What boat projects are you working on?

[1980raven]

I took delivery of 28' 1980 Freedom CK (Raven) in early March. It has some horizontal cracking on both mast which i will address over the summer (I have been reading post by others who have addressed). The biggest issue is major wet core problems in the deck and cabin. I opened up a 8" x 10" section to have a look. Balsa core looks like sponge. I intend to replace core with Grid scored Divinycell cross-linked PVC foam core H80. (any tips). Right now I am restoring a 1974 Dyer 7-11 sailing dinghy. I'll use the Dyer to learn how to sail this summer. What are you up to?

[THATBOATGUY]

George,
Nice top, very cosy porch now! But how do you manage to upload more than three photos in one message? And why do I see your photos in the email digests while I don't see other photos in the digests, just links?

Hi Michel,

I've used code to insert my photos into the message. They are hosted off site. It's as much a hassle to re-size them as upload them to my free hosting site so I usually just do it all in one step and then I've got the URL to share the photo on different web formats.

So I can display a picture of say... Big Bunny (our Genuine Russian Gray Pooper Rabbit) By simply inserting the URL for his photo:

The code looks like this:

Code: Select all

[img]http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/695/0000149.jpg[/img]

The result looks like this:



I could even make the photo into (appropriately) an "easter egg" by embedding it into a URL code link like this:

Code: Select all

[url=http://www.rabbit.org/][img]http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/695/0000149.jpg[/img][/url]

Resulting in this:



Click the bunny above to see what I mean.



George

[Michel]

Didn't know you were into rabbits too..... But now I understand that because of the external hosting, you can display the photo in the digest message. Good to know how to do that, thanks!

[GeoffSchultz]

Spent 12 hours over the last 2 days replacing the 8 screws that the mast ring bolts on to. I had to do this because some of these screws were galled. What a PITA job that was!

I also pulled the anchor chain off of the boat and took it to a regalvanizer. On the electronics side of things, I determined that both the GPS antenna and GPS antenna wire are bad on a Northstar backup chart plotter. At least the chart plotter works OK.

-- Geoff

[Michel]

At season's start, last weekend, I found the fresh water pump was stuck. The amps ran up and over the breaking load of the breaker/switch. Sigh...... so I removed al the junk from the port cockpit locker, removed the hatch that separates the locker from the engine room and went to the pump farm to dismantle the Shure diaphragm pump. As I hoped, the bearing in the pump body was stuck. The motor was fine. With lots of WD-40 I got the bearing to run again. I hope it will last the season. I also lowered the switching pressure setting so the pump runs less often to maintain pressure in the system now. What a miraculous piece of equipment, this three chamber diaphragm pump!

I also found quite a lot of black engine oil in the bilge. Got out to get oil absorbers and cleaned most of it. My bilge is black anyway, and this won't make it better. Checked all oil ducts around the engine but found them all clean and dry. Couldn't find excessive leak spots, only the usual black drops at the carter pan bolts and the engine rear plate just in front of the gear box. Have to open up the floor more often to check. The bad engine still in my biggest headache on board this boat.

[GeoffSchultz]

I spent the morning ordering parts for my Yanmar 3JH2-T(B)E engine. I'm ordering a parts manual, but since I don't have one, I spent a lot of time cross referencing multiple web sites to come up with the right parts numbers. Why is it that Yanmar changes part numbers for something which would appear to be the same between engine variations?

I then relisted BlueJacket on a truck shipping system for quotes to ship her from Milwaukee to San Diego. I had originally planned on shipping her to Mexico, but US truckers can't take loads into Mexico. Not wanting to hand her off to a Mexican trucker at the border, I switched to San Diego.

