Launch Day - Getting Wet

After scheduling my launch for Wednesday morning, May 2nd, at 11 AM, I decided that I would head up late Tuesday night. On my drive up, my dad gave me a call and offered to come up and help, and that would also solve my problem of how to get my car back. So I said sure, that'd be great, just heading up now and that would give me time to get up earlier, already be on site, and get the new Sheave Divider figured out. When I put the new ones in on Monday, I noticed that the new ones fit about perfect, but the old ones on the aft side had a slight gap in between them, and it left just enough doubt in my mind about the halyards jumping and getting jammed. Since it's the kind of thing that only happens in the worst time, I thought I should fix that. The other thing I needed to do was to source some more clevis pins for the rigging, as almost all the existing ones were either missing, or in the case of a couple shrouds, were galvanized carriage bolts that were already being worn through. Luckily most of the stores in Oswego open up at 7 AM during the weekdays. Stop one was Walmart for a drink, and more importantly, a plastic-y-composite-ish clipboard that happened to be about 1/8" thick. Ran over to Lowe's and bought them out of 3/8 clevis pins, Harbor Freight for some more, and back to the boat. With an eye on the clock, I went to work cutting the board into a small spacer section that would cover the aft half of the masthead, slid between those sheaves. Worked perfectly. I then went through and plopped pins in all the rigging.

After that, I thought hey, I have some of this JB WaterWeld, I'll stuff some around the old prop shaft. I mean, what's the worst that it could do, just not.. do anything? So I did that. Then I touched up the paint on the port side of the hull that got scraped away before I purchased it. So at this point, it was waiting for my dad to arrive. 11 was near approaching, and he later told me traffic had slowed him down. I stumbled upon the discovery that the ropes I had been kicking around under the cabin table were actually two pre-made halyards with shackles, so we quickly threaded them through in replacement of the old ones. And now, we were ready to go! Or pray. One of the two.

Bernie at Oswego Marina was great to work with. The launch and mast step were pre-paid by the previous owner from the winter storage, so it was just a matter of doing it. He backed the hydraulic trailer expertly, and loaded the boat. I'm used to a travel lift, so this was a new, and slightly nerve wracking experience. But after moving it over to the slings, suddenly she was in the air, and dangling over the water.

Once she settled into the water, Bernie gave us time to jump below and see how she looked. My dad, ever observant, looked down in the cockpit hatch because the stern tube would've been a place I would think I might see leaks. Remember, there's no motor, hasn't been in forever, so who knows what kind of shape that equipment was in. Even with WaterWeld over it, there's no knowing. First thing he saw was what looked like questionable fiberglass, but from everything I could tell it was the old rusted corner of the gas tank that had just made a mess of things. Still dry back there, other than a little water pooled behind the tank, but it wasn't anything coming in, it was just there.

Then we went into the cabin and wouldn't you know it, the next phrase was something like "Well there's water here." Well I hadn't looked there recently, but I was pretty sure I didn't remember any under there last time I looked! He was looking under the port settee and sure enough, about two inches of water pooled underneath. Very clear water, not like it had been dirty from sitting or dripping down the hull. Well then... There are a few thru-hulls on that side of the boat. There's a sink drain, the intake for the head, and two older thru hulls that were likely depth sounders or the like. Underneath the boat, they look like they'd been painted over - inside the hull, one was missing and appeared to have a plug in it's place, and the other had it's wire cut off. After careful wiping with countless towels and such, we realized the plugged one was where it was seeping in. It wouldn't have sunk the boat, but it would've been something to really try to keep up with, and that's just not acceptable.

My first feeling, was.. words I would rather not repeat. I didn't vocalize anything much, but inside I was quite disheartened. When I had my last boat, I replaced thru-hulls all new, and glassed over ones I wouldn't need. These looked visually fine inside and out so I never gave them too much thought. So as thoughts of what to do raced through my heads, my dad suggested maybe we could tighten it? So I grabbed my channel lock pliers and cranked down on the nut holding the plug in. No change. Then he pointed out that he meant on the actual backing nut for the thru-hull. Oh. Duh. Right. I managed to get a lock on it. All in all, it might have had about 1/8 of a turn in it, but it did seem to stop the leak. Or at least slowed it that we couldn't see it actually seeping any more. Phew. We ran to the others and inspected, and all showed dry. So, on that note, it was time to get the boat to the other side of the slips to get the mast raised.

