Jib Block Woes

Last weekend we blew out one of our jib blocks. 

The sail track is original to the boat. We were hoping to order new blocks and put them on the track cars. That was a failure so now we are trying to replace the cars too. On paper it looks like the ones we have ordered should fit, but we won't know until next week when we are leaving on a ten day trip. I have all my fingers crossed....

Meanwhile the pump for the shower sump is either slightly blocked or just barely working.  We probably should have shop access it out before we put any water Into it. 

We did a mid season oil change since the oil was looking quite black and nasty. 

I'm ready to do some sailing. The winds have been too light for the past two or three weekends so we have mostly been motoring and swimming. 

Sippy Cup Fail

We signed up for an overnight regatta to Annapolis.  We did it last year, maybe a week after purchasing Hobo.  Last year we white knuckled it down the bay and finished 11th out of 11. Huzzah!

This year, we had a bad start.  We got down the general vicinity of the starting line and anchored out to make dinner prior the 7:00 PM start.  Ten minutes before the start (yeah, we cut it that close) we found the anchor too deeply set to get it up easily so went to start the diesel.  Although the electrical inside was working, there was some failed connection to the starter because turning the key and even pushing the starter button on the engine block didn't elicit any response of any kind.  After a few minutes of panic for no apparent reason the engine did start. We got the anchor up eventually, got the main up and were motoring around near the start line dithering about whether even to start the race, when we realized we were on a collision course with a pretty shiny new Pearson.  Before we realized that they most definitely had the right of way, they saw us, swore up a blue streak, and tacked.  We continued to kick ourselves for this failure for most of the night.

Anyway, we got across the start line only 3 minutes late, which was pretty good I think.  The wind was blowing nice but right up the bay so everyone was tacking back and forth trying to get away from the scrum at the starting line when an announcement was made over the radio that there had been a collision at the starting line and one of the boats was dismasted.  The race organizers went to help recover the mast and get that party on their way back home.  Meanwhile the guy who wins the race every darn year was basically gone over the horizon already.

We continued on, narrowly missing colliding with a partly submerged tree near the channel up to Havre De Grace.  It's been there for many years and we have hit it in the past with no harm but it is a nasty little obstacle.

The sun was beginning to set as we approached Turkey Point.  There we found approximately 1,000% more crab pot floats than I have ever seen there before.  We immediately fouled one  on our rudder.  We couldn't shake it so we had to drop the anchor and the sails and go overboard to let it off.  We got loose, got under way again, and the boat immediately behind us instantly picked up the same float and had to the same drill.  Two tacks later we were back south of Turkey point and all of a sudden came to a dead stop and lost steerage. Baffled, as we weren't near any floats this time and  usually Hobo can drag a crab pot with no problems, we dropped the anchor and the sails AGAIN and AGAIN went overboard. This time there seemed to be nothing -- but when we hauled up the anchor we found a line wrapped around it that connected two floats and was hanging out just a foot or so under the surface.  We should have cut it as that is really an unacceptable hazard, but we were too relieved to be free and continued on our way.

The wind turned a bit and we had a really nice run all the way to Poole Island. I recieved several hails from yacht club members asking for status and tempting us to quit the race to come anchor with them.  We breezily declined and continued on our way.

At four AM we still hadn't made it past the point of Poole Island (this would be maybe a 1/3 or 1/4 mark to the finish line . . . ).  The wind and tide were both against us, developing some sloppy swells and chop, and the tacking was torturous and unproductive. We had a brief fight about whether to turn back and sail with the wind to Worton, which is an anchorage with which we are both comfortable and familiar, or to continue west under sail (too afraid to start the engine in the profusion of crab pots) and anchor in the dark and unfamiliar lee of Hart Miller Island.

Hart Miller won out, and we made our way towards the Middle River under sail, basically relying on my chartplotter app to keep us from running into Hart Miller, which is dark and nearly invisible at night.  Eventually we were able to drop the hook and pass out.

We woke up basically right in the middle of the river, but hey, nobody hit us and we got to sleep!

We motored lazily into Annapolis, and didn't even join the post race party. What we didn't know was that only 4 of the 11 boats that started the race finished at all.  Had a great day in Annapolis, and then we made our way to Rock Hall and had a great day there.  The bay really does have a lot to offer.

The Perseids made an appearance and we have been enjoying seeing some fireballs and meteors with visible tails and smoke trails!

Fourth of July Weekend Mini Trip

Friday night, July 1, we installed the stack pack for good this time.  Here's a shot I took from the dingy:

It looks giant but it makes the boat easy to find, that's for sure.  We hung up a hammock for fireworks viewing and enjoyed that greatly when we were not under sail.  

