Moving Liquids

The rebuilding of the plumbing system has officially begun. No small task, but at least all of the jobs involved are fairly straightforward and manageable without a crew of seven hearty adults.

Last week I managed to make some good progress on the rebuild of the waste system. When we got the boat, it was plumbed with the toilet connected to the holding tank and an overboard discharge. Totally illegal, and also not practical. The new system, in addition to having more options for, well, "waste-management" will have a new toilet that actually works and hose that was meant for sanitation systems (odor-resistant...very important).

Step One: Rip Out the Old Sh*%
This is a disgusting job now matter how careful you are. The holding tank was partially filled with seawater and some of that awful blue holding tank deodorizer (which doesn't work, by the way). The hoses were caked with what I can only assume was waste that didn't make it all the way to the tank, and the toilet was just plain nasty. I saved the toilet in case anyone wants it. Errr.

Here is a look at the old tank and hose setup before I started destroying things and swearing at inanimate objects:


With the tank removed from underneath the port settee, here is what we were left with. Notice the lovely (completely seized) seacock and the nasty waste hoses.Getting the through hull and seacock out of the boat was an adventure of two full days. I finally ended up grinding the flange off the outside and cutting the rest apart to get the thing out. Solid bronze, seized up with corrosion, and bonded to the hull? Bring in the power tools!

I did manage to get the beast out of there. I am keeping it on the workbench to remind me why I am not replacing any seacocks with bronze. This picture shows the hole left after the seacock came out, including the remnants of the old plywood backing plate.


Step Two: Install the New Stuff
With the seacock and the hoses out, it was time to get the hull ready for the new fittings. The flange for the new Marelon seacock was wider than the old bronze fitting, so the backing plate had to be larger. I started by cutting the hole in the hull liner to 6.5 inches in diameter and cleaning up the inside of the hull to get ready for a new backing plate, which I made out of marine plywood sealed with epoxy.

This image shows the cutout waiting for the backing block.
And this image shows the backing block in place (notice that I also painted out the locker with white Bilge Coat paint):

Since I am putting flush-mount through hulls in (why not?), I had to prepare the outer hull for the recessed flanges. This is not easy without some sort of magic tool that apparently exists but no one has.

Several hours with a Dremel grinder got me an acceptable result:

With the backing block shaped to fit the inside of the hull (several passes on the belt sander) and epoxied in place, it was time to start putting the pieces together.

First step, get the through hull fitting in place, along with the recessed bolts that will hold the seacock in place. You can see that my work on the cutout is less than perfect, but sealed well with the 3M product of choice and fared in when we get ready to paint, and this will be just fine, he says.


And here is the view from the inside. Very nice. No corrosion potential, easy to maintain, and unlikely to seize in place. I aligned the handle to run athwartships just so it would be easier to get to and open or close. The hoses will run to either side of the seacock.


This is a look at the small 3/4" seacock for the raw water intake on the head. This one isn't hidden in a locker so I made the backing block out of a piece of teak I had left over from a job on the old boat.


The toilet is bolted in and ready for the hose installation. We will be rebuilding the cabinetry in the head to actually have some storage. More on that soon.


And that's where we stand for now. I have the hose for the remainder of the install work, and the holding tank has been sanitized and cleaned. Before I reinstall the holding tank and strap it in place, I need to run a few hoses and wires for the freshwater system and some other things, but once I do that, we can button this project up and move on!

Candy Store

It's an exciting week for me. With a full workday planned at The Boat Yard on Friday, I need to pick up some supplies. And that means I get to go to Fisheries Supply. How much do I love this place? Two floors of everything you could ever want for a boat. All the coolest sailing gear, hardware, electronics, and just all around boating stuff there is. If you are a boat nerd, Fisheries is your Candy Store. One expensive candy store. It's a stroke of luck that there isn't much room on the old Visa card these days...

But even better than the store is the Fisheries Supply Catalog. For those of you who aren't in Seattle and can't make it to the retail store, the catalog is a pretty good substitute. Everything about both the store and the catalog puts Worst Marine, Defender, and the rest to shame. Do yourself a favor and order up a copy. Pretty soon you'll be doing projects on your boat just so you can order stuff. I feel like Navin R. Johnson every time the new catalog arrives on the step (it's too big to fit in the mailbox): "The new phonebooks are here! The new phonebooks are here!"



But I'm getting off track here...and now I have the urge to go order The Jerk on pay-per-view.

