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Flying Pig refit update - Long, sorry!
Well, I have access via wifi, but not through newsgroups, which is much
simpler than the googlegroup mode I'm using, but I thought I'd drop a note about what's up, having not said much in the last many months I've been aboard more than home. The topsides are newly awlgrip antiskidded and rebedded. She's dry as a bone, as confirmed during last night's marvelous thunderstorm. The toe and rub rails were stripped, redone and rebedded as well. Rub rail got awlgripped, and the Toe rail got a several step treatment which isn't quite finished yet. An awl-grip product first, to seal, then Cetol, with a couple of coats to follow. The stripping of the toe rail took, literally, months, being totally unseen in the prior more-than-30 years of my refinisher's experience, and the refinishing of it hasn't been much faster! The arch is in and everything except the 360W solar mounted. The solar will go on a SS tube frame, when they arrive, which is any day, now, and fastened to the arch. Experience reported on this forum and others suggests anywhere from 90 to 180 AH daily yield in tropics where we'll be. The remote control porch light came in handy last night when I had to go cover up the aft companionway which had some blowthrough due to the AC we've temporarily (while on the hard, working - I took out the boat AC as unneeded for our cruising grounds) installed in the opening, but not *through* it as it's too short, allowing some drip-through. The KISS is putting out its amps nicely (anticipating another 75-150 AH daily based on tropical usage reports), the VHF antenna gets through loud and clear, and I await the arrival of the receiver for the satellite antenna Glenn built for me. I still have to reattach the cable to the GPS receiver, but the antenna's up there and should be fine. The motor mount is attached to the built-in rails, the gaffs and boathooks are in their holders, and the barbeque tank is in its holder but I've not yet resurfaced the mounting brackets for our existing barbie. I rather expect to get a Magma Newport, however. The platform is modified by extending it and adding new supports underside, and we're in the process of measuring for brackets. It should go on shortly. It will have an underslung collapsible boarding ladder, easily reached from in the water (no not being able to get back in the boat!!) We're still wrestling with how to deal with the single step needed from the platform to the deck. In the course of the stern redo with the arch, the existing boarding ladder came off. Very nice, actually, with gate-making when it folds up into the stern. However, we can't effectively use it, unfortunately. I'd love to figure out how to integrate it into the side, as there are times when side boarding would be more effective. I'm going to do some more mental twiddling to see if there's a way to make it rotate, as I've seen some do, so as to lay aside the rails (more anon), out of the way. However, its design parameter was to mount a few inches below the deck, and didn't include the space of the rub rail (though it did have standoffs to accommodate the sheer angle) so it may be more trouble than it's worth. So, anyone need a very nice boarding ladder for 4' freeboard? It and the refrigeration are all that's left of all the take-offs... The galley is almost finished. New sink, faucets, salt water pressure feed, reefer and freezer have taken enormous amounts of time and money to accomplish. At the moment, the reefer and freezer doors are in the last stages of fit and finish. Still to do are mount (it's in, but sitting on the bottom, to keep out of the way of the final finishing above) the SS evaporator plate, the spillover and circulation fans and the various control elements, including the reed-switch controlled fan disconnect and LED enable when the door is opened. Also to mount are the keel cooler and the compressor in the ER (more anon), but those are pretty straightforward things to do. We tiled the bulkhead toward the salon and it looks great in contrast to the teak. The reefer project was covered, I think, in some prior posts, but the short story was that we tried to add insulation and make a second topside door (the original having just one). We ended up sawzalling out the old one, as the insulation was from hunger, and there was no way whatsoever to get the lid off (it was tabbed to the hull). In the end it was a very good thing, as it exposed a lot of rot which we corrected, as well as showed me how the plumbing was run under there, which made for a great deal easier run of the salt water feed for the galley later. We went back with a total custom installation of 6" of foam everywhere except the top of 4", foil with air separation to the outside, and epoxy encapsulation. Short of vacuum panels, this is about the best that can be done without reaching very diminishing return. We're double gasketing (top and bottom) the doors (with their attached