Gone sailing again

I began the week by repairing a few more areas of damaged gelcoat around the cockpit and deck there are no photographs as it was only small areas which required attention it was just a matter of opening them out giving them a good sanding, cleaning with acetone and then refilling with gelcoat as previously detailed.

As the weather was looking reasonable for the remainder of the week, well at least until Friday I decided to go sailing again to make the most of what was left of the fine weather. The plan was to leave on Wednesday's high water which was around 13.00, which would mean I would be able to get away about 11.30, and sail across the Thames estuary up to the river Colne and anchor up near Pyfleet for the night then spend the day sailing the area before returning home today. The trip up there was uneventful with the forecast force 3 or 4 nowhere to be seen so it was a matter of motor sailing most of the way with only a couple of brief interludes of sailing. The route was the same as the previous trip just the destination slightly changed I did not fancy another sleepless night rolling around off Jaywick.

Red Sand forts again

The forts are or were the subject of a restoration project under the title of project Red Sand I am not sure whether of not it is still active, they have a website but it has not been updated for some time there is plenty of information on these wartime relics on t'interweb. I arrived in the Colne around 19.00 and met up with a colleague who had sailed up the day before.

Sunset over Essex

Friday's weather forecast was not looking good for the return trip and with the weekend weather also looking poor after a brief discussion we decided to return home on Thursday morning. We upped anchor at 05.30 to make the best of the ebb tide as far as the Swin Spitway so that once out into Middle Deep the tide should be on the turn and then the flood tide would carry us all the way home. The forecast north westerly or westerly 3 or 4 certainly arrived on cue and with the help of the tide we had a spirited sail all the way home arriving in Conyer Creek about 12.00. On crossing the shipping channel to the Red Sand forts every other ship on the planet seemed to turn up in fact I have never seen it so busy but however I managed to get across safely with only a brief delay while passing astern of a large car carrier.

Today has been a clean and tidy up day with the aim for next week being to get the work out on deck moved forward.

Cockpit

Back to serious work this week although there is not a great deal to show for the effort I started off by opening up the stress cracks in the radius between the cockpit benches and the side of the cockpit this was followed up by a good sanding and a wash down with acetone to clean up the surface and provide a key for a coat of gelcoat which was followed up once it had started to gel by a coat of gelcoat with some wax in styrene added, aka flocoat. The wax in styrene rises to the surface to exclude the air which allows the gelcoat to fully cure. There were not many stress cracks but there were also some chipped and flaking in places so I have gone right the way round the cockpit in the hope that the finished job will look a bit less patchy.

Starboard side after applying gelcoat

I started today by sanding back the gelcoat on the port side with wet and dry sandpaper as can be seen I have not tried to colour match the new gelcoat with the old I will just fair it in and leave it to weather.

Port side after sanding the new gelcoat

The difference in colour between the original gelcoat and the new doesn't look so bad in the photograph now that it has been tidied up but it does show up more in the flesh. That is about it for this week next week the plan is to finish fairing the new gelcoat so that I can then get on with painting the non slip areas.

Quiet week

There is not a lot to show for this weeks efforts, I started on Monday morning by running the engine up to full operating temperature to check on the water leak which I had previously repaired, all was well. I had found a piece of the galley worktop fiddle rail in the big bag of wooden bits that I have at home and since building the galley lockers it was now redundant so I decided to use it to finish off the rack behind the cooker so it was cut to length and given three coats of varnish over the week.

When I reassembled the engine I purchased a kit of various rubber hose connections from Parts 4 Engines unfortunately there are three elbows which were not included in the kit so one of this weeks jobs was to measure up for said elbows so that I can replace the existing which are getting past it, I am going to use silicon rubber elbows from Hyphose.

On Wednesday the weather was warm and sunny with a south easterly 3 or 4 which was too good to waste so went for a sail down the Swale towards Harty and back there were quite a few like minded souls out there just like mid summer.

Had a bit of a late start today but I did manage to fit the piece of fiddle rail on the rack behind the cooker.

Fiddle rail added to rack

After returning to the marina on Wednesday I noticed a slight weep on the union for the fuel return to the tank which is on the top of the secondary fuel filter so to finish off a rather lazy week I fitted a new rubber olive in the union.

Fuel filter with return fuel pipe union

Next week I must bite the bullet and get on with some serious work while the weather is being kind, the aim will be to get the non slip areas of the deck painted and repair some of the minor areas of damage in the gelcoat.

