Recent Boat Projects

Sunday, July 8th, 2007

Lamely, I have not been regularly updating the blog like normal. Joshua has been posting filler photos hoping nobody will notice. This past week and a half have been consumed utterly with the Family Reunion, and we have averaged maybe 35 minutes of waking time at Joshua’s dad’s place per day. So, updates have been largely nonexistent. Before the family reunion, we were doing boatwork!

THE BOATWORK

Rudder. After dragging the boat up onto the lawn at Jeff’s house, we promptly removed the rudder and broken gudgeon. And kind of stared at it for a moment. Then we decided that maybe we’d work on some other projects first. A month later we still haven’t done any work at all on it; it has just been sitting in the breezeway under the house being largely ignored, I mean, where it can dry out thoroughly. The rudder itself isn’t really that big of a deal, we are still just sort of pissed off at it. There is a small section on one edge where the fiberglass is cracked and so we’re going to cut that away, epoxy, sand, re-glass, sand, epoxy, sand, epoxy fair, sand, and paint it. A lot of work for such a small spot. That’s usually how it goes.

Also, the infamous broken gudgeon. John Williams, the owner of Gimme Samoa, is chief engineer on a 900-some foot container ship and he generously offered to weld up a new piece for us during idle hours between Hawaii and Southern California. This was a deal we could not pass up. We just got the new part in the mail and are have been fighting over who gets to sleep with it at night, it is so BEAUTIFUL!

rudder gudgeon john williams

Behold the splendor. John did an awesome job and we are so happy!

searunner 31 rudder gudgeon

Compare to the old part we had hacked together for us in Guanaja. The ends are totally sheared off (where the double arrows are); this happened during the Gulf of Mexico crossing but we had it lashed to the rudder through those little cheek blocks. This was a sketchy situation though because the rudder knocked around inside the part, widening the legs and threatening to rip again where I have a single arrow, and where it had ripped three times already. We knew the area must be pretty brittle.

Centerboard.

searunner 31 centerboard

[Centerboard below with fairing epoxy ready for sanding. Again. A freshly-painted aca is balanced over it.]

When we first bought the boat and were sailing it down the Sacramento River to the San Francisco Bay, we had a minor anchoring mishap. After chucking the anchor overboard while pointing upwind, we dutifully attempted to reverse downwind to set it; however, the opposing current was so strong that we were spun around in a circle, running over our anchor line and wrapping it around the centerboard, which we forgot to raise before anchoring (oops). The damage was a one-inch notch in our centerboard, which we patched up “temporarily” with some Splash Zone-like epoxy putty hoping it would stay put. It held out for a very long time, until a few months ago actually, when we accidentally did the exact same thing, popping the epoxy right back out of that notch. We figured it was time to remove the board and repair the notch for real and see if there was any other damage. We dug a hole under the boat and dropped the board out from underneath. Like the rudder, there were some cracks in the fiberglass along the leading edge of the board so we ground it all off, did the whole sand/epoxy/glass/sand/etc. number, and now we just need to paint the thing. And put it back up inside the boat, which I seem to remember being much more difficult than removing it the last time we did this…

Acas. All four of the acas (the cross pieces—not the A-frame structural bits) have fiberglass cracks. They are pretty minor, but they look ugly and are one of the first things you notice when climbing aboard the boat. To fix them, we just need to remove them (one actually, Jeff fixed without taking it off the boat at all), grind/epoxy/glass/sand/fair/whatever to fix the cracks, then repaint and replace. Unfortunately, with the boat sitting out of the water, we are afraid to remove more than one piece at a time (in case the boat torques a little and we can’t get the bolts back into place). This is a pain in the ass in that we must do each one separately, one at a time. We just finished the paint and have two to go.

Hatch Covers.

searunner 31 hatch covers

The lazarette covers in the very bow and stern of the boat had major fiberglass crackage and were in general, hugely ugly and in danger of rotting. We removed them, did some prying and grinding to get rid of some of the totally gross glass and layer of rotting wood underneath on the edge and then wondered if we should just start from scratch constructing new ones. After realizing that this was probably a lame idea (the wood was fine everywhere else—just not on the edges), I removed the remaining glass from all edges, ground off all soft wood, and peeled up any sort of delaminating bits, wedging shims underneath so the air could get in and dry it out. Then I laid them out in the sun for a week. Once they were satisfactorily dry, we re-epoxied down the good-condition glass on the tops of the boards, then reglassed all four edges of all the hatch covers. This took about a million years. Much sanding and exoxy fairing and foul language later, they look better than I think they ever have and are ready for paint. Um, all except one set, which we sort of forgot to check for size after I ground away soft wood on the edges—we need to make them a little wider (only 1/8 inch but still, what a hassle); I think we will just add some more fiberglass layers, refair it, and call it good.

