November 30, 2010 Special Supplement

Okay, this is not exactly part of the Circadian saga. But The Admiral thought I ought to add this anyway. Part of last week's holiday festivities was going to a big Thanksgiving dinner in Oakland, to which we needed to bring a dish. Carol had figured out how to make a trifle, half in LA and half in Sacramento. One of the Sacramento tasks was whipping the cream. Well, all I had was a hand whisk, which The Admiral insisted would never do. We went to three stores looking for a hand beater, but had no luck. I tried to convince The Admiral I could MacGyver something, but she was dubious. Well, I did it and it worked quite well, even though it might be more Tim Taylor than Angus MacGyver. The proof is in the pudding (or trifle).

November 29, 2010

As planned, I spent a most enjoyable long holiday weekend with Carol. Because the office was closed Wednesday, however, I was able to squeeze in half a day on Circadian. I installed the refinished table and the new cover for the mast support post. It all went pretty well, although some clamping pressure was required to squeeze everything into alignment. Of course I also had to do a bit of grinding, this time on the top of the post cover to fit it around a ring on the ceiling moulding. (Nothing fits the first time on a boat.) The final result, though, was a very snug fit: absolutely no movement or rattles when you jerk on the new attached grab handle.

As you can see in the photos, I still need to insert bungs to cover the screw holes on one side. That presents a bit of a challenge because normally the bungs are trimmed and finished with the rest of the piece. I can't do that in this case without having to refinish the whole thing, which of course I don't want to do. I plan to pre-finish a thin strip of jatoba from which I will cut the bungs. Hopefully I'll be able to insert and glue the thin, pre-finished bungs so they are flush with the surface. We'll see....

I also tried out my new screw extractors on the broken-off old bronze screws that secure the teak hatch hinges. They worked great. Very cleverly, the saw teeth are designed to cut counter-clockwise, so it encourages the screw remnants to come right out as you make the surrounding circular cut.I glued dowel pieces (which didn't need to match since they will be covered by the hinge) into the resulting holes and then trimmed them flush with a chisel. You can see in the photo that it's not as clean as what the flush-cut saw would have done, but I couldn't use the flush-cut saw because of the recess for mounting the hinge flush with the wood surface. Again, it won't be visible, so as long as it's a strong joint, it doesn't need to be elegant.The old generator is still sitting in cockpit waiting for a break in the weather so it can be removed. The prospects for the coming weekend don't look good at the moment, with yet another storm moving in later in the week. Looks like I won't be able to tackle the next port installation for a while either. Ah well, there's always something that can be done!

November 21, 2010

I have two excuses for not getting much done this week: it's been raining and windy, and Carol is coming up for Thanksgiving, so a lot of time has been spent housecleaning. I did manage to pick up a few things I needed: a piece of polished stainless sheet to shield the teak bulkhead from the heat of the stove that has a burner that is too close to it, and the screw extractor that will hopefully allow me to recover from the calamity of broken screws compounded by a broken drill bit. The good news: this post will be blessedly short!

The only Circadian work accomplished this week was to finish rubbing out the polyurethane finish on the new jatoba wood cover for the ugly painted iron mast support post in the middle of the saloon. It's now ready to be installed. You can see in the photo that jatoba is a pretty good match for teak. The grab handle is teak; the rest is jatoba. (No staining or Photoshop tricks on the woods.) It's only partially assembled, since it has to be disassembled and then re-assembled around the post. If you have really sharp eyes, you might be able to detect the tiny light gray spots that are the bung holes for the screws. They are gray because because they have residual rottenstone powder in them and the bungs haven't been inserted yet.

Happy Thanksgiving all!

November 15, 2010

This post may be a little late, since I'm still dragging from a pretty intense weekend. During the week I fabricated some teak blocks to mount new latches for the teak hatches, which had none to secure them. I also did a bit more finishing work on the table parts and mast post cover.

