It was almost spring

Well spring almost arrived this week I set to on Monday to finish painting the various areas of the topsides where I had carried out repairs I had previously primed and undercoated them last year before the winter weather put a stop to any further work. I plugged in the random orbital sander and switched on, dead as a dodo it appears that the local lowlifes had broken into the adjacent industrial estate in search of anything worth removing and had cut the power to the boatyard so I ended up having to hand sand before applying a coat of Toplac Mediterranean White which appears to be a pretty good match to the existing. I had planned to do the second coat on Wednesday but low and behold we appear to be back to winter again cold and wet all day fortunately I had a plan 'B' I had finished painting the front panel for the wet locker in the heads so I got it fitted into place so that I could measure up for the hardwood trim pieces for each side these will be a homework job to sand and varnish.

Wet locker front panel

I replaced the engine heat exchanger drain cock which was leaking slightly when I test ran the engine I taken it home, stripped it and lapped it in with some fine grinding paste it is just a simple taper plug cock the repair of which I have covered before in an earlier post.

I then moved on to the heads locker opening which I had previously carried out some fibreglass repairs to I sanded back all the areas where I had filled various holes and the infill to the top of the opening.

After sanding

The remaining hole is for the shower drain pump switch, the two ends of the opening have been left a bit uneven after they were cut out and looking at the Yacht Grot post of a Moody 33 for sale on Youtube the width of the locker doors seems to indicate that this probably dates from the original construction. I had been in two minds whether or not to do something about it and as I had brought the jig saw down with me, just in case, I decided to tidy them up but lo and behold we still have no power so I had to use a hacksaw with the blade turned 90 degrees and do it by hand.

Ends of the opening tidied up

Today turned out to be another miserable wet day no chance of any external painting so I decided to get on with gel coating the front of the locker the weather was just about warm enough and by warming the resin by putting the tin in a bucket of warm water and using the maximum 4% catalyst I applied two coats of gel coat followed by a third coat of gel coat with 2% wax added to form flocoat as I had previously done in the galley. Once it has fully cured I shall sand back with wet and dry to leave a smooth finish I don't know if it is me or not but trying to get a smooth finish applying gel coat with a brush is pretty well impossible it will therefore take a bit of sanding back.

After gel coating

In between coats of gel coat I stripped and lapped in the exhaust manifold drain cock which had also been leaking this one was going to be awkward to remove, possibly having to remove the exhaust manifold to do it, so I did it in place hoping that I didn't drop any small bits under the engine, there is not much room under there as the bilge suction hose and the raw water hose run under there plus the fact there is very little room between the bottom of the engine sump and the bottom of the boat and fortunately when I dropped the inevitable small washer it fell on the outboard side of the engine bed and was thus easily retrieved. 

 

Cold again

The freezing weather returned last weekend so nothing much got done on the homework front, the original plan had been to start painting the front panel for the wet locker but it was much too cold for that although by Tuesday it had warmed up sufficiently to get it sanded and the first coat of primer/undercoat.

Monday was a non starter it was freezing cold so I went shopping for the colloidal silica so that I could carry on with various bits of filling and fairing once the weather improved I finished up the day by cleaning up the repairs to the heads internal and then arranged some timber to support the mast so that I could take the weight off the pulpit in order that I could unbolt the after end and install the cable for the navigation lights. Wednesday dawned warm enough for epoxy to cure so the first job was to unbolt the after end of the pulpit on removing the bolts it was evident that the opening for the cable was well out of line with the opening into the pulpit and also there was quite a bit of spring back in the pulpit so I decided to fill all the holes and start again from scratch, there was also some stress cracking in the gelcoat which I opened out with the tungsten carbide scraper before filling with thickened epoxy. Once this was done I went round and did all the filling around the heads internal moulding there were a number of redundant holes which I could find no use for so they all got filled with thickened epoxy. Taking advantage of the fine weather I sanded back various bits of filling below the waterline including the infilling of the old heads discharge valve and the old paddle wheel log openings these were filled quite some time ago but I had not got around to finishing them off.

I started off today by sanding back the filling to the pulpit bolt holes, cable opening and the stress crack repairs, the misalignment of the cable opening and the amount of spring back in the pulpit can be seen from the photograph below the infilled hole on the right hand end is the old cable opening

Port side 

After sanding I allowed the pulpit to fall into its natural position and then marked the holes for drilling I used a countersink drill to take the sharp edges off the holes hopefully this should stop any further stress cracking. Once all the holes were drilled I then used my original draw wires to pull in some 1.5mm tinned two core flex for the navigation lights the starboard cable went easily but on the port side the draw wire parted company with the new cable and it took quite some time to fiddle the draw wire back up the pulpit tube however I eventually triumphed and the pulpit was re secured, this job ended up taking a good part of the day. Because of the anchor well in the fore deck the pulpit bolts are difficult to reach it entails laying on one's back half in the cable locker and reaching up the side if the said well also the gap on the port side is much narrower than the starboard side, the anchor well is not central in the fore deck.

