May 30, 2011

I took last week off, primarily to work on clearing out the house in preparation for putting it on the market. Because a lot of the clutter in the house was gear for Circadian, I also had to clean out and organize Circadian to have a place to put it. Nonetheless, I still managed to squeeze in a few boat projects between bouts of boxing things up, throwing them out, and hauling them to my new storage unit.

The big mystery of the week was the disappearance of the new hub cap for the steering wheel that I made last week. Somewhere between Circadian and home, it just vaporized. During the course of the week I had cleaned out the house, the boat, and the truck, but there was no sign of the hub cap. Rather than waste time and frustration looking for it (and where would I look?), I simply made another one. Since I had already worked out the method, it took less than an hour.

I also cut out the plywood for the ceiling panel in the doghouse using the pattern I had made earlier. It was quick work with the jigsaw. I faired the edge into a smooth curve using my Japanese plane.

Now that I had (hopefully) stopped the leak in the hydraulic helm pump, I wanted to salvage and refinish the stained and weathered teak access panel under the wheel. It was in bad shape and required a lot of sanding, as much as I could without going through the veneer. A half a dozen coats of varnish made a huge difference. I also added a footrest both for comfort when sitting in the chair and to brace myself when the boat is heeling and bouncing around. To make the footrest, I started with a salvaged thick piece of teak that had been soaking in hydraulic fluid and water in the bottom of the aft lazarette when I bought Circadian. I cut one edge at an angle, cut it to length, cut two rounded corners, rounded the top edge with the router, and cut several grooves in the top for traction. Since it's already oil-soaked, the only finishing will be to oil the fresh cut edges. Then it can simply weather naturally, both for better traction and a nice contrast to the varnished panel behind it.

My first couple of trips to Hidden Harbor were about hauling gear, cleaning out gear, and stowing gear. Because CalTrans was working on the main backroad to Hidden Harbor, I had to take a detour on a backroad backroad. It was only an additional 15 minutes and I got to see some scenic remote parts of the Delta I hadn't seen before.

While the scenery and weather were often nice, lugging heavy anchors, chain, sails and other stuff down steep, rickety, snake-ridden ramps and up onto the boat took it's toll, and it was an exhausting week.

Nonetheless, I still managed to make some progress on restoration projects. While using my plywood ceiling panel pattern got the panel close to fitting, it still required repeated trial fitting and grinding until it was right. But it got there. I also thought of a good way to run and conceal the instrument wiring for the ceiling-mounted instruments.

Since I needed every cubic inch of storage space I could muster, I knew the only place to put the recently repaired genoa was back on the roller furler. Besides, the temporary line to retrieve its halyard wire was just about chafed through, so the time had definitely come. I just hoped I could remember or figure out how it all worked. It took some sorting out, but eventually it came back to me and things got dialed in. In the process, I discovered some items on deck that could cause the sheets to foul and hang up when tacking, so I've got some more items to add to "the list." Nonetheless, it felt like a milestone of sorts, and it was good to have Circadian being a sailboat again as she tugged and pulled to free herself from the docklines.

May 23, 2011

Now that I had a nice, newly-painted helm chair and pump, the uncovered hub of the steering wheel stood out as an eyesore. So, during the week I fabricated a teak cap for it.








The other items I took care of during the week and on Saturday, between house tasks, were to cut out replacement plywood for the previously removed rotten sections in the pilothouse wall and to cut thick plywood backing panels for the ceiling of the pilothouse where I would be mounting instruments. I also picked up some 1/4-inch mahogany plywood and black marine vinyl to cover it that I will use to make the ceiling panel for the instrument area. Because the vinyl fabric had "marine" in the name, it was $15 per yard, costing me nearly $50 for the three yards I needed. In addition, I worked on salvaging the teak panel below the steering wheel that was both weathered and soaked with hydraulic oil that had leaked from the helm pump. I sanded off as much of the oil-soaked teak veneer as I dared, then scrubbed it with acetone and paint thinner to try to remove any remaining oil from the surface before applying varnish. I thinned the first coat of varnish about 50%, with the idea that any remnants of oil would dissolve in the thinner and become part of the finish rather than prevent the varnish from adhering properly. When the first coat of unthinned varnish dried, it seemed to have a slight oil film on top in places. Perhaps hydraulic oil doesn't dissolve in varnish/thinner, and it rose to the top. That film is easily removed before I recoat, and as long as the varnish adheres properly, it won't matter. Time will tell.

