We're looking for the trash fence...

Since I wrote the last post I was thinking about how to pull those damn wires. I was able to pull one of the wires tonight. I used the messenger line to pull the wire to the exit in the conduit and then I used a second messenger line that I pulled from the masthead inside the mast to pull the wire out of the conduit and up into the mast. This took a bit of time and I had to use a stiff wire to pull on the wire as it exited the conduit. I then used the original messenger line to pull the wire back out the proper exit hole in the mast. Very slow going, but I think I’ve got a strategy to pull the other wires now.

Systems - Hull Slug: setbacks-and-problems Status: published

This week was full of unexpected issues and problems and very little movement forward on projects.

It started out when we noticed the some leaking with our newly installed portlights, which is fine really, a bit of tweaking was expected. However the leak got into the new wood (which was not marine grade) and caused it to swell. So we’re going to have pull down the new cabin top wood and re-seat the portlights to do that. We are not looking forward to that as the new wood was put up with epoxy, much grinding or demolition is going to be involved in that. New marine grade plywood has been ordered, if you learn one thing from me do not skimp on materials. I don’t normally skimp we did this one time and it bit us hard. Take the time to do it right and use the right materials.

This next one really pisses me off. When I had the yard install the conduit in the mast I also specified that they pull messenger lines to the masthead, spreaders and foredecksteaming light. Well they did that but they didn’t make the holes big enough for the wire. I didn’t specify a size and they didn’t ask so this is really a communication problem (one of many with the yard) but I’m not sure why they would drill any holes without explicitly knowing what size. So, I had to drill new holes in the conduit and snake new messenger lines. Once that was done I find out that I still can’t get the wire to pull through because at the angle I’m pulling (90 degrees right out the hole) all I can do is flex the tubing once the wire has exited. I can’t get any more vertical pull. That lead to an almost complete meltdown on my part. I was thinking I’d had to eat the cost the boat cable and pull primary wires instead. Now I’m thinking maybe I can pull back several feet of the insulation and still pull the wire. We’ll see. I’m sure it’s going to be another week of dinking around with that whereas I expected to be done pulling wires this weekend.

Dawn did make progress on some painting though. When we originally pulled down the hull lining and painted we left all the teak in place that covered the chainplates. We have since removed that teak and pulled the chainplates to clean them up and we’ve decided we’re going to not re-install that teak instead leaving the chainplates uncovered so we can see them and any leaking or corrosion issues. So Dawn has been painting that exposed fiberglass white to match the areas we had previously painted white. This is good because now I can start rebedding the chainplates. I’ll have an entire post on that process.

I didn’t really want to write this post, but I figured it was important so you can all learn from our mistakes and see that doing a refit like this is a lot of work and despite planning things will go awry. So with that unpleasantness behind us we are ready to kick much but in the next couple of weeks with our complete focus on everything needed to re-step the masts.

Armchair Sailor is offering trade-ins and discounts on books. They’re a great local company here in Seattle and super nice people. (Hi Cass!) Go spend your money with them!

Continually rumored to be “2 weeks away” for about a year, Fisheries Supply’s new website is now officially acknowledged to be “coming soon”. I personally can’t wait, having accurate inventory and being able to see your purchase history online will be awesome!

For the past year we’ve been on D-Dock and made some awesome friends. But getting our boat in and out of the slip was a bit of challenge at times so we moved to the north side of J-Dock where the fairway is 115’ wide compared to the 74’ on the south side D Dock. That will give us more room to get out of the slip and move around where D-Dock was tight and hard to get enough way on to turn in reverse. See the map of Shilshole Bay Marina to see the fairway widths.

Another nice things is now we’re sooo much closer to shore so trips to the shore side facilities won’t take nearly as long. Downside is that M-4 is not as nice as M-2 and the train is louder. So if you’re reading this and your on JK (we used to be on K) stop by J31 and say hi!

Since our wedding we’ve not slowed down a bit on our refit. Today the yard completed installing the wiring conduit in both masts, re-attaching the mail sail track and the new solent tang. Next steps are all on us to pull wire through the conduits, install all the new masthead electronics, spreader lights, and re-attach all of the standing rigging, including pulling a new forestay through the furler.

