A bit of fill and antifoul will sort it out.

[Slacko]

I've been an observer and occasional poster here for a few years now.
I've a bit of spare time while waiting for some air sampling to happen at work, so thought I might show my work over the last couple of years.
As the heading suggests, I hauled my yacht for annual antifoul and a few other jobs. A couple of weeks max!
We all know how badly that statement can go from reading each others topics here.
This hopefully is a picture of Haumuri.


Excellent that worked.
She is 45 ft, diagonal strip planked in Kauri with ring frames, designed/built in 1978 by Jack Cropp.
She is the last of 1/2 a dozen yachts of the same design.
She has a steel keel that is bolted to a round bilge. On the "survey" that was got at time of purchase, it stated the was evidence of some fizzing of the steel plate. When hauled the first time for antifoul it looked pretty rough with exposed steel and evidence of heavy pitting. Antifoul was slapped on, new anodes fitted and away we went for another year.
I was planning to go to the Marlborough Sounds for Christmas holiday, so got a rigger to check the rigging out.
He went up mast after first replacing the wire/rope halyard.
He didn't stay long up there and told me that I wasn't going out in Cook Strait with the state of the rigging as it was.
After a large bill that I was pleased to say didn't creep on the quote other than small bits of extra work, I used her around Wellington harbour over the next year.
For the next haulout, I purchased the materials to clean up the keel, fair it and make it an hydrodynamic appendage rather than the angry looking thing I had last seen.
On exit from the water, the waterblaster was ripping off piles of filler in sheets to reveal the true nature of what I had.
Ugly to say the least.
Anyone passing, some with experience to support their comments said it was knackered. Lots of sucking through teeth etc.
Quickly coming to the realisation that a lick of paint wasn't going to fix the old girl up, I carried on with the other work as a distraction.


Yes, that is a hole!!


OK, so I need a new keel.
I did ask just for fun at the chandlery down the road. The girl behind the counter started to look for info in the filing cabinets which was a bit of a worry!!

Interested?

[Peerie Maa]

Looks like it needed more anode as well. What is inside the fabrication? Is it worth thinking of casting a lead keel under a wood skeg?

[Tom Robb]

If you go w/ another steel fin, it may be wise to haul every year to check it.
I wonder if Cor10 steel would survive better. A wood fin and lead ballast bulb, as Peerie suggested, would be sweet.
Really pretty boat, BTW, even if she's become that hole into which one pours cash.
G'luck.
Tom

[Sailor]

The hole into wich you pour cash is CLEARLY visible in that closeup of the keel. Sorry she's out of sorts. But a few bucks and she'll be right as rain!

[Slacko]

She was eating anodes alright. The prop one especially. I think there was so much exposed steel that the anodes couldn't cope or something.
There were lots of questions and not too many answers so I whacked on more anodes and antifoul and dropped back in. $20 a day sitting on the hardstand by the way.
I got a massive quote for design and engineering of a fin/bulb keel from a hotshot in Auckland.
In my head I was going to do the whole thing for the price of his drawings.
I wrote to the designer just in case there were still drawing available. He is long retired and had no drawings to offer.
He did advise not to put any more lead on her, not that she needs it.
I next tracked down a local designer Bruce Askew.
He took the lines off her and we had a few meetings to figure how to approach the job.
We did talk about fitting a wooden fin and lead bulb among other things but opted to replace like for like with modifications.
As Jack the builder said in his letter to me, there had been big advances in coating technology to protect the steel.

Peerie - The old tank contained the lead/steel shot/concrete ballast and on top of that was a black water tank that flushed itself when you moved (via a hole at the front top and one at the rear bottom). Not legal these days, although there are still plenty of yachts/launches in NZ with no holding tanks.

I got Bruces drawings, some quotes for a fabricator and in a fit of energy lifted her out again.
At the end of the day travel lift operator lifted her up an inch off the cradle so I could drop the keel.
A bit of a daunting job was in front of me.


I undid the keelbolt nuts inside one by one, and down it went onto the cradle.
The yard boys said I should buy a lottery ticket that night.

The offending article.


As you might see, there is no top plate on the tank. The bolts were still shiny SS even though from inside, it looked a real mess with rusted mild steel floors and rusty nuts.

[Peerie Maa]

Well, now's the time to get those steel floors out and galvanised. Have a professional design the sacrificial anode fit for you, or contact your equivalent of these for a package: http://www.mgduff.co.uk/

[jackster]

Well done Slacko (you are giving your name... well... a bad name!! ) !!!
You'll be back in for the June sailing season!...?
Wait!... June isn't sailing season there, is it!?
Sorry!
Keep up the inspiring good work. And continue keeping us posted, please.

[boattruck]

Slack, Steel is as easy as anything to build this thing again, if you look to the coatings and zinc system it will out last us both...I'm sure you were hoping to be sailing rather than building, but...Cheers, BT

[Michael D. Storey]

Your last pic is really very interesting. I can not remember seeing planks ona diagonal before. I know thsat they were done that way on the build-up done on the Constellation here in Baltimore, but I doubt having seen it on a yacht.
Thnx

[Slacko]

Yep, those steel floors definitely came out.

The diagonal planking is a bit more common here, but not so common in the configuration I've got. There is only one layer 1 inch thick, glassed over the outside.
The designer for the new keel, Bruce was scratching his head looking at how she was constructed, which made me sit up. He said that Jack (the designer/builder) was a canny bugger.
As part of the new keel design, he asked what I planned to use her for. I mentioned that I wanted to go down the West Coast around Fiordland for an extended cruise. The drawings that I got therefore reflected sailing in the roaring 40's with hundreds of miles of prevailing lee shore with no shelter.
The photo showing the steel floors shows all of them except one the other side of the bulkhead up front, that connected the keel to the mast support post and bulkhead. The new design uses 10 oak floors, so it got beefed up just a little!
Every boatbuilder who comes on board has a good look around as well with regard to construction.

The next job was getting the lead out of the old keel and getting rid of the remains of the steel. Some sweat was given up on this. I also sacrificed quite a bit of cutting equipment in this operation.
The Stihl 012 with cutting disk made short work of the steel, easy.



The lead proved harder to break up. I quickly confirmed that metal cutting gear doesn't work too good. The wood cutting gear with plenty of lubricant was the answer. Putting the skillsaw across it for the first cut was a leap of faith, successful but ultimately futile as the block was 400 mm wide so I couldn't get a deep enough cut. Sabresaw wasn't manly enough (too slow).
The chainsaw came out to play!! The small McCulloch that I had for sawing firewood gave up it's life in a brave, stubborn way with moment of hilarity. It stopped once when I lifted the throttle for a moment. On inspection it was clear what the problem was. The vibration had caused the carburetor to fall off. Phew, that was lucky!
At this moment I would like to apologise to anyone here that was trying to relax on their vessel in Seaview Marina, Wellington on Boxing day 2009. That little saw had a particularly tough exhaust pitch to put up with.
Anyway, it eventually completely fell apart, but still ran!
I went to the local hardware store, and with the neighbours in mind bought an electric chainsaw. Wow, nice and quiet. The new blade went through the block like a hot knife for the first cut. Part way through the 2nd cut the internal clutch gave up the ghost, damn!
I took it home, stripped it and gave it a good clean to get rid of the lead chips. I got it run enough to cut some wood, and took it back to the store. They decided to send it away for repair, so I was without saw again.
I bit the bullet and bought myself a petrol chainsaw. Using this hurt a little coz it was now my new firewood saw.
Now at least after short work, I had lumps of lead I could carry (just).

This photo shows just how bad the keel was once all the fill that someone put in fell out. Scary to say the least.
I couldn't do this and be able to sleep at night. Imagine seeing a yacht you once patched up, upside down on the news with no keel and missing crew!



