S/V Deep Playa - Pearson 424

This week was full of unexpected issues and problems and very little movement forward on projects.

It started out when we noticed the some leaking with our newly installed portlights, which is fine really, a bit of tweaking was expected. However the leak got into the new wood (which was not marine grade) and caused it to swell. So we’re going to have pull down the new cabin top wood and re-seat the portlights to do that. We are not looking forward to that as the new wood was put up with epoxy, much grinding or demolition is going to be involved in that. New marine grade plywood has been ordered, if you learn one thing from me do not skimp on materials. I don’t normally skimp we did this one time and it bit us hard. Take the time to do it right and use the right materials.

This next one really pisses me off. When I had the yard install the conduit in the mast I also specified that they pull messenger lines to the masthead, spreaders and foredeck\steaming light. Well they did that but they didn’t make the holes big enough for the wire. I didn’t specify a size and they didn’t ask so this is really a communication problem (one of many with the yard) but I’m not sure why they would drill any holes without explicitly knowing what size. So, I had to drill new holes in the conduit and snake new messenger lines. Once that was done I find out that I still can’t get the wire to pull through because at the angle I’m pulling (90 degrees right out the hole) all I can do is flex the tubing once the wire has exited. I can’t get any more vertical pull. That lead to an almost complete meltdown on my part. I was thinking I’d had to eat the cost the boat cable and pull primary wires instead. Now I’m thinking maybe I can pull back several feet of the insulation and still pull the wire. We’ll see. I’m sure it’s going to be another week of dinking around with that whereas I expected to be done pulling wires this weekend.

Dawn did make progress on some painting though. When we originally pulled down the hull lining and painted we left all the teak in place that covered the chainplates. We have since removed that teak and pulled the chainplates to clean them up and we’ve decided we’re going to not re-install that teak instead leaving the chainplates uncovered so we can see them and any leaking or corrosion issues. So Dawn has been painting that exposed fiberglass white to match the areas we had previously painted white. This is good because now I can start rebedding the chainplates. I’ll have an entire post on that process.

I didn’t really want to write this post, but I figured it was important so you can all learn from our mistakes and see that doing a refit like this is a lot of work and despite planning things will go awry. So with that unpleasantness behind us we are ready to kick much but in the next couple of weeks with our complete focus on everything needed to re-step the masts.

I've been updating the drawing so it's more detailed than the original version. I'm getting to the point of needing to determine the number and size of things like terminal blocks, ring terminals, heat shrink tubing, etc.. Along with this I'm also getting ready to dry fit everything to the spars down at the yard before the final prep and then painting of the spars. I'm spending a lot of money having these things painted and I'd rather bounce the drill off the unpainted sand blasted spars than the newly painted spars.

I was going a little crazy trying to remember all of the things we’re wiring into the mast and what kind of wire they needed so I drew it up.

Included in this simple not to scale drawing (my spreaders are not mid-mast) are the wires for the NMEA 2000 instrument, all 2 wire and 3 wire pulls for lights and the PA horn as well as the COAX which is going to be run in the mast. These were run in the mast hanging free and wrapped in foam. As part of the refit we will run PVC conduit inside the mast for the wiring.

Click on the picture for a larger version you can actually see.

I plan to put a Maretron NMEA 2000 weather station on my masthead and replace my incandescent bulb nav lights with this ORCA Green Machine LED nav\anchor light. Everything seems great but now I’m thinking how am I going to get these two on the masthead and not have them interfere with each other.

The OGM is 2.7” in diameter and 2.7” tall.

The Maretron WSO100 is 4.25” in diameter and 3.45” tall.

Ideally you could stack them, but I’m not sure how you’d route the wire around or thru so it didn't interfere with the functionality of the weather station or the visibility of the light.

I’m sure someone else has done this, another research project…

OK, we’re not in a submarine about to be imploded by a depth charge, we just need to have new zincs put on our prop shaft. Phil checked and verified we had no zincs remaining and then cleaned the shaft while snorkeling over the 4th of July weekend. He has also offered to put the zincs on, but he’s out of town and I was getting a bit freaked by the whole thing so I called Marina Dive Services of Puget Sound (AKA Morgan) based solely on his sign on the bulletin board at the Marina.

He should up promptly, suited up, dove in, scrubbed the shaft and put on the zincs. He also scrubbed the waterline to remove the chin beard Deep Playa had been growing on her bow. I would definitely recommend him, let me know if you want his number or email.

Here’s a video of Morgan cleaning the shaft and prop that I made with my Flip camcorder and waterproof case. I was just laying on the dock with my hand in the water. It was a sunny day, low tide and there was a minimum of crap floating in the water.

Still shots will come later when I process them.