Maintenance Log for Syzygy

An earlier post describes the laborious task of removing the old tanks from the boat. We decided to make our own tanks out of plywood and epoxy–we figured this was the only way we could preserve the volume available to us under the settee, since the tank is such a funky shape.  I had come up with this idea from some book, and found more information about it in a special bulletin from West System (they cannot, however, recommend it for drinking water storage, for obvious liability reasons). Jon and Jonny did all of the construction on the tanks, and unfortunately it required one full week of labor, all day every day, just to make the tanks.  It took much more time to fit them into their spaces, construct brackets to mount them, mount the lids and seal them properly, etc. We used 3/8" marine grade plywood.  We epoxied a layer of fiberglass to all sides of all pieces of the plywood (including a baffle). We coated the outside surfaces with 3 layers of epoxy ("neat"; i.e. unthickened) and the inside with 5 layers of epoxy (all West System).  We followed the instructions in the bulletin mentioned above for a slightly resin rich ratio, specifically 6 pumps of resin to 5 pumps of hardener.  According to West System, it is the hardener that is the nastier stuff and that can affect the taste. After coating all the plywood pieces in this manner, the tanks were assembled with screws, leaving the lid off.  Generous fillets of epoxy were applied to all seams to thoroughly seal the tank.  Two holes were left in each lid for beckson ports. The tanks were brought below without the lids installed.  The tricky part was making brackets that would actually fit when we went to bolt it all down–there’s not much room for error there, and there is almost zero access to the outboard brackets that are on stringers against the hull.  Brackets consisting of two short aluminum angles (leftover mast steps–tumbled and anodized already) were glassed onto a small rectangle of plywood.  This mounting bracket was loosely bolted to the stringer.  We peanut buttered this rectangle with thickened epoxy and pushed the tank into place onto this mounting board.  We did the same with the two inboard brackets at the floor.  After it cured, we gently unbolted the brackets and removed the whole tank.  We then glassed the shit out of the brackets before reinstalling the tank permanently in place.  Finally, we epoxied the lid into place, reaching through the access holes to put the sealing fillet around the top seam (tedious and annoying step).  Finally, we glued the beckson ports in place with 5200 (epoxy doesn’t stick to plastic). We used plastic plumbing fittings and mounted them in place with 5200.

With 9/16″ samson xls.  The old stuff was ready to part, and friction filled.  Why 9/16″?  1/2″ is plenty strong enough; the deciding factor in sheets is the size that you want to pull by hand around the winches, for comfort and efficiency.  We like the heft of the 9/16″.

First time we went out sailing we broke it off when we practiced reefing.  Metal fatigue–failed at a bend.  We through-bolted two hooks to the gooseneck (one each side).  Eventually we may add a system for securing the luff from the cockpit (the leech reef lines are led to the cockpit now) but that is not high-priority.

The old docklines were 4 short lengths of unmanageable dry 3/4" 3-strand nylon; our new lines are 6 40′ lengths of 5/8" 3-strand nylon.  I bought 4 blue bumpers to supplement our deflated old ineffectual white ones.

There is way too much friction everywhere in our system.  We can’t do anything by hand, and even winching in the jib is a tedious process that requires multiple rests.  Replacing the lines will help a great deal.

We used 7/16″ Samson XLS for this application. We got a great deal on a spool of 500′, so many of our lines will be identical. I’m unconcerned.

My current ongoing battle is with the electrical system.  It consumes on average 40% of my time every workday.  And I discover new, terrible things about it every single day. The original setup was two equal sized house banks of 250Ah each; each bank consisted of two 6V Rolls 250Ah batteries in series.  This setup is not the ideal system for a boat that is trying to both maximize the capacity of the house bank and maintain the safety of a reserve supply for starting the engine while simultaneously minimizing the size, weight, volume, and cost of the batteries.  Two equal-sized house banks is a common, simple, effective solution for this.  But it is not the best.  It is better to have a large house bank of high-capacity deep-cycle (thick plate) batteries, and a separate low-capacity high-cranking (thin plate) small starting battery.  This system, though better, is more complicated for two reasons: the charging system must be more advanced in order to treat the two wildly different batteries separately, and the amount and complexity of wiring is increased. So we combined the two identical house banks into one large house bank, and bought a starting battery.   Jonny built a bombproof battery box for the starting battery next to the existing house bank.  We bought $200 worth of 2/0 cable to run new hot and ground lines to the engine (I put the new cable on the alternator and used the old cable for the starter).