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10/30/2016

2 Hiccups when Installing our Roller Furler

When I upgraded my last boat to a roller furler it was the thing that had the greatest effect on my desire to go sailing.  Without it I would have to go to the foredeck when I least wanted to and deal with a crazy flapping monster.  Then I would either have to set it up or tear it down while getting sprayed and soaked with saltwater.  

​The upgrade roller furler was magic.  Roll out.  Roll up.  All from the safety and comfort of the cockpit.  

Well, Liquid came equipped with dual headstays.  I guess this was because it allows a racing boat to raise a second headsail before the other is lowered.  This works fine if we had a large crew on board but not so well for two people.  We knew we wanted to upgrade as soon as it was realistic.








​The first step was converting the dual headstay back to a single stay.  After attaching the halyard forward to compensate, the stays were disconnected from the lower bracket.  Next I needed to go up the mast and disconnect the upper attachments.  Luckily we have mast steps and so with a harness clipped into a halyard for safety it was an easy climb.  I clipped the stays to my harness and brought them with me as I climbed back down.

With the dual stay removed I cleaned up and primed the steel and prepped for the furler drum attachment.
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​I had some stainless plates made up at Seaport Stainless and put them on.  Unfortunately I would soon find out that these made the forestay much too long. This was the first hiccup.  I would eventually decide to remove them completely... I guess they will be available as rigging plates for future projects...
I ordered some new toggles while we worked on assembling the foils and furler drum.  The first thing we did was assemble the drum on the end of the stay to be sure things actually fit.  Once that was confirmed we moved out onto the docks to start the assembly.  

Our second hiccup was that the foils wouldn't fit over our sta-lok fitting at the bottom of the stay.  Luckily we could slide them over the pressed fitting at the top.  We got them all on and carefully cut and sanded the final one to get the length right.

Sliding them on from the top eventually complicated the final assembly and there wasn't enough room to get the last foil bearing on.  Somehow the instructions are in a certain order for a reason!  After some pulling and pushing we finally got it on and it was time to raise it up.
With the help of our dock mate we tied the top to the halyard and hauled her up.  We got the top of the stay attached and let the bottom hang by the shrouds.  After a few days the toggles arrived and we could finish our assembly of the stay.  

Btw.  We needed two toggles to get the orientation right with the furler drum.  With only one toggle it would have been rotated clockwise 90 degrees which would have led to issues with the furling line lead.
We attached the foil and drum and then ran the furling line back to the cockpit.  We used some small blocks we had in storage and ran the line though them.  Thats when I realized that the line I originally bought was too short.  I never accounted for the full length of the sail as well as the length of the boat.  Oh well.  Back to Amazon to order the right size and we are mostly good to go!!
Profurl C420 from Defender - here
​
Seaport Stainless - here
​

10/27/2016

Mast Base repair

This weeks project was dealing with the old wiring thru hull at the base of the mast.  

This area has been a problem for years because the the fittings were old and a proper repair is difficult.  A proper repair involves dropping the mast which wasn't realistic for us these days.  Anyway we tried a variety of duct tape and other "super temporary" solutions but obviously nothing worked properly. Since we don't have the means to deal with the full repair now we needed to find a reasonable repair solution until it can be dealt with properly.









​We started out by cutting out the bad stuff.  The old through hulls for the wiring weren't doing their job anymore so out they came.

Next was cutting out the bad steel. We were right over the galley so out came the plastic drop cloths and we went to work.  We used a 
sawzall, jigsaw, a grinder and a variety of other small tools.  It made a pretty big mess but thankfully most of it was contained in the drop cloths.  :-)
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​After that it was time to prep the topsides.  We wanted to weld in some new plate so we needed to get down to bare steel.  A grinder with a flapper wheel did the trick with the shop-vac catching all the debris so it didn't make too much of a mess.  We cut some patch plates from some spare steel we had and soon most of the prep was done.  

One complication we had was that we didn't want to weld directly to the the mast step.  First it was stainless steel and the deck was regular carbon steel and next this was never intended to be welded to the boat.  We decided not to weld this joint and just fill it with polysulphide.  That way we would have a waterproof but flexible joint that we could take a part later..
Next we started welding in the plates.  As we were just getting set up we didn't immediately realize we had run out of welding gas.   Things didn't go so well at first.  A bit of cursing and head scratching ensued.  Once I figured out the problem I switched over to flux core wire and everything worked fine. 
 Once the plates were welded we sealed everything up with 2 part epoxy and some sand-able filler.  This helps protect the steel and will let us smooth out the weld without grinding it down.  We sealed the last seam with polysulphide and left everything to dry and cure properly. We will be repainting the entire boat later this winter so this is where the project ends..  (for now....)

Find Welder from Harbor Freight - here
Find Polysuphide - here
​
Find 2 Part Epoxy at Tap Plastics - here

10/15/2016

Leaky Window...

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One of our port salon windows had a small leak.  Nothing much but after a steady rain a small drip would develop.  I knew eventually I'd have to deal.  With rain coming this weekend I knew it was time.
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I unscrewed the frame and peeled off any sticky stuff that was left.  Unfortunately there was a large gap at the aft end of the window left from an earlier repair.  I was going to have to deal with that too.  I  glued on some small wood pieces to act as filler and then covered everything with 2 part epoxy mixed with sandable filler.  A quick sand, paint and some new gasket material and we were good to go.
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2 Part Epoxy from Tap Plastics - You can find them here
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    AUTHORS

    Marc and Laura.  

    Rebuilding a 1960s dutch built ketch over 8 years in order to follow our dream.  

    We have years of stories of fixing up the boat and we plan to travel the world and show you every stop along the way.  We have kitesurfing, SCUBA and spearfishing gear and will let you know how each of these activities rate everywhere we go.  We also will have detailed video and info for each of the anchorages in case you want to follow in our footsteps ...

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