Splashing

We splashed Tuesday morning!  Here's the pre-splash breakdown.

AJ installed the zincs.

We installed two LED lights on the hull under the cockpit. Underwater marine lights run into the low hundreds, but the Chinese make 750 lumens waterproof cast acrylic LEDs for $15, complete with rubber pads. So we gifted ourselves and installed something fun. We'll be able to light up clear tropical waters under the boat and attract the creatures. Also, they could be quite useful for servicing the prop or rudder under water. They install with 4 skinny screws, and a hole for the wires to enter the boat. I sanded off the bottom paint where they would be placed. We caulked both sides of the rubber backing pad, gluing the light to the pad and the pad to the hull. Then AJ screwed it through the hull into the cockpit lockers.

The bilge pump was installed. We have a second one to place above this one, but it's missing it's screen. So we'll add that one once we get that replaced. That portion of the bilge will get painted with the rest of the subfloors eventually.  

I painted the gudgeon and prop, then taped off the waterline for a touch up. I still had almost 2/3 a gallon of paint left after that, so I gave the rest of the bottom one last coat. It's been 6 months or more since it was painted, so it was in need of reactivation anyway. I'm glad we had just barely enough left over to cover it!

We installed most of the deck hardware before we left for Christmas. The two aft cleats, vents, dorades, etc.. We are using starboard pads instead of wood this time. No varnish, no rot. Easy peasy. I liked how it turned out, the white pads make the deck look a lot less cluttered. We caulked the deck hardware with 4000 UV, and through bolted.

You may have noticed that there is only one cleat up front. We intended to remove and re-bed both, but the one shown refused to come off. It leaks into the anchor locker, but it's solid. We would have installed the other one, but we could not find the right size bolts in town. Except for at West Marine, who wanted $5.00 per bolt. We only need 8 for both cleats, but we just couldn't suck up the cost when we can order all 8 for $5.00 online. Even with overnight shipping we'd save $25.00. So we decided to launch with just the one. It will hold until the bolts arrive regular mail, and we can install the second one. The stubborn one is on wood pads, but Danny painted over them. They're awl-gripped in, thus match the starboard pads of the second one.. Maybe we should smear some caulk on the bolts and let it be.

Monday night Robin was slung in preparation for a Tuesday morning splash at high tide.  

The lead keel dented from the front stand! Maybe we were on the hard too long...

We arrived at 7 am on Tuesday for a 7:30 high tide splash.

 Once floating we checked for leaks, then started the engine. Well, tried to start the engine. It turned on, sputtered some water and exhaust out the exhaust thru hull, then died. And it wouldn't turn over again, or even produce the obscene beep when the key was in. AJ and Bill spent the next hour checking and testing. Everything was in order, but the engine wasn't getting fuel. It was decided that there was probably air in the fuel lines. They had to bleed them for a while, but once reconnected, the piercing beep was back and the engine roared to a purr. AJ and Bill cast off and motored over to our dock, which is just down the way and around the corner from the boat yard. I hopped in the truck with David and we drove over to catch the dock lines and tie off the bow. They got there just about as fast as we did.

Docking went off without a hitch. Though it took some lassoing skills to catch the aft pilings.

So far so good. So far so excellent actually after we discovered this:

Bone dry keel bolts. They were even sitting in water on the hard. I've never seen them dry until now.  Maybe we did something right somewhere....

We installed the pulpit and 3 stanchions on the hard before launch. When we were cleaning the pulpit bases we found the hull number etched into the bottom. It's the original Hong Kong stainless pulpit, and is still in great shape. It was dingy and rusty after sitting under the boat so long. Surprisingly, the surface rust came right off with Comet stainless appliance cleaner and a Brillo pad.  We gave it a little polish after that.

We installed the rest of the stanchions after we docked. All except for the two gates. We still have to make a couple pads for them.  I caulked and dropped the bolts in from the outside and AJ cranked down the nuts and washers on the inside.

It's looking more like a boat every day!

Enjoying the sway

P.S. My hard drive with all our travel pictures, music and movies died. My entire digital media collection is gone forever.  But there's more bad news, half of the pictures on this blog have vanished also. I have to re-upload them all, only I don't have all of them anymore, so I must spend hours reclaiming them from Flickr. But the good news is there is wifi at the dock!  Which means I can blog! And start rebuilding my media collection.. and start replacing the pics on the old posts. *sigh*

The Decks are Finished!

