Hey sailing!

So we've managed to be out sailing once or twice since the boat went in the water. Managed to hit 7.2 knots the other day in 20 knots indicated true wind. Frankly it was both exhilarating and frightening. We've mainly done lite air sailing, and were out this time in 15 to 20 knot winds, gusting to 25ish. Which really isn't that much of a blow. And we've been out in this kind of wind before, but only on someone else's boat, with that someone in charge. Made a giant change when it was just the two of us out there. Had to roll the genoa in a bit till I depowered the boat enough to be comfortable I wasn't over powering things. But didn't have to reef the main. Which is good as I haven't yet made the required lines to handle that. I think I'll deal with that this weekend.

Managed to get my radar functioning. So everything except the Wifi link is now working. I have the cables for the wifi link at the boat, they just need to be run to the helm. Had an issue getting the boat started last weekend, found a very high impedance connection to the common connector on the battery switch, so swapped that out. Boat started, so I guess I fixed that. Need to check the packing gland on the prop shaft, seems to be a bit more water coming in than I expected while running. And that frankly is going to be a pita to get to, which is why I had the boatyard replace it in the first place.

Not much else is happening sailing wise. Restricting ourselves to early morning sails as of late as it is just so bleeding hot this summer. Looking forward to the fall when things will possibly be a touch cooler.

See you out there!

Yay in the water!

After a long and frankly boring winter Amadeus finally hit the water. We had her hauled last year so we could get the masts down and replace the sheaves in the mastheads, for both the main and the mizzen. So that of course lead to other things:

• New Radar
• New Depth Sounder
• New Wind Instrument
• New Halyards for the mizzen
• New Top light
• New Wind-ex
• New Streaming light
• New Deck Light
• New LED's for all internal lighting.
• Replace Zinks
• Anti Fouling bottom paint
• New Packing for the prop gland

We had already purchased a Zeus multi-display unit and used it last season. I have to say it is superior to the iPad based navigation system we tried to use previously. Mainly this is due to our being able to see it in direct sun. We have no cover over the helm, so direct sun is what we have to deal with while sailing. We hope to deal with this lack of shade in the foreseeable future. 

Issues we have faced so far:

• OMG how do I contort myself into that shape to get to that wire? 
• OMG WTF is THIS? 
• OMG WTH does this do?
• OK really Previous Owner? Did you wire every single thing on the boat directly to the batteries? 
• Hey what is this giant bundle of wires that is cut and bound with old electrical tape?
• This batch of wires is not on the schematic, any clue what it does? 
• Hey this set of wires looks important... Oh wait the other end is just laying in the bilge. Huh?
• OMG this is a set of live wires just laying here, directly connected to the battery. Nice.

Yeah, while I am not the most knowledgeable marine electrician in the world even I know this isn't how stuff is supposed to be. I think we spent at least three days trying to find the routing and purpose of of a number of wires and frankly were only successful maybe 50% of the time.

Anyway while the masts were down we pulled all the old wiring out of the mast, replaced it with new, pulled through the internal conduits as designed. Replaced all the mounting gear for lights and what not and added the new sheaves. 

Working on the getting the navigation network installed. Have to add a NMEA 2000 network to the boat. First challenge was getting the new Depth Sounder/Temperature/Speed sensor installed in the hull. This requires that the old one be removed, a new thru-hull sleeve be glued in, then the sensor slips into that. Yeah had to get the boatyard guys to get the old one out. Then there was some controversy about the sensor I got, ended up they recommended the exact one I had. So I ended up installing the new sensor and thu-hull. And while you'd think that would be fairly straight forward, just put a good amount of 5200 on the flange and up the threads then screw the giant nut on, well no. The original hole was not drilled perpendicular to the hull. The PO had sanded down a piece of plywood, just regular old plywood mind you, into a bit of a wedge shape to accommodate the hole angle. I cut a chunk out of a old plastic cutting board and free-handed a wedge with my trusty Dremel tool. Really the 5200 seals the hole and attaches the thru-hull flange to the hull, the backing nut just keeps it from falling out the bottom till the 5200 sets up. Anyway no leaks, so that is successful so far. 