How many of you know about prop walk, and the like? Ok, plenty of hands. The outboard I have on this boat, is a Mercury 9.9 Extra Long Shaft model. Thankfully (even though it's not ideal for many folks) it has tiller controls for gear selection. While this requires that the engine be kept more delicately in tune because there's no revving in neutral, it does give the option to control the progress with one hand on the boat tiller and one on the motor without having to reach for the gear selector. Mind you, this motor had only been run for ten minutes or so at home prior to this. Thankfully it fired right up and settled into a decent idle. So as you can see from the above pictures, we're backwards in the slings. Not knowing how this boat was going to handle - it's twice as heavy as my last boat - I thought it would be best to swing the bow out, and then allow me to drive forward out, up past the regular slips, spin around in the nice wide channel of the Oswego river, and come back into the dockside for raising the mast. And good ol Bernie walks the boat back, and kicks the stern off, assuming I'm going to back it the entire way down (which I had mentioned a few times that I was planning otherwise..).

Let's revisit sailboat steering for a moment. When you get into the upper 20s in feet, or anything without an outboard, the boat is steered with the water disrupted by the angle of the rudder, either moved by tiller or wheel. The water moving over the change in the angle pushes the stern of the boat, causing the turn. Let me emphasize that. Water MOVING over the rudder. You have to be moving, to turn. On smaller boats with an outboard that can be steered, you can turn the outboard to thrust it one way or another whilst starting to move. On a boat with a fixed motor, or in my case an outboard that couldn't be turned, you have to get some water speed up before the boat will react. A 9.9 horsepower motor with a standard prop, I admit, is underpowered for the boat. It will work fine, yes. But it's really a little weak, at least in standard prop form. Once it gets moving, sure it'll keep the boat moving, but the initial thrust is weak. It's weaker when the outboard isn't sitting properly down in the water where it should. And it's even worse in reverse when the natural tendency of an outboard is to rise up due to the thrust, especially so shallow already.

We ended up doing a K-turn in a boat. Basically reverse was going nowhere, so I tried getting movement forward to try to turn the boat. And it became rapidly clear that I was not going to make enough speed to make the turn very quickly, before driving straight onto the rocks that you see in the left side of the photos above. Desperate to avoid running aground, I twisted into reverse. Instead of instantly stopping the boat, it instead just more or less churned the top of the water in frustration, but had the added unintended effect of giving me a sharp prop-walk reaction to port. Happily, this was exactly where I wanted to go. So in doing that, it gave me enough room to forward, and eventually get going the proper direction. And sure enough, once we got out and I could speed up, the extra speed made it easy to just spin right back around and come in to the dockside, to tie up for the mast.

The mast raising went without incident, if you discount that I almost forgot to tighten the masthead bolts back in from my sheave divider install. We got the mast up, and Bernie gave us the ok to leave the boat tied up while we ran one of the cars to Fair Point Marina where we would end up, so that we would have way to come back and get the other car. We got to Fair Point easily, and stopped for some Friendly's on the way back. Arriving back to the boat a little before four, we had one more thing to sort out. One of the halyards was through a spreader so I tied a wrench to a thin line I had, and after about two dozen attempts, got the throw right and straightened it out. Now, we were faced with once again being pointed in the wrong direction. More than that, the wind had started picking up a bit and the clouds were coming in which cooled the day down a little. But, on the plus side, the wind was coming from the Southwest, so I had the genius idea of just releasing the stern, letting the wind and waves carry the stern out and around, and use the bow as a pivot until we were turned around. Which worked great in my head, but in practice, my dad cast off the bow a little early and.. we needed another 97 point turn to get out. Well, not really, but we did have to thrust reverse to curve a little, and then trying to get enough speed, we needed every inch of the working space to get that sucker to turn 180 degrees. But, after all that, we were finally pointed in the right direction. And if only that had been the hardest part.

99 percent

What an interesting weekend. I'm going to save people the trouble, and give the abridged version so they don't have to read through all the long bits if they don't want. And, go!

So it's finally splash time. I figured I'd take the weekend, spend it on the boat, and tie up all the loose ends that needed tying, and then Monday would be launch day. Turns out Mother Nature had other plans - Cold and wet on Saturday when I went up, which negated doing much. It was SNOWING on Sunday morning when I woke up. And today, Monday, was more cold all morning, then the sun came out, but the wind never subsided. Hence, no launch today.

What I did get done though, was:

* Installed the Steaming/Deck combo light on the mast.
* Ran all new wire for the mast, including the VHF cable
* Ran new wire from the electrical panel to the mast step in the cabin
* Wired the bilge switch
* Sorted out the cabin wiring
* Installed the new Masthead Sheaves and re-ran the halyards
* Mounted the VHF antenna, and Anchor Light
* Other bits and things.

So it was three days on the boat, all of them cold, and windy, and I got little things done. So if you don't want to hear the long drawn-out version, feel free to head off to wherever you're off to next. For those who like self-imposed torture, you be warned.