One further epoxy job was to re fix a handle on the garden shears it was easier to do it on the boat than take all the epoxy stuff home plus I also would have a use for any surplus epoxy, this was used to fill various redundant holes in the aft cabin bulkhead which I presume were for the old electrical installation these have a habit of growing over the years each addition seems to require its own dedicated hole to be drilled in a bulkhead.

I finished up the day by fitting the port side locker front panels in the fore cabin the GRP will eventually be lined with carpet but this is a future rainy day job as the main aim now is to get the boat in the water as soon as possible.

Port side fore cabin

Fibreglass weather

It was good weather for fibreglass this week but the first job on Monday morning was to get the second coat of primer undercoat on the chain locker bulkhead and another coat on the stern gland access cover. Once that was out of the way I went round and sanded the various areas around the keel that required filling after which I wiped down with acetone before filling with epoxy thickened with colloidal silica mixed to the usual peanut butter consistency.

I had several nominally empty epoxy resin and hardener tins kicking around each with some of the contents remaining I find that the West System dispensing pumps seem to lose suction leaving an appreciable amount in the bottom of the tin so I spent some time punching a hole in the bottom of each tin and fully draining the remaining contents into the tins that I am using at present given the price of the stuff these days it was a worthwhile operation, also I stripped the pumps and gave them a thorough clean out in hot soapy water something I should have done some time ago as particularly in the resin pump  there was a fair amount of congealed resin present which after a good soak had dissolved.

While the weather was being kind I started on the repairs to the heads locker moulding a section had been cut from the lower locker opening for what reason I am unsure but I do know from bitter experience that this had left two nasty corners which could be quite painful. I decided to fill in the cut out section with some 50mm x 5mm GRP flat bar in much the same way as I had previously done for the galley locker. After giving the inside a good sanding and a wipe down with acetone I clamped a flat piece of timber covered with polythene,so that it would not stick to the epoxy. across the cut out and then clamped a piece of the GRP bar to the timber so that it would be as flush as possible with the original moulding I then cut four pieces of woven glass cloth and epoxied them into place to hold the bar.

First fix of GRP bar

Once the epoxy was cured I removed all the clamps then gave it all a  clean down with water to remove any amine blush followed by a sanding and a wipe down with acetone before fully glassing the full length of the infill with several layers of woven glass cloth.

The infill fully glassed in

As can be seen there is a bit of a gap at one end of the infill which requires to be filled also a number of redundant holes but I had run out of colloidal silica by this time a trip to the chandlers will be required before I can complete this item. Once it has been filled and faired the plan is to gelcoat the whole area as previously carried out with the galley locker.

There are a number of construction details on this boat with which I am less than impressed one of these is the hull/deck joint the deck is pop riveted to a flange moulded round the top of the hull and the whole joint has then been glassed over from underneath. I have repaired several leaks in this joint by cleaning back and re glassing short sections however there have been a couple of leaks at the bulkheads and by cutting back the tabbing at the top of the offending bulkheads I find that the bulkheads had obviously been fitted before the hull deck joint had been made and the GRP seal had been terminated at each bulkhead such that any water entering the hull deck joint can travel along to the top of the bulkhead which is not sealed fortunately there does not seem to be any serious damage caused so far. After cutting back the tabbing in the affected areas I have sealed off the hull deck joint covering with thickened epoxy and I am now waiting for some wet weather to test the repair if it is successful the plan is to reinstate the tabbing this will be a dry boat.

To finish up the week I have completed the painting of the chain locker bulkhead and the stern gland access cover. On the homework front the painting of the forward cabin locker panels is now complete I intend to let the paint fully harden before bringing them back to the boat next week. The homework for the coming weekend/week is to sand and paint the heads wet locker front panel although the weekend is threatening to be too cold for painting.

Chain locker bulkhead

There is still some work to be done up here before the locker panels can be fitted re the cable openings to the pulpit for the navigation lights, the deck openings do not line up with the pulpit bases I did install draw wires when I fitted the pulpit but as the holes don't line up they appear to be trapped. Weather  permitting I will try and rectify this next week.

