Keel bolt success or brute force applied with a modicum of intelligence

Now that the keel bolt had moved I was reasonably confident that I would be able to get it out a further search through the toolbox produced a couple of old 'King Dick' sockets they were only 1/2" drive but I thought I would risk it. First thing Monday morning I hammered the socket onto the remains of the head and using a couple of adaptors I managed to reduce the 1" drive of the 65:1 drive output to the 1/2" of the socket and started to turn the input and the bolt started to move using the drive kept the socket square and stopped it slipping on the bolt and eventually it came out. I was a little perturbed when the bolt came out as I could see daylight in the bottom of the hole but on further inspection it appeared that the hole in the keel flange may have originally been drilled right through and then sealed over on the outside.

Keel bolt

As can be seen the threads are in surprisingly good condition only the hexagon head is missing driving the socket on gave it an almost splined head, the barrel shape of the remains of the head made it difficult to keep the ring spanner straight which led to it slipping and chewing up the head with the socket drive it was much easier to hold the socket square which reduced the tendency to slip. The bolts are 11/8" UNC which fortunately is still readily obtainable albeit the one I got is a bit long but it can easily be cut down.

New and the old

Last weekend I cut out the holes in the worktop for the galley sink and the taps so once the euphoria of getting the keel bolt out had worn off I got on with fitting the worktop and sticking it down as with the heads worktop I stuck it down with PU40, half the price of Sikaflex, adhesive sealant from Toolstation and once it had cured I secured the sink in the same manner then connected up the waste and fitted the mixer tap.

Trial fit

Sink and taps installed

Sink waste connected

The two flexible pipes are the hot and cold tails for the mixer tap that is as far as it goes at the moment until I start the hot and cold water installation. I ran the cables to the shower drain pump and made a temporary connection to test the waste arrangement it all seems to work quite well the pump still requires a manual switch fitting in the heads to complete the installation.

After reading a previous blog post my youngest daughter offered to arrange for the supply of the labels for the electrical switch panels from a company that she uses in her professional capacity. Just a matter of producing an auto cad drawing emailing it to the company who laser cuts them and then waiting for the postman to deliver them, they arrived this week so it was just a simple peel and stick operation to fit them.

Switch panel labels

To finish off the week I have started on the internal arrangements for the crockery stowage it needs a means of stopping the stuff moving about once it has been put through the slots I am working on the idea of a ply base with vertical dowels to restrain the crockery not much to see yet just some bits of ply.

The homework job this weekend will be to cut the new keel bolt to length and produce a new backing plate for it so that I can hopefully put it all back together next week and reinstate the watertight integrity of the boat and although I have been aware for some time that the keel bolt would need to be replaced the hole in the bottom was one of those one step backwards moments which touch wood there haven't been very many of to date.

     

Keel bolt

Most of the keel bolts are in reasonable condition I have removed the rust where necessary and given them a coat of rust treatment and painted them however there is one in the battery locker which has a heavily corroded head and the plate washer has completely disintegrated I suspect that there may have possibly been a spillage of battery acid which has eaten away the bolt head and plate whatever the cause this bolt needs to be replaced. I have borrowed some heavy sockets and a 65:1 geared socket drive. these were originally intended for the removal of lorry wheel nuts but ideal when a great deal of effort is required in a confined space as to reach the bolt with a socket would require two extension bars and the consequent loss of effort that this arrangement brings.

65:1 Socket drive

Keel bolt note absence of plate 

For the first attempt at removing the bolt I chipped off as much rust as possible and then found a socket which was a tight fit on the head of the bolt and hammered it on and then fitted the geared drive.

65:1 socket drive in place

I applied a spanner to the input of the drive and started turning the socket started moving but all that happened unfortunately was that it rounded off the bolt head and as I had not got a smaller socket that I was willing to drive onto the bolt It was a case of retire and think of a plan 'B'. 

While thinking about plan 'B' I got on with painting some of the locker fronts panels for the heads and the galley and started lining the crockery stowage and the wine locker with some of the van lining carpet off-cuts that I had left over from the headlining no photographs I am afraid.

After searching through my toolbox I came up with plan'B' for the keel bolt I had some short flogging ring spanners which I hadn't used in anger probably for about 45 years and so today I had another go at the keel bolt. After selecting a ring spanner which would be a tight fit I hammered it onto the remains of the bolt head and proceeded to try and loosen the bolt and after much effort I managed to turn it about one turn in the right direction all the time hoping that I would not shear off the head. By the time that I had moved the bolt that far the head was getting more rounded off and the spanner refused to grip it so I gave up for the day I will need to dress the bolt head and fit a slightly smaller spanner for the next attempt.

To finish up the day I marked out the galley worktop for the new sink which had arrived on Wednesday the intention being to cut out the openings for the sink and the mixer tap over the weekend. All in all its been a bit of a frustrating week with only limited progress but hey ho these things happen.

Odds and ends

This week amongst other things I have been catching up on one or two small jobs which need to be done the first was to re-bed a port side stanchion base this one was the only one which had not been removed by the previous owner and it had developed an annoying drip and so before I can finish the galley and heads storage it needed to be sorted. After removing the base I cleaned it up and then with some thickened epoxy I levelled up the inside bolting face, the nuts were almost fully recessed into the GRP which had been laid over the hull/deck joint.

While the epoxy was curing I cut out a timber stiffener to be glassed under the top of the galley moulding the idea was to make said moulding a bit more rigid and hopefully level up the top. The timber was bedded in with some thickened epoxy and held in place with a couple of screws through the top the epoxy that was squeezed out was formed into  fillet all round this was then left to cure.

While I had some thickened epoxy mixed I got on with another little job which has been needing doing for some time the starboard midships cleat I had put both the port and starboard cleats on quite early on in the project and afterwards I identified what I took to be the backing plates in amongst all the other bits and pieces. I had fitted the port side plate some time ago but I was not happy with the starboard side as can be seen from the following photograph the two bolts to the right are in way of the deck stiffener such that they are splayed out and it is impossible to get the nuts up square to the underside of the deck but at the rime the main aim had been to seal the holes in the deck to keep the rain out.

Bolts for starboard midships cleat

After removing the cleat I decided to move it forward so that I could utilise two of the original bolt holes I then marked and drilled two new holes and secured the cleat and backing plate the two redundant holes were filled with some thickened epoxy.

Starboard midships cleat backing plate

On Tuesday I spent some time at home in the workshop and silver soldered the modified engine sea water pipe ready to fit.

Sea water pipe completed

The sea water pipe was fitted on Wednesday it is now complete except for a coat of green Hammerite to match the rest of the engine.

Modified sea water pipe fitted to the engine

The next task was to finish glassing in the reinforcement to the galley moulding I used a couple of layers of 100mm woven glass fibre tape and epoxy resin such that the timber was completely encapsulated.

Galley moulding reinforcement

The top of the moulding is now much more rigid and a lot closer to being reasonably flat apart from a bit at the back under the lockers but to do anything with this area would entail grinding out the tabbing which secures the moulding to the half bulkhead and the hull and then levelling up the top and refixing it, but as the worktop is 12mm thick solid laminate which is pretty rigid and most of the top is pretty level particularly in way of the sink and taps I decided that it would be good enough.

Today I ran in the waste pipe which connects the heads washbasin waste, the discharge from the shower drain pump and the galley sink waste to the sea cock as shown in the above photograph the tee is for the connection to the galley sink waste it still requires some jubilee clips to complete but I have run out at the moment I also need the galley sink and a hose tail to connect the hose to the heads washbasin waste I shall get these on order this weekend.