I’m sure this is going to take longer than the the two weeks in my head right now, but the best part is I feel all the work is in our hands and I can see the daylight at the end of the tunnel!!

Along the way Dawn and I have also replaced 7 of the 10 portlights, amongst other things, and we’re in the middle of re-doing number 8 and should finish this weekend (maybe number 9 too). We’ll have a detailed post on the portlights in the future, but let me just repeat myself; New Found Metals… GORGEOUS and drip free!!!

Sorry I’ve not posted anything in a while. We’ve been busy tending to other matters.

More on the boat later in the week.

I wrote about cleaning the tanks before, here’s a great shot that sums up installing the Seabuilt inspection port. Using the rubber gasket you pick your spot, find the center and mark all the bolt holes. Then you cut a hole in the tank and drill out all the bolt holes. Clean up the edges of any loose material and you’re done!

The piece on the right hand side folds in-half and slides into the tank. The second gasket and the solid top piece go on top and is held in place with 1/2” nuts and lock washers.

When we bought our Pearson 424, we knew right off the bat we had to replace the portlights and the teak eyebrow trim along the outsides of the cabin top. The existing portlights were old and leaked causing the interior teak veneer to delaminate, no structural issues. The plastic windows were also hazed over and they just looked poor. At the 2009 Seattle Boat Show we made the first decision towards the beginning of this big project in that we purchased our new portholes from New Found Metals, located in Port Townsend, WA. Its always nice to be able to support local businesses.

The new portlights are either slightly larger (in case of the 5”x12”) or much larger than the existing portlights so there is some work to enlarge the holes once the existing portlights are removed. Doing all of this prep work is actually really easy using the templates provided by New Found Metals. You clamp the template in place, trace your lines and cut out the new hole. You also use the template to drill all the holes for thru bolting the portlight to the outer trim.

One time consuming piece is handling the bolts. You have to custom cut the bolts that attach the portlight to it’s outer trim. Every hull is a different thickness so they can’t really stock every possible length. I used my handy vise, cut them with the Fein Multimaster, cleaned them up with the dremel and a sanding wheel and then used two bolts to ensure the threads were clean. Here’s a video of that process.

As we’re replacing the portlights, we’re also putting up new wood along the interior teak along the insides of the cabin top. We will match the new headliner to this when we replace that as well. Painting it all white will brighten the boat considerably and visually make the cabin feel a bit taller. We’re using 1/4” plywood, primed on the finished side at the workshop prior to installation. We epoxy the new wood to over the top of the existing wood. That is a pretty involved process of making a paper template, cutting out the new pieces, dry fitting them (which involves a lot of tweaking) then making the cut outs for the portlights and then finally epoxying the new wood in place.

Here are a bunch of photos which roughly chronicle the process. Click thru for larger pics or to see more. They look awesome, the glass is so clean and clear I keep thinking they’re open!

The fresh water system was less that sterile when we bought the boat and we've done a lot of work to raise our water quality. I’ve already talked about replacing all of the plumbing hoses throughout the boat, new faucets, shower, installing a system wide water filter, etc. The last step in all of this is to really clean the tanks.

Pearson 424s have three tanks. 60 Gallons port and starboard under the salon settees and a 50 gallon bow tank. Our bow tank was decommissioned by the P.O. and used as anchor locker. The salon tanks are fiberglass and are structural to the hull, have three internal sections with baffles between each. They are fed by deck fill plates connected to the tanks on the upper foreword end of thanks. There are overflow hoses as well, that I need to go through and ensure they run into the bilge, according to the other P424 owners they were vented into the lockers (lame).

Our port tank has a single 6” aft Beckson deck plate. This is a screw-out plate that is not water or air tight under pressure. The starboard tank has three such plates one in each section of the tank. Eventually, I want to replace all of these with stronger inspection ports and add real gauges so we don’t have to disassemble the settees to look in the inspection port to see if they are full. For now, we’re adding two Seabuilt stainless steel inspection ports to the port tank. I’ll replace the others when there’s not so many other things going on.

The parts have been ordered and I’ll work on getting them installed this coming weekweekend so we can clean the port thank.