Mitch has been kind enough to let us republish a recent series of articles he wrote that are at the Observer News. I have included a link back to the original article on the Observer News website at the bottom of the article here.
The Last Leg
CAMBRIDGE, MD – The temperature outside was falling into the 30s. A brisk wind from the Northwest gripped the rigging, causing my sailboat to shudder. The gust-induced rocking seeped into the dreams of my semi-sleep state, causing wild images and an occasional note of fear. But I had nothing to fear. There was no concern about the wind; there was no chance of waves breaking over the deck. I wasn’t standing resolute to heavy weather as much as I was simply enduring it. I was tucked into the forepeak bed under an electric blanket — the deck of the boat was 12 feet above the ground. My sailboat is in a boatyard in Cambridge, Maryland, not off at sea sailing through a dark and stormy night.
The last leg is getting the boat into the water from the boatyard in Maryland, then sailing three days down the Chesapeake, then making it to Florida through the Intracoastal Waterway.
Although Cambridge is only 1,000 miles from Tampa Bay, I drove 3,200 miles to get here. Driving through snow showers from Indiana to western Maryland on my way to the boat made me question my plans. Snow and boats do not go together in my mind. Palm trees and beaches, yes. Snow, no. The thought of working on a boat and worse, sailing it, with snow falling does nothing to enhance my spirit of adventure. I’m simply not that adventurous. Fortunately, streaks of blue appeared in the sky and the temperature rose nicely as I […]
Bill Amt sent me an email recently about re-rigging his DE32 Saffanah because I had solicited information about the rigging specs on our boats. He has included the quote he got that lists the specifications of all the rigging. I will be putting that up soon. He also included a commentary on some of what he found on Saffanah that caused him to replace the rigging. So here is a link to the quote with the specifications in it DE32 rigging invoice. I have also uploaded the quote to a page under information on DE32’s. The invoice is dated 11/1/2010 to give some idea of how current the pricing is.
Scott Carle
From Bill Amt,
Some time ago I saw a comment on the DE website asking for information for standing rigging on the DE 32. I recently replaced all standing rigging and attached is a copy of the invoice giving both dimensions as well as prices for anyone looking to replace rigging.
As a side note, when I first purchased Saffanah, I had a marine survey completed before I bought the boat. The surveyor noted all rigging appears to be in serviceable condition . When I finally got Saffanah into a yard near my home this fall, I decided to un-step the mast to replace the spreaders rather than attempt to replace the spreaders on the stepped mast. I then got a chance to inspect the rigging close up with the silly thought that I was likely wasting my money removing the mast.
What I found was very disturbing to say the least. As I inspected individual tangs and connection points, I found many microscopic cracks in the stainless steel even tho there were no indications of rust. Two of the fittings were so badly weakened, after a […]
After our 2 weeks trying to get my batteries replaced, we were definitely ready to get out and do some sailing. With a nice freshly painted bottom and clean prop, we easily made 6 knots motoring out of the marina. We had planned on going north up to the Yasawa Islands, but a fresh northeasterly wind dictated that we go back out to Musket Cove on Malolo Island. We spent a couple of days on Malolo waiting for the wind to turn out of the south, enjoying the water and sunshine in the rain shadow of Viti Levu.
After a couple of days a light southerly picked up and we got an early start heading north through the Mananutha Islands. Once clear of the reefs and shoals around Malolo we put up the spinnaker and had a nice run most of the way up to Navadra Island where we picked up a commercial dive mooring and had the entire island to ourselves with a building southerly blowing across the island. Unfortunately the reason that we had the bay to ourselves was the tendency for the ocean swell to wrap around the island and make for a rolly night. After the sun went down, we were minding our own business watching a movie on the laptop when I heard a boat pull up outside. It was a couple of locals from Waya Island 7 miles away who’d come over to spearfish in the dark of the new moon. When there’s no moon out, fish tend to just sit there even when you shine a dive light on them making them much easier to spear. The fellas were planning on staying out all night fishing, and wanted coffee and smokes to help them through. I didn’t […]
Momentum is a funny thing. When doing a major boat refit/rebuild like this, momentum counts for a whole lot. More often than not, each project reveals 10 more problems than you expected. Each time these problems come up, momentum takes a hit and motivation goes down hard. Recently I’ve found myself half finished with many of my projects by hitting roadblocks, and a little lost on where to spend my time on the boat. Whenever I find myself lost, I revert to taking things apart inside the cabin. It is relatively easy work, and I feel like I am getting things done. However, these are mostly cosmetic issues that won’t get the boat back in the water anytime soon.
So with the weather cooling down, I decided it is time to focus my efforts on the monolith that is the Yanmar 4JH2E – my diesel engine. Not just the engine, but the entire engine room needs work before we splash. The primary issue in there is the need to replace the stuffing box. I could probably refurbish it, but will most likely go with a PSS shaft seal as a replacement. If you go back to the posts when I hauled out, you would see the broken propeller shim that caused a lot of vibration of the shaft and engine. This caused the shaft seal to leak, which in turn sprayed water all over the engine room. Unfortunately, to replace the stuffing box the shaft must be removed. In order to do so, one of 3 things needs to happen: remove the rudder, remove the transmission, or remove the engine all-together.
My plan for the engine is to completely clean it off of old paint and rust, replace all hoses and clamps, replace the rusted and busted air intake, and […]
One of the things I knew about Windsong when I first saw her was that all of the seacocks needed to be replaced ASAP. They are very old-school style Groco seacocks and all have corroded to the point where they are inoperable. What does that mean? If a hose were to leak, I would not have had a way to shut off the thru-hull and the boat would probably sink unless the hose or seacock was plugged.
Seacocks are meant to be the #1 insurance on the boat against sinking, and I didn’t have that insurance for the entire time I owned the boat in the water. Since I started the bottom job I have been contemplating how the heck to get the seacocks and thru-hulls off the boat. They were so corroded that unscrewing the thru-hull from the seacock was impossible. I spent many months contemplating my approach and did as much research I could on the subject. Unfortunately there aren’t many articles written on how to get this job done on old, corroded equipment. There are plenty of articles on how to take apart modern seacocks, but non on how to tear apart old ones with no hope of reuse.
I did, however, find a few blogs and forum posts from people who just cut the thru-hulls up with a Dremel or some other tool to help remove them. But with my limited experience in doing things like this, I really needed a step by step instruction on how the heck to do that. After some creative thinking and experimentation, I finally figured out how to do it and here I will show my process.
Here are the seacocks in the head with hoses removed. One is the sink drain, another is for the head itself, the other […]
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