Then I started researching where she'd go once I got her to San Diego. I didn't understand that most marinas out there don't typically have on-the-hard storage. As a result, if I wanted to store BlueJacket on the hard before launching her, I'd have to use a company like San Diego Boat Movers. They'd charge $500 to offload the boat from the truck and another $760-960 to move her to a marina and then the marina would charge their own launching fees. On top of that it would be $340/mo for storage. That doesn't make a lot of economic sense, so I think that I'll just launch her upon arrival move her to a marina. I spent a lot of time talking to boat yards and found widely varying prices ($400-800 to launch) and then started researching marinas by posting questions on several forums with W coast participants. Compared to E coast marinas, the prices don't look bad.

After that I started researching anchorages along the Baja coast. The admiral doesn't like long passages, and the passage straight from San Diego to the tip of the Baja (Cabo San Lucas) is ~720 miles, so I wanted to see how much I could break it up. I've gotten it down to segments of 92, 102, 179, 243 and 154 nm, so perhaps I can get Sue to do that. We'll see!

Tomorrow I'm headed to the boat to do lots of jobs. The re-galvanizer is done with the chain, so I'll pick it up on the way.

-- Geoff (who enjoyed working inside as it snowed/sleeted/rained today and the high was 42)

[Alain]

Do I need to say more?

350kg_1.jpg (86.66 KiB) Viewed 4952 times

[Michel]

Alain, that's what I ought to be doing as well. But I'm saving it for next winter hoping I can get through the season with my ever overheating engine.

[GeoffSchultz]

Do I need to say more?

Alain,

Why are pulling the engine? Are you having it rebuilt or are you repowering? What engine is it and how many hours are on it?

-- Geoff

[GeoffSchultz]

I spent the last several days on board (on the hard) working on projects while Sue was vacationing in FL with her family...

I picked up my regalvanized chain and re-marked it with colored cable ties. Every 10' is marked with a ties which allows us to know exactly how much chain is out. I use 5 different colors and they form a pattern similar to a resistor. I use red, yellow, green, blue and white for 10/20/30/40/50. Then I go R-R, R-Y, R-G, R-B, R-W for 60/70/80/90/100 and then Y-R, Y-Y, etc for 110/120/etc. It works well and the ties hold up reasonably well and are easy to replace.

Replaced the deck windlass switch covers. They had gotten brittle in the Caribbean sun and were cracking. The new ones look much better and should stay locked down.

I got my SpeedSeal and got that installed. My arm looks like I was in a fight with a cat, but I can tell that it will be a lot easier to get the cover on/off in the future. However, I have no illusions of doing a quick impeller swap-out while underway. The only time that I've seen that as important was one time at Glover's reef in Belize when a storm came through and blew 2 boats ashore (who had too much chain out and a squall came through, they switched and went ashore). Anyhow, a 60' steel boat was well aground and went through several impellers due to sucking lots of sand.

I got my Northstar GPS antenna replaced. I was thrilled to find that the cable wasn't bad and that the problem was at junction at the base of the radar mast. I was dreading having to pull a new cable.

Spent hours trying to get the locking nut off of the transmission flange. First off, I had to find a 30 mm socket and amazingly the boat which is behind me had one! It then became obvious that a normal socket wrench wasn't going to do the trick, as this thing is stuck. The shop manual shows placing the transmission on the bench with the flange facing upwards and using hammer and a punch to break the nut free. Yeah, what does that have to do with getting it off in a tightly cramped space that you can barely see? Anyhow, I got breaker bar at Harbor Freight and was absolutely amazed that it would JUST fit in the space and allow me to turn it. Then I found that the engine was turning over when I tried to loosen the nut. I tried blocking it with a large pair of Vice Grips, but they just can't get enough of a grip on the flange. My next plan is to put a lag screw through a flange hole and screw that into a board that will block against the hull.

Now, why am I doing this? Well, I'm still having issues with my prop shaft. I can spin it and see it move up and down. I had it straightened and they assure me that it's straight as an arrow. The current theory is that the flange on the transmission is binding with the shaft flange and that they can't get a good alignment reading. At this point this sounds logical as I can't figure out what else could be going wrong. I don't even want to talk about how many $ have been spent on this problem...

-- Geoff