Once that was done I mounted my new rate compass in the same cabinet, right in line with my keel. Except it has a SimNet connector which is not exactly the same as a standard N2K connector. Cut that off and replaced with a field replaceable N2K connector. Found out I pulled my backbone cable through the boat backwards so my wind instrument wouldn't just connect and terminate the backbone. The backbone requires terminations on both ends. Yanked that out and reversed it, now the wind instrument works as advertised. Added an additional 6' drop cable and three wire to get power to the Display unit. Wanted to come up the steering pedestal and out the front under the compass. Yea, not today. This boat is seriously old and everything is so corroded. Broke the compass mount trying to get the screws off that, so boo. Now I'll have to figure out a replacement for that. So I drilled a hole in the laughably termed hanging locker, in the equally amusingly termed navigators berth and fed the lines through to the cockpit. So now I have wires under the floor slats in the cockpit, not exactly what I wanted, but workable for now. Betty crawled back in there and pinned everything up so we can go back to using it for storage bins. 

On a side note I love how they design and build these sail boats. They have us staffed up to 1800's Royal Navy standards. I have berthing for two in the V-berth, two in the sea berths in the salon, two more in the salon table area, one more across the way from that, one in the navigators berth, and finally two in the aft "Master Cabin". So yeah, berthing for ten. No way I can ever envision ten people trying to survive in this little thing. We'd be sitting in each others laps and murder would break out three days after leaving port.

Got the Radar cable back through the boat and back by the nav station, but another interconnection issue there. Have power, but no connection to the N2K network. The WiFi-1 unit to allow us to monitor stuff on our iPad is yet another SimNet connector, so ordered two SimNet to Micro C cables. Looks like I also have to run a new Ethernet connector to the back of the Main nav display. It'll get done eventually. 

Still need an AIS transponder and attendant wiring, but I'm really in no hurry for that.  

So we wanted to sail to Annapolis for our wedding anniversary but it just took too long to get everything else done. Plus I lost an afternoon to a wonderful migraine. Been having those since my car accident last December, yay. 10 to 20 a month, so very not fun. 

So we drove up instead.

And that's about all for now! Going to get the sails up tomorrow, depending on hangovers from tonight's bacchanal. And then some sailing finally this weekend. 

Getting ever so much closer

Oh my, I think the boat will hit the water later this month. I still have a few bits to source, but nothing that will stop us from going sailing.

As I said earlier I purchased a complete new navigation system over the last year. It's been sitting in my basement and slowly the piece parts have been making their way to the boat. I'm quite excited! Had a bit of concern over the angle the new depth/speed/temp sensor would end up being at once installed in the boat. Spent a considerable amount of time researching this particular sensor that came with my system, a DST-800. Happily found out that it will work at mounting angles from 0 to 22 degrees. Which is great because my hull is about 18 degrees where I plan on mounting it. I will need to be very aware of the offset when I am leaning to starboard, as the sensor will be tilted beyond what it can handle. So I'll be mounting the can it sits in this weekend. Then run the wiring for the network on the boat. I also need to find a place to mount my rate compass. That tells all the things attached to my navigation network which way the boat is oriented. It will probably end up right next to my DST sensor in the forward port settee cabinet.

Have replaced all my sheaves, and received all the new rope for new halyards. Also replaced all the wiring in the mast. New Radar cable, three wire for the steaming/work light, VHF antenna wiring, two wire for the mast head light. All fit in the handy conduits that were in the mast for exactly this reason. Now only my halyards will run free through that space. Hopefully there will be much less banging.

This so far has been a fun project. I'm not as fast as I used to be, but I think that is more of a function of age than my current brain damage. I still need to source a few exit boxes, but if I can't I can send them to Zephyr and get them rebuilt. I love his communications, just the price and his address. Nice.

I'll post pictures once I recover some shots from Betty's phone.

I'm still wondering about a staysail. Doing some further research in the "owner's manual" I found one of the exit boxes was on the front of the mizzen was for flying a staysail. I wonder if the extra wire I found was to fly an extra jib, or was it for a main mast rigged staysail? Anyway I bought enough rope to make a halyard for that. I have a line run up the mizzen to draw that line in, so I wonder if I should just not mount it, I don't think I even own a staysail at this point. I'll have to look into getting one before we go far foreign. But I also need to know how to rig and fly my spinnaker as well. Oh well off to school I guess. Loads of youtube in my future as I struggle to figure this out. Oh I also need to get a jib pole as well.