Saturday:

I got up early, at least for me, and decided that before doing anything, I would replace the vacuum line to the brake booster on my car. The old one had split really bad, and though taping it up heavily with electrical tape sealed a good portion of the leak that was tripping codes on the reader, it still left me with manual brakes only. This had gone on way too long, so that was job one. I have slightly better brakes now! And must still have just enough of a leak where codes are staring to manifest again. Fix one thing, five break. One more year car.. one more.

Loading up for the lake was an adventure in and of itself. I drive a 2003 Jaguar XJR - right before Ford started bloating them up in '04, and is one of the last years they had that truly classic XJ-series look to them. Unfortunately, it also means a pretty small trunk when it really comes down to it. And in this wonderful (tempermental) car, I had to figure out how to fit an outboard, a ladder, the gas tank, an extra gas can, clothes, my laptop and camera, tool box, box full of epoxy, another box full of parts and pieces, and countless other things. Which, thank you very much, I succeeded in doing. So onward to the lake! I stopped in Cortland for some Wendy's, because by this point, it was near 1:30 or so. I left there a dry person, and quickly was glad to be in the car - a pretty hefty rainstorm passed through as I made my way up towards Syracuse, which slowed traffic on the highway a good bit. Soldiering on though, I arrived just after 3 PM. Matt had left the Sapphire Blue paint on the blocks by the keep, for the touch up that will eventually be done.

I unloaded the car, plugged my extension cord into the power at the building and ran it to the boat. Inside, I fired up my trusty little Walmart heater, and the Halogen work light - combined, they do a fair amount of heating in the cabin. It was certainly going to be better than the night it was fifteen degrees, but still would be appreciated. The problem I had, was that the majority of what I wanted to do was outside work. Mast work on the wiring, the sheaves, working on the deck fitting for the electrical, and so on. I wasn't exactly wearing survival gear, but it still was drizzling on and off long enough that it was miserable to try to do much for long outside. The object was to not become fully soaked to a degree that would make drying out a long process. I passed the time by running to the store for a few things, like a new clevis pin that would work with the new sheaves in the masthead. Apparently stores only stock 2" long pins in a 3/8 diameter. I should've measured... but I took a gamble, and it turned out to be just right. Too wet to mess with that, I did about the only other things I could - I got the old steaming light off the mast, which was basically just glued on. I also went to the masthead, and cut off the connectors up there which weren't even doing anything. A few more rain drops, then I went out again and pulled the existing wiring with some new taped to it, for the new combo light. That didn't go as planned - all it succeeded in doing was pulling a bird's nest from up inside the mast out and showering over my head, and the tape came undone anyway. I saved the egg and set it aside. Not my fault, don't build a house in another man's mast.

I finally gave up for the evening on Saturday and just buckled down inside. Fired up the laptop and watched some more Volvo Ocean race highlights, and tinkered with the bilge pump wiring. Which is to say, I ran the wire up to the ground block, the positive up, and temporarily mounted the bilge pump switch under the main location. I really do need a finished piece to mount everything to soon.

Doesn't look like much, but it's something to start with, and by weekend's end, it was pretty much all wired as far as the panel goes. That was it for Saturday, so I climbed into the port berth, turned off the halogen and slept with the quiet whir of the heater keeping up with the weather.

I woke up Sunday to being snowed on. Well, outside, the boat didn't have the hatch open or anything. I decided that I needed a few things from the store. One of the things I had done during my wiring fiasco was to notice a previous VHF cable hole near the masthead that someone had tried to fill in with what looked to be like JB weld. I tapped it with a screwdriver and it popped out easily, so that solved my dilemma of how to get the VHF cable through. But I needed some grommets for the hole. So a trip to Harbor Freight and that was solved. Except it wasn't - turns out the grommets in their assorted pack are for about 1/16" depths an the mast is easily double that in thickness. But between that and some extra taping and heat shrink, we should be fine. It just got to the point where it was cold and rainy enough, that I couldn't really get much done. I finally got the combo light riveted in place (crooked by 1/4 inch which I hate myself for but it was hard to gauge with the mast laying half crooked in a cradle). I had originally decided on launching on Monday, but the forecast for that day was going to be really windy so I knew I wouldn't be getting much of anywhere. So in between rain drops, I decided to run the rest of the wire up the mast. I have a fish tape, how hard can this be? As it turns out, there are foam inserts about every ten feet in the mast. The fish tape wasn't going to cut it. Another trip to Lowes for 40' of PVC pipe, and bingo. Push them through from one side to the other, run the fish tape down it, tape everything to the other end, and pull everrrrrything back out. This included the VHF cable and one pair of wires from end to and, and another pair of wire to the steaming light. The wire is Red and Yellow in the jacket. So I have Red #1, Yellow #1, Red #2, and Yellow #2. Yellow 1 is going to be a common ground. Red 1 is the anchor light, Red 2 is the steaming light, and red 3 is the Deck light. This is made a little easier by the combo light having a single shared ground lead feeding off it. By the time I got done running that, I was ready to duck back inside for the day. I was just tired of being cold. I watched a few more shows in between running new lengths of wire from the panel back to the feed up to where the mast plug would be. I couldn't really put the new plugs and socket in place, since it was still cold and wet, so I just left it all in place.