Varnishing.

searunner

[So. Shiny.]

The companionway handles used to be lovely varnished glowing wood; however, after two years of rubbing sweaty hands covered with deet and sunscreen over them every time we got in and out of the cabin, the varnish was goopy and the handles were darkened and ugly. In addition, there were a couple other little pieces of wood (like in front of the sink) that had some varnish rubbed off. I removed these, sanded off all varnish entirely, then clear epoxied, sanded, and varnished them. I ended up painting four coats of varnish in the end, although I had intended to only do three (sanding between coats gets old fast). Unfortunately, right after I painted the supposedly third and final coat, the wind shifted, upsetting a large amount of fresh sawdust from the upstairs construction. This swarm of sawdust navigated down the stairs, circumnavigated the house to the downstairs breezeway, and evenly coated all my wet varnish. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it. After much grumbling, I finally drove my pile of sticks to Tucker’s house to do the new final coat in his garage. They are back in place in the cabin and look really really nice. Varnish is a wonderful thing.

searunner 31 varnish

Minikeel. There was a three or four inch crack in the fiberglass in the minikeel. We weren’t sure if it was a small or large issue but figured it ought to be ground it away to make sure the wood underneath was still good. Grinding was interesting in that we discovered a little pocket of water under the glass but we also found that the wood underneath was still totally solid. Joshua ground away a huge swath of glass maybe three feet long on both sides to make sure there weren’t any other hidden water hidey holes and we let this dry out for a week or so. Joshua then laid new glass over the whole area. It now needs a final sand and paint.

Beneath the minikeel was a wormshoe. This is a piece of wood, usually unfinished but in our case, neatly glassed and painted with beveled edges, meant as a sacrificial snack for would-be pests and boring critters. We pried the remains of this gnarly bit off with a crowbar and trashed the thing. It was fully rotted out and perforated with holes. Wormholes, presumably. The minikeel was in excellent shape (aside from the glassy bit above I mentioned) so I guess it did its job.

Catwalk Supports.

searunner 31 catwalk supports

[Just in case you weren’t sure, the old pieces are on the left, bleeding rust. The new pieces are faired and ready for paint.]

These were originally made from ferrous metal and then painted to stave off rust. Clearly, this did not work out so well and the rust had oozed orange stripes down the boat. Finally, in the last couple of months, they rusted through completely and needed to be replaced totally. Joshua’s dad decided he would make new ones from scratch from plywood, so he partook in the cut/sand/epoxy/sand/fair/sand/drill holes/epoxy/etc. fun. They are ready for paint now and are looking great. I’m particularly happy that they will no longer drip nasty gunk down the boat. There is a product called “Sno-bowl” (like Tilex) that was recommended for the rust stains and it worked great! (We were highly skeptical that the stains would come off.)

Cockpit Seat. There was a tiny hole in the drainhole of the cockpit seat and eventually, this leaked water into the seat and delaminated the fiberglass (and possibly the plywood). We decided to add a hardwood support underneath, drill holes into the top of the seat to dry it out, then inject it with penetrating epoxy and regular filler epoxy after. I made a piece for the support and drilled a zillion little holes in the seat. About three days later, right around the time it was nearing bone dryness and was about for filling, it began to rain. We freaked out, blue taped up the holes as best as we could, and rigged a tarp over the area to keep the water off. Unfortunately, when it rains here, it comes down either sideways and upside down or as a solid lake—and it tends to last for days on end. In this case, about seven. Water got on the seat. Water mocked my blue tape and got in my holes. CRAP!!

To make a long story short, the seat is drying out once more. We’ll hopefully get to it soon here. Hopefully it won’t rain for a few days.