  

The weather improves

Now that all the nasty white stuff has gone and the temperature has risen sufficiently it was time to get on with preparations for anti fouling but before that I spent most of Monday morning draining the bilges the ingress of water was a bit of a puzzle at first but I finally twigged that when I altered the gas locker drain so that it discharged directly overboard I had neglected to blank off the old skin fitting which allowed the gas locker to drain into the cockpit. This skin fitting is just above the level of the cockpit drains and was connected to the gas locker by means of a hose which ran through the void space around the gas locker, see an earlier post. There had been quite a considerable amount of snow in the cockpit and when it started to thaw the cockpit drains were probably still blocked with frozen snow so the water ran into the void space through the open skin fitting and then through into the saloon bilge but all was not lost as it gave me the opportunity to test the refurbished saloon bilge pump. In the near future I will remove the guilty skin fitting and glass over the opening.

Once the rain had stopped it was time to put on the protective stuff, dust mask, goggles, boiler suit etc and start on the old anti fouling quite a lot had been removed by the previous owner but there was still a fair bit of flaking stuff I therefore gave the whole underwater area a good going over with the tungsten carbide scraper anything which survived this will be allowed to remain. I spent most of Wednesday and this morning on the job finally finishing about lunchtime by giving the whole underwater area a good wash down with a stainless steel scrubbing pad. The previous owner had stripped the cast iron keel which will need a coat of rust treatment and primer before the anti fouling is applied.

After scraping the old anti fouling

After lunch the rain returned which brought a halt to further outside work there is still a bit of fairing to do on the underwater area particularly at the hull keel joint I think that originally the keel flange was a little proud of the hull and fairing filler had been applied some of which requires making good in places the weather forecast is looking reasonably favourable for next week for epoxy work.

As it was raining I finished up the day by filling the redundant screw holes in the cable locker bulkhead before sanding and priming the bare plywood I also managed another coat of paint to the cover for the stern gland access in the aft cabin.

Over last weekend and this week I managed two coats of primer/undercoat on the locker panels for the forward cabin the plan is to get two coats of gloss white on both sides over the weekend and the coming week. Painting both sides of these items takes up quite a bit of time.

I have added the photograph of the cables through the starboard side of the saloon after spiral wrapping which I had omitted previously, they will eventually be concealed above headlining panels.

Inclement weather

I didn't manage to achieve a great deal this week due to the freezing weather I managed to get down to the boatyard on Monday and sanded the anchor locker bulkhead ready for painting then finished wrapping the cables on the starboard side of the saloon see the photograph from last weeks post unfortunately I had left the camera at home so apologies for lack of photographs.

When I did the engine test run I did not put antifreeze in the water jacket in case there were any leaks and the antifreeze would have ended up in the bilge I did drain the water out again so that I could refurbish a couple of the engine drain cocks however I did omit to drain the water jacket to the gearbox and as I had used fresh water through the raw water circuit for the test run I had to make this a priority job in view of the forecast freezing weather, there was a sigh of relief when I removed the drain plug and water ran out.

While down at the yard I did a trial fit of the propeller as I wanted to ascertain whether of not there was room for a rope cutter between the propeller and the 'P' bracket in the event there was only 10mm and I am going to need approximately 25mm depending on the type of rope cutter, the only practical way to achieve this will be to fit a spacer in the engine coupling, the other option would be a longer propeller shaft which would be a much more costly option also removing the existing shaft would entail lifting the engine, it may be possible to remove the coupling and the cutlass bearing and wriggle the shaft past the skeg but that is a bit of an unknown. I haven't decided on the type of rope cutter but am leaning towards either the R&D knife type http://www.randdmarine.co.uk/downloads/RandD_RopeCutter.pdf or the Shaft Knife Plus from T Norris http://www.tnorrismarine.co.uk/shaft-knife-plus/ the R&D has a recess which overlaps the aft end of the 'P' bracket which should avoid rope etc being jammed between moving and stationary parts, the Shaft Knife Plus is a bit more of a saw than a knife.

I did manage to get the locker front panels for the forward cabin cleaned up and sanded ready for painting last weekend at home, I used the tungsten carbide scraper to remove the majority of the old adhesive before filling the ho;es and sanding, I think that they have cleaned up rather well.

Before and after

I have just noticed that I hadn't sanded the right hand panel after filling various holes when I took the photograph although it has been done now. Hopefully the weather will allow me to get these items painted next week also the aim is, weather permitting to finish the topsides and the fairing of the underwater areas there is now a glimmer of light beginning to show at the end of the project.