Anyway, I just placed a will-call order for some thru-hulls, seacocks, and other plumbing parts to get the sanitation system back in place. We're going from bronze to Marelon thru-hulls (I've not found a single good reason to keep metal thru-hulls. Anyone?) and running the pipe in a little more logical manner. We're also redesigning the system to have a pump overboard or pump out option. We call it the Northwest Package: in Puget Sound you can't even spit overboard anymore, but cross the imaginary line in the middle of the Straits of Juan de Fuca into Canada and shit directly into the ocean. It's a strange world we live in. On one side of that purple dotted line, you have to have your overboard discharge locked closed. On the other? Flush away.

The plan is pretty simple, and so far I've rounded up all of the parts except the manual pump for the overboard discharge. No one seems to have the one we need in stock, so I'll just have to leave room for it in the layout and keep searching. Which reminds me:

This weekend I also need to go see Previous Boat Owner, who called last week to remind me that he still has an outboard engine and "some other stuff that goes with the boat" at his house in Port Townsend. Seems that so long as I am in Port Townsend it would be a shame not to browse through the boatyard. The consignment shop there is one of my favorite haunts, and the shops up there actually carry the stuff people need for their boats, not just drink cozies and "Life's Good" t-shirts (I'm looking at you, Worst Marine). Who knows what I'll find when I'm there! Something I have to have, no doubt.

I will take some award-winning pictures of the progress this weekend. I'm sure this will be the time nothing at all goes wrong with a boat project. Right?

Power

I have never been a mechanical sorta guy. I wasn't into cars when I was little, and engines never interested me. So when I first owned a boat in my past life, the powerplant was just a mysterious gray monster that lived under the companionway stairs. It started and it ran, and the surveyor said it was in good shape, so I was happy.

And then on a early trip, the kind little Yanmar 2GM caught a case of engine runaway and almost took the boat to the bottom of the Puget Sound with it. Scary stuff, that. I got lucky, and the runaway stopped itself after a few minutes and before the engine completely seized, but it was never the same after that. Or maybe it was that I was never the same again. Something like that.

From that day on I was always pretty sure I could hear the engine sputtering or laboring. I always had a little tick of nerves that she was going to go south on me. She never did, and was still running great when we sold her years later, but the damage had been done to my psyche.

So here we are with our new-old boat, getting ready to find a way to get a new engine in there, and I have admit that I'm pretty damn excited about it. The idea of starting completely fresh is making me into a bit of a mechanical geek: reading manuals, learning about reduction gears, calculating torque ratios, sketching installation plans. Even the simple idea of a perfectly clean and organized engine space is motivating enough to make me want to rip the old Yanmar out and get started.

And I think we might have settled on our engine:

Isn't she adorable? This is the Betamarine 14. A 13.5 horsepower 2-cylinder marinized Kubota engine. I spoke with the local dealer this morning about our project and I have to say I have a lot of confidence in them. The engine would come with mounts to match the current installation, all wiring, the control, and all the support I need from the yard. They will customize it with specific options for our needs (bigger alternator, hot water heater hook ups, etc) and from actual order to a pallet in our garage is one week.

The ONLY problem is that the base cost is 6 full Boat Units. For the price of this engine we could get:

• 500 cases of Red Hook ESB
• 3,000 nonfat lattes at Jason's Java
• 3 full sets of new sails
• 2 rebuilt Yanmar 2GM engines
• 1 used Cape Dory 25
• 2 used Santana 22s
• 1/2 of a BMW F800GS
• Out of debt.
  

But nothing beats a reliable, powerful, easy to maintain diesel engine when you are cruising in the Northwest, where 5 knot surface currents are not uncommon and the wind is ALWAYS on the nose when you are trying to push through Deception Pass.




So now we're actively entering into the fundraising portion of this program. I might have to start drinking cheap beer again to make this one work...

-g

Things That Are Driving Me Crazy

In lieu of an actual, complete update on our progress, I thought I'd post a list of some of the things about this boat that are driving me completely mad. In no particular order:

1. The factory wiring. I can't go back in time to watch them build our little boat, but it is becoming apparent that they did a lot of the work before the boat was put together. The wiring for the cabin lights for example, was obviously run along the top of the cabin liner BEFORE it was put in the boat and BEFORE the top half of the hull was put on. The result? The wires are trapped between two layers of fiberglass, with no way to get them out without cutting the hell out of the boat. Awesome? Or super-fantastic? You decide. On top of that, the "electrician" who wired our boat used duct tape to bundle the wires and to hold them in place behind fixtures. So that's great. The result is that any wires I can't pull through are just being cut back to the surface and left there. I have to figure out how to run new wires in a better fashion.
2. The bonding system. A random combination of solid wire and twisted copper wire zig zagging around the hull, connecting every piece of metal to be found? That's super fun! Getting it out? Next to impossible.
   