Bottom Paint. Joshua sanded the bottom and it’s essentially ready for paint when we are ready to apply it. I plan to tape off the main hull adding a couple of inches to the water line. When we were traveling and loaded down, the line was exactly at the water level, which made us feel fat. When empty, of course, the main hull has around three or four inches to spare.

Misc Leaks. There are a couple of drippy drips that happen when it pours outside. One is forward where our running light sits—we need to goop that sucker up with some marine silicon. Also, checking the windows might be a good idea before we leave the boat. We also have a leak from the boom track, which will require us to remove it, dry it out for a day (if necessary), re-goop and bolt the thing back down. We were procrastinating on these minor tasks during the nice weather and then of course, we couldn’t do anything when it was raining


DIY Haul Out

Thursday, June 7th, 2007

searunner 31 trimaran preparing to haul out

searunner 31 trimaran positioned on the haul out skid

Pull up your pants!

searunner 31 trimaran starting up the slide

Cheyenne scratching mosquito bites. The mosquitos surrounded us in thick swarms to feast on deet.

haul out truck winch setup

You can see the 8000lb electric winch setup for a 2:1 pull. The blue truck in the background also has a winch connected to the brown truck to help anchor it in place.

searunner 31 trimaran being jacked up to clear the seawall

Bill arrived and found us in contemplation of the jacking.

The slide wasn’t supporting enough of the minikeel so we had to jack up the boat by the amas and lever the slide further under the boat (it wasn’t long enough to get it far enough under the boat at first). It seems scary to support the whole boat by the amas, but it has to be that strong to sail. The static weight of the main hull is only a fraction of the forces applied to the amas when beating to weather.

haul out slid problem

You can see another problem here… The hull is too wide to fit through the gap in the bulkhead.

cutting the seawall with a chainsaw

Jeff operating a chainsaw dangerously close the hull. We had to cut away part of the bulkhead to allow the hull to pass through because we couldn’t jack it up high enough.

main hull clear of the seawall

inspecting the bottom of the main hull

At this point the winch failed us. Mostly because all of the weight was still resting on a single roller that had jamed sideways. We had to do some more jacking to straighten it out.

nigerian dugout canoe

An unexpected collision with a Nigerian dugout.

searunner 31 trimaran side at an angle nearly clear of the water

searunner 31 trimaran take off

At some point near the top the winch failed again. It just couldn’t pull it any higher. Maybe the truck batteries were low. Anyhow, Jeff jumped in the truck, put it in drive and yanked it the rest of the way out with Cheyenne and I shouting “Whoaaaa! Stop. stop. Wait!”

searunner 31 trimaran haulout complete

Due to the rapid ascent we couldn’t block up the amas fast enough. You can see that the entire boat is balanced on the main hull. Cheyenne is on the other side holding it up with one hand. After this, we had to jack it up by the amas again to pull the slide out.


Rudder McBrokersons

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007

We barely had time to delight in the first downwind sail we’ve had since Huatulco when the seas grew irritatingly large and the rudder broke.

Crap.

I had been trying to take a morning nap after a night of no sleep (I never get more than two hours or so when underway) but was having trouble due to the uncomfortable way the boat was weaving back and forth down the waves. Just as I got up, something happened and Joshua lost control completely of the steering. The boat rounded up into the wind and just stood there, teetertottering over the oncoming waves. We pulled the centerboard down in hopes of having some control (we sometimes run with it up when running due downwind/downsea) and Joshua went back to inspect the problem area.

“The rudder is totally trashed,” came the report. “Like how trashed? TRASHED trashed? Or still sort of functional trashed?” I put my harness on and went back to see for myself.

searunner 31 broken kick-up rudder

[TRASHED trashed, but still sort of functional trashed.]

Sea and wind conditions were 6-8 feet and 25 knots, occasionally gusting to 30. I was pissed about the rudder and snuffled irritatedly in the cockpit while Joshua the fearless non-worrier made fried rice for breakfast. We were actually really lucky to be only 14 miles out from Guanaja. Unfortunately, it was all downwind sailing, which places more stress on the rudder than upwind sailing.

