Disturbing material failure ...?

 

I don't think this should have happened. The long crack in the reinforced heel of the starboard tube resulted in a slow leak. I've managed to seal it with a liquid silicone product, but it will need a patch on the outside as well to strengthen it.

It's a Zodiac dinghy, and this looks like a material failure.

Dinghy on the Coachroof

 

This doesn't quite work. It's hard to get into position, risks snagging the dinghy and the vents, and it fouls the kicking strap

It might be useful if I was motoring some distance and didn't want to deflate the dinghy.

Varnish ...

Some new/refurbished items. The old locker lid was on the point of failure, and I had this nice piece of mahogany ...

The cockpit step is from the same piece, from a few years ago. It's a very useful enhancement & it now looks a bit nicer.

And the companionway steps are looking good in situ. I might need to do some work on the galley, now ...

Overdue Cosmetics ... ?

 

The companionway steps have been pretty manky for a long time. I took them home to get them sanded and re-varnished - Angus did the work, and substantially exceeded expectations.

The piece of mahogany on top of the table saw bench is a new lid for the stern cockpit locker. The piece on the floor to the right is the 'shelf' I put at the front of the cockpit (like a bridge deck) to create a space for putting things down and under. I think there is a photo of it somewhere in this blog...

Both pieces of mahogany came from the counter in my grandfather's photography shop (now long gone), so definitely recycled. I may get one or two other useful sections out of it, although it has some damage and quite a bit of surface 'patina'. If it was perfect it would just look wrong on Raasay, in any case.

 

So - I have installed new batteries.

I was up a few days ago, and the mains battery charger started behaving oddly when I switched it on. After a brief investigation, I discovered that the batteries had lost a lot of electrolyte. The tops of the plates were clearly exposed.

I topped them up and tried charging them again. This didn't work. There may be more extreme resuscitation methods I could try, but the original batteries were already a long way through their useful life and I didn't fancy having to rely on semi-dodgy batteries...

I had also been thinking about switching from conventional lead acid to AGM, so this seemed a good time to do it.

I don't really know why the electrolyte was low. I check it fairly regularly. I normally switch the charger off when I'm not on the boat, but did leave it switched on for a couple of weeks by accident recently. I find it hard to believe this was relevant, as I used to leave the charger switched on permanently - up until two or three years ago, when I learned that this might not be a good idea.

The charger is a 25 amp NOCO Genius charger, which should be safe enough to leave permanently on ...

The drop in the electrolyte level did look like the consequence of a boiling event, though.

Anyhow, I now have AGMs. So I don't have to worry about heel angles anymore. Or about topping up.

A small issue:

The Leoch AGMs are rated as '115 ah', and the Trojan batteries I removed are rated at '225 ah'. However, both are rated at 115 ah (or thereabouts) for a ten-hour discharge period. The higher rate for the Trojans is for a twenty-hour discharge. The arithmetic here doesn't quite make sense, because 10 amps over 10 hours is 100 ah, and over 20 hours is 200 ah... I'll need to go back through the specs to understand this.

I should still be able to discharge 10 amps for 10 hours and keep the bank (two batteries) about 50% charge. This looks fine for overnight sailing, for instance.

I have a Sterling Alternator to Battery charger capable of putting 90 amps (alternator maximum) into the batteries during the boost phase of the charge.

I also have a 200w solar panel to deal with lower demands.

Last Stage - Keel Shoe (posted in the wrong order ...)

 

Hanging in the Slings, ready to get at the keel shoe.

CopperCoat on, keeping it warm.

Going Back in the Water

 

Coming out of the shed ...

Ready to remast.

The empty shed!

Back in the water.

Nearly Ready ...

With the (slightly wavery) boot top applied, and the topsides cleaned up, we're nearly ready to go:

There is one job left, that can only be done when the boat is lifted. The bottom of the keel needs cleaned up and CopperCoated. Lossiemouth Marina will put me in the boat lift the day before I launch, so I can do it then. I'll drape the bottom of the keel in Visqueen (a mini-tent ...) and heat the area up so that the CC cures quickly. I routinely dry the boat out (one reason for going for CopperCoat - it can be maintained alongside), so I expect the bottom of the keel to get a good bit of wear. And it's rarely seen.

I guess I'm saying it may end up a bit rough.

But I don't know how else I could do it ...

Replacing the Rudder and Prop

I thought I had the prop shaft installation finished until I made this unpleasant discovery:

The new prop shaft isn't shorter - I'd just inserted it further into the clamp than the old one had been. Undoing the clamp again was a grim prospect, but I'm getting quite good at it now & have all the right equipment.

Here's the rudder having CopperCoat applied:

And here's everything reassembled again:

Five minutes to post about three days work ...

The Stuffing Box Hose

 

This was very difficult to remove and replace. It goes from the stern tube to the stuffing box, and it's underneath the fuel tank, partly behind a small bulkhead.

The hose clamps on the aft end (that secure it to the stern tube) are particularly difficult to get at (very long extensions on the 1/4" drive ...)

Here is the new one :

And here it is in place, with the new prop shaft:

I cleaned up the stuffing box, replaced the grease injection joint with a stainless steel connector, and renewed the stuffing.

This is the area I am most worried about when the boat goes back in. It's even harder to access now than it looks in this picture because the exhaust system is back in place.

Here's what it looked like before:

And yes, the dimensions are slightly different. The new hose is an inch longer. I wanted to see it better...

Finally - some useful tools:

CopperCoating The Hull

Here's the Visqueen tent we set up to create a warmer (12-14 degrees) environment.

This worked extremely well, although there were some diesel fumes ... I had a CO meter inside it. It stayed resolutely at zero.

Applying the CopperCoat was a fraught business. We started about mid-day and finished about midnight. And then had to stay up a lot of the night to monitor the diesel heater as the outside temperature was expected to drop below 8 degrees ...

We just kept adding coats until we'd used up 7 of the 8 'doses'. One was kept back to do the shoe of the keel and the rudder. We also saved a bit by stopping at the waterline rather than using it as a boot top as well. We definitely got four coats on everywhere and possibly five - certainly over large areas of the hull.

The first coat was epoxy only (no copper powder), and it was a bit thick in a few small patches. We ended up with drips ...

After that, we thinned the mix and rolled it on carefully - spreading it out as much as we could.

It set up overnight and was completely hard and dry after a day or two.