foam blocks) to minimize loss in that area. We ended up with about 7 and 3.5 cubic feet, and calculate our BTU load at well under 4000 per day, which should make for a reasonable amphour load on the cycling Frigoboat installation. We expect that the solar alone would more than cover that during the daytime, as well as provide charging duties. Along with the galley, which used to have this atrocious orange-ish tinge laminate and similar (well applied, though) paint over the panels in the doors, the walk-through engine-room side has had the painted surfaces redone in teak. The panels in the salon and galley storage doors, too, have been re-teaked. Panels are satin, as is the new teak finish on all the large surfaces, but the stiles and all other trim are gloss. Nice contrast. The walkthrough storage project has yet to start (see the M46Mods section in the gallery to see what it will look like), but I'm assured it's a very quick job - "one day, max", which I've learned will most likely mean not less than a week - but the rest of the walkthrough is coming along nicely. Replacing a small dual element fluorescent is a 4' single, which lights up the workbench and walkthrough marvelously. While in there, I also added an AC outlet. I'm thinking about some rope red lighting, stuck to the outboard side of the fixture, so as to be invisible, for great night vision. The remainder of the workbench area redo will wait until Trinidad/Venezuela, but there's lots of potential there for improvement, not the least of which is the removal or recovering of that atrocious color laminate and repainting of the other stuff as well. The padded vinyl cover (in the same orange off-white!) to all the wiring/piping in that area will have to be replaced, too, as the substrate is rotting away. That will be done in white; whether it happens before we leave is still TBD. Along the way, likely I'll add some head protection, as I bang in a lot of places; one of them, already protected with padded vinyl (see above!) is removed for the repaint, but I should add more, I think. OTOH, this trip, I have yet to bleed, so perhaps I'm finally getting used to where I need to duck! All the passage and closet doors in the boat have gotten eggshell white over the orange paint. Very nice contrast to the gloss teak borders. All the hinges were replaced, as they were the original chrome over brass, and some of them were beginning to "rot" - and as long as we were taking them off to refinish, it was easy and cheap to put new on. As I've rehung doors, I've taken advantage of the immediacy to make each close firmly and easily, not the case with nearly any of them (one or the other or both defect) in the original. The aft cabin redo is marvelous. We extended the already-large-by-boat-standards sleeping area from full to queen athwart (8" extension). We also added a step below of 16" out and a foot up, making it storage as well. The step was needed because we replaced the standard 4" foam with a custom Tempur-Pedic look-alike of 8" total. It's the best sleeping we've ever done. I took paper patterns and angle measurements for the sides (ditto the Vee) to the fabricator, and together we cut them to fit exactly. Absolutely marvelous. Along the way in our refit, I hired, for a brief time, a kid who'd had some experience in a boatyard as well as 7 years liveaboard and cruising on a 50' ketch. He seemed to have some painting skills, and since it was cheap, I had him tackle the aft cabin. That turned out to be a disaster, for a variety of reasons, and I'll spare you the gory details of how we turned it around. However, the short story is that the entire orange look on the headliner and walls is now the same white eggshell alkyd (oil paint) rolled-on (slightly nubby) finish. Combined with taking down the ugly curtains, it made the aft cabin look half again as big, and very notably brighter. This was done while I was off the boat for a week, and the contractor continued, as it was so lovely, to do the same in the galley, as there were places there which were going to need repaint, anyway, and did the headliner as well. As there's so much structural change associated with the radios, we're leaving the nav side repaint for now. A funny is that Lydia had initially refused to look at boats with white vs all teak - but now she absolutely loves it. Go to the archives for the purchase adventure about the white (what we called the orange before having seen what white *really* looks like!), but suffice to say that it looks great. The remainder of the headliner and walls will wait until we're cruising or in the third world, as this project has literally broken the bank, and we're not finished. Reading boat ads where you see "just finished a 50K refit" makes you think that there must have been massive equipment installations probably just means that someone cleaned up the fit and finish, as we'll have about that much in ours before we leave... The electrical, as an extension of the solar and wind, is coming along