Well that's it today from this Oldy Boat.

Back again...

Well after a long hiatus I'm back again. mainly because I've been watching SV Delos Youtube videos.

We spent last season sailing Amadeus as much as we could. Which wasn't as much as we should have, I unfortunately have developed a touch of anxiety about taking her off of the moorings. Severe enough that we can't cast off sometimes. Yeah, fearless captain isn't me. But we did get out most weekends at least once. We sailed a lot in the light winds that we find most weekends in the area, and managed to go out and come back without ever bumping into anything, breaking anything on the boat or running aground. And we managed this with very little in the way of navigation equipment. We have a GPS enabled chart plotter, which is a freaking godsend. But that really is all we have. Well that and really well marked cruising grounds.

I have since purchased a complete navigation system, depth/speed/temp sensor, wind speed and direction sensor for the masthead as well as a radar unit that overlays the radar on the chart plotter. The new radar unit uses non ionizing radiation so it is much safer to use than the old style I used to work on, so it is more energy efficient, and won't cook your body parts if you get in front of it somehow.  Of course that also means that I can't hoist my Christmas turkey up in front of it and cook the thing in a speedy fashion either, but I felt that was a fair trade off. The E2-C Radar system I used to work on had the reputation of causing sea gulls to explode if they flew through the cone of radiation, but sea tales are all about the story, with the same touching concern with facts as our current political leadership.

We had Amadeus hauled early in November and pulled the masts as well. They really needed some work done. I was missing a halyard on the mizzen so I could not rig the mizzen sail. The mainsail had gone from difficult to OMG is this even going up? And every time we had to raise the genoa it was a battle as it kept jamming and getting twisted. We were completely unable to raise the working Jib at all as it jammed and twisted almost immediately. I wanted to examine the condition of the sheaves that live at the top of the mastheads. And really there are three ways to accomplish this.

1. I could put on the bosun's chair and have Betty winch me to the top of the mast and look at them.
1. One issue with this is that I have to use one of the sheaves (what the pulleys the halyards run through up there) to accomplish that.
2. Second issue is I am a complete baby when it comes to heights. Scares me spitless.
2. I could winch Betty to the top of the mast and have her look.
1. She has no idea what she is looking at.
2. Still have to use one of those sheaves.
3. Pull the masts off the boat and lay them flat for work and inspection.

So we took the masts down. I needed to replace the internal wiring anyway because it has been banging around inside the mast for maybe thirty years and for some reason, probably because it is a PITA, the wiring has not been run through the conduits that are on the inside the mast for exactly that purpose. Makes for a really noisy mast system while in a rolly situation. Also lets me inspect the fittings and connections of the standing rigging. Which frankly look fine. So now I have the ugliest slowest speed boat ever seen.

I started this repair/down season feeling optimistic that I could do a couple searches for pieces and parts, bits and bobs and voila I'd be able to source said parts for this beastie and in no time at all we'd be all ready to go back in the water by April no sweat. Yeah I'm an idiot. First and foremost I called Jeanneau, they made the boat after all, who never bothered to return my calls, go figure. I asked for help on the Jeanneau Pro Boards, which garnered zero responses to my requests for assistance. So I struck out on my own, which garnered even fewer useful results. So I did what I should have done in the first place, I asked the guys at the boatyard for assistance. Much better. In one 15 minute phone call I received three solid leads and they even sent my poor old busted stuff off with a sales guy for a quote. The quote that came back was frightening, but that wasn't the boatyards fault. I think I have mentioned them before, but the fine folks at Washburn's Boatyard are both kind and helpful. The ladies in the front office are helpful, the guys in the parts department are always willing to answer my newbie questions and help as much as possible. And did in fact help considerably. I was able to order custom built sheaves to replace the originals and those cost less than $400.00. Shout out to Ed at Zephyr Sheaves who handled building those for me. The old ones were super worn out, had some nylon type insert as the bearing surface. That had gone super hard and brittle over the 30 years they had been up there exposed to weather and were quite obviously past their useful service life.