This is the leading edge of the keel showing the side plates not connected except by a bit of epoxy.

[johngsandusky]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing.

[Slacko]

One of the other guys in the yard was melting ingots for ballast, so I offered to buy his kit after he finished as it worked pretty well.
The pot is made out of a 6 kg gas bottle with the top cut off, and the heatshield is a 9 kg bottle cut to suit. Typical Kiwi use what you've got attitude. The burner is a concentric ring unit available from any Asian cooking suppy shop.
All I needed to supply was the regulator and bottle which I took off the yacht BBQ.
Here it is assembled on my mobile smelting rig with pavers for a bit of insulation. The trailer got it up to a nice height to work.



The raw lumps are in the top right corner. The electric chainsaw had obviously come back from repair by this stage and was being used to knock the lumps down a bit more for melting.

I got 2 sizes of moulds with my kit. The bigger one was about 12 kg on average and the smaller triangular are about 1.5 kg.



I melted from memory about 1500 kg this way over a few sessions, with no serious problems. I needed quite a bit of extra lead, so had to buy it from the local scrap metal guy.



Pouring lead into the steel tank was the next biggie.
I had nowhere to set up to be able to do this as I live in a residential area.
Pouring lead into the steel keel was going to cause it to buckle without additional support.
The general consensus was that burying it and packing dirt hard to the surface was the most successful method apparently.
I'm pretty sure the haulout yard wern't going to be happy with me digging up their asphalt hardstand.
The welder who made the tank suggested a water jacket to keep the steel cool had been done.
This was fraught with multiple ways this could go wrong, ending in explosions of molten metal, fire and general mayhem. I've worked in Steel mills so have seen how badly it can go wrong.
I decided to take the wimps way out and pack the ingots into the keel using cement and the steel shot to pack out the airgaps left, weighing all of this as I went. This went pretty well and was achieved over a couple of days. The inside of the tank has metal tabs through it as part of the construction so these also support the material in place.
I then poured a 2 inch layer of cement over the top to make it nice and smooth.
Then a heavy layer of fibreglass went over the top as icing, making it up to a total ballast of 2 tonnes.
By the time this was all done I had decided it would have been a whole lot easier to get a NACA fin fabricated and hang a cast bulb off the bottom of it.
Hindsight is 20/20 as the saying goes.
I would have lost the self steering ability the longer keel gives, but the performance gains would have been massive.
I am happy with the tradeoff that I've made anyway.

Here is a shot of the keel after picking up from the sandblasters with 2 coat primer on it.



It was fabricated within view of the yacht and blasted about a km down the road, so the topheavy loading wasn't a problem for transport.
I lifted it off the trailer with a mobile engine hoist, and it was ballasted sitting beside the yacht.

[Slacko]

While this was happening there were also a couple of other issues to sort out.
The new wooded floors needed to be installed.
There was also the Samson post that snapped off with rot in a storm. I was looking at it dubiously, so one of the bow lines was always on the winch.
The cockpit floor was straining any water that got in there at best.
There were many other little leaks about the place and the stanchion mountings were decidedly dodgy.

I started by getting the skilsaw out and started cutting the glass over ply deck around the hole left by the Samson post looking for solid structure.
I ended up standing in the hole, with rotted deck beam removed, and king plank arrangement also cut back to good material.
No photo's of the process, but the wood butchery had started!
This shows the finished repair with 2 layers of 12 mm ply and plenty of glass and West over the top.


This also shows the beginnings of sanding the antiskid. It was sand, set down with epoxy. Great non-skid surface but it had at some stage it had suffered a repaint with 2 pack paint that was a bit flaky (no prep at all by the look).
So I had to sand it all off. The sanding quickly escalated from a beltsander, to a 10" variable speed grinder with a rubber pad and 25 grit paper. The paper was only just rougher than the deck, and any heat caused the paper to lose all bite. If I didn't keep it reasonably flat the sander would bite through and the plywood would disappear. I was getting about a metre of side deck done per hour on average. The Chiropractor was the winner from this operation. I could only really do an hour of this a day with out serious downside for my back (and sanity).
My wife was also sanding the inside of the cabin. She is able to keep at this far longer than I can, sanding for hours overhead with a mouse style unit.
I turned up one afternoon after work and was shown an area over the Forepeak. After sanding the paint off there was a couple of plys completely missing underneath. The fixed ports in the deck had been leaking, with the water staying inside the ply and running along the end of the ply for awhile before dropping out over the sail locker further back.
The skillsaw came back out and it became clear it was easiest to take it back to the cabin upright side and insert fresh ply right across. The curve of the cabintop is pretty severe here with 2 layers of 12 mm ply again. I cut the top layer of the existing cabin top back 50 mm extra front and back for the top layer of ply to land on.
I also had to make the timber moulding that formed the curved edge and for the plywood to land on either side of the cabin for one side.
The first layer got glued and screwed to these timbers with the middle being held up by the kingplank that runs the length of the cabin roof.
This was obviously how it had been done from new because the curve was perfect. The second layer was glued and screwed down over the top and fitted nicely as well.
I liked the extra light and air the big hole allowed into the area, so an opening hatch was purchased and cut into the plywood I had just glued in.
An oak frame was made up and glued/screwed into place.



The tarp is over the cockpit because by the time this photo was taken I must have attacked the cockpit also.
The lump of square plywood in shot was screwed down to the hatch frame for quite some time after this to keep the water out.
I had also removed all the deck fittings and stanchions and drilled the screwholes out with a cone cutter big enough to see that there was no rot.
There were a few small patches of ply that needed to be replaced, and in a couple of spots the Sheer clamp had have new material scarfed in due to the leaking stanchions. Boatbuilders love Stanchions, they are the source of most of their income where repairs are concerned.
The Fein really came into it's own here, cutting scarfs inside small lockers was heaps of fun.

All these holes were then filled with Epoxy and glue powder.
I ended up with virtually no penetrations in the deck. It would be nice if it could stay that way!
The backstays mountings were actually in the worst state.
I spent many hours upside down 1/2 sticking out of small deck hatches learning how to block out the pain.
I also learned to ignore the fact that I was stuck, and calmly extricate myself without freaking out.
I didn't document this to the usual standard here sorry, but I did lose a camera at one stage.
It could have been built in somewhere maybe!!

[Slacko]

The next job was the cockpit. I managed to get a tarpaulin cover to stay on this for the duration of the work back here as there were some pretty big holes for the rain to get in otherwise.
I replaced the cockpit floor and part of one side of the floorwell, but have no photo's of this work at all. This must have been when I lost the camera.

I then had an area of rot that I had found by poking behind the winch base.
I cut the side of the cockpit off to reveal some pretty ugly stuff. I'm glad I had started at the bow because this was looking pretty daunting even after the work I had already done.



After cutting the outside and top of the coaming away from the winchbase it was removed easily to show the remains of the deck underneath. Ouch!!



This was a solid block of Kauri that was too far gone at the bottom to be useable again.

The side deck was removed forward to a sheet join and sideways to over the stringer up underneath.



The inside coaming was also removed, I think to get at the cleat underneath that was rotten. I was able to use it as a pattern to replicate the opening shape. The cleat was replaced, and a new piece of ply slid in under the coamings. Butt blocks were used under the deck where the ply was joined to the original. The decks are single layer 12 mm with 200 boat cloth over the top which is minimal.
I took the rotten winch block home and laminated a block out of Kauri.
This was then shaped to match the old one, but I made it level with the coaming to correct the poor lead from the genoa car that constantly caused overides. I was surprised how quickly I got it to the shape i needed, as I was learning at every step what to do.
I think I used a belt sander quite a bit which doesn't quite meet the usual methods here.