Our karma came back to get us though.  The annual Sippy Cup regatta is going to be on the night of the new moon this year.  We scoffed at a captain who isn't going to participate for fear of snagging crab pots in the dark.  We are crab pot proof, we said. We aren't worried, we said.  

Just north of Poole's Island my husband was on the helm.  I saw an orange float dead ahead and called it out, but we ran it right over anyway.  I ran to the stern and waited . . . and waited . . . and waited and it did not pop up.  We continued sailing with no steerage problems so I assumed we had dodged the bullet somehow, but every few minutes there was a quite little tappity tap on the hull.  We sailed to the midway point of Poole's Island and still the tappiy tapping continued.  I looked through all the stowages for something that would explain it and found nothing.  Since we were moving pretty slowly my husband went overboard and checked the prop aperture, but there was nothing stuck there.  We kept sailing and the tappity tapping kept going.  Finally, since we knew we would want to motor into the wind to get to our anchorage for the night, we decided drastic measures were required.  We dropped the sails, dropped anchor, and my husband went under the boat again.  He checked the prop, he checked the rudder, he checked behind the boat, he checked all along the keel and found nothing.  He was just swimming back to the stern, and was saying "I have checked everywhere, there is NOTHING stuck on this . . ."

And that was when he found it. His foot brushed a piece of taut line extending 90 degrees from the centerline of the boat and out.  We hauled it in and found this guy:

The other end, the float end, was jammed into the 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch gap at the bottom of the hinge for the rudder, with the float pressed up against the hull.  There's still a teeny tiny piece of line stuck in there.  I tied the lines back together and left the pot where it was, some three miles from where it started.  (sorry crabber guy, I hope you find it)

Karma.  

So now we know. It's possible.  

Meanwhile, it has been the worst year on record for carrion and fish guts on the boat. We have found fresh sushi, fresh intestines, millions of bones and scales, half a rabbit, and a duck egg so far this year.  We hung up an owl and that seemed to help with the ducks but the ospreys/eagles are still enjoying themselves.  I have a nice bloodstain in the middle of the mainsail now.  

We keep trying different configurations of holographic reflective tape. Hopefully this weekend we won't find as much as we have been.

Up the Mast with a Mast Mate

I don't have any pictures from the spreaders this time.  Things did not go all that smoothly.  Saturday we installed the new water pump, a small Flojet.  It worked perfectly from the first moment.  Of course there are no more leaks since what is left of the water system is fortified against extreme pressure now.  The Flojet is super quiet and very low draw.  The lights don't even flicker when it comes on.  LOVE IT. It took us probably four trips to Lowe's to accomplish everything we needed to do, so the day was largely spent driving around town and getting back only to realize we didn't have everything and had to go back out.  Then by the time we had everything we needed the powerboat traffic was in full swing.  We ran the Mastmate up anyway.  We had a couple of false starts as we had not used one in a year and had to try to remember how everything is supposed to come together.  We didn't have any sail cars for it so we ran it up loose and then winched it down at the bottom so that there would be tension on it.  Unfortunately it was still a wild ride up, with Matt swinging from one side of the mast to the other, vertically or horizontally and everything in between.  By the time he got to the spreaders it was clear this was not going to be an easy sojourn up there.  The mission was to repair a loose spreader boot (my top priority) and install blocks just under the spreaders for the lazyjacks (his priority).  He got his drill out, drilled the first hole. Then he got out his tap and tried to tap the hole.  He got a little way done before the swinging of the boat caused him to break the tap off in the hole.  I sent up some vise grips to get it out, but we had no way of finishing the project without it.

We went back to Lowes and then went to West Marine and found, luckily, 8 sail cars that would fit our track.  I put them on the Mastmate, and lubricated them in anticipation of getting up super early and trying again at sunrise while the power boaters are still sleeping.

The next morning everything went pretty smoothly! Matt got the lazyjacks installed (I think they might be pretty crooked but it doesn't matter one little bit).  He couldn't manage to get the waxed thread in to position to do the spreader boot with riggers thread, so we  . . . we put duct tape on it. I don't even care. It's perfect. I love it.

Anyway, I cut the legs for the lazyjacks, ran up the stack pack, ran up the sail, took the boat out for a sail to make sure everything would hang right, and then realized the whole front end of the stack pack was off from the angle between the mast and the boom by about 10 degrees.  No big.  I can fix this.  So we had to take the whole thing down and back home for a little adjustment but honestly, that's about as little adjustment as I might have hoped for.

I had to undo a lot in order to pull the front back, and now there's a weird fold in it that I'm not happy about but I didn't have enough room to but it down and then reinstall the common sense fastener grommets further in so this was my only choice without adding a strip of fabric and thereby two more seams.

