Sorting the Bilges

Todays little adventure was to get to work on the bilges.  This needed doing, a; because they are shockingly bad and b; and more importantly, I had to put in a board for the loo to sit on.The bilges have been sadly negleted as they are normally hidden under the sole.   The picture below give some idea of how bad they are.

I started by giving them a right good clean with some Silky deep clean, this stuff is the bees knees.  I'm not sure how diluted it is supposed to be but I mixed it up about 3:1 and it made short work of the muck as you can see below. 

I then spent quite some time making a platform for the loo to sit on.  For a non technical piece of wood this really took some time to get right.  The final effort of the evening was to give everything a good coating of Danboline,  I have a sneaking suspicion that Dan may have painted many tudor ships until Henry carelessly beheaded his sister.

A bit more

It was still warm and light when I finished work tonight so I managed to crack on with a bit more.  I finished of the repair to the rudder blade.  The Resin mix had set well and I just had to file it to shape before slapping on some yacht enamel.

The lower bearing housing for the rudder stock needed some attention, I had snapped a stainless screw in it last year while working on the beach.  I managed to get the old bit of screw out but I also notice some other bits of metal in the GRP.  After some digging I pull out two broken drill bits and another broken screw.  By this time the hole was getting quite big... some remedial action was required.    I poked out all the lose bits and wiped it over with acetone, I then filled all four holes with a resin filler mix before reattaching the bearing housing with the screws into the three good holes.  The idea being that the resin mix in these will set and take up any slack from previous wear.  The nasty hole will be allowed to set before being re drilled. All the fun of the fair!

Having made good progress I grabbed some sand paper are roughed up the rubbing strakes followed by a coat of Sadolin,, it's amazing how simple things start to make the task look so much better.

My last job of the evening was to refit the rudder and reattach the tiller.  A simple task which posed the problem of how do you know that the rudder is in central position while you are in the cockpit attaching the tiller?   So here's my tip of the day... I wedged an old fender between the rudder and hull and hey presto the rudder stays in position :) 

Polish a coprolite

Last night, during a fit of enthusiasm I decided to roll my sleeves up and do a bit on Ciao Bella.   In the scheme of things I have decided to do the minimum to get Ciao Bella back on the water this year.  This means starting with the hull as once that is done she can happily sit on her mooring.

The first job was to wash the hull down with Oxalic acid which makes short work of the brown stains which don't seem to be shifted by anything else.   The topsides although clean looked very dull so I spent a bit of time with some cream cleaner and a polisher.   This hull is never going to look like it's just come out of a showroom but it does now look presentable.

The next job was to sort out the cracks at the top of the rudder and fill in the old holes from the lower pintle bracket. Water has clearly been getting into the rudder foil and causing corrosion.  In the picture below you can see a rust streak running down the side of the rudder.

I used my trusty Dremel to chase out the cracks and remove old repairs which hadn't worked.  I then gave it a good slosh of Acetone to clean the area and help the resin to bond.  I mixed up some resin with Colloidal silica to make a filler mix.

I then put some masking tape around the edge to make a dam, otherwise the resin would just run out and dribble down the side of the rudder :)  I had read in 'Fibreglass boats' by Hugo Du Plessis that Polyester Resin is not waterproof and although epoxy is better it is still not waterproof and depends on good post cure to achieve that. He goes on to say that 'Good Polyester is better than mediocre Epoxy'  With this in mind I will be over painting with enamel paint once the repair has cured and shaped.

Cripes... It's March!

Heeeelp... it's well into March and I have done virtually nothing since Ciao Bella came out at the end of last season.   So here come the excuses.. Work is mental at the moment, the weather has been the worst since I don't know when, the valentines day storm wrecked the pier at the sailing club did a lot of damage to the building and my Mum has been poorly so playing with boats has been way down the list.

 Anyway, the sun came out today so I snuck out and did a bit. I started with stripping paint from the tread areas on the foredeck.  I used Owetrol marine stripper, my expectations where low as I've never had much luck with chemical strippers.

I coated the textured areas with a thick layer of the Owetrol, it sits like a gel on the surface and hopefully does its stuff.  An hour in and it didn't appear to be doing much.

The next items to grab my attention were the locker lids and wash boards.  The washboards got a quick flash over with the sander and were treated to a coat of varnish, only another four or five to go!  

 The locker lids needed a bit more attention.  One of the lids needed some repair.  The rain water had got under the top layer of the ply and had started to lift it.   I used a stanley knife to slice into the effected area and squidged  PVA in, I then put weights on to hold it down.  I hadn't got round to filling the grooves in the port lid with Sika flex last year so I masked that up smoothed in the black stuff.

While the paint stripper was doing what appeared to be not a lot and the varnish and sikaflex were drying I turned on the main sheet traveller cleats.  These had started to pull out during the course of last season.  When I took them off the wood screws that hold each cam down had bent and the bolt through the base plate was threaded into the GRP without a nut on the back of it.