3. Cheap refit jobs. The previous owner was a sweet old guy, but from what I can tell, he didn't know a damn thing about boats. There are more mild steel screws and weird clamps and hooks on this boat than I can count. And I keep finding more everywhere I look. Like the little cup hook on the INSIDE of the starboard locker, which I found today by dragging my wrist across its nice, sharp tip. What the hell is that doing in there?
4. The Yanmar. The Yanmar Santa hasn't delivered a new engine yet, but no matter, because the old beast is still sitting there, mocking me. Today I started imagining how to get it out of the there, and I don't think I can do it. I don't see how it will fit through the opening it is supposed to fit through. Again, I have a strong suspicion that they installed that little sucker BEFORE they put the boat together. I see some serious destruction of the cabin in our future.
5. Propane parts. Why are these so hard to find? And why does no one know anything about where to find parts? And why do they sell propane lockers with hose seals that hoses don't fit through? And why don't they make a 90 degree 3/8" flare to 3/8 female fitting? And why is it that even though they don't recommend solid copper tubing for use on boats, all of the books explaining onboard propane systems show them made with solid copper?
   

Galley Progress

Here are some photos of the just-about-completed galley. First, the section roughed in with the fiddle rails in place and the propane burner installed:

Next, a little detail photo showing the drawer system and storage bin:

And finally, my Dad's latest creation. The storage system that completes the look. The top is white Formica and the wood is marine-grade birch plywood with mahogany for the details and fiddles. Once we stain the plywood and put the cabinet hardware on, it will match the rest of the interior wood (all of which is getting stripped and refinished, so matching should be pretty easy:

Just a Quick Update

The Yanmar Santa hasn't magically delivered and installed a new engine yet (what gives, Santa?), so we are moving ahead with other projects. Actually, I should say that Dad is moving ahead with other projects, because the Admiral and I have been traveling so much this summer that we haven't been able to devote as much time to the boat as we should.

But I found a few minutes to get over to the Boat Yard this week to check things out and get a little bit of work done. I arrived to find that the empty white space where there was once a badly designed galley has already gone from this:

To this:
It really is amazing! Dad has outdone himself here. You can see that the propane hose is run, and the power is also roughed in for the electronic igniter on the stove, which is a single burner built-in model. Here are a couple other shots of the galley construction.

This shows the drawer detail:

Check out all the added storage! Before there was almost no storage to be found, but with Dad's design we have two good sized drawers and a lot of dry storage for food and the like.

This next picture shows the view from forward:

We have sacrificed the port-side single berth in favor of a more functional galley, and in the process gained two huge storage spaces. A swing down cupboard door will give us access to the space you see here, and access to the space beneath that will be from the side through another swing down door.

Giving up the berth on that side of the boat was a hard choice because we didn't want to make too many big changes to the boat's layout. She is a classic, after all. But we still have the starboard side settee as a good sea berth and the four-foot wide settee we are left with on the port side will be a great spot to sit and read, play games, and eat. The increased galley space and storage make it all worth it.

Next up? It's time to start wiring. We know where the panels are going to go, but need to sit down and really plan out the AC system and the rest of the DC wiring. All of the old fixtures are coming out and all of the old wire is going in the trash with them.

Given my experience with our last boat's wiring scheme, I really want to take the time to do this part of the refit correctly. But that ain't gonna be cheap.

Also, we're still waiting for that Yanmar to magically appear.

-g

Some Photos to Back Up the Words

Here are some quick photos that can serve as proof of Hayden's narrative claims of actual progress on the boat.

Tearing Out the V-Berth

BEFORE Hayden's Epic Adventure: AFTER (Not pictured, Hayden's Chemical High):
Looks pretty good, eh? And for the record, those splotches that remain are original (messy resin work by the boat builders.) That ain't coming off.

The Galley

BEFORE Destruction:

AFTER destruction (but clearly BEFORE cleaning):
Dad is on the job of designing the new space, and has been green-lighted to have at it. Can't wait to see how it comes together!

A Proper Propane Place

Aft Lazarette (future propane locker) BEFORE:

Aft Lazarette DURING (patched, sanded, cleaned, and painted):

Aft Lazarette Becoming Closer to Useful (I know those slats don't look straight in the photo, but trust me, they are):

Aft Lazarette Acting Like a Proper Propane Locker: