Maintenance Log for Syzygy

(pictures will be added when I have time to sit down for more than a minute)

Maybe I should say “replaced”, but I don’t consider 30 year-old stiff corroded 14 gauge wired snaked from the chainplates all through the overhead of the boat before going down to the keel bolt any form of lightning protection.  The cables need to be substantial–I used 4 gauge–and more importantly they need to run as straight as possible down to the keel bolt.  The idea is to protect the lightning from travelling down the shroud and then jumping from chainplate straight to the mast–which would happen to be right through the center of the boat where you could be standing at the time.  So each chainplate got its own 4 gauge wire, and the three wires on each side join up behind the settees (a bolt holds the terminals together), then one wire goes down alongside the watertanks, underneath the settees, on each side, to a keel bolt.

There are four chainplates on each side, but the aft lower and the intermediate backstays are bolted together on opposite sides of the bulkhead (they serve as each other’s backing plate) and so required only one cable on each side.

I snaked another 4 gauge cable from the backstay down to a keel bolt, but I haven’t yet done the forestay.  That will be more problematic since it needs to go underneth the holding tank, which has poured expandable foam all around it from what I can see.

(pictures will be added when I have time to sit down for more than a minute)

Can’t have that stuff getting away.

(pictures will be added when I have time to sit down for more than a minute)

I bought a three year-old basic radar set (dome, display, and cable) from a nice guy named Tom off the valiant owners group for $500, a great deal for a $1300 radar.  After wavering about whether to put it on the mast (it came with a mast mount) or on top of the radar arch where we had already prepared a place, I weighed the difficulty and time required to do it each way and ended up going with the mast.  It would have been easier to put the radar on the arch on the stern, but then it would have been much more complicated to install all the other things that needed to go around and on top of the radar dome (AIS antenna, gps antenna, wifi access point, wifi antenna).  I was most worried about the difficulty of snaking the cable down through the mast, but with the help of a snake we borrowed from Jim Hassberger, it ended up being pretty easy (the snake was crucial).

The cable had been cut in order to remove it from the previous installation; Pete graciously took on the task of splicing it back together.  The one fat cable has about 10 different small wires inside of it, one of which is a tiny little mini coax, and the whole fat thing is a coax cable as well, and if the splicing of the shielding isn’t done correctly, the video signal won’t come through.  Anyway, Pete did it well and did it quickly, and we mounted the screen above the ready rail and it looks great.

(pictures will be added when I have time to sit down for more than a minute)

Pete was on hand and thought it would be a really good idea to add a second primary fuel filter to the engine fuel circuit, plumbed in parallel via a valve, such that when one filter clogs up from bad fuel or sloshing around during a storm, one can flip the valve to the new filter without the engine stopping–and then have time to change the clogged filter.  Initially I balked because I thought the cost would be prohibitive, but when I discovered that another nice racor filter would only be $150 (and I wouldn’t have to deal with the installation part at all, with Pete around), I decided it was a good idea.

(pictures will be added when I have time to sit down for more than a minute)

In the course of various projects over the past two years pieces of the ssb installation had been disconnected; e.g. the antenna to the backstay, the copper foil behind the radio itself, a couple pieces of foil surrounding the antenna tuner.

I sat down with the manual and reviewed my literature on ssb installations and discovered that we didn’t actually have a decent counterpoise at all–there were only two old bits of foil connecting the tuner to the rudder shaft and to the backstay chainplate.

I bought 4″ wide copper foil from Alco for 50 cents a foot, and painfully snaked the foil from a keel bolt in the center of the bilge back through all the various holes, under the engine, under the fuel tank, and up the side of Pete’s newly fabricated quadrant protector, to reach the antenna tuner.  It is very difficult to deal with that foil: the edges are very sharp, and it is hard not to kink and bend and fold it all up into a mess.

(pictures will be added when I have time to sit down for more than a minute)

Since moving onto the boat, I have been shocked by the amount of condensation and mildew generated just by our breathing (and cooking plays a part too I guess).  The weather has been chilly and wet, magnifying the problem.  At night we would get dripped on by a solution of condensation mixed with uncured boat resin from somewhere in the ceiling–nasty stuff.