Monday came around, and it was quite blustery. I didn't do much when I got up, just moved some stuff inside. For some reason, I found myself really tired still, and laid down for another hour or so. I woke up to sunshine, and slightly better temperatures. By better, I mean over 40. I took the time to finally, FINALLY get the new masthead sheaves in. It was a fairly simple process, other than I tackled it a crazy way. Since the sheaves I needed to put in were on the narrower end of the masthead, I had to remove the old ones on the aft side, and lower the new ones down from that end on some string to hold in place, and get everything lined up. Which also required removing the backstay pins and all that, but went pretty smooth. It wasn't until afterwards that I realized that the plate on the top of the masthead was just bolted on, and I could've just popped that off for full access. Go figure. At least they were in. With the sun coming out finally, I also took the time to mount the deck plug in place after soldering the wire together. I drilled some pilot holes, put down a layer of 5200 over the opening and previous holes, and screwed everything down. These connectors are something else though. I'll do more on those later. The mast wiring went just the same, other than dangling off the ladder with a hot soldering iron to reach it all. I had pre-tinned and filled the backside of the connectors with solder so that I had a head start with the wiring, and it went smooth.

After all that, I went home, for a much needed shower and night's sleep.

Getting closer!

So with a little over a week to go before the beginning of the season (I classify it as May 1st around here), it's time to get down to the nitty gritty. And by that, I mean.. being as broke as possible before getting on the water.

To recap the recent events as of late:

Couple weekends ago, I met with Matt, the previous owner, and picked up the 9.9 HP Mercury Extra Long Shaft outboard to go with the boat. The only downfall was that he hadn't found the fuel hose to bridge the tank and outboard. No worries, I'll go grab one from Wal-mart to play with it in the meantime. See, he told me that the motor had been looked at before, but he really didn't seem sure that it would be running 100%, so I thought I would just give it a look over. Imagine my surprise when the standard Mercury/Mariner fittings sold on the shelf, do NOT fit a 1988 Mercury outboard. They also sell the male fitting. Which, strangely, ALSO won't fit the female fitting they sell. So that was a bummer.

Then the weekend of the 7th, I was able to meet up with Matt again, to hand over the remaining balance for the actual boat purchase, sign the registration, and officially take ownership. Matt found the hose a couple days later and offered to mail it, so that was a nice bonus. Unfortunately the weather here has been unseasonably cold for the time of year and I haven't had any time, or daylight, to mess with it. That should change this weekend, when we might, MIGHT even hit 60 degrees! Woohoo, right?

So now it's a week and a half to go before the season opens. What do I have left to do?

Refit the masthead sheaves. To this end, I've ordered a new pair from Ballenger Spars, which was quite literally the ONLY place that I found the exact size needed already listed, without having to commission someone to create them special. And to that end, they were actually cheaper than most "close enough to work" sheaves that I found elsewhere. Whether or not they get here, that's the interesting question. Now, on the one hand, if they DO get here before next weekend, well then it's a party. I can replace the two missing ones with the new ones, and have free use of the spinnaker block and halyard for it's intended usage instead of it being tied up keeping head sail duties under wraps. Now, if they DON'T, well, the mast has been rigged with the aforementioned block doing duty and I'll just keep that orientation until I can climb up the mast and make the swap.

Mast Wiring. Right now, the mast wiring is nearly non-existant. The mast wiring on these boats come up through the deck-mounted mast step, and is sealed in the liner in the cabin. Unfortunately that means that if there are any breaks in wiring, you can't just pull new wire through the old. Now in my case, new wiring for the steaming light HAS been run, and plugs in (sort of) outside the mast. This is a very common way for things like this to be run, so that isn't the issue. What is, however, is the fact that the existing steaming light is absolutely destroyed. It's some form of LED fixture which has exactly nothing left minus an LED board dangling off some wooden bung.

As far as I can tell, it's the only wiring in the mast right now. The masthead has no anchor light, no VHF antenna, no anything at all. So in that spirit, I've ordered up a new LED anchor light, and a cheap steaming/deck light. It's sort of a Forespar knockoff, but it's cheap enough that I don't mind taking a risk on it. The only complaint that people have in the reviews I've read, is that when the wings are curved to match some mast angles, it could potentially deform the fixture enough that it could compromise the way things line up. My thinking, is that it's a plastic/composite fixture. A little heat should allow that to be formed without hardly any issues. Guess we'll see.



The anchor light is just some cheap all-round LED that should at least do something. My original plan was to just hoist a lantern, which I'll likely still do. But for fifteen bucks, and I already have the wire, why not throw on up anyway? Maybe I'll get lucky and this one will actually work, unlike the last one I had on my other boat.

And then in direct contrast, I ordered LMR-400 VHF cable to run up the mast, and to tie into the existing whip antenna that I found in the boat to mount. There are variations of VHF cable qualities, but in most threads I've read, the 400 seems to be at the, if not the top of the list for quality and signal loss in practical boating applications. That is to say that yes, there are physically better choices but the cost/weight/etcs hit a point where it isn't beneficial to sacrifice towards. The existing VHF radio that was mounted, was just run to an eight foot fiberglass whip mounted on the stern, but there IS a VHF barrel connector on the deck for the mast, just missing the cable run from there through the cabin to the radio. So at the very least, the cable will run from the masthead antenna to the deck. I plan on using the old radio for the time being, and then I might upgrade it next year. If you're curious as to just what kind of differences there are between the cable choices, here's a good chart:

Attenuation of Coaxial Transmission Lines in the VHF/UHF/Microwave Amateur and ISM Bands

Cable Type	144 MHz	220 MHz	450 MHz	915 MHz	1.2 GHz	2.4 GHz	5.8 GHz
RG-58	6.2(20.3)	7.4(24.3)	10.6(34.8)	16.5(54.1)	21.1(69.2)	32.2(105.6)	51.6(169.2)
RG-8X	4.7(15.4)	6.0(19.7)	8.6(28.2)	12.8(42.0)	15.9(52.8)	23.1(75.8)	40.9(134.2)
LMR-240	3.0(9.8)	3.7(12.1)	5.3(17.4)	7.6(24.9)	9.2(30.2)	12.9(42.3)	20.4(66.9)
RG-213/214	2.8(9.2)	3.5(11.5)	5.2(17.1)	8.0(26.2)	10.1(33.1)	15.2(49.9)	28.6(93.8)
9913	1.6(5.2)	1.9(6.2)	2.8(9.2)	4.2(13.8)	5.2(17.1)	7.7(25.3)	13.8(45.3)
LMR-400	1.5(4.9)	1.8(5.9)	2.7(8.9)	3.9(12.8)	4.8(15.7)	6.8(22.3)	10.8(35.4)
3/8" LDF	1.3(4.3)	1.6(5.2)	2.3(7.5)	3.4(11.2)	4.2(13.8)	5.9(19.4)	8.1(26.6)
LMR-600	0.96(3.1)	1.2(3.9)	1.7(5.6)	2.5(8.2)	3.1(10.2)	4.4(14.4)	7.3(23.9)
1/2" LDF	0.85(2.8)	1.1(3.6)	1.5(4.9)	2.2(7.2)	2.7(8.9)	3.9(12.8)	6.6(21.6)
7/8" LDF	0.46(1.5)	0.56(2.1)	0.83(2.7)	1.2(3.9)	1.5(4.9)	2.3(7.5)	3.8(12.5)
1 1/4" LDF	0.34(1.1)	0.42(1.4)	0.62(2.0)	0.91(3.0)	1.1(3.6)	1.7(5.6)	2.8(9.2)
1 5/8" LDF	0.28(0.92)	0.35(1.1)	0.52(1.7)	0.77(2.5)	0.96(3.1)	1.4(4.6)	2.5(8.2)

Attenuation of Various Transmission Lines in Amateur and ISM Bands in dB/ 100 ft (dB/ 100 m)


One thing that I AM excited about though is something my brother and I stumbled across in some searches for a project he's working on. One thing that I always see threads on forums about, is some sort of wiring connector at the mast. Most are somewhat flimsy 4-pin connectors or something, and frankly, the one I ordered for the Ex 26 I had, ended up being pretty poorly built. Now, you are free to point out the price. And I will be the first to admit that yes, it was very cheap and likely the main reason for failure. But if I'm honest, there are quite a few very similar ones, and I've seen them sell for upwards of thirty dollars. For reference, what I had was:

And every time I look for a waterproof deck connector, I always find the same kind of deal. I was almost resigned to using a trailer wiring plug. But when we were stumbling across other things unrelated, we found a company called CNLINKO, that manufactures waterproof connectors for various applications, including optical and USB. My brother ordered one, and was very impressed, so I decided to order a 1/4 turn locking 4 pin combo that I'm looking forward to seeing, in the following style:

