It’s been a little while since I last updated on our progress.The days are getting longer. And you, gentle reader, are possibly wondering what we have been up to.
So let me tell you. The cabin side process is crawling along. The sides have been sanded and coated with three coats of epoxy. They look great. Upon the go ahead from my attendant shipwright we’ll sand them smooth and prime and paint them. With that done we can finally install the portlights throughout and be one step closer to removing the tarp that shrouds Amatheia’s noble form.
David, in charge of this phase of the project, says that he’ll soon finish the stringers for the underside of the side decks. Then we’ll be able to cut and install the plywood that will cover the side deck underside. I can’t wait.
Jon went to work on the lockers, cleaning, priming and painting. They are now wonderfully white, clean and sparkly, and that makes me happy just looking at them. We used an oil based paint for these.
We’ve started on the galley. We peeled off the countertop laminate, filled the large holes cut in the counter by the previous owner, removed the icebox tops and will be ready to install new laminate, sink and seawater hand pump as soon as I scrape together the funds to purchase them. We’ll build new icebox lids or repair the old ones, haven’t quite decided yet. I’ve seen some DE 32’s with a cutting board lid for the forward icebox, that sounds like a good idea to me.
We cleaned the icebox interiors with good old acetone, they cleaned up well.
My last post found me about ready to haul Bodhran in Gulf Harbour to determine whether or not I needed to replace my cutlass bearing. Upon hauling, my cutlass bearing was deflecting less than 1/16th of an inch, so it wasn’t the problem. I then investigated further and quickly found that two of the four bolts connecting my prop shaft to the transmission had come out and the other two were loose. Oops. Seems that when I put my engine back in in November and replaced those stainless bolts in the coupler with some mild steel ones I forgot to put on any lock washers and after a hard 4 hours motor sailing into 25 knot winds the nuts just vibrated themselves free. The fix took 15 mintues and $5 worth of hardware, this time including some $.15 lock washers. So I’ve got Bodhran hauled, Tiffany is gone for 10 days traveling with her mother, now what am I going to do? I’d been talking about building cockpit combings for Bodhran for 5 years or more and figured that now was a fine time to do it. Pat on Eeylos had lent me his transformer so that I could plug in all my power tools, Arek and Iwona lent me one of their cars to run errands in, the timing was perfect to start a building project.
Combings, for you non-nautical types out there, are a barrier built around the cockpit to keep water from the deck rolling back into the cockpit. They also normally serve as backrests for the cockpit seating. For one reason or another, the Downeast 32 was built with a wonderfully clear, clean deck that runs uninterrupted from stem to stern. In theory, any water reaching that deck is supposed […]
Bodhran ready to go back in the water after a week’s haulout:
Well Bodhran is back in the water after a 10 day haulout. The biggest item on the project list was to reinforce the mast step. My mast had caused the deck to buckle ¼ of an inch around the mast, so I pulled the mast off, jacked up the deck, and had a bracket fabricated to reinforce the area and hopefully fix the problem. We also painted the hull, scoured the prop and coated it with Peller Clean (a silicon anti fouling for bronze), cleaned, buffed and waxed the topsides, repainted the shear stripe, removed all the caulk and rot from under the caprail and injected thickened epoxy to fill the voids.
Tiffany and I taking a break in the shade of Bodhran’s hull:
The new mast bracket on top of the compression post:
It was a pretty full 10 days. Fortunately for us, Christian and his boat Irie were in the yard. Christian is friends with Greg and Bonnie and Bob and Cary from back in Bellingham. He and his ex were caretakers out at Eliza Island before taking off across the Pacific. It was nice to have an extra hand in the yard, a person to bum tools and advice from. He also happens to have a van and very generously let us borrow it to make runs into town for parts, groceries and beers. He also got us out one night to Tutukaka to visit Rick on Guava Jelly and play some music before Rick had to fly back to Seattle for the Winter. Distraction was also provided by Arek and Iwona who drove up from Orewa and took us up to explore the area north of the Bay of […]
In my time off I have been busy stripping and sanding various pieces of woodwork from the boat. I spend a few hours a day working on it and have developed a good rhythm and process to prepare the woodwork for varnishing. I ordered some Interlux Compass and Goldspar Satin varnish and will begin to apply them this week. As you can see below, I have a box full of cabinet doors, trim, all 3 doors and a few other random pieces already done. I went back to the boat this weekend with my friend Jeff to gather more wood, as I had finished prepping all the wood I had. We have pretty much completely removed all wooden pieces from the v-berth and I can start to feel the progress.
Stripped and sanded wood, ready for varnishing:
The v-berth, mid wood removal. You can also see that I’ve removed all of the headliner as well:
This past weekend I also sealed up the portlights (windows) with some silicon sealant. This is a temporary measure to eliminate leaks until I start to remove and replace everything. All of the windows leak so something needed to be done until I could replace them.
So this week I have quite a bit more wood to strip and sand, but will also start the varnishing. I am excited to see some finished product after all of the hours I’ve put into the woodwork. A lot of the pieces will need to be re-installed on the boat before I can finish them, as they need to have bungs (wooden plugs to hide the screws) installed before finishing.
I also cleaned up and tested out the 9.5 foot Achilles dinghy that came with the boat. It isn’t pretty, it’s quite ugly in […]
This project was submitted by Bob Salnick of DE45 Eolian This project is from the winter of 2004/2005
During the last months I had noticed that the amount of water being delivered out the exhaust pipe had been decreasing. (Water? Out the exhaust pipe? Read on.)
First, a brief lesson on marine engines… ours is ‘fresh water cooled’. That means that it is exactly like a car engine. Except that instead of an air-cooled radiator, we have a heat exchanger which is cooled with sea water. The engine coolant and the sea water do not mix, any more than the air and the engine coolant in a car mix – they are separated by the internal walls of the water-air heat exchanger (radiator) or water-water heat exchanger (marine engine). Once the sea water has picked up the waste heat from the engine, it is put to one final use: It is dumped into the exhaust gases to cool them so that high temperature plumbing is not required for the exhaust system. It exits with them. The injection point is at an elbow on the very end of the (water cooled) exhaust manifold.
I had cleaned the exhaust elbow once before by poking around inside it with a piece of wire – I am sure that I didn’t do a very good job, but I did get the water flowing again OK that time. This time, I decided to remove the elbow and acid pickle it to clean it completely.
It looked easy.
Tho the working space is very cramped, the elbow itself is not large, and it is held onto the exhaust manifold (painted blue in the picture) with only 4 nuts. Well, when I tried to […]
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