I'm still looking for a series of things called exit boxes and they come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Of the ones I have located so far none match. Mine are frozen solid due to corrosion. I took a set of them off the mast and put them in a jar with penetrating oil for three months, ah sucks to be me, not one of them can be moved.

I had also changed halyards last year, and while I thought I was using the correct sizes, I'm once again proved wrong. While I used the same size as the PO, HE was the idiot this time. As he is dead and can no longer defend himself I'm totally going to lay the blame on him. PO is the idiot this time! HE chose the wrong size rope leading me to choose the incorrect size of rope to fashion into my  halyards. So annoying. So I have to purchase new halyards this year, AGAIN (Huff, Puff, HUFF) Anyway that is another couple hundred bucks.

I ordered a bunch of stuff, a mount for my radar transceiver unit to attach to the mast, a LED masthead light, a new LED work light with separate LED steaming light that is still attached to the work light, uses some of the same wiring, a new VHF whip antenna. Feeling inadequate for some reason I got the 3' whip vice the 1 1/2' version. Will still work with the VHF so anyway there's that. The size difference isn't going to make it work better, it's at the top of a 52' mast after all, but I wanted a 3' whip. So I got a 3' whip. I'm going to be so pissed if it doesn't work for some reason. To round out my order I got some wire to connect my lights with, a bunch of shroud covers and new tip covers for my spreaders. I would be so pissed if I tore my 150% Genoa. I was flat amazed they wanted to charge close to $80 USD for leather tip covers, a piece, to sew over my spreader tips. So I got plastic. I also ordered 6 1' sections of bird spiking strips. Maybe I can dissuade the local ospreys from using my mastheads as combination butcher blocks and dining room tables. This may keep the carnage from accumulating in the cockpit, with commensurate stench. Few things smell quite as nice as week old crab guts left laying in the sun for a week.

I was going to modify a plastic cutting board to make an adapter so I could reuse the old mount I had for the radome from my old burned out radar unit. Like I mentioned earlier I got a new radar system, and who would ever include a mast mount with a new radome? It's completely unheard of for a radome to be to be mounted on a mast, you know like about 3/4 of the way up say a main mast? That's a deeply sarcastic statement if you couldn't tell. But then I got to thinking about this a bit further. I spent a pretty good penny for my new radome and if my plastic fantastic adapter failed at some point my pricy radome would fall off the mast and dangle from its wires while repeatedly flinging itself suicidally at the mast till it was returned to kit form. I doubt that B&G's warranty would cover that sort of damage. So I ponied up the cash and bought the official mount. So now I feel virtuous but a little poorer.

Now for the other fun I encountered on my off season, at the beginning of December I was involved in an auto accident. Some guy in a hurry to get gas or sometime stated he didn't see our Nissan Murano barreling up the road and darted in front of me which ended up totaling our new Murano. He got the ticket. I got the concussion. Now I am battling post concussion syndrome and am not enjoying my new status at all. :(  So as this is a sailing blog I will not really be touching on that after this, because really who wants to read about another late middle aged guys medical issues? I have had a freaking headache for close on to three months now, my anxiety is through the roof, I can't seem to hit the programming zone anymore, my memory is even worse than it has ever ever been, and I would give my eyeteeth for a solid night of sleep. Yeah ok, enough medical whining.

Running up to the boat this weekend to affix my new depth, speed sensor to the wire of my old depth sensor so the boatyard guys can swap them out for me. I am just not up to doing the work at this point, I'd love to, but spending that amount of time bent over with my already pounding head just sounds like a recipe for a gigantic screw up.

I'm about to post this, so for the 11 guys in Korea that are going to instantly pounce on it 안녕하세요

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!

Where is my boat?