   The decks cabin and cockpit are painted.

The leaky teak hatch is rebuilt and ready to go back on the boat.  We stripped the varnish and took it apart.

It was re-cut and glued back together by MR Woods here in town.  We varnished over the course of a few days.  Haven't seen the sun in a while. The coats dry very slowly in the cloudiness and humidity.

Now that the decks are finished, we can start installing the windows and deck hardware.  Danny is going to barrier coat the engine room and bilge, then we'll install the engine, and chug up the river to our dock where we'll complete rigging and reassembly.  The plan is to be finished by November 31.  In December we will go visit family to say our goodbyes before sailing away.  We'll be living aboard with a working engine and rig by January. I'm not sure which direction we will head, and I don't really care.  We will finally start a nomadic life!
                                         

As ready as I am to leave Florida, a unique thing about living here is the plethora of wildlife and primeval-like flora.  I guess that's called "the Tropics,"  but it appears positively primeval to my deciduous sensibilities.  The only point of reference I have for such scenery are dinosaur children's books.  In the mountainous region where I'm from there are little leaves, little songbirds, little rodents, and the occasional deer that darts in front of your car on back highways.  There isn't much wildlife within city limits.  Here there are huge plants, huge birds, and the ground is alive with lizards, geckos and crabs. (And all the insects necessary to feed them.) We need to start catching these crabs for dinner!

Geckos seem to like hanging out indoors.  I haven't seen many lizards inside, but there are always 3 or 4 Geckos on the walls.  According to S/V Bella Star, Geckos are good to have on board because they eat bugs, so maybe I'll chase one onto the boat before we leave.  Cute little things.  I have been wanting a pet... a cat would be lovely, but my asthma won't allow furry creatures, especially not when trapped on a boat!
             

We like to take the landlords canoe out and watch the drama unfold between the many bird species.

Black Vulture

       
For all the lovely sounds a mockingbird makes, it also emits furious screeches when it wants its branch back, and will fearlessly defend its territory... even when the offender is a large bird of prey.

The mocking bird launching the attack on the osprey.  The mockingbird won, and chased the frightened osprey across the canal before returning to it's perch.

Perched white ibises and egrets, and a cormorant in flight.

A Great Blue Heron

           

Wild parrots live in the trees near the boat yard.  A talking parrot would be a fun pet.  I'd take it everywhere on my shoulder like a proper pirate! I'm a sucker for romanticized tradition. Hmm... expensive little buggers though.

We need a better camera.

Enter Witty Post Title Here

For anyone who was a friend of Venture Minimalists on Facebook, you are no longer! I've closed the friend account, and created an Org page. You can still follow us on FB by clicking "Like" on our new page!  

https://www.facebook.com/VentureMinimalists1

Also, if interested in more pics than posted in the blog check out our Flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewandsarahtravels/sets/

Someday the pics will be of foreign lands...

In other news, here's our cabin with Awlgrip and non-skid.

           

Decks sanded, fared, and primed for Awlgrip as of Sunday. It looks like a different boat.

           

I Taste Progress

August is flying by. Does time speed up exponentially after turning 30? Or just when you're hemorrhaging cash? We are so close to the reconstruction phase I can taste it. (It tastes less chalky/metallic and more petro-chemical-ly).  But right now it's raining, and will probably keep raining for the next week.  Due to having no windows or hatches and 100 holes in the deck, we've had to keep the boat covered when away. It looks like this half of the time.
           

The last thing left to remove from the deck was the teak bow piece.  It leaks into the anchor locker.  We were hoping to be able to salvage this teak, but it proved too old and worn after all. Crumbling and breaking like the rest.

When AJ began prying at the starboard side bow rail, the stainless bolts actually broke.  The bronze bolts stayed true throughout, but nearly every stainless bolt broke.

Nothing left but one very stubborn and still very useful, cleat.

The past couple days Danny's gang have been sanding and patching the toe rail bolt holes, chain plate holes, and other misc holes.  We are working on fiber-glassing new panels for the engine room/cockpit locker separation, and still battling with fixing the rudder.  The white areas are a primer they laid over where they did patch work. The black spray paint is there to signify that it hasn't been sanded. Soon the honeycomb will be gone.

As soon as the boat is painted, we will install new 1 1/2" teak toe rails (they were  3" tall).  We were going to use Mahogany, but we found a good enough deal on teak.  We actually made enough money scrapping old bronze hardware and copper wiring to cover it.  We won't have the issue of the stern toe rail piece not matching the rest of the toe rails after all.

             
Once painted we'll re-install the deck hardware, new opening windows, the hatches (then we won't need tarps!), install the engine, raise a new mast, and we can get off the hard and back in the water to finish the refit.   We'll be in the water with a mobile boat for the first time since we bought it!  And hopefully less leaky.   Plumbing, wiring and life systems installations can be done back in the water.
I have not yet talked about what we are doing for a new mast.  Last I left off on the subject AJ was hacking the old one into pieces.   As soon as we were in the market to buy a used mast there was nothing to be found. Nothing on craigs list, nothing at boating consignment warehouses.  We'd seen a few come and go over the last year that we thought would do, but now that we could buy, we couldn't find anything.   We were also going to need a new mainsail.  The one that came with the boat is shot.  We went to Mac Sails to talk about having a new one made, and they called around to see if they could also find a mast.   They found us a factory new surplus 46' Z Spar Profile, prepped by Sparcraft.  It will be 4 feet taller than the previous rig, giving us more sail area.  We're still looking for a 17' boom.   More details of the new rig when when we raise it!
Here is the inside of the cabin now.  It is hard to imagine this ever being a habitable space again.  But I think this last leg of the haul out will move quickly.   It's more motivating to see the boat coming together rather than coming apart.
           

I'm looking forward to it coming together.  Not having a home is starting to wear on us.

Sub-floor Surprises

The Topsides are complete.

But before we could go to town on the decks, AJ noticed black standing water in the dinette seat drawer compartment. It smelled like the oily bilge water, that is to say, like death.  When we sopped it up, it eventually came back. We found an 1/8" hole in the floor where it was coming up.  Water was trapped somewhere. Not good.

Between the sweeping hull sides and water tank is a flat fiberglassed in subfloor. The water was somewhere between that and the hull.

AJ drilled holes in the subfloor next to the compartment. The released pressure caused more water to come out in the drawer compartment. Wet sand came out of the new holes.

They had to come out. AJ drilled a few holes along the edge and started chiseling. The starboard side was filled with polyester resin.  The resin was glassy smooth as was the inside of the hull, indicating there was never any adhesion.  Polyester resin shrinks and cracks, as you can see. About half down though, the resin was not fully cured, and was a sticky mess to dig out.

The port side, where the mystery bilge water was coming up, was filled with polyester resin, sand, gravel, and water that crept in through the 1/8" hole. Oil likely got in when we had the Mercedes swinging, thus the smell.

Underneath the added subfloor the hull slants downward a couple inches until it meets with the water thank. The water tank lip is glassed to the hull sides. The floor leveling addition was likely added to keep water from pooling  in a crescent next to the tank, and allow it to go to the bilge. We know that didn't work well because of the number of hoses that were running bow to bilge.
Upon closer inspection the water tank is not a tank at all. The inside of the tank is the inside of the hull.  It is sealed off by the lip on top, and a wall built between it and the bilge. The fiberglass tape on that wall is delaminating.  The bumps in the bottom of the tank are glassed in keel bolts. The board in the center with the cut out is coming apart. It provides support for the hull, and keeps the water from sloshing too badly. The paint looks suspicious and the tank lids are chalky oxidizing aluminum.

The water tank is done for. We are going to cut off the lip of the tank, leaving us with nothing but hull sides. It is the only way to be able to access the inside. The Wall between the bilge and tank needs to be removed and replaced since it provides structural support.  Then we get to decide what to for a water tank. We could remake it as it was, get a custom tank made that would fit inside suspended from the floor frame, or use water bladders that expand to fill the space, which is my favorite idea.

While AJ ripped apart the floor, I got started on the decks.  This is the honeycomb we want to take off.  The decks used to be teak, and this is what's underneath from the factory. The black dots are epoxy filled holes left from the teak removal.

The areas of bare fiberglass are raised ripples in the deck. I don't want to sand down the fibgerglass so I have to move on and leave some portions slightly raised. I'll come back for them with a smaller detail sander.

It takes about a half hour to sand down a square foot.  And the vacuum has to be taken to the ground and dumped about out every 20 minutes.

We got 3 scorching days without rain, and rigged a tent with greenhouse shade fabric and pvc pipe. We will use it the fabric to make a boom tent once the mast is back up. It keeps the cabin 10 degrees cooler.