Oh, remember that whole "I have nice shiny new batteries" thing? Let's revisit my Excalibur 26. Two nice GC2 golf cart batteries, and a Renogy Solar 100 watt panel and PWM controller. I've already mounted two new batteries on this boat, but I've only had a little 5 watt panel sitting out on the cockpit seat to feed them through a brand new Victron 75|15 controller. There's nothing drawing on the batteries right now, nothing is hooked up. But it won't be long before it's being used, and that little panel MIGHT be able to veryyyyy slowlyyy try to top batteries off over a week that I'm not there. But why tempt fate, right? I ordered a new HQST 100 watt monocrystalline solar panel, extension cables, and a waterproof deck seal connector. I fully intended to go with the Renogy again, and to be completely fair, I've read reviews comparing the two with mixed results. They have great reviews on this as well, and as one comment pointed out, these are manufactured by Renogy for distribution by HQST. This panel is about twenty dollars cheaper, so they must have skimped somewhere, you would think. But the problem is that there are reviews where people have purchased both panels and found them to be virtually identical. There are also a couple that maintain that they are in fact, NOT the same panel, and these are inferior. So, while I do plan on a second panel before the end of summer, I figured I'd at least give this one a go, and see how it compared to the one I had before.

All in all, it's shaping up to be a pretty good last week of preparation. The idea is to have all these things in for next week, and since I have the first week in May scheduled off, next weekend will be all the actual boat work and final prep, and then launch the next week and... who knows!

The disorder of it all

This weekend I plan on going up and taking care of some things on the boat, weather permitting. I have more goodies coming in tomorrow that will help that process. Not the weather, but the working. And when looking over the list, my first thought was, wow, I sure do things in a sporadic nature. Certainly not how I watch other people do it. That's when I realized that since I'm not in the business of producing nice shiny videos for others to watch, it's not a big issue.

Now a normal person, for example, will look at a project and make a list of everything that's needed, purchase it all at once, and complete the project. Do I look normal to you? To be fair, there's a lot of little projects to be done. It's not as if I'm building a shed or something. This is why you'll see me talk about buying one piece here, then something completely unrelated the next week, and so on. See, it doesn't matter how one does a puzzle. Some ways might be more efficient, like doing the borders and corners first. But as long as the end result is still a completed picture, it matters little the process taken.

Another thing you might notice is that I'm a fan of Amazon. Partially because I have the Prime membership so shipping is quick and painless, and more than partially because the pricing on a lot of things is hard to beat. Don't get me wrong, I am a strong fan of Defender, and have used them for a lot in the past - and will do so again. But I also have found that for a lot of incidental things, the price is relatively close between the two, and shipping would be the same time frame. By the time you factor in paying the little extra shipping for Defender, it's mostly a wash on things anyway. And there's an added bonus.

Did you know that if you go to http://smile.amazon.com instead of the regular www link, you can pick a charity to have money donated to, because of your purchase? It doesn't cost you anything different, but Amazon donates a % of the purchase to them. They are small numbers to be sure, but if you look at the grand scheme of everyone? It really adds up, and is a really cool thing to have happen. For example, you might think you aren't having an impact. I've placed 25 qualifying orders through Amazon, and have managed a paltry $11 dollars of impact for the charity I had chosen (and which can be changed at any time). However, combined, this charity alone has seen just under 2 million dollars raised. That's million. And total charitable contributions through the Smile program have exceed seventy million dollars. All without any addition costs to us, the consumers. All without asking me to spare a dollar in a checkout line.

Go ahead, try it. I dare you.

Wiring Part 1. Unwiring?

This past weekend, my dad went along with me on a day trip up to the boat to do some preliminary assessing of my wiring mess. Well, I already knew it was a mess. Maybe I just wanted someone to go "Wow, you weren't kidding!"

Before heading up, I stopped at the Sam's Club near where I'd be meeting my dad to pick up a pair of golf cart 6v batteries. When I had my Excalibur, I had two GC2 batteries, fed by a Renogy Solar 100 watt solar panel and controller kit. While I had originally wanted to double that bank, I recently decided that if it worked on that boat, it can work on this one as well since I don't plan on doing anything differently as far as usage. Let's recap a little about these batteries though.

The 6 volt golf cart battery is a common house bank choice. The Trojan T105 battery has long been the standard for these, but a very well-recommended alternative is the GC2 from Sam's Club, branded by Duracell. I won't get into actual manufacturing and whatnot. The GC2 is a slight bit lower capacity but a good chunk less in price, and maintained properly will give a good result. They also sell an EGC2 battery which steps up the amp-hours a notch at a cost of an additional $30 per battery - the GC2 is rated at 215 amp-hours, the EGC2 is 230. Comparatively, the Trojan is rated at 225. Considering that you need at least two batteries to form a 12 volt bank, and the cheapest I've seen a Trojan listed was $170 dollars, and the GC2 is half that, well.. do the math. And it's exponentially more cost-effective as your bank grows larger.

