Back to Bluebird today, bailing out the water we shipped last October and then sizing up the centerboard pivot bolt for some leak prevention. A friend, Peter Carter, suggested the use of 3M's 5200 caulk, the stuff that is supposed to never let go. I'll give it a try. A visit to Home Depot got me two pvc caps with screw-in lids, one for each side of the bolt. The plan is to glue the caps over the bolt ends with 5200 and then insert the screw-in lids to hold the water at bay. If the 5200 does, indeed, keep the pvc in place, that part of the problem should be solved.
I'd be happy to hear from anyone who may have used 5200 on pvc, or who has a better suggestion.
Monday, April 25, 2011
I've bought what I hope is an important safety and communications device for Robin. It will be mailed today in Maine, and when it arrives, I'll know whether it was a good investment.
It is a single sideband radio. With it, one can communicate at sea anyplace in the world. This particular one was bought by our friend, Rusty Duym, for this year's edition of the Bermuda One-Two race. Rusty was hoping to upgrade his Cal 30 Williwaw.
Rusty died last winter suddenly, and his brother, Tom, took on the job of disposing of Rusty's sailing gear. We were lucky to get Rusty's radio, and it will be a nice reminder onboard Robin of a decent person.
The particular unit is an Icom 718. We paid about one-fifth the brand new price. I'll have to hire someone with electronics knowledge to install it. I wasn't planning on such a major upgrade, but I decided it would be foolish to pass up the chance to make Robin safer.
With a future additional expense, this radio will enable us to send and receive email from any location, certainly an invaluable asset.
It is a single sideband radio. With it, one can communicate at sea anyplace in the world. This particular one was bought by our friend, Rusty Duym, for this year's edition of the Bermuda One-Two race. Rusty was hoping to upgrade his Cal 30 Williwaw.
Rusty died last winter suddenly, and his brother, Tom, took on the job of disposing of Rusty's sailing gear. We were lucky to get Rusty's radio, and it will be a nice reminder onboard Robin of a decent person.
The particular unit is an Icom 718. We paid about one-fifth the brand new price. I'll have to hire someone with electronics knowledge to install it. I wasn't planning on such a major upgrade, but I decided it would be foolish to pass up the chance to make Robin safer.
With a future additional expense, this radio will enable us to send and receive email from any location, certainly an invaluable asset.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
I got to return to Robin this week, from Monday through yesterday noon. The project at hand was repair of the rotting aft bulkhead in the V-berth. There were some ups and some downs.
Climb up on the V-berth platform, do some work in a pretzeled position in the cramped quarters under the deck, realize I needed one more tool than I had brought and, unbending, climb down to fetch it.
This process was repeated -- for more tools, to make measurements, to see what things looked like on the opposite side of the bulkhead -- for most of two days. My lower back complained bitterly.
At one point on Tuesday, I thought I could make the repair without removing the waste holding tank from under the V-berth. The bulkhead is made of 3/4 inch plywood, and the less of it I had to remove, the better.
Early on I'd discovered the source of the rot. I'd thought that water had come in through a leak at the bow, traveled on top of the 1/4 inch plywood headliner until it reached the bulkhead where it was stopped, and there did its dirty work.
But I hadn't yet removed the final piece of headliner -- the one that butted against the bulkhead.
When I removed that last headliner section, I saw how wrong my diagnosis had been. To understand, you need to know the whole construction of the holding tank.
The tank is a rotomolded polyethylene box. It has three openings -- one where the waste enters the box, another where it drains from the box and a third small hole for a vent, so that a vaccuum doesn't collapse the box.
The tank is plumbed with a line coming from the head and entering one fitting and another 1 1/2 inch line exiting the box. That line leads to a T fitting. One line leaves the T and goes through a valve to the seacock which, if open, allows the waste to dump overboard. Another line leaves the T and goes up to a pump-out fitting on the deck. When the valve below is closed, the waste cannot dump overboard and occasionally has to be pumped out through the deck fitting.
The deck fitting was the source of the rot. More accurately, it was part of the route that water landing on the deck took to get to the bulkhead.
Robin has a teak deck. The teak is old and worn, and the caulking between the teak planks is shot. It is almost impossible to keep caulk between the teak planks because the wear is so extensive.
The result is that water had run into the spaces where the caulk was missing and followed along until it reached the pump-out fitting. Then it just dropped down through the hole bored in the deck and landed on the top edge of the bulkhead.
So the first thing I did was remove the pump-out fitting from the deck, clean out all the old caulk between the planks surrounding the fitting, recaulk those seams as best as I could, recaulk the fitting and return it to its place.
Once that job was done, I spent a lot of time probing the bulkhead. A sober assessment revealed that to get at all the rot, I had to remove the holding tank.
The short story of the arduous labor is that the tank is out and I have made a pattern of the wood that must be replaced. Today I'll buy a piece of 3/4 inch plywood large enough for the job and shape it according to the pattern.
In two weeks, when I return to Robin, I'll have to go slowly to make sure my repair is strong so that I won't have to repeat the project in the near future.
