Something is wrong it's June and our boat is still not in the water :(. I attempted to be lazy and asked the yard to paint the bottom of the boat but it seems they have not gotten around to it yet nor did they ever get around to asking which through haul I needed replaced? In a previous post you can read about my adventures with getting the new ball valve replaced. Continuing that saga.. after getting home I did get confirmation from the manufacturer of the synthetic valve that it would work but would not allow much in the way of heat tolerance should I over heat my generator at some point. So not wanting to end up with a melted value in a far off anchorage somewhere I bought a new metal ball valve at West Marine and figured no big deal I'll just swap it. I got to the boat figured I would knock this project out in about 30 minutes. Nope seems West only sells US threaded valves and I needed an EU threaded one. Who knew they used a different thread standard over there? I attempted a stop at two plumbing supply stores to see if they might have an adaptor or even a EU valve. Nope.. Well this meant I needed to head back over to West Marine for a new brass US through haul fitting and nipple for this now escalating project. The downside is I have no less then 8-10 through hauls on this boat. I'm assuming they are all EU threaded and now I'm going to have one oddball US one. I can't wait to see what kind of pain this may cause me down the road? Anyway back to the story. I attempted to borrow a through haul tool from the yard that's supposed to make removing them easier as they are usually glued and sealed into the boat pretty well. Seems what they had didn't fit my through haul so we attacked it with a pipe wrench and made a little bit of progress. Unfortunately our progress was not enough that I could get a cutting wheel in between to simply cut it off so we ended up grinding off two sides of it turning it into more of a rectangle then a circle then one of the guys in the yard found a four foot pipe wrench that must have weighed 50 lbs. Once we got that thing on there (it took two of us to hold it) we then had enough leverage to get it turning and out of the boat. After another 5hrs or so into this project (including some travel time to the various stores mentioned above) we now had a nice big empty hole in the boat that we could fill with the new fitting. Now after the third time of attempting this project I hope it's completed and won't leak once the boat goes in the water. I'm keeping my fingers crossed..
My next project was to run a halyard for our self tacking jib that came out of the mast by accident last fall when I took the sails off the boat. That project ended in complete failure after getting Max up the mast we had no luck getting the line all the way down. It seemed to keep hitting something regardless of how much we attempted to wiggle it from the top? After sleeping on it I'm wondering if I might have more luck running something like a pipe snake up the mast but am not really sure how I might pull that to the block once it makes its was up (wire coat hanger.. maybe?)? After keeping Max up there for an hour or so trying everything we could think of I decided it may be time to call a professional?
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| Freshly painted bottom |
Next on the list was bottom paint. I originally thought we might get it sanded and painted in a day. Boy did I underestimate my stamina for this project. With two of us working on it, it only took 4-5 hours to get the haul sanded but I was pretty well spent by the time we were done. If I was on my own for this one it would have been a two day project. Then maybe another two days to paint though this part was way easier. Its times like this that it's really nice to have a 18 year old around that is actually helpful. We ended up doing two coats using six gallons of paint with enough left over to do the rudders, bow, front of the hauls, transom, and keels with a third coat. I'm not sure what kind of ablative paint was on the boat before but after having good luck with
CSC Micron on the Tug during our loop trip I decided to put it on this boat. Hopefully it works out and I don't have to think about it for a couple more seasons. Next time I think I'll do the first coat using a different color to make it easier to see where I've painted and how it's wearing over time.
While I had Max with me we also got the mainsail on the boat. For once a project actually went pretty easy and again it was really nice to have a second person helping with this one. While we got the sail on mast and working the wind had picked up just enough that we didn't want to leave it up while we were still on that hard to attempt to figure out how the reefing lines work. Hopefully I can find a diagram somewhere on that and I can come back to get that done fairly quickly another day. Hopefully it won't be too difficult?
After a solid two days of projects we should be ready to splash. Hopefully the boat will be in the water when we get back to MD in two weeks.
