We found her in Olympia last year. I drove up in July to take a look. “She sure deserves to be brought back” the broker said, glancing at the floor. I looked her over carefully with all the experience that a three-year owner of a 20 foot day sailor could bring to bear. We could tell she had been neglected, the big port lights were taped over with clear packing tape and there was evidence of water leakage from those areas. The headliner was kind of dingy. It looked like she hadn’t been out in awhile. I told the broker I would think about it and drove back to Portland.
“She sure is going to need a lot of work” said Jean, shaking her head as she thought of the old boat. “But I need a project” I said, “and besides we can get her cheap”.
The surveyor pretty much spent the day on her. He tapped and prodded, poked and pulled. He came with us on the test sail, a short 45 minute motor sail part way out Budd Inlet and back. The motor ran okay or it sure seemed to anyway. The hour meter didn’t work. As we stood in the parking lot after a long day of inspection the surveyor said “Any price reduction you get now will seem very small when considered against the cost of the restoration”. I didn’t know just how right he would be.
“She has bronze port lights, and beautiful teak throughout. That full canvas enclosure sure is nice and how about the single side band, the radar, the life raft and the dingy.” I made them an offer and they took it. The boat was mine.
In August we hold her home, snuggled on the back of a semi truck she […]
One day when I first got Windsong I opened up the door to the v-berth and it basically fell apart at the seams. The wood was intact, but had separated at all of the joints where it is glued together. It consists of a frame, two thin veneer plywood pieces, and slats. I decided to take the door home to begin its reconstruction and restoration. The door would then be my test piece for my interior woodwork restoration process.
Windsong has a ton of wood in the cabin, mostly teak trim or veneer with teak & holly sole. The varnish and what appears to be stain on the wood has dulled and needs to be redone on most pieces. Some of the bulkheads are plywood with varnish but I would like to convert most of them to white or off-white by either painting or applying formica to the surfaces. I have begun taking wooden trim and other pieces off the boat to take home so that I can do the woodwork during the week.
As you can see here, the trim is dull and dirty, and needs re-working. I plan on taking it all off so that I can paint or re-surface the vertical surfaces with something white. The galley counter tops, nav table, and other areas with formica surfaces will also be redone.
In the v-berth on both sides and in the starboard side of the cabin there are long wooden slats decorating the sides. These will also be taken off to be refinished and so I can clean and paint the surfaces behind them, also hiding the chainplates.
You can see here the large bulkhead which I want to be white, along with most other vertical surfaces.
The first thing I need to do is buy some aluminum bar stock and drill some holes in it. Then go out and measure… or… wait… no, first buy a solar panel then measure… no that’s not it either. Oh, I know! Install a controller FIRST, THEN buy aluminum bar stock, then drill holes, then measure, and then buy a solar panel!
Finally I settled on this process:
The first step is to approximate what your daily power consumption is. Sounds pretty straight forward, but it turns out that it depends much more on what kind of person you are than what kind of stuff you have that runs on electricity. An organized person would take their boat out for a week and every time they turned a light bulb on, transmitted on the radio, turned the radar on, ran the engine, or did anything else that would in any way affect the charge state of the battery. Unfortunately, even after 4 years of engineering school, and 4 years in the military, I’m still not an organized person.
First a checklist (because I like lists):
1) Figure out what you will be using the panels for. Trickle charging your starting battery while you’re away from your boat, or providing power to watch TV and run the microwave and dishwasher while cruising?
2) Budget? (In my experience any project on a boat costs exactly $1000)
3) Do an energy budget. See below for a poor example of one.
4) Where and how will you mount it? It needs to “see” the sun, the sun moves (so does the boat and the earth) and the more direct the sun the better, and yes, apparently this really matters.
$750 – ProSeries 1000 (West Marine) $ 25 ($12.50/ea X 2) – Extra Long Drill Bits (Local) $800 – 300 ft 5/16 HT Chain w/ X-large links on each end (www.1st-chainsupply.com) $160 – 60 ft #2awg marine grade wire (eBay) $ 15 – Nuts/bolts/all-thread (Local) $ 20 – Wire terminals (Local) $ 30 – 20 ft 3×12 AWG wire for switch (Local)
$1800 – Grand Total
-$200 – Sold 300 ft of old PC chain -$650 – Sold old manual Windlass on eBay (seriously)
$950 – Our Grand total
We dropped the hook in 60 feet of water in Tea Harbor, a narrow steep walled (at least underwater) inlet just north of Juneau, AK. Out came 150 feet of 5/16 inch Proof Coil chain. We backed down to set the anchor, and I thought to myself “I should really let out another 50 feet or so to improve the scope, especially in this 20 knot breeze, but if we do we’ll be too close to shore.” But I didn’t, and we spent the next 8 hours fretting about whether the anchor was dragging (I think it was) instead of sleeping. So why didn’t we just pick up the anchor, move over a bit, and drop it again? Simple: the next morning when we started to hand crank the chain with our manual windlass we had to take turns because it takes about 3 cranks to pull in each FOOT of chain!!! 150 feet, You do the math! After zero sleep, an aching back and arms, and a headache the size of Alaska I decided that we were going to get an electric windlass.
So, as usual, I did research. Way too much research to the point where I could spout out the dimensions of almost any […]
Piping coolant from a 3 cylinder fresh water cooled Yanmar engine to a hot water tank is simple. You just need a hot water tank that has piping designed for this purpose. The most difficult thing is finding the correct fittings. I read that the ports on the fresh water pump on a Yanmar are British Standard Pipe Thread. So you have to find a dealer to supply these special fittings. For another helpful resource check out this link:
http://www.boatus.com/goodoldboat/repower2.htm
Here’s what we needed:
Two Brass 5/8 BSPT to 3/8 hose barb fittings, Maryland Metrics, www.mdmetric.com 5 ft of 3/8 inch water heater hose 4 hose clamps Enough coolant to refill the system after draining it completely.
Step 1. Drain the coolant from the engine. I used an empty washer fluid bottle with a hole cut in the side that fit under the engine. Then I put a spare chunk of hose over the coolant drain valve leading down into the bottle. Then I opened the drain (and the fill) and the coolant fell right out.
Step 2. Flush the system with fresh water. Why not? It’s drained and needs to be cleaned anyway. So I filled it up a few times with fresh water and ran the engine briefly each time to flush the hoses.
Step 3. Drain it all again.
Step 4. Remove the plugs from the FRESH WATER PUMP only. Insert the 5/8 BSPT brass fittings.
Step 5. Cut the hoses to length to run from the brass fittings to your water heater and back. Clamp them in place.
Step 6. Refill the system with the right mix of coolant and water according to the bottle of coolant.
Some important considerations: Coolant is generally poisonous, so make sure your […]
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