New block snugly in position with plenty of Epoxy. The winch is bolted through as well, so I was happy with the attachment.



New Inner coaming fitted, and also shows the new knee that went into the doorway.


Mmmm Shiny with two topcoats on.

[Sailor]

Ok there should be a sticky. This is a great thread.

[Slacko]

As the last photo above shows, I took the opportunity of getting the cockpit painted while the tarp was still up.
It worked well because I gained valuable tips in using the epoxy paint on a smaller area than the entire deck/cabin.
I got a bit of a shock how well it came up actually.



I had taken a pattern from the old keel shape to compare with the new top plate to see how it was going to fit.
Once the new keel shape was lofted out it came clear that the new top plate was longer and wider at the front. I was going to have to add to the shoe that it sits on.
A few phone calls later I had someone who knows what they are doing on the job. The pro boatbuilder did this and bound it all together with 2 layers of triaxial cloth and pox that ended up about 5 mm thick in total.

He then moved on to the Oak floors. These were shaped and prepared for installation.
The plans called for coachbolts in each end of the floors through the stringers, bolts through the floors and into the deadwood.
They also to be screwed to each plank and glued down.
After a bit of discusion, it was decided to drill the floors for the keel bolts prior to installation, then use these holes to mark the top platte of the keel for drilling. This allowed the holes to be drilled in a bench press and get them nice and straight.
So the interior needed to come out to access the stringers.





Visitors to the old girl now freaked out about how much work I had in front of me putting her back together.
Tony wasn't adverse to advising me how to progress with the other jobs that I was doing so I got boatbuilding lessons included in the hourly rate. This gave me a heap of confidence that I wasn't making a complete hash of things.
He even didn't charge me for the time we spent gas bagging about all and sundry.

So now I had a keel sitting beside a yacht with all the goodies required to make the one. Gulp!!

[Phil Y]

Nice work, looking good. My boat Balia has 2 keels of similar construction, with the bottom 1/4 or so filled with lead. Based on the way condensation forms on cold tassie nights she seem to have some framing inside the steel shells. As far as I can tell the metal is in good nick.

[/IMG]

[Slacko]

The rest of the deck/ cabin had a couple of coats of epoxy primer, then final fill of all the bits you don't see until it is all the same colour. A couple more coats of primer got me to this point.



I now drilled a couple of hundred holes in this nice surface to mount all the deck hardware. All the holes were drilled oversize and countersunk on the deck side. This gives the deck sealant a place to make a nice gasket. The hole was then reamed with a small bottle brush to coat the holes with unthickened epoxy. The holes then got redrilled with the correct size for the screws/bolts.
I then put 2 coats of 2 pot undercoat over this.
Ohh, and sanded lightly between each coat just for fun. I stuck to the min/max coating times as well, just make it more fun.
The 2 topcoats were then applied to the areas that wern't going to get antiskid.
The first one went well and looked pretty nice. Another bit of sanding then the final coat.
This was all being done out in the open, and the weather had been playing nicely as well.
I had to go away for work at this point, so the wife (who had been involved in this from the start) put this coat on.
When I got back the final result was really disappointing. All the horizontal surface that were painted from half way down the boat were flat and a bit rough.
I was confused because nothing had changed other than it taking a bit longer with only 1 of us working on it.
We sanded it back again and gave it another coat. I was using about 1 litre per coat, so while expensive it wasn't too bad.
Same result!
Spookily, at this point there was a seminar from the paint manufacturer at the local chandlery.
I went along and learned that even getting an early start there was no guarantee that the paint would go off enough to be able to handle the bit of dew I was getting at this point in the season. I was finished by 2pm, getting dark at about 8 pm.
So, I needed to cover a 45ft yacht (no mast) for 48 hours while I did the final coats.
Temporary tarps were considered, but watching one blow away from another yacht put this in perspective.
I had to bite the bullet and pay for a shed for a few days.
At this point I decided to fit the keel, so I didn't have to go back to the longterm storage location I had been in.