Man this is annoying. Betty and I have gone out to the boat a few times, I think I mentioned it is currently sitting on the hard about 80 miles from our lovely mid 70's home we remodeled. I am at a place where I need to start parting with some $$ to move forward. Immediate needs, batteries, and not the usual $90.00 wonders we buy every year or two that start our cars. I need a few serious deep cycle monsters, AGM Group 31 type, $250.00 to $400.00 per, so I can power the interior lighting and instrumentation, as well as crank the engine. I also need some bilge cleaners and Bilge Coat, $30.00 a gallon. I am also going to have to start taking things apart as we have surfaced a fuel leak that fills the bilge with diesel fuel. We hand bailed about 12 gallons of bilge crud out so far. I can hear "Get started, you aren't working after all!" I would love to! Ok not really, but it's all part of the joy of boat ownership, which so far from all my reading has translated to "Buy a boat! Do your unscheduled maintenance in exotic places, with language issues and difficulty sourcing parts!" The issue is that a month after being told we "own" the boat we still do not have a bill of sale. The frigging paperwork is still in limbo. I am absolutely not spending any serious cash on this project till everything is in order legally. I was annoyed that we had to purchase three new buckets from Lowes to accomplish the first round of bilge cleansing.

I feel Betty and I are stuck in a version of our personal "Glory Days". Which appears to the unaided eye to be the mid 70's. House built in 1974, boat from 1977, etc. Just the weird thoughts that run through my mind in the middle of the night when regular folks are sleeping.

Have been checking on the costs of some items that will need to be replaced or added on the boat. These items are on the list, in no particular order:

• Lighting
• Ventilation
• Engine
• Paint, interior and hull
• Cushions
• Refrigeration
• Instrumentation, Radar, Navigation, AIS, Chart Plotter
• Required safety equipment, Life Raft (OMG! $$$$), Flares, Noise maker, EPRIB, fire extinguishers.
• Sole

Sails appear to be ok, hull, ok, standing rigging, ok. So once again, just like our house, the bones are viable, the skin and guts could use some work. Some of these items are on the future list, like the instrumentation, that one item is going to cost a very pretty penny indeed. While I would love to be a Checkbook Captain, my budget is certainly not going to accommodate that. So things are a touch more complicated in that I will have to do this sort of thing in stages. But the items I put in now need to support the things I will put in years from now. As the boat currently sits I feel fairly certain I could put it in the water and sail away. But not in a level of comfort consistent with doing it more than a few times or going any long distance. And heaven, actually Coast Guard, help me if anything would go south during that excursion. 

Anyway to that end I have been doing a ton of research, mainly centered around everything in the world marine. Yeah a bit scattershot. And as always it's a battle between the haters and the opposite haters. Yeah the opposite of hate is love right? Not on the internets. Go try to research anything and mostly you find a mash of conflicting opinion. What's the best battery? "Dude! Wally World has the best!". "You moron, you shop at Wally World? They oppress third world peoples and prey on the local poverty stricken." Then a three page invective riven discussion of Wally Worlds business model. All while never actually discussing which battery Wally World has that is "The Best". Somehow or another President Obama gets drawn into the discussion then it really goes off the rails. Then you look at the posting dates and see it was posted 5 years ago. So I have settled for simply looking for recommendations, not from the manufacturer. Figuring out what actually comes from a manufacturer is harder than it sounds.

After exhaustive research I am simply exhausted from researching. I zeroed in on a thing I am fairly competent in, electronics. I will need to replace all the lighting on the boat to lower power level of lighting. This particular boat will run exclusively off a 12 volt DC system for the foreseeable future. There is no lighting in any of the berthing areas, like I am never going to actually open a paper based book whist reclining in my rack. Or want to be able to find my pants on a dark night. So that will need to be added. Whether I convert the boat to a diesel electric system or not we will need to scrimp on every amp hour in the batteries. So obviously LED lighting is in my future. OMG! What is WRONG with you people! Those prices are frigging insane! $25.00 for a single round red/white puck. Screw this I can build my own. This I can do on my own. Yay! This is actual straight forward research, instantly found two reliable sources for plans, and four sources for parts. So I'll be creating my own. Ventilation is also an issue, we need fans in the berthing and living spaces. Nice quiet 12 VDC fans that aren't energy greedy. Back to qualitative research.

Betty is in charge of the sewing projects, simply cuz she can run her machine. We brought some of the pieces of the salon cushions back to the house a few weeks ago. She is thinking about what we have that can be repurposed and reused from the piles of things we keep moving from state to state.

Now if I could just get the boat paperwork we could do some "boat stuffs".

Amadeus September 19, 2014

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