Lift out

 I started this week by taking off the sails and the spray hood ready for lifting out on Wednesday, as I had an appointment with the coronary rehab team on Wednesday the plan was to move the boat round to the lift out berth on Tuesday afternoon. Once the berth was clear I fired up the engine and tried to get the stern to swing to starboard using the prop walk, however there was quite a stiff southerly blowing which was causing the stern to swing to port and the prop walk would not overcome this. I think that the problem is that New Morning only has a 12"x7" propeller as the engine has a 1:1 gearbox great for reducing the drag when sailing but just when prop walk might be useful its not there. In the end I had to go down the creek to a wider part and turn round, travel half a mile to cover 50 yards. I went over to Conyer today to find New Morning lifted out, pressure washed and sitting in a cradle so I got on with cleaning and stowing the fenders and stowing the mooring lines before conducting an inspection of the hull below the waterline, the first time I had seen it in over two years, it all looked pretty good apart from the brown east coast mud deposits which are like concrete. The keel looks good with no rust showing, it had a good dose of rust converter and two coats of underwater primer before anti fouling. 

East coast mud

Before New Morning was launched I had to remove a very poor repair to the base of the skeg, it did not take a lot of effort, in fact the whole lump just fell off this was detailed in a much earlier post, I then ground out the defective GRP before building op the base of the skeg with woven rovings and epoxy and on inspection it would appear that it was a successful repair.

As can bee seen from the photographs above some of the anti fouling has fallen off but the skeg repair is still sound. The cutlass bearing is good for further service but the shaft anode has disappeared so will need to be replaced. The hull anode is showing some wastage but is probably fit for further service. So really all that is required this winter will be a scrape down to remove the mud deposits and a new shaft anode.

Propeller shaft and hull anode

 

Went sailing today

I started this week by having another look at the wind instruments, I checked the continuity of the cables as far as the connection box in the heads, there seems to be no problem up to this point it looks as though the problem is either in the mast or at the masthead but I am not taking it down just for that. I finished sanding the forward cabin sole it is just needing the final coat of flocoat. With the lift out programmed for next Wednesday I decided to go for a final sail, with a Northerly 2 or 3 it was not too bad although some sunshine would have been been welcome.

The last photograph is the new waste to energy plant at Kemsley looks as though part of it has been built with 'Lego' bricks.

Short post this week

 I have done a little more sanding to the forward cabin sole however I am suffering from a bit of a low boredom threshold with sanding so I decided to fix an outstanding issue with the engine stop cable. Before I got the engine running I had replaced the original engine stop cable with a new one, the original cable was a bowden cable and it was getting pretty frayed, the new one is a solid Morse type cable but it did not have the usual ferrule at the end of the outer sheath and while the engine stop function worked perfectly well but when pushing the knob back in to reset the stop all that happened was that the outer sheath moved so the stop lever had to be reset by hand before restarting the engine, this all worked OK in fact it was probably a good way of immobilising the engine provided that you remembered to do the reset. On further investigation I found that the stop lever return spring was too long so that even in the stop position there was insufficient tension in the spring to return the lever. I started by removing the spring and cutting about three-quarters of an inch off it before forming a new eye on the end. Replacing the spring was a bit tricky as it is behind the fuel rack return spring but after some perseverance I managed to refit it.

I cut this much off the spring

Arrangement of the stop cable

As can bee seen from the above photograph that the cable connection to the stop lever does not allow for push pull operation. As a belt and braces I secured the cable outer sheath at a couple of points on the engine, the stop lever now works as intended no need for a manual reset. I had thought of fitting a stop solenoid but as can bee seen there is not much space and I am all in favour of keeping things simple where possible.

Back to sanding

 Not a lot to write about this week I am afraid I was hoping that I would be able to get out into the Swale for a couple of hours at least once this week but the weather has been atrocious on the days that I had available such is life. The first task this week was to finish applying the varnish to the the shelf etc for the bookshelf behind the dinette seat back.

Bookshelf

Cover for lower opening

Covering the lower opening and fitting the bookshelf does help reduce the noise from the domestic water pump which is mounted in the space below but as it is mounted on a fairly thin plywood bulkhead it is still quite intrusive, requires further investigation. For the rest of my time this week I have been sanding the new gelcoat on the forward cabin sole although I must admit that I have not been overly enthusiastic about it but having said that it is almost ready for the final coat of flocoat. I had been quietly pleased that the reinforcement of the heads sole had stopped it creaking however there was an annoying creak from the bilge access cover and after some investigation I found that when applying the gelcoat i had left a bit of a blob in the recess so that the cover was jamming when any weight was applied five minutes with some coarse sandpaper soon sorted it. That is it for this week I have booked for a lift out on the 21st October I was hoping to do it last winter but I was a bit late trying to book it and all space in the yard and the cradles were taken, so plan B was to do it in Marsh this year but the Chinese flu got in the way so hoping that it all goes according to plan this time.