The Adventures, Projects and accomplishments of a Server Geek and Sailor
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The Haul out - Part 2
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OK, so the boat is out of the water, and time is ticking down. I have to finish everything I want to do in the smallest amount of time possible...Time on the Hard is money! Fortunately, I had only a few things that I needed to do. The rest would be done by the boatyard.
I came back on Friday, and spent most of the day cleaning the
bilge. I wanted to put a coat or two of BilgeCoat in there, but it had
to be cleaned first! As it turned out, Friday was a Gorgeous day... unlike Thursday with the high winds and rolly seas... here is a panoramic pic from the deck of my boat...
It is also odd to look forward on your boat and see it almost overhanging a road....
they Started the buffing job, I gotta say I was pretty impressed with the work that they were doing. I stopped to take the following Pic, as it shows the before and after pretty well!
Then I started work on Painting the Bilge on Saturday. I got the whole thing painted, but that was all I had time for, as I had to get to the Tacoma Musical Playhouse for "Man of La Mancha" Rehearsals.... it was the start of Hell Week, meaning that we would be rehearsing and performing for the next 8 days straight!
I almost forgot to take a "before" picture...
The "After" shot.... see those bolts? Those are what hold the 800 pound keel on...
Easy clean up.... I used a chip brush... good thing too, as I had to leave in a hurry....
On Sunday, I spent the day SCRUBBING the Hull and the edge of the deck above the Rub Rail. As the boatyard was only buffing to just below the rub rail, it made the area above it look FILTHY. Well, it was, it was just that you could see it better... This was prep work for the buffing job I know I will have to do to that area, and the deck and cockpit as well, sometime in the near future.... a few hours of that, then it was off to rehearsal! that was the last bit of work that I would be able to do on it, as the yard was DONE with all of their work by Wednesday afternoon. that would have been Buffing the rest of the Boat, sanding the bottom, and applying 2 coats of Bottom Coat. I arranged to take leave from work on Friday so I could splash the boat, and return to Foss Harbor. As I promised earlier, here are the STARTLING Before and after pictures! I am making them pretty big, but you can click on any picture to see it in full view.
This first set, is also the most Dramatic! the Prop and Shaft, and the answer to the question I asked in the last blog entry "Do you notice anything missing here?"
Prop and Shaft before.... obviously... What was missing?
And the After Pic! And notice the Zinc Anodes installed on the Shaft... THAT is what was missing! ooooooo... Shiny!
yeah... pretty ugly....
Before...
after!!!
Nice, Clean and Smooth!
Before.....
AFTER! OOOOOOOOOOOOO.... Shiny!!!
Lynn is checking out the Raw Water intake... clean as a whistle now!
Now that the work was done, it was time to put it back in the water. Reinstall the Transducer? Check! Check the the thru hulls? Check. Pay the bill? Cough... Check. Ready to go!
once back in the water and underway, I noticed a HUGE difference in the way the boat handled! It really glides through the water now using much less engine throttle to do so.... I had to cut the engine toward the end of the slips to make the right hand turn... we were moving too fast! We stopped and got some fuel, and then it was out into the East passage.... where we fought the wind, waves and tide. The tide would turn in about a half hour or so, but the wind and waves were right in our face making it slow going.... 2 - 3 Knots...
This video was shot right after getting into the east passage...
The ride was NOWHERE near the level of the trip down, thank goodness, and I had a lot more fun on this trip. It took somewhere between 2 - 3 hours to get back, and our speed picked up a bit when we got into Commencement bay.... Docking the boat was a bit different as well, with the new handling characteristics, but we got it into the slip with no problems....
Till Next Time! and feel free to leave a comment below!
No, My friends, this post is not about one who travels.... on the
contrary, it is about that necessary piece of hardware that I rarely
used, because it was such a pain in the @$$ to use. Of course, if you
own or have owned an older Catalina 30 like mine, you know I am talking
about the Main Sail traveler..
The stock one that came with the boat (ergo it is about 37 years old) is curved, and could only be adjusted in a very awkward manner... that is: let out the main sheet, pull the pin for the side you want to go to, slide the stop to the location you wanted, re-seat the pin in that hole, move the traveler car, move the opposite stop to lock the car in place, then readjust the main sheet. as you might Imagine, I didn't use it very often, and I am sure that affected my sailing.
So I ordered an upgrade kit that Garhauer Marine Hardware had for my Catalina 30 (on sale too, I might add!)
This would allow me to get rid of this old out-of-date traveler in favor of a travele…
Okay, I'm a geek, I freely admit that. One thing I have accumulated over the years as a computer network administrator and technician is an abundance of old Hard Drives. I just never wanted to throw them out, even though they had failed or been replaced with bigger faster ones... now I know why!
I have always liked taking things apart... even when I was very young. My mom tells a story of how I took apart a crib, with no tools, while my younger sister was sleeping in it... but that's a story for another day. I found I had the specialized driver bit for removing the star drive screws that hold the hard drives together. I found two useful things in there - Magnets and Platters. There are two powerful Magnets in each drive, and between 2 to four platters. I have figured a way to use both of these in my boat... This post focuses on using the magnets.
This post focuses on using the Magnets that control the movement of the drive head (like the needle on a Record Player f…
This is likely to be a pretty long post, but it was a LOT of work as well. so bear with me....
To start putting it all back together, I was going to need to run the wires from where they were, to their new location in the Navigation Station. In some cases I just ran new wire from the appliance or device, and in other cases I just spliced into the existing wiring to make it longer so it would reach (I was NOT going to run new wire up the mast! LOL... ) In all cases it required using MARINE GRADE connectors. Why did I capitalize that, well, because it is important! Marine grade connectors won't corrode and will, preferably, have Heat Shrink on them to completely seal the wire. It is also important that you use MARINE GRADE wire, which is multi strand copper wire that has been tinned to repel corrosion. Corrosion is the ENEMY of electricity, and will not only keep current flowing, which will increase your battery usage, but will also cause the wires to HEAT UP, causing a boat …
Then I started work on Painting the Bilge on Saturday. I got the whole thing painted, but that was all I had time for, as I had to get to the Tacoma Musical Playhouse for "Man of La Mancha" Rehearsals.... it was the start of Hell Week, meaning that we would be rehearsing and performing for the next 8 days straight!
