We are in the water!

Yeah us!

Ok thought we were going in the water sometime ago, just needed a touch of bottom paint. Wrong. Had to get the old paint soda blasted off as the PO never really did any of that sort of stuff, so a decade or so of old nasty bottom paint on the boat. Had the boatyard get a guy in to soda blast the bottom. Peachy! Nope, not quite so fast there new boat owner.

This is close up of what was left after the soda blast was finished.  Many hours of rust removal from the keel, many hours of sanding, four coats of barrier coat, THEN a coat of ablative anti-foul.  Now can we go in the water PLEASE?

Crane trip into the well. So yes we made it into the water. And didn't need to be pulled immediately out of the water either. Motor started immediately and off we went. Had a friend I met at sailing classes, actually one of the instructors, help me drive it out to the slip.  

Had no idea that mooring was so stressful. First off going in reverse to back down is a no go.  Stopping, yes, going anywhere but in a circle? Not happening yet. Tomorrow is hanging the sails day. Then maybe we can get some sailing pictures up.

Later all!

Almost to the water!

While I was in the Navy we had a saying, "Sailors belong on boats and boats belong at sea.". "Haze gray and underway." Lots of those fun little things. Anyway, last few trips to the boat have been quite epic and have got a huge number of things resolved. As noted in my previous post, the engine runs. We were quite thrilled with that. But I was having serious issues with the electrical systems. The engine ran, the charging circuit worked, that all seemed pretty straight forward. But only two of the lights worked below decks. No power to anything else. Loads of testing, reading schematics, trying to track down the issue without ripping the entire interior out of the boat. I had been using the PO's manual, which was driving me nuts as it was just a tiny bit different from what I was looking at in person. So I compared the paper manual he had, and the PDF version I had, had an awesome AH HA! moment when I finally noticed a small entry indicating the paper manual was for a sister boat, Sun Fizz, not a Gin Fizz. I my defense the paper manual is missing it's cover. Spent some quality time with my voltmeter and some faint PDF based wiring diagrams and noticed a tiny difference in the schematic to the reality of the wiring in front of me. A touch of back story, the boat is OLD, when it was built they were using four six volt batteries to make up the 12 VDC system for the boat. Split into separate 12 VDC circuits, one for starting, one for the house bank. The house circuit could be switched from 12 VDC to 6 VDC so the lighting had two levels, dim and dimmer. Somewhere in the boats past this was changed to be a straight 12 volt system. The electrical panel has a switch that shows 6 VDC and 12 VDC, logically I always left that switch in the 12 volt position, because those are the batteries I put in after all. Opps. Really the 12 volt side of the selector has no wire on it at all, yeah you got it, I just moved the switch to 6 volts and amazingly enough the boat now has lights and power to all it's lights and outlets. Sigh, weeks of hair tearing and concern for a freaking switch. I'll have to rewire that once I figure out what else has been changed incorrectly.

Other news, cleaned the bilges out. Betty was able to come down for the weekend which we spent scrubbing the nasty out of the bilge. I was a bit dismayed to find that the bilge pump is in an area that doesn't actually accumulate any water that happens to get in the bilge until it overflows the flooring. So that has to be resolved. The shower/head area deck turned out to be completely rotted out. Four buckets of old rotted plywood that was still wet and gunky.

So that is going to be fun to repair. The little black button in the middle there is some sort of drain that is connected to the main waste line that runs the grey water from both the shower and sink back to the well where the only bilge pump is sitting and is then pumped over the side. Yeah that whole arrangement needs to be resolved. I am thinking I can fill the area with two part expanding foam and then lay a chunk of ply over that with a cut out for the water to drain into a plastic bowl with a self actuated bilge pump. Or something like that. But the main bilge pump still works, as long as you bail the water into the box it is sitting in, so I got that going for me. 

Betty scrubbed the galley floor, more nasty. She ended up peeling the covering off the ply that was laid, so we are looking into something seriously cheap to put down over that. I pulled the wood slats off the bottom of the cockpit and scrubbed that mess out. 

The bottom is to be painted next week and she should go in the water the following week. Here is a picture of where we expect to be our new home to be parked for the next series of repairs. Pretty fancy don't you think?

A bit of a hike to the showers, but we need the exercise anyway. We certainly aren't going to be showering on the boat for a while. Other small things found while scrubbing. All the screws that hold the ledges that the flooring sits on have rusted away and all the little ledges are just slimy nasty, so those all need to be replaced. The dog house the engine sits under has been modified by PO and now needs to be modified back. Basically the dog house is also the stairs up to the cockpit. It fits tight to the galley cabinets on the starboard side, so is cut away on that side. On the port side however it runs straight back to the bulkhead next to the engine compartment and behind the nav. station. The dog house was built so that a smaller panel could be removed on the port side so you could tilt the entire stair assembly on end and move it into the salon area. Otherwise it is too wide to get it there and causes even more chaos in an already tiny space. 

I swear Betty and I are going to have some quite amazing adaptations to make. We are really rather messy folks. Not dirty mind you, but we do have serious issues with clutter. That clutter usually ends up getting piled into nice neat piles, then the piles get piles. Then they get placed somewhere to be gone through and filed. Where they languish for an indeterminate period of time. There just isn't room in this baby for that level of clutter tolerance. 

Did some shopping for stuffs though, have some gauges, a barometer, clock, tide clock, thermometer coming, a new fan, some more LED lights, and a few sundresses for the lady of the boat. 

And that is about it for this episode of this oldy boat, on a budget!

LA!

News from the right coast.

Headed out to the boat as the mechanic guys say they can look at the engine today. Pretty nice day, got an early start with one minor complication, water was out. So down to Starbucks we head, which nicely enough has an Autozone next door. Had to pick up another battery. Dropped Betty off at the house and sat in traffic all the way up 95 to 495. Finally lightened up about 30 miles from the boat.

Anyway complaints aside I emptied out the lazarette and looked at the tangle of wires and decided to replace the only remaining original battery. Used one of my winches to get the battery on board, stupid things weigh 12 tons. So +1 there the winch worked. Got the battery hooked up and amazingly enough the mechanic showed up, and I'll be damned if the engine didn't just turn over and kind of chug a bit on the stored fuel and water in the system. Diddled the plumbing from the engine to the through hull so that instead of the sea cooling the heat exchanger the water in the bucket did it instead. We are after all some 1/4 mile from the water. I learned that you don't ever just connect a hose directly to one of these engines, if you have an issue getting it started you can hydro-lock it. Then you are totally screwed. Rather than having a radiator like on car there is a cooling loop in the engine that takes seawater from outside the hull and runs it up to a heat exchanger that sits on the engine, after it takes the heat from the coolant, standard antifreeze, it is routed to the a box that the exhaust manifold is connected to which cools and "cleans" the exhaust. Then both the water and the cooled exhaust is ejected over the side from an above water through hull. It's all pretty simple, but the hoses are quite long. The pressure from the exhaust cycle forces the water out the hoses, but if there is no pressure the exhaust box will get filled with water which will back fill into the engine, and as water can't be compressed you now have a major repair on your hands Anyway to make this long story short, the engine cranked for a couple minutes then fired right up. I was so excited! Remember when we bought this boat I expected the engine to be a seized lump of useless cast iron. We ran it for 20-30 minutes to get it up to operating temp, engaged the transmission and spun the prop a little bit. Then looked for leaks, none, no extra water, no extra fuel, no oil pumping from unfindable cracks. Simply amazeballs. I am over the moon. Just saved a good 8 boat bucks there.

I'll have to figure out how to add video so you to can enjoy my unbelievably exciting engine sounds and watch the belts spinning, until then just make loud raspberry noises.

Other things we have done, Betty got a backrest completed.

I scared myself by starting to work on the electrical system:

I think we are going to spend the weekend there either this weekend or next, not sure. Betty has been working killer hours and needs a break.

Made my first trip to West Marine, yeah it's worse than Toys-R-Us for adults. 

That's it for this weeks scintillating installment of "This Oldy Boat". 

LA!

The boring parts

So from here on out this will get even more boring than simply blank pages. As it is starting to get warmer it was time to head for the boat and get started on my lists. First thing, finish removing the old dingy overhead. Last year we got about 1/3 of it off. Nice. Yesterday I finished that job in the salon, yuck. There were enough cockroach cadavers and empty fossilized egg cases to make a giant cockroach, or something. lots of vacuuming after that nasty experience. I'm obviously saving the trim pieces but the rest had to go. As most monohullers can attest the inside of a boat is more like a cave, dark, close, and occasionally intensely humid. I do hope to alleviate at least a little of this by replacing the old mahogany overhead panels with some bubble insulation and a white fabric type headliner. While I was there I also spoke to the yard ladies, they are so nice, got to pet the office dog as well, sweet. There was some disagreement between the PO's lawyer and myself about the date the boat became mine, which only matters when it comes to storage costs. So I ponied up another batch of green to pay for the "past due" bills. I need to get some help from one of the diesel mechanics to get the beast running, or determine that the beast is really just an expensive anchor. First appointment I could make was two weeks out. I also got the keys to the boat, so can finally lock it up properly. Which is hilarious when I think about it, having it locked up "properly" certainly didn't stop the many brokers from gaining access previously. Will have to look at that a little closer once we start heading out to other places. I have heard that people really don't steal sailboats, but man do they steal stuff OFF sailboats. Which makes sense, sailing is a fairly specialized skill. The boatyard I am in has a large number of boats pulled out, some folks getting their boats ready for what looks like a fun sailing season. Ours depends on if the engine works or not. So now that I have the headliner down I can start some work in troubleshooting the installed electrical system. One light in the entire boat works, well did work, I dismounted it yesterday. Nothing else gets power, got to be some corroded connections somewhere. Also noticed that one of the connections to the ground plane for the VHF has fallen apart. One nice thing is that it, the boat,  doesn't appear to be catching anymore water. Now if I could just figure out what all these ropes laying all over the place were used for...

I did spend some time sitting in the cockpit just soaking it up. However today was forecast to be warm but rainy, I stayed home, will go brave the weather later this week.

LA!

Winter almost over

So it's getting all spring like around here, which really only means that it's gray and drippy rather more than blue and shiny.  Still plenty cold, not yet time to dewinterize Amadeus. I have two tasks to complete for April, get the motor running and paint the bottom. Until we have overnight temps above freezing no engine work, and no painting till same temps are in the 50s. Then she needs to go in the water, which is already paid for thankfully. I have 1/2 the overhead torn out already, and will strip the rest out on next visit. The electrical work will take a couple weeks as I track down corroded wires and replace the interior lighting with LEDs. Already have a stock of lamps to go in place, but with no power to any but the single fluorescent in the salon, need to figure out the wiring first. Also want to run a few extra wires to accommodate some fans in all the areas. Amadeus has two overhead hatches and two opening ports located on the aft bulkhead of the salon. So fans are going to be a nessecity. No dorade type ports either, which I find annoying.

I did tear apart the aft cabin and OMG!! I found a life raft tucked in there. Thank you P.O. I thought you had sold it. My current conundrum is how to mount the forward Bimini, and raise the sails, and the anchor, and tie it up to a dock, or mooring ball, or start the engine, so loads of fun stuff in my immediate future.

I worked for a couple months this winter, it was exhausting and frustrating to the extreme. But brought in enough to fix the transmission in the car and still have a few boat bucks left over. While I love my Jetta, it can be a very expensive thing to fix. Thankfully it hasn't required very much of that.

Sailing school should start pretty soon, so I'll be doing that as well.

I should be updating thing here a little more frequently as I actually start doing more stuff. Expect more pictures as I dig around and find more junk as well as fix some other junk.

LA!