"Flying Pig" wrote in message
...
Hi, Wilbur, and readers worldwide,

The last couple of days I've been sanding stainless steel, taking either
rusty, dinged, material which is still on the boat, or new, to replace
it, mill finish, tube and plate, for the bow roller cage and assembly,
to brilliant.

Good grief. What you're saying is you let your stainless steel go
neglected for so long that you have to sand off the rust? Holy Cow! All
it takes is a going over about once a month with some Never Dull and it
stays looking like new. Mine is 40 years old and still looks and shines
like new. Have you ever heard the old saying, "A stitch in time saves
nine?" Wake up, Skippy.

Heh. Getting to it is nearly impossible. However, more significantly,
the surface rust (which came right off) was a product of the makeshift (in
the end - this repair will end all that for the lifetime of our ownership
at minimum, and likely get much more than the 30 years which brought us to
this point) repairs in St. Augustine, which were never passivated, let
alone polished, along with some of the "rotting" other steel we've removed
and are replacing. You'd know that if you ever went to my gallery to
snoop on the refits we've done, or just paid attention to my logs, rather
than only sniping at them :{)) BTW, this/these of late aren't logs,
they're just day-to-day activities in the boatyard.

Getting to it is nearly impossible??? Duh! Next time you're having a beer
(or two) break out the Never Dull and polish something for about ten
minutes. In no time at all you'll have all the SS sparkling. This should be
routine maintenance not confined to haul-outs. Use some Whink to remove any
rust stains on your white paint or gel coat.

(about our cockpit table dissatisfactions)

Forget the wood. Nowadays there is a plastic called "Star Board" It comes
in brown that looks like teak and it will last a lifetime and it never
needs varnish. Get rid of the wood and replace it with Star Board and
kiss your wood-slave days goodbye!

Heh. Talk about heavy, especially in the size needed to construct the
table. Not to mention ugly as dirt. OTOH, if it is hard enough to drill
and tap, perhaps that would do for a makeshift until we got the actual
teak.

You're right about the weight. The stuff is quite heavy. It can be drilled
and tapped and even wood screws work with the right-sized pilot holes. For
something like a folding cockpit table you could use probably 1/4" which
would not be prohibitively heavy. And, your rot and maintenance problems
with it would be gone forever. There's something very attractive about
maintenance-free on a boat. The few sticks of teak I have left on the
exterior of my boat (companionway hatch slider) I have prepped and painted
blue. A good paint job lasts a lot longer than a varnish job and it's much
easier to touch up. Sailing should be more about sailing and less about
maintenance.

Unlike others, we have SOME teak accents aboard - but a lot of white
paint. When we were first looking at boats, Lydia was totally turned off
by white interiors. Now that she's lived with mostly-white (lots of teak
accents/trim), as I was showing her the newer models of our type, with
wider and longer pulpit center teak, she complained about how dark most of
them were inside - a product of all that teak she was so sure she wanted
:{))

Same here. The inside of my yacht is mostly an off-white with teak accents.
The white bulkheads and other white surfaces are so much nicer than dark
wood and they are easier to keep clean and new-looking. I used glossy
Formica on the extra bulkhead I installed and trimmed around the edges with
pine stained mahogany. It looks great. Spraying all the inside surfaces with
glass cleaner and wiping with a paper towell makes them look like new. Even
the overhead that does collect a film of cooking oils, dust, etc. Again,
it's all low maintenance.





snippage

The most recent "Peril of Pauline" is our refrigeration/freezer seeming
to be taking a dump. Long story which I'll not encumber you with,
especially as it's not over yet, but various fixes I've done in the past
when this symptom (no cool, compressor's running, or Smart Speed Control
doesn't seem to be acting right) showed up occasionally have had no
effect. Thus, going from perfect function (8° and 32° in freezer and
reefer boxes, even in 90+ heat) to having NO heat removal since sometime
last night, this has a heightened sense of urgency. Even if I get it to
work again, we're going to have to do something "final" about it before
we cast off, as, if it's not resolved, it will only get worse in the
wilds of wherever we are. As the techs I've spoken with can't tell from
the symptoms what it is, we're about to get expensive, likely, as we
track down what's really happening so we can address it. Cool! (well,
it would be nice for it to be cooling, but not yet...)

Hee Hee. You jinxed yourself, Skippy!

Heh. The thought occurred to me :{/)

It's been less than a month now since you were bragging about how well
your fridge was working even with the keel out of water. I bet it
sprung a leak and all the refrigerant leaked out.

I don't know about "springing" a leak, but in my forays into the engine
room for diagnosis, I touched the lines to the keel cooler. They should
be hot and hotter. Instead, despite the compressor running, they're both
cool.

No compression, then. It might mean a clog but it probably means a leak with
low or no pressure. Hope that that brass nut just vibrated loose and after a
tightening it will hold pressure.


However, on the yellow line (I'd have to see if that's inbound or
outbound, cuz I don't remember), under the silver connector, the brass nut
and a very slight portion of the tube were wet. Thin enough not to be
oil, but thick enough to possibly be.

So, you may be right about the freon (oops - R134A) situation. I have a
set of gauges, but need to get the adapter which will allow me to put the
can on the schrader valve cap before I start messing around in it.

I got mine from NAPA - they had it in stock. But, to install it involved
removing the Schrader valve in the original so the new one could be screwed
on piggyback as it has it's own Schrader valve. An excellent time to add the
adapter is when the system is low on or out of refrigerant because you will
lose it anyway when you remove the original Schrader valve. You will also
need a schrader valve tool.

Wilbur Hubbard