well. We've rewired most of the significant stuff, and nearly every piece of original wire we've pulled out has been black all the way through (meaning the corrosion crept up the insulation - sometimes for 15-20 feet!!). However, the new is much simplified, and, of course, new. 1500W inverter, MPPT controller, remote control for the "porch light" (hit the button in the dark anchorage and have the boat light up), tracing down all the faults and troubles, new outlets in various places in 12 and 120V, and, of course, the exploration of LED as a solution. So far, fluorescent is winning, with the exception of redlight. The rails project is being derailed for the moment, as we've been misled about the availability of tubing. It will be a scramble, but in the end, we'll have SS rails 30" and 15", to match the stern rails integrated to the arch. One of the challenges has been the forward segment, which is 23' on the top, so a 24' stick (one of the standard lengths) is needed. They're hard to come by, as the more normal is 20' - which is fine for everything else, as we'd cut it up, anyway, other than the top rail, which will be continuous. We're using SeaDog fittings, with straight-through for the stanchions connecting the butted middle rails, and straight-through for the top rail butted to the stanchion. The ER was emptied of refrigeration, Genset, Lectra-San and a lot of other stuff which was in the way or unneeded, and cleaned and repainted in the same finish as the rest of the white stuff. Reinforcement of the shelves, which had sagged from having batteries on them (outboard, high? what were they thinking??!), repair of lots of dryrot, installation of new decking (rotted), removal of dead through-hull to be replaced with the keel cooler, and many other cleanup-repaint-refinish items has made the ER a much nicer place to work on the electrical. Once that's finished, I can tackle the remainder of the bilge pump redo fore and aft, and the aft head replumbing, as it's in the area we'd have to cross. I also have to install the salt water feed/pickup for the galley and fore and aft washdowns. The forward head project has PVC pipe in place of the stinky hose previous. A short section of Aussiglobe (OdorSafePlus without their rebranding) connects the outflow and Y valve end points. Still working on the shower problem, as it's not pumping well. The aft head, which I initially thought would be a piece of cake to pipe, I don't think will work, whereas, while convoluted, the forward was pretty straightforward in execution. The aft head base is off to enable the bilge pump resolution, as well as clean out the bilges, which was a major project. They run clear, now, however. In the course of that removal we uncovered more rot, which is being resolved before it goes back with a starboard base as that portion of the rot's solution. Still to come in the ER is the new battery bank. We removed the 4xT-105 original from the portside walkthrough (about 250#, which we hope may help our small port list), have temporarily put one pair in the ER as a house buffer to the shorepower enabled charger, and will be installing 4 Trojan L16HC where the genset used to live. As that will be about 200 or so pounds heavier, slightly to starboard (right next to the engine, essentially), combined with the others' removal, we're hopeful she'll stand up straight. Radios are being replaced pretty much wholesale. The cockpit VHF worked fine but the volume knob froze up and can't be replaced. 100bux bought a waterproof DSC enabled replacement from BoatBandit, which is mounted on the pedestal. The nav VHF, 20 years old, with a remote station in the workbench area, has had frequency migration and not worth fixing. Don't know yet what we'll do about that, but it won't be a challenge, as I've proven the up-the-mast antenna as working fine. The Ham and SSB are dinosaurs, and, while they may work, if I ever could prove them out, are dicey at the moment. Most likely I'll go back with Icom 802, and keep the existing SGC230 tuner, reported by most correspondents as being equal or superior to the Icom equivalents, and the 23' whip on the stern. I got, at the same time as the cockpit VHF, two small handhelds for another deciboatbuck, but have been given two more substantial handhelds as well, so we're overequipped in that department. Other comms might include Pactor in the future, but I'm aggressively pursuing the potential - not yet proven due to equipment glitches - of an up-the-mast wifi enhancement (more of which discussion having appeared in this space previously). As it is now, I'm on line aboard with wifi-enabled surfing, mailing, and even VOIP telephone, but, of course, it's a fixed location, with no directional issues as would be the case at anchor (I have a directional antenna here, landside). If we can make this work, it will make Lydia's life a great deal more pleasant, as she's joined at the hip with her kids. The salon will remain mostly as it was until we reach the third world, other than we think that adding some risers to the bench seat, and extending the cushion a few inches, will make sitting there vastly more comfortable. To come is a redo of that side to allow storage, removing the second berth which was the standard for the charter trade, as well as the same paint removal/redo as in the aft cabin. Lighting of that area will also be addressed, and I'm hopeful we can find a way to make amber LED rope light effective in overall lighting. Still to come is the salt water washdowns fore and aft and the stern shower. The aft runs are in, but the fittings aren't installed yet (we're saving that part for the final installation of dinghy-tow fairlead and cleat, HF radio antenna remount and lifeline anchor remounts). I'm still wrestling with how to get my salt water feed to the bow, and may give up and run them up with the wiring. I'd hoped to utilize the forward shower dump feed which goes to the ER to connect to the cockpit drains (why that instead of a simple overboard is beyond me)as it's already up there, but I may have to give up. Also to come is a review of the engine, as it's been out of the water for over a year, and will be close to 2 years by the time we actually leave. In the course of getting the totally fouled bilge clean, overspray got everything in the front of the engine rusty, so it all came off, for wirebrushing and eventual repaint. I'll be replacing (keeping the current one as spare) the alternator with a high-output, and will have to make a new bracket for the raw water pump, removed with the engine drive reefer (still available for any interested!). The triple sheave additional pulley came off, too, and will be available assuming I can properly align the existing second pulley with the raw water pump. In the course of removing the genset, the feed and return lines are open, so I'll be redoing some of that sort of thing. Likewise, I want to revisit the oil pressure, temperature and tach sending stuff. The original hourmeter on the pedestal literally fell out from rot when we were rewiring the pedestal; it was supplanted on a presumed rebuild about 2600 hours ago with a tach which inlcuded an hourmeter. The tach is electronic; the original was direct drive, and we removed the remainder of it to use as a fish line (not too long, but very stiff in length, but very flexible in side). One of my toys I want to get is an infrared tachometer to go with the infrared thermometer (both "gun" style point-and-shoot), so I can calibrate it. It only goes to 3000RPM, and I'm pretty sure we turn faster than that at WOT, so getting it accurate would be useful! The windlass has so far resisted removal, but we're trying to get that done in order to have it serviced. I have received a parts blowup and am about to get an actual manual, so I believe we can make that happen. Once that's finished, we can button up the forward cabin, which has had some work, too. We opened up the chain locker and resolved some rot there, along with building some backing for keeping the chain inside without having to screw the doors shut. A drop-in board secured by the dividing board for the two sections made it simple and stout. The previous opening door wouldn't, due to the reinforcing line for the inner stay added at a later date being in the way, so it, too, is now a drop-in to brackets on the face, making it neat but very accessible. The top two doors remain in their finger-latch configuration as not being exposed to as much weight as the bottom. Until all that's finished, the new mattresses are still at at the upholsterers where they were covered in the same sort of material as used by Tempur-Pedic. Ironically, the labor to recover, along with the material (a much lesser amount!) totalled about double the cost of the custom mattresses. And, all along, all the trim items, access panels, oak batten hull trim - think Endeavour 43 side look - boards (added some time in the past) and lighting are being refinished and replaced as we finish out each area. That alone is a major task, time consuming, expensive and frustrating in both regards. So, I'm living aboard, full time, in order to try to get this pushed through. I had my shoulder operation scheduled for June 6, but put it off until August 1. At that, I don't think we'll be finished, though I fervently hope I'm mistaken. Any further work in which I'm needed will have to wait until after my rehab, which may well be sometime next year. We'll continue updates, but after I'm cut, I'll be incommunicado for at least a month, most likely two... Interested parties can see photos of some of what's going on by surfing to the projects section of my gallery, obtained by hitting the "home" at the top of the URL in the sig. L8R Skip (aboard, refitting as fast as I can) and Lydia (remaining at work, trying to support the bux it's costing) Morgan 461 #2 SV Flying Pig http://tinyurl.com/384p2 "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain |
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