacements I have to go back in and yet they still would not part.  If you're looking to go cheap, think about this: is saving $5 worth your boat sinking or maybe your life?  I didn't think so.

Moving on, I would like to take some time to talk about knowing your boat before you dive into big projects.  I do not know this boat as well as maybe I should, although I am learning more about her every day.  Take last weekend for example.  I decided that instead of doing surgery to make new scupper drains fit an old design, I would rather do major surgery and cover the drain holes so that the water drains straight over the side, rather than down through the hull.  The original scupper drain was something that is no longer available, or was cobbled together from non-marine bronze parts.  In any case, was not a direct replacement available, so I cut the toe rail instead.  After doing so I realized that that was where the hull to deck connection is.  Oooops!  That connection is glassed on the back side (inside the boat) making it not obvious from the inside.  From the outside the joint is pop riveted together.  I was not really thrilled to find out that it is pop riveted together, but at least they used mechanical fasteners.  Some of the cheaper boats today use 3M 5200 adhesive to join the hull and deck with no mechanical fasteners or fiberglassing of the connection, so things could be worse.  As you can see in the photo to the left, there is another large hole in the deck.  This was for the fresh water filler cap pictured above.  I made a decision to move that forward onto the foredeck since the fresh water tank is in the very peak of the V berth in the bow.  The piping for the fill cap therefore ran through most of the boat to the front where the tank is, and then ran half way back the other side to where the foot pump and sink are located.  There is no need for so much garden hose to run through the boat.  Yes, that's right, they plumbed the whole system using garden hose.  While cheap, and ready with fittings, it makes me cringe to wonder about the previous owners and how they accomplished things on the boat.  While the wood working is great, and the idea behind the charging station was good, the implementation of the wiring, plumbing, and other systems leave much to be desired.  Maybe if I sell the boat down the road, someone will think the same about me.

Since the boat currently has no functioning electrical system, I have to go old school and run a mechanical, hand operated bilge pump.  Thankfully there was already one on the boat since they are rather expensive.  As you can see by the photo, the old diaphragm is cracked and dry rotted.  It still functions and I know because I used it to drain the bilge when it had 10 gallons of water in it (before drilling the second drain hole) last fall.  While it still functions, when thinking about using the pump in an adrenaline fueled panic, any weakness in the pump is the spot where it is likely to fail.  If I happen to be taking on a lot of water for some reason, I don't want the bilge pump to fail.  That is why I decided to make a bag with the parts that came out of the bilge pump so that if I do have a failure, I can rebuild with parts in relatively short order.  To make sure the diaphragm that is dry rotted will function in an emergency, it is now covered in duct tape.  You had to know that duct tape what going to come out for something eventually!

I had some time when I was up at my parent's house to get my sails down and inspect them.  I had not really had time to do that in the fall.  In general, the sails are in really great shape.  The main, genoa, and storm jib are all in amazing condition.  The main and storm jib look brand new and the genoa looks lightly used.  The spinnaker is in pretty good shape as well, with one or two tiny holes.  This is not really an issue, as the spinnaker is made from rip-stop nylon.

To the right are the three head sails (genoa, working jib, storm jib) laid out on each other.  The genoa looks like a 150% genoa, meaning that is overlaps the main sail by about 50% to make use of more sail area in light to moderate wind conditions.  The working jib does not overlap the main and is used in moderate winds, while the storm jib is used in heavy winds.  If I were planning to do a lot of open ocean sailing, I would get a true storm jib (about 35 sq ft) and a storm trysail (to replace the main, about 50 sq ft).  These sails are designed for when you're sailing in storm weather, with winds that are probably 40+ knots, and therefore TINY!!!  Enough about sails I don't have though.  The working jib has seen a lot of use, and unfortunately has a few holes in it from mice.  While some might see this as a major setback, I see it as an opportunity to learn to patch my sails.  Eventually I want to make my own sails when I have to replace these, or when I get the next boat.  Learning to patch the ones I have is a good way to get started.  It is a relatively small undertaking, but it sets up a lot of the basic techniques for sewing sails (at least by hand).  

