Seacocks do the hokey cokey

Today was the annual wallet emptying day at the sailing club,  Always nice to catch up with everyone and find out just how little work has been done by all,,, one member, while discussing the merits of having his boat on the drive, said "it's like being taunted every time I leave the house.. but I won't be bullied, I'll paint it when I feel like painting it".   I had to admire his stance on bullying :)
After a spot of lunch at the R.N.L.I, I made my way home, battling with whether I should get out and work on the boat or sit in front of the laptop surfing eBay and other time swallowing sites... Ciao Bella won, she's obviously a bigger bully than the aforementioned boat.
Despite yesterdays efforts with the hatch, an over night downpour of biblical proportions meant I wasn't too surprised to find water still coming through the hatch area.It looked like it was coming in through the bottom sill. There is a piece of wood screwed to the sill which is supposed to stop water coming in but it looks like it is seeping under neath.  I took this piece out, surprisingly it, and the sill are still sound, so I cleaned them up; blew them down with the airline, splodged some sikaflex into the join and reassembled. Hopefully that should reduce the amount of wet stuff in the cabin.

While at the club this morning I also caught up with Roger, who furnished me with two 4" marine ply discs for the seacocks backing pads.  Disassembling the seacocks was easy enough once I'd got the sanitation hose off the hose tails.  The small inlet one came off easy enough but the large outlet pipe was a royal pain in the backside. In the end I had to cut it off.

I'm much happier with the bigger pads and hopefully that'll be the last time for a while that I'll have to grapple with these. I'd just like to say thanks to Gypsy Phil (no that's not an insult,his name is Phil and his boat is called Gypsy) for shaming me into action :o).
Other small jobs knocked off the list were the upper and lower rudder stock bearings and the lower pintle. Where the pintle had been too long it had pushed the rudder stock up whenever the skeg touched the sand, this had put too much strain on the bearing caps and had pushed the screws out of the top bearing cap and sheared the heads off screws in the lower bearing cap.
As the holes for the screws at the top had stripped and been elongated, I turned the cap 45 degrees and drilled new holes.  I then splodged some (you guessed it) sikaflex around the mating surface and screwed it down.  The lower one just needed the broken screws winding out, I then sikaflexed the joint and reassembled.
The lower pintle was trimmed with the angle grinder.  As always there is a 'one step back'. While working on the rudder I noticed rust seeping out of some cracks in the GRP.  I ground out the cracks with the angle grinder while I had it to hand and will have the make good when the weather improves.   I know this will be a medium term solution as once there is rust in there it will eventually expand and keep splitting the rudder.  I will start to think about making a new stock and rudder blade in a couple of years, assuming my repairs hold out that long.

Hatch a plan

Apart from looking particularly scruffy, the wood trim on the hatch was actively channeling rain water into the cabin.  I decided today was a good day to tackle this job.

Although rotten and held on with the ghosts of mild steel wood screws it still took some time to remove.  The main problem was the horrible handle that had been screwed on from  the inside then fibre glassed over. I used the dremel to get to the screw heads, but they had decided they were not going to shift.  They dremel was then used to saw through the handle and the screws then knocked back through. A fair amount of sanding and cleaning then took place to remove the old glue and ensure every thing fitted nicely before moving on.

The main problem with its design was that it didn't over hang the wash boards, so any rain would just run in under it. I thought it best to make the new piece quite a bit thicker,  I also set the saw blade at a 10 degree angle to give it a nice profile then finally set the blade really low, about 2mm and routed a drip channel into the underside.

Once happy with the shape and finish, I drilled & Countersunk holes for the stainless steel screws, spread the mating surface liberally with sikaflex; then attached; making sure it was pressed home all the way. 

A massive sikaflex clean up operation ensued! It's nice to be making progress again, I'm chuffed with this job, it went  as smoothly as could be expected. Just needs a rub down and varnish once the sikaflex has dried. 

Small progress

So in the spirit of moving forward, yesterday I stopped off at Machine Mart to pick up a 10" blade for my table saw and a 3/8 bsp straight through union. Which meant this morning, bright and early before work got in the way, I was able to tick one job off and start on another.
The union was to enable me to finish the auto pilot extension This is a piece of Ali from a golf trolley, cut to length, and tapped at each end to accept the union and the original end piece. The thread isn't exactly right but its close enough and as the whole thing cost about £1 I am prepared to accept this. Once assembled it won't be disassembled so no problem.
The saw blade enabled me to cut the battens for raising the fore-peak locker lids from the scavenged hardwood door frame, seen leaning up against the garage :).

Where has the enthusiasm gone?

I must slap myself around a bit for not getting stuck in enough recently.  I'm sure I could come up with a million excuses about  the snow, ice freezing temperatures and family & work commitments   but at the end of the day there is always something that I could be doing to keep the project moving forward. The  spark that has kicked me back into life came from Roger.. While I was bemoaning my excuses  to him the other day he offered to cut out some new backing pads for my seacocks as the ones I fitted are woefully undersized.  It then occurred to me that Roger will have done more work on Ciao Bella in 2013 than I  have... even worse, he asked me for the  diameter of the holes for the skin fittings last week and I still haven't got back to him... Unforgivable.

So here's my commitment:  I will complete at least one item... no matter how small per week. (Starting with measuring the skin fitting tails).

One more thing to cheer me up was this facebook post from Swift sails :o)

  

Toilet is in

Last day of 2012 spent peering into a toilet bowl :-)  Well at least it's in now.  First job was to cut the holes for the pipes to fit through.

Then fit the elbows and tails with PTFE, fit the pipes onto the tails; made easier by heating in boiling water, and securing with two hose clips on each fitting.

I then had to come up with a cunning plan to secure the loo in place. As there is a drainage pipe in the front of the locker, visible in the picture above, I could not make the base plate fit all the way to the front of the locker.  Instead I made a block with a lip on it that I could screw and glue to the floor which the base could slip under. The aft end could then be held in place with another. removable, block which would hold the base both horizontally and vertically.

This is all best explained with a picture.