What this week's work has convinced me is that I can expect only more such problems until I've removed the teak decking, covered the underlying fiberglass with a new layer of glass and effectively sealed out the water.
Climb up on the V-berth platform, do some work in a pretzeled position in the cramped quarters under the deck, realize I needed one more tool than I had brought and, unbending, climb down to fetch it.
This process was repeated -- for more tools, to make measurements, to see what things looked like on the opposite side of the bulkhead -- for most of two days. My lower back complained bitterly.
At one point on Tuesday, I thought I could make the repair without removing the waste holding tank from under the V-berth. The bulkhead is made of 3/4 inch plywood, and the less of it I had to remove, the better.
Early on I'd discovered the source of the rot. I'd thought that water had come in through a leak at the bow, traveled on top of the 1/4 inch plywood headliner until it reached the bulkhead where it was stopped, and there did its dirty work.
But I hadn't yet removed the final piece of headliner -- the one that butted against the bulkhead.
When I removed that last headliner section, I saw how wrong my diagnosis had been. To understand, you need to know the whole construction of the holding tank.
The tank is a rotomolded polyethylene box. It has three openings -- one where the waste enters the box, another where it drains from the box and a third small hole for a vent, so that a vaccuum doesn't collapse the box.
The tank is plumbed with a line coming from the head and entering one fitting and another 1 1/2 inch line exiting the box. That line leads to a T fitting. One line leaves the T and goes through a valve to the seacock which, if open, allows the waste to dump overboard. Another line leaves the T and goes up to a pump-out fitting on the deck. When the valve below is closed, the waste cannot dump overboard and occasionally has to be pumped out through the deck fitting.
The deck fitting was the source of the rot. More accurately, it was part of the route that water landing on the deck took to get to the bulkhead.
Robin has a teak deck. The teak is old and worn, and the caulking between the teak planks is shot. It is almost impossible to keep caulk between the teak planks because the wear is so extensive.
The result is that water had run into the spaces where the caulk was missing and followed along until it reached the pump-out fitting. Then it just dropped down through the hole bored in the deck and landed on the top edge of the bulkhead.
So the first thing I did was remove the pump-out fitting from the deck, clean out all the old caulk between the planks surrounding the fitting, recaulk those seams as best as I could, recaulk the fitting and return it to its place.
Once that job was done, I spent a lot of time probing the bulkhead. A sober assessment revealed that to get at all the rot, I had to remove the holding tank.
The short story of the arduous labor is that the tank is out and I have made a pattern of the wood that must be replaced. Today I'll buy a piece of 3/4 inch plywood large enough for the job and shape it according to the pattern.
In two weeks, when I return to Robin, I'll have to go slowly to make sure my repair is strong so that I won't have to repeat the project in the near future.
What this week's work has convinced me is that I can expect only more such problems until I've removed the teak decking, covered the underlying fiberglass with a new layer of glass and effectively sealed out the water.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
After I returned from Rooster, my life with boats was not on hold. The next day, I used $7 worth of gasoline to buy a $6 piece of 1/4-inch aluminum plate, which I needed to make a new mounting base for the centerboard winch for the O'Day Mariner, Bluebird.
I hooked Bluebird's trailer to the car (after first inflating a flat tire) and towed my little prize down to the waterfront on the Delaware River.
There she sits right now, in the midst of an evening downpour, waiting for my next free time at home when I will attack the repair of the winch and the sealing of a leak around the centerboard pivot bolt.
If I am diligent, I may have Bluebird in the water and ready to sail by May 1. Or perhaps not.
For the next week, I'll have free time for boats (except for my day with the grandkids, a must-have opportunity that I never willingly pass up.) My free time is brought to me by my youth novel agent, Jennifer, who, after leading me through six rewrites (if my counting is accurate,) has declared the little book ready for marketing.
I've never been so heavily edited as I've been by Jennifer, nor have I (I hope) learned more from an editor. It's been a remarkable experience. I'm crossing my fingers that some publisher will think the effort has been worthwhile.
I hooked Bluebird's trailer to the car (after first inflating a flat tire) and towed my little prize down to the waterfront on the Delaware River.
There she sits right now, in the midst of an evening downpour, waiting for my next free time at home when I will attack the repair of the winch and the sealing of a leak around the centerboard pivot bolt.
If I am diligent, I may have Bluebird in the water and ready to sail by May 1. Or perhaps not.
For the next week, I'll have free time for boats (except for my day with the grandkids, a must-have opportunity that I never willingly pass up.) My free time is brought to me by my youth novel agent, Jennifer, who, after leading me through six rewrites (if my counting is accurate,) has declared the little book ready for marketing.
I've never been so heavily edited as I've been by Jennifer, nor have I (I hope) learned more from an editor. It's been a remarkable experience. I'm crossing my fingers that some publisher will think the effort has been worthwhile.
Bowels, in a mammal or a marine vessel, are no place to spend time. But there are situations where visiting a boat's bowels is unavoidable.