Yesterday we got caught in the rain.  There was a drip, a drop, a thunderclap, then instant down poor. Rolled in in about 30 seconds and drenched everything. Today it's raining, and it's supposed to keep raining till Friday. The bilge is full of water again because everything still leaks. If my boat could just stay dry we could work on fixing that...

Pretty on the Outside, Rotten to the Core

Robin's got new AwlGrip sides in oyster white; so shiny you can see your face in it.  Just enough buttercream richness to allude to its vintage (age? Decrepitness?), while keeping the viewer wondering if it is truly white without another Florida day-glo-white boat for reference.  The original gel coat was a deep cream, but a bit too rich for me.  This is a nice compromise that won't burn your retinas, nor leave the boat looking too dated.

The waterline stripe and the arrow are taped off, ready to be painted black. I'm glad the bottom paint turned out the deep maroon it is instead of the ferrari red that it was.  Sophisticated curves deserve sophisticated colors.

Here I am getting angry at a cutlass bearing.

The brass inner sleeve of the cutlass bearing was well attached to the housing.  This is after cutting out the rubber sleeve.

A fellow boater in the yard came over and lent a hammer driver.  His parting words were, "Best of luck to you, many men have cried trying to replace a cutlass bearing." A Florida instant deluge washing away my tears in the middle of removal.

The bearing never did come out, so the whole housing came off instead, and went to the prop shop for a professional press.  Probably a better idea anyway since it is about to hold and seal the shaft for our new engine and prop. It is difficult to see here, but the Previous owner used thickened epoxy to fair the hull around the cutlass housing.  Pretty in theory, kinda asinine in practice.

The anchor locker after a little paint scraping by Sarah.  I'm not sure if we can get in there to reach the bow without removing the divider panel.

And also not with those on the ceiling. It's unlikely that we could stay low enough to not cut our scalp open on one of 12 screws.  I'll be cutting them off flush after reinstallation.

The panel is painted plywood with fiberglass and epoxy tabs holding it to the ceiling and floor.  We will have to cut the panel out, coat it in epoxy and glass, and put it back in.  We will also seal the exposed core you can see around the rough cut holes for the hawse pipes in the ceiling.  Not sure how long they have been that way, but the nice thing about teak-cored decks as you can see, is that the core is still dry and still fully laminated...  though the cleat backing blocks aren't.

Here I am removing those damn table stands.  The dinette table has been the most painful thing in our lives for the last year.  From its sharp edges causing deep cuts and bruises on our hip and thighs, to the constant knee bashing on the 3" slides under the table, to shin banging on the stands... Even the bolts resulted in enough busted knuckles that I ended up cutting the heads off with a grinder.  The evil has been exercised.

Free at last, with a little help from my favorite "persuader", the 5 pound sledge with a 9" handle.

What lies beneath the boards that have never been removed.

Vinegar and water is the first and primary cleaning solution.  Why waste expensive non-eco-friendly cleaning chems and breathe toxic fumes when there is just so much crap to get loose?

I'm still shocked at which screws are the hardest to get loose.  So far, every underwater threaded fitting has come free with a couple taps followed by steady pressure.  The smaller screws that hold the interior together are proving to be pure evil, as you saw with the table.  The screws holding this floorboard on are still making me scratch my head.  Most of them were varnished over.

Here is more bulkhead de-lamination. This is the de-lamination around a leaky window, split by the bulkhead. It's the same bulkhead Sarah ripped the bottom out of in the closet.

Bulkhead de-lamination is the major reason for the subfloor rebuild.  You don't want to fix the bulkheads if the floor isn't draining away standing water properly.  Soon the floors will be flowing freely to the bilge, and we can cut and glass in new bulkheads around the cabin.  But first we will seal the decks and install new windows so no water is present to make the newly-cleared trip past the bulkheads to the bilge.

As soon as the black striping is done on the topsides, we are going to hit the decks and abandon the demoralizing, filthy, stifling cabin and spend some time in the fresh air.   It's not supposed to rain Sunday through Tuesday, so we are going to start sanding the paint and honeycomb off the decks with 36 grit and vacuum sanders. Then on to hardware removal/re-installation, chain plate removal, patching the deck, wood treatment, and paint.  Then we'll replace the windows.  Once the decks and cabin are fully sealed, we'll head back down below.