The main mission for the weekend was to remove the big old Westerbeke 4.4 kw genset which had never been completely installed and whose operability was dubious. I don't need or want a big monster like that, and I had previously struck a deal with Bill, the itinerant master diesel mechanic, that he could have it if he removed it. Once out, I can use the space for something better like a work bench with organized tool storage and a vise.

Friday was the big day, so I took the day off to lend a hand and keep an eye on things. I was there early, and so spent a couple of hours working on the forward hatch that still had a bit of a leak despite rebedding with butyl and a new gasket. I relied on the wisdom of Sherlock Holmes to solve the mystery: "When you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, no matter how unlikely, must be so." In this case, although unlikely, the leak had to be around the butyl between the metal hatch frame and the teak mounting base. Because of the way the base is constructed and where the water was entering, it was impossible to be leaking elsewhere. I concluded I needed to compress the seal more using the clamping method that had recently proven effective on the portlight installation. I removed the hatch's mounting screws and clamped and squeezed and clamped and squeezed until I had gone entirely around the perimeter. I replaced the screws tightly and set the hose running water over the hatch to test the seal. About this time Bill arrived, along with Scott, one of the two brothers who own and manage the marina. The two of them spent the better part of the day on the big hoist.

The first step was to remove a panel from the cockpit lazarette so the genset would clear. That entailed removing some teak trim strips that hid a seam and then cutting through a single layer of fiberglass along the seam on the inside. Next, a beam and support posts were set up using pre-fabricated lumber components that Bill had made earlier. The rest was basically nervous pulling on the chain hoist and tugging on the genset while I tried to keep the wobbling post and beam stable (... to the accompaniment of a great deal of gratuitous grunting, groaning, complaining and cursing) until the heavy genset was resting on the cockpit engine cover I had built back in May. It was reassuring to see that it could hold an estimated 800-900 lbs without protest (genset plus two big guys).

Because I had been diverted and distracted from monitoring my testing of the seal on the forward hatch, the water had been running over the hatch for a loooooooooong time. No leaks !!

The plan for removing the genset was to move the boat at high tide on Saturday to a part of the marina where Scott's backhoe could be used to lift the genset out of the boat, then move the boat out from under it and back to her berth. I started up Circadian's engine to warm it up prior to the move. The electronic engine hour meter was now working!! Amazing! It must have been a computer glitch that 'rebooting' cured. Unfortunately, when the appointed hour for the move came, Scott couldn't get the backhoe started. A little impromptu exploratory surgery by Bill revealed a broken starter motor shaft. So much for plan A. Plan B: Do it next weekend if the backhoe is back in operation. Plan C: Use the crane that is supposed to be on site some time in the next week or two to restep someone's mast. I know...God is laughing! Perhaps that's why there is now three days of rain in the forecast for next weekend.

Since I wouldn't be spending Saturday getting this big white elephant of a genset the hell out of the middle of my cockpit, I went back to work on "the list:" sort out the forward lower spreaders and make sure all the turnbuckles are secured with cotter pins, get the anchor light working, wire up the steaming light, move the radar ground, complete the rebuild of the teak hatches, etc, etc, etc.

Solving the mystery of the non-functioning anchor light was the first task of the day, since I would likely need to climb the mast and it's best to do that in the calm of early morning. This time it was the wisdom of "Occam's Razor" (Look for the simplest solution.) that helped. I checked the breaker and current was getting through, which left the splice to the wire coming through the mast, the wire in the mast, and the new LED bulb I had installed when the mast was down months earlier. The splice seemed solid, and it would require re-doing it to check it. A bad wire through the mast was too horrible to contemplate, and besides, it had checked out fine when the mast was down. The simple thing: the bulb had worked loose during the process of restepping the mast. So, I turned on the breaker and climbed the mast to check the bulb. Sure enough, it was no longer properly twisted into the socket. A little twist and I had an anchor light. I rejoiced in my good fortune!

Since the electricity gods were looking upon me with favor, I next moved the radar gound from the engine to a small ground plate on the hull. That was routine, including the usual uncomfortable contortions. Encouraged by my success, I decided to tackle the mystery of the forward lower shrouds. When I restepped the mast, I carefully measured from the masthead to the port and starboard main shroud chainplates to make sure the mast was centered and vertical. As I snugged up the lowers, I sighted up the mast to make sure it remained straight. That theoretically should result in the lowers being centered as well. However, in the words of Yogi Berra, "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is." The mystery was "Why is only the starboard lower apparently just enough too short to prevent the turnbuckle from screwing down enough to allow inserting a cotter pin through the shaft?" So, this time it was Yogi who provided the essential clue. I had to actually measure the distance from the lower shroud attachments on the mast to the chainplates. That, in theory, meant climbing up and down the mast three more times (once to secure the tape on one side, once to move it to the other side, and once to take it down). In practice, it required four round trips because the tape fell off once. It's amazing how the mast gets taller and the steps get further apart each time. So, I now had a total of 5 round trips up the mast. But I had my answer: The mast was perfectly centered, so the two shrouds were simply not exactly the same length. I had the answer, but what was the solution? The simplest solution would be slightly longer turnbuckles. Not cheap if I had to buy them, but simple. I now had another stroke of amazing good fortune: months before I had bought two turnbuckles to replace a couple that went missing after the move from South Carolina. They were the wrong size and I had intended to return them, but never did. Amazingly, they were just exactly what I needed to replace the slightly too short turnbuckles on the forward inner shrouds. I was a happy, but tired, sailor!

I had just enough energy left at the end of the day to lay a coat of Cetol on the bases of the teak hatches I had been rebuilding. I also coated the exposed 3M 5200 to protect it from UV radiation.

Sunday I faced up to the challenge of mounting the teak blocks to the underside of the teak hatches so I could mount the new latches. The tough part was drilling holes in the side of the hatch cover with less than 3/8 of an inch clearance from the plexiglass on top. I bought a 12-inch-long 1/8 inch drill bit in the hope that I could get the four required holes drilled before I broke the bit. The angle would be slightly off, but it would be close enough if it worked. It did. And, I didn't even break the drill bit!

But that was the last of my great string of good luck. Some of the old bronze hinge screws for the hatches had corroded away inside the teak and broken off when I tried to extract them. I tried drilling them out using a self-centering bit for drilling pilot holes for mounting hinges. It was a great idea in theory; in practice, it was a disaster. The drill bit broke off down in the teak next to the broken screw. Now I had a bigger problem. But, I couldn't deal with it now. So, I added some neoprene weather stripping to the hatch lids, and screwed them down as best I could. At least the new latches worked nicely. Next step will be trying screw extractors to saw a hole around the broken bit and screws, then plugging the hole with a piece of dowel, and finally drilling a new pilot hole in the dowel. Sounds good in theory. Stay tuned to see how it works in practice.

November 8, 2010

It was a cha-cha week on Circadian: one step forward, two back. During the week I took several more measures to eliminate dust and grit in my final varnish coats. I moved my HEPA filter into the guest bathroom I used as a clean room and let it run for 24 hours. I filtered the varnish into a new plastic cup that had been blown out with canned air. After vacuuming the surface to be varnished, I wiped it down with a tack rag and followed that by blowing it off with canned air. It all helped, but there were still flaws. It only takes one hair, flake of dandruff, bit of dust or moth to mar an otherwise perfect surface. Duh!

Sooooooo, Saturday I bit the bullet and decided I had to do what I had been working so hard to avoid: a hand-rubbed finish. I was able to get powdered pumice and rottenstone at Woodcraft, where they not only have it, they don't look at you like you're crazy when you ask for it. I already had some 2000 grit wet sandpaper (usually used for color sanding auto finishes), finishing wax, and a new secret ingredient: Pledge.

I wet sanded the table top, followed that with pumice mixed with a bit of water to make a paste, which was followed (after removing the pumice completely) by the rottenstone, also mixed into a paste. Lots of rubbing, always with the grain, of course. Then I applied the carnauba finishing wax to add more luster. It did, but it also tended to streak and show marks wherever it was touched. As an experiment, I tried going over it with some Pledge. Eureka!! Whatever oil or other secret ingredients are in that stuff, it did the trick. No fingerprints, and a nice smooth luster that shows reflections, but doesn't make the wood look like it's covered with plastic (which it is). So from now on, frustration will be replaced with elbow grease.

Sunday it rained steadily, but I wanted to go to the boat to check for leaks, replace the steering wheel and finish wiring up the radar.

The one teak hatch that wasn't covered with plastic sheeting seemed fine. I did discover that one of the covered-over holes for the old ports was leaking, so I now know which new port gets installed next. Much to my surprise and disappointment, I discovered the forward hatch that I had redone was leaking somewhere between the frame and the base. I tried tightening the mounting screws in the rain, to no avail. There was one screw the wrong size that could not be tightened securely, so that might be it. There's a lot of butyl around the base, but I didn't pre-compress it with clamps like I did with the new ports (which, by the way, did not leak). When I get some dry weather, I'll remove all the mounting screws, stuff in more butyl, and use clamps to compress the butyl.

I had to replace the steering wheel that I had just removed (with some difficulty, you might recall) because the mechanic who is going to remove my old generator wants to do it next week. To pull it off the boat, we need to move the boat to another part of the marina. Steering will be a necessity! The steering wheel's mounting screw would not go back into the shaft because it took so much force on the wheel puller to get the wheel off that the pressure from central pin on the puller distorted the first few threads in the steering wheel shaft just enough to prevent the mounting bolt from screwing in. No worries, I thought; I'll just re-tap the threads. No big deal, since I had a tap and die set on board. English boat, English threads, right? It turns out, no. So, I had to drive into town and get a metric tap the right size. Fortunately, they had one, and it did the job.

Next: wire up the radar display. Months ago while hauled out in Napa, I mounted the antenna on the mast while the mast was down, and eventually got the antenna wire through the mast. (See January 31 and February 15 blogs.) But under the gun to get the boat in the water and to her home berth, I never had time to wire up the display and check to see if everything worked. So, for all these months, it's been a little concern nagging at me. The day of reckoning had finally arrived. Luckily there was a breaker available on the panel and a route for the wire into the doghouse that didn't require any drilling. However, the instructions also called for a ground wire to be run from a terminal on the display "to a bolt on the hull (or weld)." Clearly they were assuming a metal hull, since fiberglass is an insulator. I found a bolt on the engine that had several other ground wires terminated to it, so I thought that would be a good spot to ground the display. I had just enough black wire to reach, too. Once I had everything wired up, it was time for the dramatic moment: would it work? I pressed the power switch. The display immediately lit up and showed the proper first screen. Yeah! Okay, but the big test was would the antenna and the cable connection work? I hacked around with the buttons and on-screen menu until I had arrived at the display that should show the radar image. Blank white screen. I went through the sequence again just to be sure I had done it right. I had. Still a blank screen. The roar of stomach acid flowing was palpable. I had visions of big problems and big expenses. I was able to push back the tide of anxiety and negative fantasies long enough to recall the wisdom of Occam's razor, which in this case meant "Look for the simplest problem/solution first." I jiggled the antenna connection on the back of the display. Voila!!! A radar image! Whew!!!

While I won't be able to permanently mount the display until I get a new ceiling in the doghouse, it was a great relief to know the radar is working.

Since I will need to move the boat next week, I thought it would be a good idea to make sure the engine and running gear were working properly before I left. Besides, the engine hadn't been run in quite a while, and it needed some exercise. I could let it run while I cleaned up. I checked the oil, which was still clear since the last change (only about 10 operating hours ago), and opened the raw water intake seacock. The engine started right up, water was gushing out the exhaust as it should, and she ran smoothly. There was only one fly in the ointment: the electronic digital engine hour meter was blank! Damn! Always something. I checked the connections on the back of the panel and everything seemed solid. Short of some sort of internal computer failure, the only thing I could think of that might have caused the failure was that there might be a ground connection at the engine bolt I used to ground the radar that had gone bad as a result of the removal and reassembly. Well, I was out of time and couldn't try to test that possibility. If a simple fix like cleaning and reconnecting the grounds doesn't do it, I'll have to just buy a good old reliable Hobbs meter and wire it into the ignition circuit. Stay tuned!

November 1, 2010

My accomplishments for my week of boat work went almost as planned (about as good as it gets). I picked up the heavy glass mat and epoxy resin on Monday, and returned to the boat on Tuesday. It took another 16 (!) layers of mat to fill the two old port holes (pun intended). On Wednesday I ground the new glass close to flat and flush, using a straight edge to find and mark the high spots. I got to wear my new Wes Cravens designed grinding outfit, hoping to mostly avoid the infamous fiberglass itch.Next followed three cycles of filling the low spots with Microlite putty and fairing it flush and flat with the manual sanding board (torture board). A foot-wide $3 plastic smoothing tool was a great help in applying the putty flat and smooth across the entire area.

The rain predicted for Thursday was delayed, so I was able cut out the holes for the new ports using my big hole saw and new jig saw. As anyone who's done it will tell you, cutting big holes in your boat, even above the waterline, is always traumatic. "Measure twice, cut once" was a mantra I repeated over and over. Careful use of drilling and cutting guides helped it go smoothly. Cut-outs showed that my laminations were good: no gaps, all the mat layers fully saturated with resin A little grinding to round the inner edges and the ports slid into the new holes perfectly. Whew!! I coated the newly-exposed edges of the plywood interior liner with epoxy so it wouldn't absorb water and rot in the event of (Heaven forbid!) a leak. While I waited for the epoxy to cure, I cut and applied butyl tape to a porthole flange. In addition to the flat cut pieces of butyl around the outer flange, I added a strip around the corner where the inner and outer flanges meet at a 90 degree angle. The theory was that it would squeeze out between the inner flange and the edge of the hole, resulting in a good seal.

The epoxy around the hole on the sunny side cured quickly enough for me to try to bolt in the port. I soon discovered that my newly-purchased bronze machine screws were too short to extend through both the uncompressed butyl and the mounting flange. Damn! After a few moments of high anxiety, I thought I might be able to use a couple of clamps to compress the butyl enough to get the screws through. By repeatedly clamping and reclamping around the perimeter and using a lot of clamping pressure, it worked like a charm. The individual butyl pieces welded to each other nicely, and the excess squeezed out between the flange and the hole as I had hoped. Of course some also sqeezed out around the inside mounting flange on the cabin side, but that was easily removed simply by cutting around the flange with sharp knife and lifting off the excess. At this point, the epoxy around the hole on the shady side still wasn't cured, it was getting late, the rain was coming in, and I was beat-all good reasons to call it a day and head home.

It rained Friday and Saturday, so I continued with the shop projects. I rounded the corners on the mast support post cover, cut matching bungs from scrap jatoba and glued them in place on one side. On the other side (the piece that will be screwed on during installation) I mounted a teak grab handle. No, I didn't make it. At twelve bucks (even at Worst Marine), it wasn't worth the time. The next morning, after the glue had set, I trimmed the protruding bungs flat using a flushcut saw. I find it works better than using the usual chisel method. Even with a sharp chisel and thin cuts, I usually end up with some of the bungs breaking off below the surface. The flushcut saw doesn't scratch the surface and results in the bung trimmed so close to the surface that normal finish sanding is enough to make it perfect. Finally, finish sanding of the post cover pieces, and between-coats sanding of the varnish on the table parts. Last thing Saturday was to apply varnish all around.

Sunday was a beautiful day. I installed the second port as I had the first and applied a bead of 3M 4000 UV around the ports to finish off the installaton and create a redundent outer seal. With some white plastic caps to cover the protruding nuts and bolts, it will be a pretty clean installation. I cleaned up the week's mess (well, mostly), and called it a good week.