The Longest Long Weekend Ever

So the engine was out in the cockpit this weekend.  We had three days to clean up the bilge and get it ready for the Beta.  It took a day of scrubbing with degreasers to realize the bilge really needed more than just cleaning.  Here's the before picture for reference.  

Hiding under neath the drip pan for the engine was the bilge pump, an item we had never actually seen because the wires came out from one side of the pan and the hose came from the other so it was essentially impossible to get to without cutting one or the other.  

She is covered in oil -- and yet still worked.  No number of oil absorbers  could have saved us.  

Looks like an old Rule pump to me but all identifying marks had been obliterated. We are replacing with a Rule Mate 2000 - it is an electro sensitive pump and will come on automatically when the water reaches a certain depth in the bilge but it has no float switch to jam.

Here's the man himself looking particularly tortured, trying to sand the last greasy residue out so that he could apply some tinted epoxy to seal the bilge up really nicely.  Under the drip pan, along with the bilge pump, was a sizeable spot of delamination.  Removing it produced a stream of water into the bilge that we couldn't stop.  Unfortunately it kept raining. It did possibly answer the question of how water kept getting into the bilge when all the hoses were sound and not leaking at all.  My suspicion is that the teak decking is the source up top of a lot of our water intrusion.  Inspection of the seams this weekend lead me to believe that even where there is still caulk in them there isn't good adhesion any more.  So the water seeps into the seams, down into the cored decks and then it works its way down the outside of the deck fills, which pass through the teak decks, through the fiberglass and the wet coring, and then down to the hull. Additional leaks come into the bilge area from the seats in the cockpit, which also need to be recaulked.  Otherwise we have already re-bedded most if not all of our deck hardware.  I mean, what else could it be?  

Here's that drip pan out of the bilge.  This is just how nicely it cleaned up with degreaser.  Crazy.  

I had one single tube of this stuff.  The instructions are:  Cut out the old caulking, Sand the seams down to bare wood, then clean the grooves with forced air.  Then wrap a rag soaked in acetone around a putty knife and jam it into the seams, allowing the acetone to soak in rocking the putty knife back and forth . . . then apply a seal breaking tape to the bottom of each seam, then while standing on your head, apply the caulk to all seams. Then run a putty knife over all the seams at a 30 degree angle to force the caulk into the seams and clean it up as best you can I guess?? Wait 48 hours and sand back to clean wood.  WTF.  Who do you think I am? Also Don't tell me what to do.  This is what I did:  Peeled the caulk out with a putty knife.  Rubbed everything down with acetone on a rag -- then I taped off the seams with painters tape and ran beads of caulk into the seams.  I mushed it flat with a putty knife and peeled off the tape.  So far the adhesion looks good and it is a marked improvement over before but I was only able to do the foredeck and a couple of the worst seams on one side deck before running out of caulk.  West marine sells this stuff for 30.00 a tube.  Get real.  Ordering more tubes from Jamestown Distributors for 12.99.  I am really hoping it helps with the water intrusion, but it's hard to tell because of the way the boat is built. It seems like this shouldn't really effect the bilge but we shall see.  

Meanwhile, we also reinforced the floor in front of the weird, badly installed, leaky access hatch in the cockpit. We then cut the old hatch out and put in a brand new bomar hatch with a double gasket.  I'm hoping that's the end of my need to duct tape a trash bag to the cockpit floor to keep it from leaking.  

We had a number of failed endeavors this weekend as well.  The boat has a large manual bilge pump installed that I couldn't get to work.  The diaphragm looks to be in good shape to me, yet pumping it would yield no results.  Per our mechanic, when he pulled the engine he found that there was no bottom half to the hose, it appeared to have dissolved.  He suggested we buy new hose and a strum box for the bottom.  We looked at the hose, which is 1 3/4 inch engine exhaust hose, jammed forcibly onto a rusted 2 inch coupler, which was the end of the line.  In the bottom of the bilge we found a nice heavy metal strum box with a hose clamp on it and no hose.  Weird.  No amount of searching hardware stores, west marine, and even the internet (!) allowed us to find a coupler in the right size.  So we would have to replace the entire length of hose, which is about 15.00 a foot, and we needed more than ten feet, which is the only length West Marine sells it in.  Anyway the end attached to the bilge pump intake is basically welded to it and I can't get it off so it was feeling pretty hopeless.  I still don't know what to do so I'm hoping the folks at Dependable can take care of it this week.  However I now understand what happened and why it seemed like such a kludge -- Prior owners probably couldn't find the right coupler either, couldn't get a long enough hose readily and just gave up. 