To follow!!

[Crux]

While I wait for the next installment, it has reminded me to go back and look at photos of my own renovation project. I relate well to how often a small project on our wooden boats grow as the extent of the problem becomes apparent under all the paint and detritus of years of use/neglect! For me it was a small cockpit and deck leak led to the replacement of the both cockpit and deck, and while I was at it, all the rest....

[John B]

When I got back the final result was really disappointing. All the horizontal surface that were painted from half way down the boat were flat and a bit rough.

Same thing happened to me last year . I recoated the coverboards/ inside bulwarks an extra couple of times because the dew was getting it. It was touch dry at the end of the day but just not quite enough. In the end it was a matter of cutting some 12 inch strips of light mdf and just propping it over the rails for the length of the boat and that was enough to get it through the critical time.. around 5 or 6 am when the dew wants to form.
Its a great thread, keep it coming.

[Slacko]

Yeah there is no such thing as a small job.
When asked when I was relaunching at this stage, my standard reply was Tuesday.
So, to fit the keel I needed to get the yacht out of the cradle, put the keel in the cradle.



This cost a box of beer to the courier company across the road.
Then lower the yacht over the keel, got her lined up with where they are supposed to meet.
Plumb bob and lines marked on the bow and front of keel with plenty of eyometer squinting from anyone interested later it was decided that we were ok.



Next trick was using a loooong drill, mark the top plate of keel with a scratch.
Yacht then back out of the way to drill the holes for the top plate. Crikey they were where they should have been!
Yacht back down and double check all the bolts fit, wahoo!



Yacht back up, smother the top plate with 5 litres of epoxy and glue powder like a big birthday cake.




Finally the two are joined together, bolted up and left in the slings overnight to harden off without moving.
Rental for the day of the travel lift, Ouch! I did also get the services of the operator (who happened to be a boatbuilder), who was awesome and helped me get it done before the goop went off. That was alot of epoxy setting off by the minute!!
That was one tough long trip into the unknown with the potential for trouble giving some loss of sleep in advance.
In the end it went swimmingly, with only a couple of things that needed a bit of attention as I went.
The lift operator got to leave on time at 5 pm, so everyone was happy! I went home and slept well that night.

I then just needed to fair the joint smooth which involved encapsulating the nuts underneath. For this I used polystyrene sheet attached to the steel with epoxy, shaped with a diskgrinder in the end. It melted it to a nice crust for the epoxy to stick to over the top, then glassed over with a couple of layers of cloth.
Some of the comments around this were interesting. Guys crusing the yard just couldn't understand that the glass had no structural purpose and was simply to stop drag.
It was a painful job really, getting fibreglass cloth to stick upside down.
I was now ready to go in the shed.
My deadline was approaching as well. My wife was about to give birth to our first child, so I knew things boat related were about to hit the back burner for awhile.
No pressure!!

[Slacko]

I'd like to apologise to the Northern viewers for the gratuitous blue sky in those shots at this point too.
You must be getting some soon, surely!

[Garret]

Thanks - the apology was needed

Quite the project & I bet the travelift time was not cheap. Looks like a heck of a job though!

Hope all goes well with the birth!

[johnw]

No problem, I lurk on this thread just to dry out.

[Slacko]

It was great see her travelling down the road in one piece heading for the shed, no photo's as I was directing traffic. Some people shouldn't have a driving licence, seriously.

Once in the shed I got another coat of 2 pot undercoat on and 2 more topcoats on, with plenty of sanding and cleaning in between. All this paint was applied with 100 mm foam rollers cutting in with disposable brushes. Everything goes in the bin at the end of each coat.