We had the salon ceiling (outboard parts that is) off for the knee project, so I took the opportunity to cut pieces from our leftover ensolite foam to fit in the gaps (leftover from insulating hull after knee repair).  We bought the ensolite as old sleeping pads from the army surplus store (army green!)  Two layers of the foam were the perfect thickness, and if I was careful with the sizing, they would fit up in there and stay all by themselves, without bothering with the contact cement.

In the quarterberth all the pieces had to be glued in place; Karen spent an arduous day in the respirator with the box fan ventilating the quarterberth, coating pieces and the ceiling with contact cement and trying to get them to stick.

We have had no dripping, or water droplets forming on the ceiling over our heads, since then.

(pictures will be added when I have time to sit down for more than a minute)

In the process of re-glassing the knees to the hull, we decided that it would be prudent to replace the chainplates as well.  Most of the old ones looked okay, though when Jonny cleaned one up really well for inspection there was clear signs of pitting right where the plate passes through the deck.  The nature of stainless is that it fails without much more warning that that, and we already had everything apart, and Pete was willing and able to fabricate a new set for me, so it was a no brainer.

The old plates were 5/16″ thick, the metal yard had 3/8″, so we went up a size.  The yard cut the plates to length and Pete drilled the holes and rounded the ends.  The metal was mill-finished from the yard, i.e. a roughish matte gray texture, and stainless corrodes where it isn’t polished, so I spent 2/3rds of a day polishing just the upper 4 inches of each plate–the portion that lives through the deck and above deck.  If we weren’t two weeks away from departure, I would have done the whole surface, because I finally figured out the fastest way to do the polishing (after a few years and many different stainless polishing project attempts) and goddamn the mirror finish on that stainless is gorgeous.  There is an immense satisfaction in taking a gray flat metal and taking it to the point where you can see yourself in the reflection.

Jim Hassberger from Kanga suggested that we add plinths to the deck, through which the chainplates protrude, in order to prevent the plates from ever sitting in water.  At first I didn’t want to do the extra work, but good sense prevailed and we took the extra time to do it.  Jon cut rectangles from a leftover piece of 3/8″ thick FRP (pre-made sheet of fiberglass) from McMaster-Carr that we had used in the construction of the lazarette and propane locker lids.  He ground a bevel into each side, then I cut an overlarge slot down through the center to admit the plates.  I temporarily mounted the chainplates (two bolts each loosely connected), then marked the position of the plinths.  Then I removed the chainplates and glassed the plinths to the deck with slightly thickened epoxy (after having sanded down the area under them to bare glass).

While epoxying the plinths to the deck, I filled the voided core area underneath them (from which I had removed the balsa) with thickened epoxy as well.  I used a putty knife and my fingers to jam the thick epoxy in the gaps, and roughly shaped the slot with my finger.  After it cured I came back with the dremel and cleaned up the slot.  Now, if any water penetrates the sealant around the chainplate, it will enter the ceiling of the boat (and be visible) rather than rotting out the core of the deck, to which it has no access.

The plinths didn’t end up adding that much time and effort, and didn’t cost anything since we already had the extra fiberglass plates sitting around, so I’m glad we did it.

I used new bolts/nuts/lockwashers on the chainplates, stainless of course, and bedded them onto the side of the knees with a light layer of silicon to prevent water from wicking into that joint to corrode them (Pete’s suggestion).

(pictures will be added when I have time to sit down for more than a minute)

Ever since we pulled the old propane locker, opening up the entire lazarette for storage, we had the unexpected problem that everything we dropped into the back locker jammed up against the steering quadrant, preventing the rudder from turning, which is not a safe feature on a sailboat.

When Pete arrived, I put him on that project first, since he is far more comfortable with wood that I am.  He made us a bombproof box to block off the area where the quadrant moves from the rest of the stern.  It succeeds admirably in the three design criteria: 1) protect the quadrant 2) strong enough to be climbed on 3) minimize amount of space taken away from the storage.

(pictures will be added when I have time to sit down for more than a minute)

The job is done (there are two earlier posts about it).

(pictures will be added when I have time to sit down for more than a minute)

Between Jonny and I we got the windlass apart, cleaned all the gears inside, and re-oiled the whole thing.  Karen cleaned up the wooden pad on the foredeck where it is mounted, then I faired it with epoxy fairing compound (we had taken some big chunks out of it while trying to get the windlass off), sanded smooth, and painted it with an epoxy primer (primekote).  Eventually I’ll have to put two coats of something different on it after it yellows, but there’s no time now.