Now that our battery lesson is out of the way, I'll tell you why I told you the story. As I mentioned, I went to Sam's to pick up my pair of batteries. The EGC2 battery is a gray casing, the standard GC2 is black. Now I had remembered that the higher capacity batteries were a few dollars more for a few more amps, but couldn't remember the exact pricing and differences. As I stare at the display, I see the GC8s sitting there at 99 bucks versus the $84 GC2 next to it. So to myself, I think well heck, for fifteen bucks, I'll go for the upgrade, and tossed them in my cart. Some of you see what I did there.

I checked out, and headed towards my dad. As I did, I decided to do a follow up to see just how many more amp hours I bought myself. Obviously in no way was I researching while driving, the search for my newly purchased GC8 battery revealed a very startling first line.

Go ahead. See if you can see my sudden realization. I'll wait. Yes, friends. I purchased two 8 volt batteries. And for having a 12 volt system on the boat, this presents a bit of a puzzle. So, picked dad up, went back, and exchanged for the correct GC2 batteries. Off to a good start.

The drive was as expected, on new wheel bearings in my car. Side note, jumping your car off the road into a snowy ditch for a couple hundred feet, doesn't work out well for those. But once there, we unloaded all the junk - er, gear - I brought with us, including my handy little mighty ladder to give us access. I gave the brief tour into the boat, and pointed out the mess we were going to tackle. Then we moved the mast aft about ten feet so that I could get an idea of the masthead sheave issue, and peek into the anchor locker. Note to self - new anchor and chain to be ordered.

Pointing into the rat's nest of wiring, I gave my dad an idea of what had baffled me earlier. Because we were both toying with yanking on wires, I didn't take many pictures. So suffice it to say, it was just ripping out most of everything.

 

Sadly, I can't even remember what direction this angle was even facing! But we also tackled into removing the AC wiring, everything this side of the shore power connector on the hull. Here, you can see the old-school style AC breaker box amidst the mess.

It took a bit over an hour or so to finally cut loose all the old wiring, the ties, untangle them, and then the hard part - removing the existing switches. If I can find a picture somewhere I'll add it, but basically they, and the fuseholders for those that were equipped, were just drilled in holes in the liner above the quarter berth. Very not cool. I found the easiest way to remove the nuts from the back of the fuse holders, was to simply grab the whole assembly with pliers, give a quick twist and just shatter the whole assembly which would then fall back out of the hole. The switches were mostly old style metal casings so they took some more effort but in the end, success. 

A neat little feature that most Newport 28 owners might have overlooked, is that if you remove the Atomic 4 from the engine compartment, it makes a great place to store a pair of batteries!

Obviously, these aren't locked down, or anything, but I wanted to see how well they would fit. I propped them up on some small wooden pieces laying around to keep them up off the hull itself for fear of condensation/freezing. But I think a pair fits quite nicely. The plan is to use some 3/8 plywood and make a box of sorts, that will look similar to an H, that will sit in there, allowing for space underneath, the batteries sit on the cross, and I can add anchors within the box to hold them down, as well as strap the box itself to the old engine mounts. Plenty of time to get there, but that's the plan. I managed to sort out which wire went to the stern light. That was as far as the tracing went before we called it a day and left for dinner on the way home.

We did, before we moved the mast back forward to eliminate the stern pressure, was to pull the two remaining masthead sheaves from it. They're the old style composites, measuring 2 3/4" in diameter, 1/2" thick (outside to outside) and with a 3/8" hole for the pin. So far, I've found some that were CLOSE that would work, but I finally found my way back to Ballanger Spars webpage. I had ordered my hinged mast step from them for my last boat, and knew he did mast work but I didn't think about sheaves. Sure enough, he has the exact size listed in his catalog, in aluminum for only $24 apiece. Since the two I have left are in fine shape, I'll place an order for two more, and get the masthead in shape within the next few weeks. 

I will say though, it was nice not having to lug those batteries back down the ladder afterwards. I didn't mention that above. Anyone planning on retrofitting some of these into a house bank, or replacing existing, and if you care about weight.. They're about 68 lbs each. Yes, my ladder held up as I carried each up to the top. 

Hopefully it'll only be a couple more weekends before I get up and start stringing new wire, with more pictures of that side of it. Really, taking things apart is pretty boring anyway.

All in a name

One of the things I had been trying to think of for a while, was a new appropriate name for this boat. I wanted something that hinged nicely off the striking paint color, but also simple in nature, and also something that was easy to call a Mayday from if the situation warranted it. I mean, calling the boat 'I'm bluer than you, but it's the color, not the mood' would make for a very confusing radio hail.