 I found some suitable bolts, drilled through the grp and bolted them down on a bed of Sikaflex.  The pic above shows the inside.  The base plate bolt now has a penny washer and a nut on it but there was no space for washers of any kind on the bolts for the cams.  I need two more bolts as the I'd run out of the length that I needed to go through the cams, base, GRP, nut and have enough for a few spare threads :)

Meanwhile the Stripper had been busy working away.  It doesn't bubble or flake or do anything to show that its working but once the pressure washer get to work the paint just washes off.  Below is a piece of paint dislodged from the boat. 

I'm still here

Ah well, you could be forgiven for thinking that I'd given up or won the lottery or been abducted.  The truth is I'm not clever enough to know when to give up, lucky enough to win the lottery or desirable enough to abduct so I guess my absence can only of been down to the weather, which has kept me well and truely pinned down.

Shortly after putting the tarp over Ciao Bella we had the gales so that had to come down, the rain has been both persistent and horizontal. With a break in the weather on Sunday afternoon I went for a nose around. On lifting the cabin sole I was greeted by two inches of rain water, no mystery here; it had been blown between the hatch and the washboards.

I picked on a job that I could do quickly, the rudder pintle repair that I did last year on the beach needed some adjustment.

I had somehow measured incorrectly and when it came to fitting it between tides I'd had to make a hurried bodge job.  As you can see in the picture above, the stainless straps don't project far enough past the skeg. I'd had to drill through the bottom plate and attach the Plastic bush with a vertical bolt.  This was a bit wobbly in use and didn't inspire me with confidence when it was hauled out at the end of the season.

My solution was to move the fitting back and redrill the skeg.  The bush is now held with a horizontal bolt which will keep it in position in the SS channel.  When the temp picks up I will need to remove it again to epoxy fill the original holes but it feels like a step forward. 

I had also had trouble with Antifoul adhesion last year.  I think I had used some silicon based cleaning products and hadn't prepared the areas to be painted well enough.  While it was still dry and light I went around and scraped the effected areas back to the gel coat.  I will ensure it is properly keys this year.

Got the January blues

It's wet.... It's so wet and cold that I've barely moved from in front of the TV in weeks.  Not that there has been anything worth watching on telly.  Wall to wall star wars and crap costume drama's. Ughh!
The cabin fever is getting too me and the day job is not, as they say, floating my boat at the moment.
This morning I made rather too much espresso and banana gelato,  can I eat my way out of January?  One of the many excuses that I have for not doing anything on Ciao Bella is that it's just too wet, the cabin is constantly damp and cold and the cockpit is swimming as the scuppers keep getting blocked with leafs and moss off the house roof.
Well following a conversation about setting a date for this years cross channel attempt, oh yes; 21st June and the following week are in the diary; I did get off my are this afternoon and drape a tarp over the cockpit and cabin.
Hopefully now the locker lid will dry out so I can rub them back and varnish. I'll also be able to leave the wash boards out to let air circulate and maybe even start to strip paint from the anti slip areas.
Its been a long time coming but I think the enthusiasm is starting to build again... I'm off to the boat show on Monday with Sparrow Steve so I'd better get a wish list together.
Projects for this year include:
Rig the boom for easy reefing.
Move the heads and create a functioning V berth.
Overhaul the mainsheet track and fittings.
Cure some more leaks.
Make a sail cover.
Paint the decks and coach roof.

Lets make a start

Well I have finally made a start on the winter jobs.   I haven't put a lot of thought into what I want to achieve this winter, so I started on the basics.  I gave the hull a good scrub and washed it off with the pressure washer. This years anti foul had worked quite well but it hadn't adhered very well. I'm not sure why, possibly due to poor preparation last year or maybe something I'd used on the hull. What ever the reason, I shall have to take it back to a good base this year. While I had the pressure  washer out I set about cleaning the caked on seagull poo of the decks... Yerk!

I then set the engine up so that I could flush it out and run the carb dry.  While it was running I checked to output from the charging circuit.  I'd never used it before as it didn't seem to work.  The reason had been because one of the wires under the cover had become broken.  The output was up to 15v at full revs but at normal speeds it only puts out about 7 or 8 volts.  I will install a socket to allow it the assist with battery charging.

Somethings which occurred to me while cleaning were...

• Set up the boom to allow easy reefing.  
• Improve out-haul system.
• Make new point for topping lift to attach to.
• Strip the paint from the decks and coach-roof, repair any damage and repaint.
• Remove all deck fittings and re-bed to stop leaks.
• Rub down and re varnish all wood work.
• Redesign main hatch sliders.
• Move heads from current location.
• Make cushion covers.
• Make sail cover.

I'm sure this list will grow considerably over the next few weeks.