Shower drain pump connection

To finish up today I removed the starboard chain plates so that I could reseal them while there was a minor leak on the port chain plates the starboard ones were OK however at the moment they are easy to get at but once the internal refit is completed the job will be a little more awkward and sods law usually says if I don't do them now once I get the boat sailing things are bound to work a bit and they will then start leaking. I cleaned everything up and washed with acetone before applying a generous dollop of Sikaflex and then lowered the plates in and bolted them back to the bulkheads and then fitted the deck plates and pulled them down until the Sikaflex was starting to be squeezed out once it has cured I will harden up the screws in the deck plates.

Chain plates ready to be replaced

Sikaflex being squeezed out round the deck plates

Engine

First job this week was to clean out the fuel tank it wasn't too bad but while it was still easy to remove I lifted it out of the locker and removed the inspection plate to enable me to give it a good wipe round inside. To finish up I washed the tank out with some industrial strength detergent and fortunately it was a warm sunny day so ti did not take long to dry out.

After some consideration I decided that as there was already a hole in the forward end of the tank about one inch from the bottom I would utilise this for the fuel supply to the engine by fitting a tank connector together with a ball type isolating valve and a hose tail. These tanks are normally arranged with a fuel outlet at the top of the tank with an internal pipe as this pipe extends to the very bottom of the tank I decided that I would use this as the water drain by connecting a vacuum pump, when required, of the type used for sucking out engine oil.

Fuel supply to engine

Over the weekend I had modified the return fuel connection by silver soldering a purpose made hose barb to the end of the copper pipe as I am not keen on connecting hose directly to plain copper pipe with jubilee clips, yes I know lots of people do it and don't have any problems. Also I could then use the same size fuel hose that I had used for the engine supply for the return to the tank. The right angled hose tail was then fitted to the tank inspection plate and the fuel return hose connected up.

Hose tail silver soldered to the fuel return 

Hose connected

Fuel return connected to tank

The hoses to connect the tank to the deck filling point and the fuel tank vent are still to be fitted once I have the required hose but it will still be possible to put fuel into the tank and the cap is fitted with a vent so that I will still be able to test run the engine. Also I have fitted a simple mechanical fuel gauge to the tank I will probably change this for a remote reading electric gauge in the future.

I have turned down the hose tail for the engine sea water pump to take a 1" hose but this has not been connected yet as I will use a temporary hose into a bucket for test running the engine.

When I fitted the new engine exhaust elbow I had to remove the copper sea water pipe which ran from the oil cooler to the cooling passage on the gearbox as there was not room for both as can be seen in the photograph below the sea water connection from the oil cooler is on the left just above the red teleflex throttle cable. I had been thinking of using a flexible hose but after some thought I found that I could probably modify the existing copper pipe one end of which was somewhat corroded although the rest of the pipe appeared to be sound .

The new exhaust connection

The corroded end of the sea water pipe

By cutting off the corroded end and the addition of a couple of copper elbows I found that I could divert the pipe around the exhaust connection the use of a capillary type fitting effectively forms a hose barb and will make the flexible hose connection to the oil cooler a much more secure fit, the original end of the pipe was finished in a similar fashion. The pipe required the attention of a file as it was of a slightly larger diameter than standard 28mm pipe. The modified pipe is in the workshop waiting to be soldered together it will have to wait until next week as I am going sailing this weekend Conyer round to Ramsgate and back on a friends boat.

Modified pipe awaiting soldering

The final connection to be made is the sea water hose from the engine heat exchanger  via an anti siphon device to the sea water injection point on the exhaust connection the connection on the exhaust requires 32mm hose while the connection on the heat exchanger is a bit less and on the first attempt the jubilee clip would not compress the hose sufficiently to give a tight fit I will investigate further next week.

Finally to finish up today I started the pipework for the shower drain pump this will drain via an up and over loop into the waste from the heads wash hand basin which will also connect to the galley sink waste.

Shower drain pump

Shower drain pump strum box.

The bilge under the shower still requires a good clean and a coat of paint