This boat does not have a typical skeg rudder but rather an extra-long kick-up rudder housed in a stainless box. The box is attached to the stern and the rudder is bolted at a pivot point above and held down in place with a rope. Because this type of rudder sticks down below the keel, it is particularly vulnerable so we made a fuse out of some fishing test so in case we ever hit something; then it would break and the rudder would float harmlessly to the surface to trail behind us. Hopefully we wouldn’t need to, say, steer if this ever happened. The rudder box has always been suspect in that it cracked shortly after we left San Francisco (we had it welded in Ensenada) and again around Huatulco (we had it welded again there). We are not sure what happened this time; possibly we hit a submerged log and the fuse broke or we hit nothing and the fuse broke anyway, then the following seas pushed the floating rudder across and ripped the rudder box wide open. Now the rudder is attached only at the pin (where it is in danger of twisting sideways and causing further damage) and the lower part just sloshes alarmingly free.

We went with the mainsail up only and I steered by suggestion. “Left.” “More left.” “Goddammit!” Each gust was causing the boat to head up and it was very difficult to get back to where we wanted to be without putting any pressure on the rudder. Joshua put up the storm jib and pulled it in tightly; now when the gust caused us to head up, the wind would push against the jib and have us back on course (mostly) shortly thereafter. We wobbled our way to Guanaja making around 5 to 6 knots and happily rounded the reefs to the anchorage after only a few nerve-fraying hours.

Again, we are lucky in that Guanaja has a large fleet of working fishing boats. A welder was recommended to us almost immediately and tomorrow we will take our broken rudder box to him and see what we can do. We will not be able to just weld the box back together at this point but we think we can cut the bottom part off and fabricate a new piece to bolt directly to the lower part of the rudder itself.

So now we’re Destination: Texas, where Joshua’s family lives and we can haul out and fix stuff. Among other things (an irritating leak in the centerboard trunk will require attention soon) we will see about building a new, more solid rudder and ditch this kick-up bullshit altogether.


The Last of the Painting, I Mean It.

Friday, September 29th, 2006

We are done painting. Well, not actually DONE done, but done enough. During this time, the whole boat has been in an uproar: a minefield of scattered painting equipment, gaping holes where the trampolines are untied, various logs scattered about waiting to be triped over, and freshly painted ‘wet’ spots, which we can’t touch until we feel the paint has completely set. The dinghy has been migrating all over the boat as we have been covering the hulls with fresh paint. Last week I chucked the coffee grounds right into it, since it was not in its customary location. Freakin’ mess, that was. If we could have hauled the boat out or something, all the work could have been completed at once and the pain in the ass, although acute, would have been short lived. As it was, we had to beach the boat upon the sandbar every day where we had maybe three hours of work time without water underfoot. Basically we would push the Time Machine over with the dinghy (the outboard is currently on the dinghy), snag the mooring ball over the shallow bar, kick up the rudder, and wait. Once the center hull touched bottom, we would spring into action and begin tying our support sticks (7-foot long sturdy drift-logs we scavenged off the beach) to the A-frames. This would keep the boat upright as the water receded, leaving the amas floating in air. As soon as the boat settled and the amas were out of the water, we hop into the knee-deep water and run around the boat scraping crap off the bottom and getting ready to do what we had to do for the day. Once the water was almost gone, we sand or paint as fast as we could until the water started to come back in. We’d generally be still sloshing around until it was knee-deep again before climbing back onto the boat to wait for the amas to float. Then we’d untie the support sticks and wait some more while the boat bumped around until it was finally free. Then we’d push it back over to deeper water to anchor as usual. We had to do this seven times to get the bloody thing painted.

The two-part epoxy paint still sucks balls but we are stubborn enough that we decided to deal with it until the entire hull was painted. In addition to the hellish paint situation, we have been having all sorts of issues with our generator. We got gas at the hotel a while back and something was up with it because as soon as we filled the tanks of our outboard and generator, they stopped running. This caused considerable consternation on our parts. We didn’t know what the problem was for some time but suspected the gas after we had the oil changed by a local dude and he took an alarming amount of water and grit out of the fuel tank. We mentioned this in passing once to Murray, who has a small haul-out facility here and works closely with the hotel to make it ‘cruiser-friendly’ and he was very defensive. “I buy more gas here than ANYBODY on the ENTIRE estuary and have been for four years and I have never, NEVER, gotten any bad gas.” He went on in this vein for some time and we were sorry we had mentioned it but we still weren’t convinced it wasn’t the gas. We got some other gas from the Texaco up the way and it was fine. So to make a long and wholly infuriating story short, both generator and outboard are running more or less okay in the end. We made one trip to San Salvador for spark plugs and another to Zacatecaluca for more; Joshua took the generator apart no less than five times and the outboard, three. Much swearing occurred. Both seem to be going through the spark plugs with the suspect gas but seem to run okay and normally with the other gas. Joshua thought maybe it had diesel mixed in with it. We noticed yesterday that there is a “sale” on regular at the hotel gas station: $2.85/gallon. We’re not falling for that shit.