This past week presented one of those opportunities. There was a device in Robin's head called a Lectrasan, a waste treatment machine that supposedly made what exited through the "out" seacock as pure as what entered through the "in" seacock. But I had suspected for a long time that this machine was responsible for an unyielding odor that assaulted every nose that descended Robin's companionway ladder.
The machine had a blue plastic tank with a capacity of about two gallons, into which effluent from the head was deposited through one hose. It had some sort of grinding equipment, along with some electrodes that, I think, were supposed to neutralize any bacteria in the waste stream.
You'd flush the head into the tank and then push a button. Immediately, you heard a grinding sound something like a washing machine with a load of rocks. Then you'd hear a pump go on. At this point the effluent was, one assumed, exiting through a second hose leading to the "out" seacock.
The problem was that the pump never expelled all of the waste, so that in the tank and in the exit hose there always was borne a cargo of crap, treated or otherwise. And from there came the stink.
A Lecrasan is not an inexpensive piece of equipment. Ours was on board Robin when we bought her, and Monica thought it would be a waste to get rid of it.
But finally, perhaps overwhelmed by the impolite presence of the essence of bowel byproduct, she relented. And now was the time for the removeal.
I was aware that the several feet of 2 1/4 inch hose leading to and from the Lectrasan probably contained some leftover liquids. Thus informed, I took special care in removing the hoses.
Still, there was leakage, and when, after about three hours of work, all the machinery was safely overboard and in the marina Dumpster, there remained an olfactory reminder throughout Robin's cabins.
I went to the hardware store seeking a solution. In the "marine" aisle -- in any Chesapeake Bay hardware store it is wise to serve the needs of watermen and recreational boaters alike -- I found a biodegradable bilge cleaner. I bought it and, back at the marina, mixed three pints with a bucket full of tap water. I poured this solution into the cabinet from which I'd removed the Lectrasan, knowing the fluid would find its way to the bilge. Within a minute, the bilge pump went on and, for about a minute, it pumped a cloudy stream overboard.
I repeated this procedure and then dumped a third bucket, with water and a bit of bleach, into the same cabinet.
When I left the boat on Wednesday, it appeared to have a neutral aroma.
On Monday, I'll return to Robin for the next project -- removing a section of rotted bulkhead and replacing it with new marine plywood. My nose will tell me immediately whether I've scuttled the stink or whether I have to move on to the next step -- replacing all the old plumbing in the head with spotless new hoses and tanks.
It will be a spring filled with many such experiences, the instructional lot of the recreational boater.
This past week presented one of those opportunities. There was a device in Robin's head called a Lectrasan, a waste treatment machine that supposedly made what exited through the "out" seacock as pure as what entered through the "in" seacock. But I had suspected for a long time that this machine was responsible for an unyielding odor that assaulted every nose that descended Robin's companionway ladder.
The machine had a blue plastic tank with a capacity of about two gallons, into which effluent from the head was deposited through one hose. It had some sort of grinding equipment, along with some electrodes that, I think, were supposed to neutralize any bacteria in the waste stream.
You'd flush the head into the tank and then push a button. Immediately, you heard a grinding sound something like a washing machine with a load of rocks. Then you'd hear a pump go on. At this point the effluent was, one assumed, exiting through a second hose leading to the "out" seacock.
The problem was that the pump never expelled all of the waste, so that in the tank and in the exit hose there always was borne a cargo of crap, treated or otherwise. And from there came the stink.
A Lecrasan is not an inexpensive piece of equipment. Ours was on board Robin when we bought her, and Monica thought it would be a waste to get rid of it.
But finally, perhaps overwhelmed by the impolite presence of the essence of bowel byproduct, she relented. And now was the time for the removeal.
I was aware that the several feet of 2 1/4 inch hose leading to and from the Lectrasan probably contained some leftover liquids. Thus informed, I took special care in removing the hoses.
Still, there was leakage, and when, after about three hours of work, all the machinery was safely overboard and in the marina Dumpster, there remained an olfactory reminder throughout Robin's cabins.
I went to the hardware store seeking a solution. In the "marine" aisle -- in any Chesapeake Bay hardware store it is wise to serve the needs of watermen and recreational boaters alike -- I found a biodegradable bilge cleaner. I bought it and, back at the marina, mixed three pints with a bucket full of tap water. I poured this solution into the cabinet from which I'd removed the Lectrasan, knowing the fluid would find its way to the bilge. Within a minute, the bilge pump went on and, for about a minute, it pumped a cloudy stream overboard.
I repeated this procedure and then dumped a third bucket, with water and a bit of bleach, into the same cabinet.
When I left the boat on Wednesday, it appeared to have a neutral aroma.
On Monday, I'll return to Robin for the next project -- removing a section of rotted bulkhead and replacing it with new marine plywood. My nose will tell me immediately whether I've scuttled the stink or whether I have to move on to the next step -- replacing all the old plumbing in the head with spotless new hoses and tanks.
It will be a spring filled with many such experiences, the instructional lot of the recreational boater.
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