More to come soon, including starting the bottom paint project.  Until then, I wish you all fair winds and following seas!

Overdue post... (hatches)

Hello again.  I know, its been a while, but I have been focusing on working on the boat rather than blogging about not working that much on the boat! I have a lot to cover, so I will be doing several smaller posts because I am currently feeling overwhelmed by the amount I have to blog about.  Imagine that! 

priming the bilge with cut off paint brush

What have I been up to?  So glad you asked!  I have been doing a lot of painting.  A LOT of painting!  I found some great urethane acrylic primer that I have been using on the hatches.  It is basically urethane glue (think Gorilla glue)  that has some white pigment in it.  That means it sticks to everything!  I have been priming my fiberglass hatches, the inside of the fiberglass and gel coat dingy, the scraped down and previously painted cabin interior with no indication of the primer not working.  I have even painted the bilge with it, which is a notoriously hard place to get to, get clean, and get dry to paint.  I happen to be getting ahead of myself though.  I have been doing some reading to get a good idea of what I should be using for paint.  I think I might have mentioned this in a earlier post, but I kept coming up with the same answer: Alkyd paint.  It is basically oil based paint.  I happened to go with the Benjamin Moore Super Spec paint because it is designed to be used on heavy machinery and heavily abused equipment.  I thought this made a lot of sense for me to use since the marine environment is a harsh one. One of the reasons for going with oil based paint is because it repels water.  That is very very good when talking about things like hatches that are out in the weather 24/7.  It is also good for things like bilges because is repels the water away from the bare fiberglass and helps to prevent blistering and separation of the fiberglass layers.

Main Hatch

I've spent quite a bit of time painting over the last several weeks.  I would like to say that I am done, but this is only the beginning.  Not only do I have most of the interior of the boat to prime and paint, I also have the bottom to sand and paint.  I see no end in sight for painting.  Fortunately Jenny has stepped up and has been helping me out with scraping, cleaning, painting, and keeping me on track.  

The main hatch, which I thought was done, turned out to need more trimming.  Unfortunately I found that out after I painted it completely with both primer and topcoat.  It looked really great when I was done, but now needs some attention from being on its roof to cut, trim, and chisel away the bits that needed to be removed to make it fit.  It does now fit, and quite snugly when in the closed position (pictured left).  I was going to make it slide a little easier, but I would rather have a tight fit with it in the closed position.  This means that when I close the hatch in high wind or heavy seas, it will stay shut with out the need of a lock.  To me, this is a HUGE step forward because I have all 4 hatches that I am building at this time on the boat and mostly finished.  It means that I am very much closer to getting the boat ready for splash day.  

So much for the hatch being finished!  Saw dust and wood chips everywhere!

Forward Hatch

I believe the last time I posted, the forward hatch was done in terms of wood working, but had yet to be glassed, painted, hinged, etc.  Fortunately I have had time and appropriate weather to get the glassing done.  It was the last hatch that needed to be built, and honestly, I got a little lazy.  The glass-work leaves something to be desired, but I am in "Get the boat in the water" mode.  I was quite happy that a friend of mine (Yes, Davey, this means you!) who does glass work and auto body work professionally said that my glass work is pretty good.

Before the hatch was glassed, I had to trim the hatch to accept the piano-style hinge so that it will open while being attached to the deck.  It took a boat load of screws to attach the hinge, but I don't think it is going to go anywhere.

Unfortunately I do not have any pics of this hatch painted, but I think you get the idea.





This is only the hatch work that I have gotten accomplished in the last few weeks.  In the next post I hope to discuss sea-cocks, thru-hulls, re-engineering the deck and cockpit drainage, and other miscellaneous stuff I have gotten accomplished.

I have to extend a HUGE thank you to Jenny for coming out and scraping paint, priming the interior of the cabin, and generally keeping my mind in the game when I get overwhelmed with the number and scope of the projects to be accomplished.  Jenny, you're the best!