One of our other big issues is that turning in one direction, the wheel stops before the rudder hits the spinning propeller (good) but turning in the other direction you can turn until you hit the spinning prop and grinds up the rudder (bad, super bad). We have already had to repair the rudder twice.  Luckily that's all that broke.  So I climbed down into the cockpit stowage and hunkered down to look at the steering system.  Surely there had to be a stopper or something on the cable that is asymmetrical and can be adjusted. 

Well there's the quadrant in all its glory with the ancient cables and pulleys.  See the weird cut block of fiberglass at the bottom right? That's the stopper.  The edge of the quadrant hits that and stops turning.  It's not exactly adjustable without adding, what . . plywood? So one side it hits the block and on the other side it keeps turning until the quadrant hits the pulleys.  Now we will have a bigger prop and this hazard is going to be more hazardous.  Something we will have to figure out next weekend I suppose once the new prop is on.  

Poor Mr. Smee looking longingly out over the bilge.  

And here she is after the epoxy coating. It took three days to get to this point and we didn't leave the marina until very late last night.  Got home at 3:00 AM after a 1.5 hour bridge closure of the Delaware Memorial Bridge.  Holy cow.  

Engine update

The Engine is out.  36 years of diesel exhaust, oil leaks, water intrusion . . . we have some work to do.  I hear the manual bilge pump hose has actually dissolved in this primordial soup but we won't really get to get into it until tomorrow morning. 

Life on the Hard

Friday May 12, Matt headed down a bit early, left his car at the marina two and a half hours away, and caught a ride back up to our yacht club with a friendly club member.  He was able, using the tail of a halyard, to straighten up the spreaders.  It took loosening the upper stays, and then pulling them up with the halyard or down with the flag halyard and then sighting from the stern, but it worked out nicely.  Even the spreader boots cooperated. 

Saturday May 13 we set out pretty early.  It was cold, raining, and windy but the wind was blowing straight down the bay right to our destination.  The plan was to head down to Lake Ogleton and drop anchor instead of going all the way into Annapolis Harbor and paying for a mooring.  We said a little prayer and tried to start the engine.  She has never enjoyed starting in cold weather, and since she has no glo plugs and a sticky piston it's always kind of a crap shoot what is going to happen.  90 seconds of cranking and staring at each other and it finally fired up.  After that we were too afraid to turn it off so we just motor-sailed the whole way down.  

We took turns hiding inside to try to warm up. Here's my view.  

I made some rather mediocre grilled cheeses under way and we ate them soggily.  

We made the bridge by mid afternoon and decided to go the rest of the way into Annapolis anyway and get a hot dinner in a heated restaurant.  

Iron Rooster - my fave in town now.  

 Then the next morning we only had a three hour leg left to do so we slept in a little and took the kids for a dinghy ride.

Then we headed south again, while Matt worked on putting some things to right inside including re-hanging the ceiling paneling we had to take down to work on the traveler and sea cover.

Cruised behind Thomas Point Light and into Herring Bay.


We wended our way up the narrow channel and into a slip that was creepily close to the marshy bank.  We got the lines tied on just as the wind picked up pretty hard and started screaming through the rigging.  The marina staff showed up to help after that. There she is in her slip.  We think maybe she scraped the dock a bit after we left, so thanks for the look out marina staff, we clearly didn't know how to tie up properly . . .  I bet there's black bottom paint on the dock there now.

 It took until Wednesday for the yard to finally haul her -- we called a few times and were a pain so I think it might have been longer if not for that.  Squeaky wheel, that's us.  This yard is all gravel, no trees. The marina is ridiculously nice with landscaping that would give Sailing Emporium a run for their money.  Everything is far too fancy and monstrously expensive.  They have their own dog park, restaurants, west marine, at least three separate lift wells of varying sizes, and you basically need a car to get from one end to the other.  The best thing though is a free cycle bin that they have by one of the dumpsters.  You can leave unwanted items that are too good to be trash there, and take anything you see that you can use.

Here's the princess in her throne. 

All that gravel is dusty.  Every car that drives by arrives and departs in a cloud of gray dust.  I don't know how serious painters/varnishers can accomplish anything in this yard.  So on the 20th we did a few things -- worked on the coaming compartments a bit with some more thickened epoxy, I touched up the boot stripe where the old lift at the club chewed it up pretty badly, touched up with Poli Glow where I had missed a couple of spots, and then I decided to do an experiment and I put poli glow on the boot stripe to try to inhibit mud and algae from sticking to it.  I'll report back at the end of the summer. 

My galley foot pump had refused to work in the water so I pulled that out and found a plug of bay water scum in the hose, which smelled amazing by the way.  The hose was probably original. It was a soft rubbery material without any reinforcing fibers so I got to take it to the on site West Marine and give it to some poor kid and make him cut me replacement hose. The foot pump appears to be incredibly old but when I put water into the intake and worked the pump it pumped water out of the outlet quite effectively so it's going back in.  I cleaned it out inside and inside and reinstalled it with the new hose.  I can't tell if it will leak when we go back in the water.  There's got to be a way to test that.  

I took apart the kludged shower drain assembly as well and found the problem with that -- the impeller in the pump was adhered completely to the chamber lid.  No wonder the poor thing didn't work.  

Matt worked on the wiring, installing two deck glands for the new mast wiring, and he pulled down the rest of the ceiling in the vee berth, putting up backing wood for the new ceiling to go up next weekend.  Unfortunately the old teak frame around our forward hatch appears to be too soft and uv damaged to go back in.  It must have suffered greatly from the light being magnified by the acrylic hatch.  We have some salvaged teak from a demolished boat that we can use to replace it, Having the frame off and being able to look at the cross section of the deck though was  bit distressing.  More rot.  Whoever installed these hatches didn't do much of a job to remove the old ones, they cut it off leaving the original nuts and bolts and washers in place.  Lazy and gross. 

Mast Up, Slight Hitch

We had a ten o'clock appointment yesterday to raise the mast at the neighboring marina.  Our rigger friends had ordered the replacement standing rigging and swageless fittings, but weren't sure if they would arrive in time.  Matt was able to finish work early and head down Monday afternoon to meet with them at the mast to finish our other mast related projects, organize everything to go up, and attach the swageless fittings. He worked until after 8:00 PM and eventually was able to do more or less everything that needed to be done.  There were a few more lines to feed through blocks, old cotter pins to replace, etc.  I had to work until five and wound up staying home with the dogs so that they wouldn't have to be under foot during the mast raising.  Ultimately I missed a lot of lessons from the riggers but I think it was better not to have the dogs to worry about.  The lift well for the marina was very far back in a very narrow approach. If we hadn't had a working engine I'm not sure how this would have gone but we made the approach, and got into the well successfully after having really no practice at close quarters maneuvers yet this season.  The well is completely concrete so there's no margin for error.  They pulled us very far forward with the anchors hanging over the concrete and then made fun of me for being nervous. What can you do.  I get nervous about my boat. 

The crane was attached at the exact center of the mast so the initial lift brought it up horizontally.  One of the men handling the raising had to use his body weight as a counter weight on the mast foot to keep it down.  

Up! Unfortunately we didn't follow instructions well because we didn't straighten the angle of the spreaders appropriately (port one is a bit droopy as you can see).  We didn't notice, tuned the rig up using a borrowed tensioner, and put the sails on.  It took a surprisingly long time to get everything back where we wanted it.

There's that droopy spreader again looking a bit worse with the rig tightened up.  Hopefully it will be OK, we have a plan to fix it, it's just annoying since we need to be under way early on Saturday in the pouring rain and the wind on Sunday is predicted to be quite heavy so we have to try to get it right.  

Meanwhile the poor door into the vee berth won't close at all with the mast under tension.  Looks like the shape of the doorway is the shape of the doorway even after reinforcing the mast base area.  Maybe it's time to consider shaving the door down.  

Anyway, looking good! 

Launch day

We have had a tremendous amount of rain, and winds blowing out of the south so even though we were looking to splash at the 8:00 PM high tide, we had basically all day long to go in.  High tide was ridiculously high, and low tide was higher than your average high tide.  We finished installing the last of the deck hardware we had removed to work on the cabin house and cleaned as much as we could inside while we had electricity for the shop vac.  Then suddenly the tractor was in need of minor repairs so we found we had some extra time.  I had ordered a 4 inch memory foam topper for the vee berth -- sounds like a lot, and it was a lot.  I hauled it and the cushions into the clubhouse and went to town with a steak knife.

It feels like a cloud, no joke.  Over the fall I had removed the shower grate, which was just old gray teak, and sanded it a bit and oiled with teak oil. Made it nice and dark and pretty looking. Forced me to clean the dirt out of the shower pan so you can see it actually is white under there.

When the tractor was fixed, our friend brought it over.  She's a beast!

It was a little bit of a process deciding how to configure the new yard trailer to lift our boat.  We are the biggest yet to go in with it so we were the guinea pigs.  It went very smoothly thanks to the driver being incredibly patient and also quite skillful.  

Here's a link to the video -- stay to the end to watch the hydraulic telescoping trailer tongue.

https://youtu.be/unVxvYMB-aE

And we're in the water:

It was a bit wet out but that's OK because the engine started!  Slept like babies on the new foam, but it's really really thick now:

Sunday AM we got up bright and early for our first boat breakfast of the season.  Then we closed her up and headed to the marina that is storing our mast to work on that.  We still had to wire in the fixtures, test them, install the mast head, install the light fixtures, sort out the lines, install two flag halyards blah blah blah . . . We were in the middle of it when the rain picked up and the wind started blowing a bit.  We got one call from a club member that someone's dinghy was getting squeezed between two floating docks.  We brushed it off, having really just left the club and seen that it was fine.  Then we got a second call from the dinghy owner saying that his dinghy was getting squeezed so we left our work and ran back to the club, to find that the dinghy's painter had ripped off the d ring on the bow and the boat was in fact stuck between two floating docks.  The only thing to do was to drag it, thirty gallons of water, and it's engine up onto the dock.  We hauled it out with the hand trailer and put it somewhere safe.  

Then back to work.  Mostly got it done, but we had the rig assessed by our local riggers and they found three cracked swages, meaning another 1500.00 spent on new standing rigging.  We are crossing our fingers that the cables arrive today so we can install them this afternoon and keep our appointment to have the mast raised tomorrow.  

IT'S HERE

Here she is, our new BetaMarine 35 - four cylinder, 35 horsepower diesel.  Brand spanking new and as pretty as she will ever look.  She's waiting for us at another yard, so we just have to launch, get the mast put back up, re-rig everything and get our butts down there.

Meanwhile on the home front, the fairing is done and we put on a coat of Interlux two part primer in white. We thinned it to 25% thinner (toluene) and got our first coating on pretty efficiently. By the end though Matt was sick and vomiting and I spend the next day in a hungover fog.  Apparently you actually need to wear vapor masks with this stuff. 

It's not perfect.  It won't ever be perfect, so right now we are debating between fairing more and just proceeding with the top coat (interlux Perfection).  I'm leaning towards proceeding, I think it looks amazing and it's going to be visually broken up more when the mast is back on so why worry about small flaws.  

This weekend we got our next coating of primer on on Saturday wearing vapor masks.

Success! It looks great!  We reinstalled the traveler, which was sheer unmitigated torture and we are doubting the job because none of the holes for the bolts are either straight or plumb so the forces on them will be a bit weird.  The mast base plate is now bedded and bolted in place as well, and also . . .not level.  So. Maybe the weight of the mast will settle everything . . . Maybe it won't. We have an appointment for 5/9 to raise it and that will be the big scary moment -- will the repairs hold?  Will the compression post tolerate the plate being un level or will it level itself under load?  So may mysteries that can only be solved by actually doing the deed.

We are still working on the mast, she isn't ready to go up so that's another stressor right now.  Hopefully the rest of the work goes smoothly, the wiring all works when we actually test it, and it would be nice bonus if the engine will start, otherwise we are going to be relying on our 5hp Honda outboard and the dinghy to get us where we are going.  It's fine for going forward, not so fine for stopping.