The other thing I learned from putting it up is that the bigger the stack pack the harder it is to work the zipper.  It definitely needs an external loop of line to run the zipper pull so I added some cheek blocks to make a triangle loop and i am really crossing my fingers that this will actually work.  Mack Pack does this for larger boats but I'm not sure how they get the line from the top of the stack pack down to the side without just having it drag across the ends of the material too much.  If it works I will post pictures to clarify this post.

I started cutting the material for the hatch covers but I need 96 inches of three inch wide strips for the casing and edges of the cover. I think I got maybe 48 inches done if I am being kind, before I got tired of it and quit for the night.

Expanding the Network and Building a Stack Pack

There's an ad in Texas right now for a Rafiki 35 for 10,000.00.  The ad doesn't really say anything and only has two pictures.  The boat has nice canvas and looks to have been well cared for (from the outside in a small picture, I don't know what the inside is like or anything up close).  I contacted the seller, who put me in touch with the buyer, who is pretty excited! Nice to meet someone else.  I think that makes it five now that I know of. Still looking for the rest of you.

Anyway, I had my copy of the blueprints scanned and was able to share them.  It sounds like maybe it is not as standard as I had thought to have received a copy of the plans with the boat.

Meanwhile, my big evening project has been to build a stack pack.  It's gigantic.  I think we could use it to sail in high winds if we wanted to.  Building one for the second time was definitely a lot easier than the first time.  We are planning to go up the mast this weekend to install the blocks on the mast for the lazyjacks, run the line, and also to reattach a spreader boot that is working its way loose.  The weird flat spreader bars are a challenge, it seems.

I'm planning a four leg lazyjack configuration and I'm using bowlines for the loops for the legs instead of hardware.  The topping lift is very heavy duty so the stack pack won't have to take the weight of the boom usually, and I think everything can be fairly simple. Last time around I went with the 300.00 Harken lazyjacks, which are nice but not very adjustable and leave a steel cable and block banging on your mainsail.

All told, the project has cost less than 300.00, and that includes the line which was quite expensive.

Next thing will be to make hatch covers.  You can really tell that the interior will benefit from the shade. The poor dinette table is really UV damaged.  We can spruce it up a bit when we get around to it, but it would be nice to at least protect it some.

Last weekend we were sailing with just the jib. lazy style, when the steel cable that holds the foot of the jib down to the ruller furler pulled free of its fittings. The jib actually popped up a bit on the track.  That is being replaced this weekend also with dyneema.  We also attempted to sail off the anchor with just the jib, but the maneuver had to be abandoned in order to avoid scaring some anchored power boaters to death.  I don't think they had their brown pants on so it seemed unfair to torture them.

Update re:  the Whale Pump:  They sent us an email stating that the pump was too large and it was our fault for buying the wrong one (it isn't, the specs say it's for a 2-3 outlet system. We have 3 outlets . . . ).  We had to contact Defender to get someone to go to bat for us.  Now Attwood is replacing the pump but honestly what on earth.  This was completely mis handled and I feel sorry for anyone who didn't buy their equipment from someone who could help!

That right there is the Whale Universal Pressure Pump.  I can't say whether it's a good pump or not generally, but the one we got has been a nightmare.  Picked it up at the Defender spring commissioning warehouse sale.  By the time we were ready to install it the return window was over (you only get 30 days and they won't help you at all after that time has passed).  It went in easily enough, but as soon as we powered it up it shot water out of the motor housing.  Since Defender was done with us, we had to contact Attwood, the american distributor for Whale products.  They refused to pay shipping to return it and were completely unapologetic about our instant problem (clearly the product had not been quality checked at all).  A week or so after we shipped it to them we were told that it had been missing a washer and they were returning it to us.

We finally got it back and installed it again.  Again, the install was super easy.  It started pumping away.  Now, this is advertised as low draw and very quiet. It was not quiet. It was not low draw. The lights still flickered with every cycle of the pump.  God only knows what our anchor light looked like while we were doing this . . . Leaks formed EVERYWHERE in our freshwater system.  The entire hot water line let go at every single fixture.  We assumed that it was because the old pump hadn't been really pressurizing well any more and now there leaks appearing all over the place in the old fittings and soldered pipes.  It actually reached the point where pipes were disconnected entirely and water was just pumping out into the bilge.

Fortunately we don't have a hot water heater so we just capped off that line and focused on fixing the leaks in the cold water system.  When they were finally fixed, we tried the pump again and it would never shut off.  It pressurized to the point that turning on a faucet resulted in a geyser that would ricochet from the bottom of the sink to the ceiling (and me).  The tubing in the system was bulging from pressure.  The pump was dancing around all over the place still trying to pump! So clearly Attwood failed to quality check the pump not once but twice.