I headed out to Circadian on Sunday morning under a gray, dull sky blanketed with high cirrus clouds. That made for uninteresting landscapes, but created a ring around the sun later.



On board Circadian, I hauled out the grinder and worked on fitting the new plywood pieces to replace the previously cut out rotten sections in the pilothouse. The fit was good, but I had to grind away a section in order to be able to slip the new pieces in place without removing the window. I'll just make a small filler piece to fill the gap. It will all be seamless once I epoxy everything in place and paint it.



Most of the day was spent gluing backing panels in place on the doghouse ceiling so I will have something solid on which to mount instruments later. I used Bondo initially for its very short set time (about 5 minutes), and then used thickened epoxy fillets around the edges for additional strength. Once the panels were in place, I made a rough paper pattern showing where all the reinforced areas were to guide instrument placement later.

With the major tasks taken care of, I turned to smaller items such as installing the newly-painted helm seat, and trying one more time to tackle the shower sump drain leaks. Not only did my latest brilliant idea to seal the drain fail to work, but this time I broke loose the strainer fitting on the shower floor. So, it's not just back to square one, it's back to square minus one on that problem. Sometimes what seems like the simplest problem is the toughest!

On the good news side, the helm pump was absolutely free of any leaks and functioned as it should. So, I felt I could finally remove the emergency tiller shaft that stuck up through the aft deck and created an unsightly, inconvenient, and even dangerous obstacle as well as a deck opening for water to get below. My only concern was that in the whole time I've had Circadian, I'd never found the chromed bronze deck plate for closing off the access hole for the tiller shaft. Bronze or stainless replacements are ridiculously expensive. Well, purely by chance I found it while measuring some drawer cutouts in the aft cabin. Yippee!!! Made my whole week!

May 16, 2011

During the week I continued working on clearing out the house. After work on Friday I went over to Hydraulic Power Sales (HPS) to pick up the face plate with shaft for the helm pump and its new seals. Unlike repairing anything that says "marine" on it, the tab was a very reasonable $50 total for all the seals plus the labor for removing the old shaft seal and pressing in the new one. I also got some tips and education from Matt about hydraulic oil and seals. It's always great to work with real professionals. They didn't even flinch when I told them the parts were from an old British pump. They determined the sizes and hunted down the somewhat esoteric parts from one of their many suppliers. I'm sure I'll be back for some new hoses when it's time to install the new WH autopilot now on order.
With my attention now on the helm, I decided I needed to do something about the ugly black helm seat, since I knew I'd be spending a lot of time in it or next to it. I was even tempted to replace it, but new seats are too costly. I had considered a good deal I found on Craigslist, but realized the cost in time and money involved in the long drive to get it just weren't worth it. In the end, I decided to just sand and paint the old seat with white epoxy. It made a huge difference for very little time and money.
Saturday was filled with more work on clearing out the house and replacing a headlight and wiper blades on my little truck. I brought a large box of old computer hardware to the local Goodwill and lugged seven boxes of old records to the shredder.
A series of squalls blew through over the weekend, but on Sunday I headed out to Hidden Harbor anyway, figuring I could put the helm pump back together even in the rain. I could also check on the effectiveness of my efforts to keep everything dry. The unstable weather produced a spectacular sky, with constantly moving patches of clouds, rain and full sunshine. Lots of flowers, too. It made for a beautiful scenic drive and lots of eye candy for this week's blog.

Everything was dry on board Circadian, which was nice, but not a severe test since the rain was only intermittent and of short duration. The helm pump reassembly went smoothly and once it was sealed up tight and refilled, I scrubbed off the remnants of the old hydraulic oil leaks with paint thinner, wire-brushed the case, masked it, and sprayed it with hammer-finish paint.