Admittedly, it was something that had only been passing back and forth in my mind for a bit here and there, but when it came time to fill out my dock agreement for Fair Point Marina, one of the blanks is for boat name. What better time to figure that out than the present, I figured. So after much consideration that took the better part of five minutes, I have decided that this Newport 28 will take on the name Blue Skye. The 'e' was a suggestion from someone here at work, and I don't mind the addition.

I've spent the last week starting to put together my shopping lists for the refit. If you haven't read any of my past plans, it included a 400+ amp hour house battery bank, 300 watts of solar power, large inverter to tie into the AC outlets on board, possibly a hot water heater. Plumbing in a shower in the head, and so on and so on.

I've ordered a new DC panel - though likely not the permanent one that I would like to eventually get to. I'm also ordering up a new AC main breaker panel, to get rid of the horrible design that is in it now. Until I get more pictures later, it's basically a 30 amp house breaker in a box stuck up in the cabin. Unacceptable to me. Also a new pulpit railing flange, some battery jumper wires to run my GC2s in parallel, and other little odds and ends.

But one thing I have wrestled with, is the scaling back of such a grand scheme. My last boat was powered by a single 100 watt solar panel feeding two GC2 batteries from Sam's Club - so 215 amp hours in the bank. That boat used a 7" touchscreen chartplotter, VHF and active depthsounder that all ran full time anyone was on board, as well as LED cabin lights, the regular nav lights in the dark, cell phone chargers, and a small inverter that would run a 24" LED television. I never once had any issues with power, even after I inadvertently pulled one of the cables from the charge controller and was running on battery only for who knows how long. So why on earth would I need to double the capacity when I have no realistic expectations this year to use any more power than I had before? With the only exception being a water pump for the sink faucet, there's no more draw to this boat than the last. Likely even less than that one, as I don't have the same chart plotter setup - I'm going to stick to a small tablet with Navigation Apps instead which use the same maps I already had, and with just as accurate a GPS fix.

I will be jumping up to 2 panels instead of one, and will likely make it an arch over the stern instead of just mounting them on the rail. Another option would be to let them swivel off the side of the stern instead of the back, but an arch would offer a little more cockpit shade under certain angles, and will still be back far enough that the boom won't shade them at all. I can always add two more batteries later to double the bank up, but for the immediate season, this should be plenty.

Other things I have waiting to be ordered, are just wiring and plumbing supplies, and new lights for the mast, and cabin. I do need to figure out the masthead sheave situation but I need to get back to the boat for that part. I've been trying to compare pictures of the masthead that I've taken, with a few that I found online from what I believe is another N28, and I think I have an idea for one side, but I really have to get to the boat with a second set of hands so that I can maneuver the mast backwards on the boat to where I have access to the masthead for some measurements, and to see what's up. The aft side doesn't appear to have anything in the masthead at all, but the front of it does at least still have a pin, so maybe there's hope.

The To-Do List

I decided that even though I have a laundry list of "would be nice to do" things in my head, I should probably jot down the list of things I better get done before splash time for the upcoming season. And then wherever the two shall meet, good things become better.

First up, the mast wiring. There's a few things in this mess that have to get sorted out, like a new steaming light. I'll likely go steaming/deck combination, but the existing one is just thrashed, so it definitely needs new. So I'm thinking of something simple like the following, since it's a budget-style refit.

Not sure how the wiring currently is on the way through the mast itself, but I also want to run a new mast-head VHF antenna. Well, I have one in the boat that I found, I just need to mount it at the top and run new VHF cable down. I realize that the boat is only going to be used for the time being on Lake Ontario and it won't make so much difference being that extra thirty feet in the air, but I still like having it up there.

The other thing with the mast is replacing some sheaves and fixing the halyards which were 'fixed' in a less than ideal way prior. I don't know if it was just lack of availability or what happened, but apparently the existing ones either broke or seized or something, so instead, one of the previous owners just shackled a block onto the spinnaker ring and used that for the head sail instead. So I would like to undo that.

I also need to splice in a repair to the bowsprit where it was damaged before. That won't take too much, really. a couple feet of stainless, some adhesive and a piece to sleeve inside it, and that should be it. For anyone that's curious about how that works, it's basically using a slightly smaller diameter that fits snug inside the replacement piece. Basically like a splice. And to be honest, I really thought I was going to have to pony up a few hundred dollars for a repair job.

Though the next step in that, is to add lifelines, unless they're somewhere hiding on the boat coiled up that I hadn't found in the first visit. If memory serves, the stanchions are all now present and accounted for, so I guess worst case, I can at least get some rope (I am aware that once it's aboard the boat, it will no longer be called rope), and make something temporary.

Surprisingly enough, that's all it needs, from what I can tell. That isn't to say there isn't a a nice list of wants and wishes. With luck, I'll have a better idea of those soon.