Not only was customer service unpleasant and unaccommodating, they are completely incompetent at repairing their own products and testing them as well.  Now, thanks to them, we will have to re-plumb our whole hot water system if we ever want a hot water heater.  Gracias, Attwood.  Gracias.

Hobo came with some fun, original advertisements:

Better Late Than Never

Towards the end of last season the engine was increasingly difficult to start.  We have a raw water cooled 1979 Volvo MD11C 23hp rustbucket, but when she gets going she does just fine.  Since neither of us are well acquainted with diesels we brought in an outside consultant, who kindly came down on May 24 to take a look.  The starter wasn't working properly, so he took it out and took it to a shop to have it rebuilt.  Per the guys at the shop, the inside was almost totally rusted and there was only one of six electrical connections remaining.  It was too far gone to be rebuilt, and no one is manufacturing counter clockwise volvo starters these days, but there is apparently a specialty starter shop in Minneapolis that will build custom starters for you same day.  So for 230.00 we got  a brand new custom starter, which fit like a glove.  Friday, May 27, our consultant returned and installed it for us.  The diesel started right up, just as stinky and smoky as last year so I guess we are good to go.  Fuel filters were changed, and the air bled from the lines.  The interior was as finished as it needed to be so in we went.  This boat does make the club's boat lift look itty bitty.  

Some more shots of the interior with the new cabin liners.  The new lights are LED fixtures, made of plastic and all the electronics are sealed to water intrusion.  The old metal and glass 12v incandescent fixtures were largely shorted out by water, or alternately full of mud dauber nests.



We're still sanding the handrails and coaming and such.  By now I have one coat of cetol on the handrails and eyebrows but there are a lot more to go.

The boat came with some interesting magazines, looks like the first owner did his homework:

Skip to the "after" bit

Well, I've been lousy at updating this. Let me catch up. 

First, all the bottom paint was off by March. 

At this point I decided to try a chemical stripper on the old blue paint on the port side. Unfortunately this revealed and also destroyed a good deal of fairing compound someone already applied just under the capping on the bulwarks. I didn't do that on the starboard side. Alas it was too late for the port side, and, as a wise man once told me, perfection is the enemy of completion. So instead of fairing again I sanded as best I could and painted it. All the while I was also sanding the bottom smooth and ultimately applying barrier coat. We used us composites two part epoxy with a turquoise color additive and west system alkaloid aluminum additive. 

Free handing the curlicues was exceedingly stressfull. It was almost impossible to get the blue paint compleytely off the gel coat without leaving a blue shadow. Fortunately it largely worked out fine. I guess I was pretty neat with it. 

Ordered the boat lettering and I think it was a success: 

Meanwhile, as I was the only one visibly working on the boat I got a lot of positive feedback. My husband was inside working on the interior and was frequently accused of sleeping all day. 

We had a lot of water intrusion inside. The 36 year old deck hardware had never been rebedded so step one was to take down all the rotten old paneling and step two was to rebed everything. Then new paneling had to be hung. It came out beautifully. 

My part of this was to order and install new window gaskets. With no manufacturing information to go on I found a company that makes custom extrusions. I removed an old gasket, which was basicaly compressed rubber dust at this point, and used calipers to measure for replacements. The first batch of rubber extrusion was too large by .5 mm aka a hair and wouldn't fit into the groove. The second batch fit but only closed with the dogs screwed all the way down and with as much strength as I can muster. They still drip a bit even so.  I am now on my third batch of possible gaskets, which just arrived in the mail yesterday. Hopefully they will be a better fit. 

Our old water pressure pump was a belt driven jabsco pump that was probably original to the boat. It was shorting out and over heating so much that it melted the welds holding the sprocket on that held the belt on. Luckily it didn't catch on fire. We bought a replacement from Whale, which, when hooked up instantly sprayed water everywhere. Defender wouldn't take it as a return and we were forced to pay for shipping back to Atwood, the North American distributor of whale products, even though they had clearly not performed a single qc check on the pump since any test would have shown it was defective. They determined that a washer was missing and are shipping it back to us without a single apology. Lovely. I really hope it works and that they haven't poisoned it. Boo Atwood customer service and quality control. Very very disappointing. Definitely wouldn't trust them for a bilge pump or something more crucial. 

Winter is upon us

Now is the winter of our discount overhead scraper. Using only a 5.00 scraper from harbor freight I am removing all of my red bottom paint. Since November I would say I have gotten maybe 1/3 off.