I started mounting some of the bling that had been sitting in boxes in the forepeak for quite some time. This was the most satifying part of the whole job I think.
The toerail stripe also got touched up at this point.
In between coats, I etch primed the keel to kill off any residual rust from sitting around for awhile then a couple of Epoxy primer coats over the top.
The first coat of antifoul went on to the touch dry primer to give them a chemical bond.



Late finish, but looking good tucked up for the night! This is all cleaned up ready to come back out the next morning.
Wickedly expensive way to work on your boat, but you can kill off a heap of work when it's not weather and daylight dependent.

After a week or so to harden off nicely I then spent most of a day masking the top coat and scuffing anything exposed for the antiskid paint. I traced around cans of various sizes to give nice radius for the corners, then cut the masking tape away.
The antiskid is rolled on with a high solids roller, and it was pretty tricky stuff to get right. The first 2 coats looked a bit of a dogs breakfast, but the 3rd one came up pretty good. In hindsight breaking the antiskid up into smaller panel would have made this easier but I don't like the look of that.
If you are real fussy it wouldn't suit, but it is excellent at doing what you want an antiskid to do, ie stopping you from falling over on a pitching foredeck.
Some of the other products that look nicer are really crap at the basic reason for putting it there, I've spent enough time doing foredeck on racing yachts to be able to tell from the dock.



Masking tape off, final bits still to do.




This shot also includes a Townson for the Piedy fan up North a little.

[John B]

Looks more like a Gulf 30.

[seedy]

She looks great. You worked hard and thought on your feet and deserve every bit of how good it looks!

I didn't even notice the blue skies since it's that way nearly every day where I am. Although it is freezing cold here today, low front pushing through, probably won't make it up to 70° F, so people will probably be found perished in their cars still wearing the sandals they foolishly put on instead of woolen layers.

[Slacko]

I won't disagree with you John, it just had the look so I assumed it was a Townson.
I just checked the sail number on the bow and you are right.

[John B]

My Dad had a Gulf 30 and there are few transom hung rudders in the Townson world. Good ole Beau Birdsall, designed a mean hull but often the cabins left something to be desired.Not that thats a bad one. Did you ever end up talking to the young bloke I put on to you? (with the Cropp at Okahu bay)

[Slacko]

I emailed him once, but didn't hear back I think.
I hope he has stuck with it, or it went to a good home.
Another one got broken up in Wellington a few years ago. It was a little older with triple diagonal skin that had some holes that you could look through all 3 skins.
Water had got between the skins from the toerail leaking.

[Phil Y]

Looking great! I'm seriously thinking about nixing the teak overlay on my deck, and going to a finish like you have there.

[Ian McColgin]

Brilliant job. Now she knows you love her.

[Slacko]

I'm on the homeward stretch now!

The next step was getting the mast dropped back in.
I had fitted a new masthead combined trilight and anchor light, and put the VHF aerial up there as well.
The old one had been rail mounted, which I kept as well just in case the worst happens and I lose the mast somehow.
I also ran spinnaker halyard and topping lift for the spin pole internally as she had a fixed topping lift previously.




Big crane for the job, but the crane company is a kilometre down the road and their small rig was out on another job.
I only had to pay for the small one as this unit was idle at the time.

I spent a day sanding the antifoul back to get rid of some flakey stuff, which I since found out may have been caused by the incredible zinc eating abilities of of her as she was. The prop was like swiss cheese when pulled out, and the antifoul around this part of her had been a problem the last few times out. The stray currents flying around apparently can attack the antifoul.
I wet sanded with an airpowered 1/4 sheet sander which worked pretty well, but messy.
Two coats of ablative had her looking good at this stage.

