Boat Projects
Every boat is a project. What would we do without the Internet, allowing us to see how others have tackled similar tasks. We hope to share our experiences here, but it may take a while to get organized. In the meantime, visit our original website.
Bad thinking! Everyone knows that any hole saw put aboard a boat becomes a "water seeking hole saw".
I was cutting a hole for a new hose, a nice simple diagonal hole through a locker floor and a bulkhead. I could see through another hole, the hose I needed to not nick. I knew I needed to control the feed pressure on the saw, and just barely finish the cut before stopping the saw. Yet despite my best efforts to control the feed pressure on the saw, I failed miserably and touched the hose, yet ever so slightly, with the saw. The bad news is that the hose was 1-1/2 inch diameter and open to below water-line (I wasn't going to nick it so I didn't shut the sea cock. Bad Sean!) The good news is I didn't cut it clear through, I only compromised about half of the wall thickness of the hose, so I only had to spend an extra couple hours changing one of the most difficult hoses in the boat.
We were changing the head (toilet to non-boating types). We had a Raritan PHII, and while it worked, it was getting pretty odiferous flushing with sea water. (Sea water, even in the intake hose will "rot" in short order and produce a sulfur odor akin to rotten eggs.) Not to mention what sea water does to the insides of the hoses (the calcium builds up very quickly). So we decided to convert to a fresh water flush. We have three fresh water tanks, and the smallest one is proximate to the head, so it was easy to plumb it as a dedicated tank for flushing.
We decided to go with a new Lavac marine toilet, a time tested and simple solution, and a favorite of many cruisers. It has a bowl with a 1-1/2 inch outlet at the bottom that gets plumbed to a great big diaphragm pump. The lid actually has a seal, so to flush you just close the lid and take some strokes on that pump, which empties the bowl and creates a vacuum in the bowl which is what draws the flush water in. After about 30 seconds, the
vacuum breaks and you can lift the lid and everything is ready to go again.
You can read more about the Lavac here.
SK
--posted Wednesday, Jun 10, 2009
It takes a village...
Coming out of Monterey Bay, we were rolling hard because we had significant swell and the wind was too light to stabilize the roll.
When that happens, the sails tend to backwind on the roll and then slam full on the return. It's really hard on everything and best not to let it happen. In any event, while we were looking for a point of sail that might work, we blew some stitching on the headsail.
That's Jan above, being assisted by Ned from Bristol Blue, who brought his Honda generator along to power the sewing machine out on the grass. John from Naida also assisted and we got the big sail through the little sewing machine. Thanks guys!
SK
--posted Tuesday, Oct 21, 2008
Turbochargers and mixing elbows - Part II
It took me about 4 hours to clean everything up and fuss things back together. A gnome with double jointed wrists and elbows would have been faster but in order to start some fasterners in near impossible to reach places I had to resort to tweezers chopsticks and masking tape, in various combinations with fingers and regular old tools. With a few well timed grunts and oaths all the fasteners were fastened. There were two especially stubborn nuts that managed to consume about an hour between them. Only three tools were dropped in the bilge...
SK
--posted Wednesday, Oct 1, 2008
Turbochargers and mixing elbows
While changing engine fluids I noticed a bunch of salt cake around the engine exhaust area. Actually some very interesting structures, that indicated to me that a substantial amount of salt water had been flowing. Our last run had been a 48 hour run out of Humbolt Bay (Eureka), and this was starting to explain some of the water that had been accumulating in the aft bilge (another engineering story yet to come).
So it was clear that there was salt water leaking out from the vicinity of the exhaust mixing elbow, where salt water is injected into the exhaust stream to cool it, which also explained some of the observations of corrosion in this area I had been making.
My initial assessment was that the mixing elbow was not going to be separated from the turbocharger without some kind of damage because of corrosion damage to at least one of the studs. I ordered a new mixing elbow and a new turbo (ouch!), as well as various and sundry other items that are in close proximity to the affected area.
After disassembly, ordering the new turbo seems to have been the right call as the interface between the turbo and the mixing elbow is quite compromised.
I'll let you know how the assembly goes tomorrow...
SK
--posted Tuesday, Sep 30, 2008
We Love Monty!
We love our Monitor wind vane steering!
We named him "Monty". Monty has so far steered us flawlessly through a fair bunch of slop without complaint.
I'm already a better driver from watching Monty. He doesn't get excited unless things get really sideways. He is gentle and persistent.
Any rumors that vane steering doesn't work deep downwind appear to be untrue, at least with our boat. If things go too light, we have a Simrad tiller pilot rigged to a stub vane to try. We'll keep you posted if that is needed.
SK
--posted Friday, Sep 5, 2008
Rigging Change #1
After the hop from Neah Bay to Grays Harbor, our first rigging change was to immediately off the boom brake/vang/preventer and rig a pair of gun tackles to the rails. Much better! Boom stays where it belongs and breezy jibes are a breeze!
SK
--posted Friday, Sep 5, 2008
Last minute stuff
We're trying to take care of a few last minute part replacements while waiting here in the rain, though going out on deck to rig lines will be really wet work. Nearly everything on board has been touched - lines, hoses, clamps, rigging. Every safety issue has been addressesd. Today we'll replace the raw water impeller and rig the jacklines. We'll top up the fuel and poke our nose out into the big blue. Winds are forecast at 15-25 knots. We'll be sailing!
JC
--posted Friday, Aug 29, 2008