Starter solenoid

The first job on Monday morning was to remove the defective starter solenoid this was a fairly easy job I removed the mounting plate from the engine as I was sure that the new solenoid mounting bolts would not coincide with the old ones.

Defective starter solenoid

First thing on Wednesday I made a start on the water leak, to reach the offending fitting required the removal of the heat exchanger and the aft end engine lifting eye. Once I had removed the elbow and the valve the cause of the problem immediately became obvious, the elbow is effectively a right angle tap connector which had been fitted into a 15mm compression fitting with a sealing washer, the washer had broken up leading to the leak. In any event the end of  a 15mm compression fitting does not have sufficient area to support a sealing washer so I cut off the flange and found that a 15mm brass olive was a good fit on the remaining part of the elbow, I hope that the description is clear I should have included some more photographs however it all went back together and was fully tightened so that there was no movement in the fitting it had been quite loose as the sealing washer had disintegrated. I spent the rest of the day replacing the heat exchanger and after refilling the cooling system with water I had a good look round, everything appears to be tight. When there is sufficient water in the creek, probably next Monday, I shall run the engine for a proper test of the repair.

The offending elbow can just be seen hiding behind no4 injector

I ordered a new starter solenoid from Parts 4 Engines on Tuesday evening and it arrived on Thursday at lunchtime. As expected I had to drill some new holes in the mounting plate for the bolts to secure the solenoid. I started this morning by bolting the solenoid to the mounting plate before re securing the whole lot to the engine then once this was done I began to connect the various cables. Some of the connections were beginning to look somewhat frayed so I re terminated most of the smaller control cables for the starter solenoid and the engine pre heater which operates through a relay also mounted on the same plate, the main starter cable terminations were in good order so these were just re connected. 

New starter solenoid with pre heater relay above

Once everything had been re connected I turned the key and the starter motor immediately engaged and turned the engine over job done.

Shakedown

This post is a little late as I finally got to do a shakedown trip, up to now apart from the delivery from Queenborough round to Conyer I had only done two brief trips out on the tide in the Swale and I really wanted to give everything a more thorough test.


I started the week last Monday by fitting the rack for the storage containers behind the cooker, I had made the parts some time ago and had been looking for some suitable containers for tea, coffee etc. Now I know that may be the wrong way to do a job like this but a couple of weeks ago I found exactly the containers for the job in Sainsburys.

Rack for storage containers

Getting back to the shakedown I left Conyer on the Wednesday afternoon high water and sailed in company with a friend up through the Swale, West Swin, Middle Deep and the Swin Spitway and anchored off Jaywick for the night unfortunately there was a bit of a swell rolling in which led to  pretty sleepless night. Leaving Jaywick on Thursday morning we sailed around before anchoring for the night on the North side of the entrance to the River Blackwater where again the swell led to another uncomfortable night. After raising anchor on Friday morning we sailed over to Bradwell Marina for the night after a good shower, a couple of pints and some fish and chips a decent nights sleep ensued. In order to return home on Sunday making the best use of the tide we left Bradwell on Saturday afternoon and after sailing up the Blackwater to Osea Island we came back down and anchored in the River Colne off Brightlingsea where peaceful night ensued. Leaving the Colne at 07.00 with about three hours of the ebb to run so that once through the Swin Spitway we could take advantage of a favourable flood tide to carry us all the way home. With a westerly 3 or 4 forecast we had a cracking sail home even with the baggy mainsail in fact I had to slow right down passing Faversham as I would not be able to get into Conyer Creek until about 15.00 as I was going I would have been at the entrance to the creek about 14.00 with an hour to wait so the last couple of miles were run with the mainsail and the engine on tick over with the wind on the nose creeping along at about 2 knots.

Sailing down Middle Deep

Red Sand forts

All in all I am quite happy with the way the boat sails making a fairly effortless 7-8 knots much of the time, albeit with a favourable tide, all the various systems that I had installed worked perfectly. There were only a couple of minor niggles there has been a persistent water leak on the engine fresh water side which I thought I had cured  but on further investigation in Bradwell I finally found it on the connection from the cylinder head to the calorifier coil which is very difficult to access however with the aid of a hammer and a screwdriver I managed to tighten it up to reduce the leak to a minimum in order to do a proper job I will have to remove the heat exchanger again. Then on leaving Bradwell turning the key to start the engine resulted in just an ominous click of the solenoid, on checking round it appeared that the main contacts were not making so the emergency starting tool was used, a screwdriver across the solenoid terminals, and with a few sparks the engine fired up immediately. The rest of this week will be spent sourcing and fitting a new solenoid and fixing the water leak once and for all.