This weekend I started tackling jobs that had to wait for the mast to come down. First off is the compression post beneath the mast. When I purchased Windsong, the post seemed fine, but as I sailed her a large crack started to form in the middle of it all the way down its length. I knew it would need to be either refurbished or replaced, and I am still unsure of what route to take.
By the looks of it, the post is made of two solid pieces of hardwood laminated together. The crack is where they are laminated together, essentially separating at the seam. I would just glue them back together and re-use the post, however, there is a considerable amount of rot at the base. The rot goes in/up a few inches, and doesn’t seem like something git-rot or some other penetrating epoxy can take care of. When touched, the rotted area just turns to powder. I may be able to scarf on a piece of wood on the bottom, but a full replacement is likely. Any thoughts or ideas regarding what I should do about the post would be appreciated.
Base:
Crack:
View from the head:
The rot
I had my dad come out on Sunday to help remove the bowsprit as well. Removal wasn’t too complicated, but the thing is a beast and heavy as can be. We both ended up with some injuries, though he got the worst of it. Many Downeaster owners say that their bowsprit is laminated hardwood, however, mine is one solid hunk of hardwood. I know a lot of DE owners have needed to replace it due to rot, and my boat has a ton of wood rot. I figured this would […]
There… over there on the right hand side of the picture, near the bottom… See that grey power cord snaking out of the compartment under the dinette seating? That has been our “permanent power wiring” for the heat pump since we installed it last winter.
Now, it is a proven Law Of Nature that the incentive for completing a project is proportional to the amount of the project remaining. Thus, you can approach project completion, but it is difficult to actually get there. This is one of those items. I have been “temporarily” supplying power to the heat pump by plugging it in to a convenient outlet, for a year.
In order to properly wire the heat pump, it needed to have its own breaker in the power panel. And a decision had to be made as to whether to supply the heat pump thru the inverter, or direct from the mains. And since the wiring for the water heater had a PO splice in it and was conveniently nearby, it needed to be replaced too.
But first: power thru the inverter or not? Although the inverter can power the heat pump (I tried it), we would never do that – the battery load is unsustainable. So then, why would I choose to power it thru the inverter, as that was the final decision? The reasoning went like this:
We have significant 12V loads on Eolian, even when plugged into shore power. Most notably refrigeration Significant 12V loads mean that the battery charger will be needed frequently, and will need to deliver significant power – not just a trickle charge. In turn, this means the battery charger will require significant amounts of power. The battery charger is actually part of the inverter, a […]
We pick up the story of Eolian’s heat pump from last week with two more articles about the installation. One is some finishing touches a week later and the second is the next spring.
As I mentioned last week, we are still putting the finishing touches on the heat pump installation. One of those finishing touches is to protect the flexible ductwork in the storage compartment under Jane’s berth from the heavy things that are normally stored there.
The first step was to cut some cleat stock out of some scrap lumber, and glue/screw it to the surfaces surrounding the ductwork, to provide a foundation.
Next, making templates out of cardboard saves lumber, and allows you to change your mind about the design at zero material cost.
Once I settled on a design, I used the templates to mark up the plywood, cut it out with a saber saw. Because everything is made to fit, it fits perfectly (OK, I was surprised too).
After all the pieces were cut, I glued on more cleat stock in the appropriate places, and then assembled the whole thing.
A little sanding, a couple of coats of paint, and it looks like a factory install (almost).
The heat pump which has been keeping us warm all winter was not really installed. Last fall when I got it, I kind of jury-rigged the install in order to get it up and running. Today I tackled one part of that jury-rigging: I positioned the heat pump in its final location and bolted it down – a prerequisite for us to be able to go sailing (wouldn’t do to have it flopping around down there).
In order to do this, it was necessary to make a giant mess of the cabin, […]
It’s always fun when someone runs across some new factory documentation and share’s it with us. Duane of Gracie Emmett found some factory spec sheets and copied them for us. Though they are specific to the DE32 I think that they would apply to the DE38 also. the layout of rigging is very similar. So enjoy and drop a thank you to him 🙂
Here are some PDF’s you can download and look at with acrobat reader.
DE 32 Deck Fittings PDF
DE 32 Rigging PDF
DE 32 Spars PDF
here are some pictures that Duane pulled from the documentation.
I had always thought heat pumps were the perfect answer for heating/cooling on a boat, but never considered one due to their cost. When I saw a two-year old one on craigslist for less than 1/4 the retail cost, I jumped without hesitation.
(An aside to those who do not know how a heat pump works: A heat pump is almost exactly like an air conditioner, but with the addition of solenoid valves which allow reversal of the freon flow. Did you ever notice that a running window air conditioner blows hot air outside? That is the heat which was removed from the cooler inside. If you were to physically turn the unit around in the window, it would become a heater. The solenoid valves allow this reversal of function without having to physically move the unit. And yes, the heat pump is also an air conditioner. One more thing: on a marine heat pump, the heat source/sink is not the outside air, but is instead the water. In Puget Sound, the water temperature ranges from about 55 degrees in the summer to about 48 degrees in the winter, so it is perfect for this.)
Here on the boat, we live on 30 amps. That is, the total amount of power available to us is a little less than what you can get from 2 household circuits. This requires us to be conscious of our electrical usage. With the current price of diesel, it is cheaper to heat the boat with electricity than using diesel in our diesel heater. To do this, we have used 3 space heaters (forward cabin, main saloon, aft head), each set on a 500 watt setting. Thus we were heating with 15 amps, leaving another 15 amps to run the water heater, refrigerator, espresso machine, […]
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