While the paint was drying I re-tested the shower sump drain connection, and it still leaked despite the copious use of Lifecaulk when I had assembled it last week. I disassembled it again, cleaned it up and tried using the old reliable butyl caulk. STILL leaked! Third try was smoothing the mating surfaces and using teflon tape. STILL LEAKED! Sigh! The plastic tapered end of the new fitting just wasn't soft enough to make a good seal with with the bronze drain fitting, and it apparently was made of HDPE or something similar, meaning no sealant would stick to it. I'll just have to investigate what other types of fittings are available.

All that frustration with the sump drain burned up enough time so that the paint on the helm pump was dry and I could pull off the masking tape and aluminum foil, remount the wheel and test out the refurbished pump. With the new spotless paint, I would quickly learn if there were any leaks.

The big moment had arrived and I turned the wheel. It spun freely and didn't move the rudder. A moment of cold panic and nightmarish visions of major problems and expenses ensued before I realized that the problem could simply be that the pump needed to be primed and the system bled. I vaguely recalled reading somewhere that turning the wheel back and forth, stop to stop, would bleed the system. Of course the wheel wasn't turning the rudder yet, so it never hit the stops. Nonetheless, I opened up the reservoir and turned the wheel back and forth. I could see the fluid level gradually going down, so the pump was probably getting primed. I refilled it, and continued turning the wheel. Small bubbles began to appear in the fluid. The rudder turned! Encouraged, I continued turning the wheel back and forth. It now turned the rudder to the stops. I maintained some pressure at each stop, and things gradually firmed up. When there were no more bubbles in the fluid, I buttoned things up, gave a huge sigh of relief and rejoiced that I now had my steering back. Best of all, there was absolutely no sign of any leaks.

After cleaning up, I headed back home a bit early so I could get a long-overdue haircut that I forgot to get done on Saturday. I was tired, but happy about being able to check off a major item on "the list." While the sump drain problem was frustrating, any leakage went directly into the bilge, so it wasn't a cruise-stopping issue.

May 9, 2011

I got some tragic news this week. One of my second cousins committed suicide, sending a tsunami of painful emotions through the family. Plans for a relaxing weekend with Carol in LA had to be altered, and we spent most of Saturday with a cousin who lives in LA.
Nonetheless, I was able to squeeze out a little time on Tuesday evening to test the old Neco autopilot motor. I used my car battery and a small 12 v power supply to provide power sources. I also had a large wiring diagram I had drawn showing just the six needed connections I had isolated from tracing circuits in the complex complete wiring diagram. After a few missteps, I got it going...at least in one direction. It ran fine and I learned I had to get power to the clutch solenoids in order to engage the output shaft. But, I still hadn't figured out how to wire it to reverse the motor direction.I had some more discussions with Wil Hamm, and he explained to me that such a motor really needs those troublesome relays to reverse it, and that trying to control the old motor with his controller would end up causing repeated failures and repairs. He suggested seeing if the motor could be separated from the gearbox so that we could use the old gearbox and pump with a new motor. Well, as soon as I pulled the old motor off the gearbox, gear oil flooded the workbench. Obviously the two were designed and built to function as a single unit.I thought about the possibility of trying to put a large pulley on the old pump and mating a new WH motor to it with a belt, similar to the arrangement Wil uses. Of course working out and fabricating the mounting arrangements would be quite a bit of work, and I'd still have a 40-year-old pump. In the end, Wil worked with me to find a way to get a whole new system within my budget. Thanks to his giving me a real break and using some demo components (but still with full warranty), I'll just be able to do it, although it's still going to take a big bite out of the kitty. But, like the anchor, chain and windlass, an autopilot is a critical system that you have to be able to count on and it's no place to scrimp. WH is the best, so, I'll be placing the order this week. I'll also be checking back with Hydraulic Power Sales to see how they're coming with the new seals for the helm pump.