In the meantime, we applied the nonskid finally to the topsides of the amas. The paint was Petit ‘Pearl Gray,’ which we had leftover from the States. It is a one-part standard boat paint and it went on beautifully. Amazingly. I was in raptures applying it, seriously. I put on one coat plain and then mixed the nonskid (a kind of pointy plastic sand) in to the paint for the second coat. Usually, with an aggressive nonskid like the one we were applying, it is generally sprinkled onto wet paint, then the remaining unstuck sand is vacuumed up, then a final coat is applied over the top to hold it down. Because, as I may have mentioned once or twice, it is typically no less than two billion degrees during the day, paint dries practically the moment it is applied. Which is why I mixed the sand with the paint to apply with a roller. It required irritating fanaticism to lay down evenly but it worked out in the end. Once applied, it looked awesome and in our zeal to behold the miracle, we happily ripped off the masking tape and headed triumphantly to the hotel to drink a cold beverage and brag to the Internet about how awesome we were.

We gave it a day or two to really set before we dared to dip a toe upon the decks. I decided to test a spot under where the cleat would go to see if I could rub off the nonskid (to see if it was stuck down well enough—a test that may have been more prudent to do, say, the same day we painted) and, it just came right off. Oh Crap. There was no way in hell that I was going to do any more sanding on the nonskid and so fuckit, I just dusted it off and painted another coat right over the top. Joshua re-taped for me. Now, it looks exactly right and the non-skid is completely stuck down. So…cough… I just hope that it doesn’t peel up or whatever horrible thing is supposed to happen if you don’t sand before painting.

We got the generator running just in time to go back up on the bar again. This time we were going to sand the main hull and paint it; it would take us two days on the bar. Day 1 went basically fine, except I didn’t lash my support sticks as well as Joshua did and mine settled too far into the sand, setting the boat at an alarming tilt. The ama wasn’t exactly touching the sand on one side, but close. Oops. Sanding sucked as it always does and we floated off the bar six hours later a dusty, muddy mess.

Day 2: Joshua had the brilliant plan to lay the boat on the bar ass-end to the outgoing current (normally we are nose into the current). The reasoning here is so that the outer ama we wanted to touch up (remember the gashes the port-a-bote made?) would be in the shade and maybe some other reasons. This was very awkward because with the current, we fishtailed around and finally settled at a rakish 45-degree angle to the current. The stern then proceeded to kick up all sorts of funky eddy things and dig itself way down into the sand so that the boat finally settled pointing up. Looked flat-out ridiculous but whatever. We could still reach the tip of the nose to paint so we didn’t fuss too much over it. Then this gnarly wind kicked up. This made painting nearly unbearable and once again, I burst into tears at the evilness of this paint. With the wind though, paint was flying everywhere. Pouring it from the canister into the tray was a major feat and we had to hunker down under the wing of the ama to find a less-windy spot so that the paint stream wouldn’t atomize and spray all over us. Not that we escaped being covered head to toe with bits of paint cobweb and splatters. I even got it in my eye at one point, causing Joshua to freak out and dump a bunch of funky estuary water up my nose in an attempt to “flush” out my eye. Gack. It’s still all over my face in hopes that it will be easier to rub off after a few days.

We got about two and a half coats on the mainhull and decided to call it done. We were out of paint and didn’t have time to mix more before the tide came back in anyway. From a distance it looks pretty good.

Searunner 31 Time Machine at Bahia del Sol, El Salvador


Victorious and Triumphant

Saturday, September 23rd, 2006

Topsides nonskid ON.

searunner 31 non-skid paint

Sweet!

searunner 31 non-skid paint

That’s what I’M talking about!


Cheyenne Weil, Joshua Coxwell