I had the foresight to test run the engine at this point.
I rigged a hose filling a bucket with the raw water inlet sucking out.
I have a Ford D series 4 cylinder Diesel that is rated for 55 hp. She is original, big, heavy, smelly, noisy and requires some assistance to start up (small squirt of Ether).
I set the overfuel device that makes her run up to full revs on startup, then click back to the throttle setting I set (fast Tick over). On this test run she fired OK, but I could hear that she hadn't hit full revs and was sitting there at reasonably high revs.
I pulled the stop lever, and she went quiet. Repeated attempts to get her going at this point failed until the battery went flat. I have another Nissan engine in my shed which is earmarked for installation, but now wasn't the time!
I was chatting to a work colleague who said he would have a look at her, which sounded great.
A couple of hours later he had stripped off the injector rack, cleaned it up to free the stickiness, and reassembled.
He then bleed all the lines and injectors and I had a noisy, smelly engine back.
His only request of me was to not tell my mates to give him a call if they had similar problems.

Looking like a yacht and going back in the water, yeah!



There was a not insignificant amount of water filling the bilge up, which caused some consternation and discussion with the yard boys! When asked if I wanted to take her back out, I hummed and tapped my feet for long enough to see the flow was already slowing, so I sucked it up and finished the drop. It was coming from down the back somewhere, so I assume it is the rudder tube, which must have dried out. This is the only place where wood could possibly be exposed to seawater. I could see the shaft wasn't leaking.

I went into a marina berth and spent that afternoon and evening monitoring the water level, that never actually even set off the automatic bilge pump.
My wife and I had a takeout Curry on board that evening and I slept like a baby that night with the relief!



I spent the next couple of days doing the final rig up for sailing and taking some of the gear off from the rebuild.


As you can see the waterline changed a little, but I've since moved the anchor chain further back in the boat to suit the new hawse from the anchor winch and it lifted an inch or so.

At this point I told my sailing buddies that she was floating, and ready to go home to her mooring at Clyde Quay Boat harbour, so we sailed her home. Going down the fairway of the marina we had the wind on the nose, so the main went up. We turned the corner into the main channel so she heeled over, the genoa got unfurled and we sailed out of the marina. Happy Days!!

[Slacko]

There is still heaps of jobs to do before I'm reduced to wear and tear, but it was great to get her back out sailing.
My wife is now weeks away from giving birth and all work stopping for a couple of months at least.



Adjusting the Genoa luff tension.


Back on her mooring, 2 years in total after haulout!!



I never thought it would take this long, but I was there working away most weekends, and in the evenings.
In hindsight I would have been better to buy a small industrial building and get her moved in there.
The additional cost of the mortgage would have been offset by being indoors and able to work in all weather and later into the evenings. It would have cut the job duration massively.
If it weren't for the current economic climate, you could probably sell it at a profit as well after completion, or easily lease the building.
The initial extra hassle of making or buying a cradle and getting her transported to the shed put me off this choice.
Again I was expecting 6 months or so at worst!!

A year later I am now slowly getting back into doing all the extra work as we get used to being parents.
The latest job crossed off was getting the new anchor winch wired up and running. As a test I went out for a spot of fishing in the harbour with my Dad and caught some big fat Kahawai, which got smoked. Very satisfying!
The anchor winch worked great, putting down full chain rode in 20 metres of water.
The only issue was, on retrieval I hooked some 1" rope. I've no idea how much, but the winch got a good workout and I had to lean over the bow to slice it through with the fish filleting knife.
I need to get the Pushpits and pulpit welded up and fit lifelines so I can go racing legally now.
I've done a couple of Friday night rum races over the summer with a couple of wins in the bag.
Our club has a policy that the rum handicaps are set so that most yachts will win at some stage of the season.
If you are the only one in the fleet that hasn't won that year yet, you are pretty much guaranteed it.

After the relaunch, I lit the BBQ outside the shed one afternoon and had an openboat and a few cold ones to celebrate.

[Slacko]

I think I said no work, not no sailing.
I'm more of a sailor than boatbuilder, and that probably meant things took longer than they could have because I was racing still at the same time.
Not as much, but still there at least once a week.
The yacht I race on is sitting behind mine in the last photo above by the way.