A friend from work and I move the boat from the boat yard to
the marina yesterday after work. We have
a new slip this year. Last year we took
what was available in terms of a slip.
It was a 40 foot slip for our 29 foot boat. The new slip is a 30 foot slip. I discovered last night there is a big
difference in coming into a 30 foot slip with a 29 foot boat as compared to a
40 foot slip. The 30 foot slip doesn’t leave
room to maneuver. It is a tight fit.
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| Thanks Dad's new slip |
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| Tight fit in the slip |
I also discovered a crack in the engine’s “mixing exhaust
elbow”. This is the pipe where the exhaust
and cooling water come together before exiting out the back of the boat. So during our trip to the marina, all the
cooling water and exhaust came out the crack and not the back of the boat. It made the engine compartment a bit wet.
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| Crack in Exhaust elbow |
Over the winter, we did several projects and ebay became my
new friend.
Unlike last year’s March when the average temperature was 50
degrees and we had a week in the 80’s, this year’s March had an average
temperature of 30 degrees. It finally
got into the mid 40s the last couple days of the month so my brother and I took
the opportunity to remove the tarp and breakdown the frame. We match marked each piece of the frame so
we will be able to get it back together in the fall without too much
trouble.
We did miss drilling and screwing one of the 45 degree
fittings on the frame and in January it separated and then shifted the whole
frame causing the back to open up and a couple tears in the tarp. We fixed it and it was fine afterwards. In March one of the other 45 degree fittings
broke (it had been properly drilled and screwed) but didn’t cause a problem
with the tarp. Since it was so close to
the end of the winter season I didn’t bother making a repair. All in all the
frame/tarp survived the winter fairly well.
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| Tarp after the Winter |
I bought an electric flush toilet on ebay. It was a mfg rep’s demo and is in perfect
shape. The manual pump on the old toilet
had a crack and I got the new one for less than what replacement parts for the
old one cost. I removed the old toilet,
removed and replaced the old thru-hull fitting for the water intake, capped the
overboard discharge thru-hull fitting, took out the old flooring, hoses and bladder
style holding tank. Cleaned and painted
the hull in the head area, fabricated a new floor for the new toilet from “King
Starboard” and installed new hoses and a hard sided holding tank. Still need to do the final connections from the
water intake to the pump and then the toilet.
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| Old head area |
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| New head area |
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| Old bladder holding tank |
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| New holding tank |
Under each of settee berths in the cabin was a 35 gallon
stainless steel water tank. These were
original pieces of the boat and at over 45 years old I was not intending to
ever drink water that had been inside these things. I removed them and am planning to make this a
storage area at some point.
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| Removing the old water tanks |
In the cockpit of the boat is a panel with indicator lights
for low oil pressure, water temperature and alternator charging. Two (2) of the indicator lights had broken
lenses and there are two (2) larger holes in the panel for non-existent
gauges. These holes had hole plugs in
place, but they were cracked and would fall out easily and frequently. I removed the panel, painted it, bought new
hole plugs and bought new indicator lights.
Unfortunately, the holes in the panel for the indicator lights are 5/8”
diameter and the largest indicator lights I could find are ¼” diameter. So I bought 5/8” holes plugs and drilled them to mount the
¼” lights. Also made labels for each
indicator light.
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| Cockpit engine panel before and after |
My dad had rigged the boat for single handed sailing by
removing the mast winches and cleats for
the mainsail and jib halyards and
mounting them on top of the cabin so he could raise and lower the sails from
the cockpit. I bought and installed used
winches and rope clutches on eBay to update the rigging. I cleaned and re-greased them before
installing them. I also cleaned and re-greased
the jib winches and bought new line on eBay
to replace the main sail halyard.
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| Old rigging |
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| Winches before and after cleaning |
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| Newly cleaned winch during installation |
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| New rigging with rope clutches and winches. |
Before fabricating the tarp frame in the fall, my brother
and I removed the lifeline stanchions and their bases from the deck. Several of the stanchions were bent and the
guys at work straightened and polished them for me. They also cleaned up the stanchion bases by
bead blasted them. They are looking like
new now.
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| Stanchion before and after |
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| Stanchion bases before and after |
I had to cut the life lines in order to remove them from the
stanchions, so we had new life lines fabricated and changed the design slightly
with a threaded gate eye at the most aft stanchion. This way the life lines and be removed
without cutting and they don’t become too loose and useless when the gate is
open.
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| New life line's Swivel Gate Eyes |
The bow and stern pulpits were also bent. I think the mast resting across them when the
boat was hauled from Maryland bounced up and down and bent them. I tried to straighten them myself, but didn’t
have the proper tools to do it. So I
found an auto body guy who was able to do a good job improving them. They are still not perfectly straight, but
are a lot better than before.
We also painted the cockpit area. Last year we primed, but we never got around
to painting it.
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| Painting the cockpt |
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