Surgery, Part1

After over a year of pushing this project out, I finally found the guts to replace the soft core in front of the port side chain plates! This quite some project, requiring cutting through the outer skin, digging out the old rotten core and rebuilding everything from scratch. I started with sounding the deck and concluded that the suspect area with at least delamination was along one section in the non-skid that I would need to replace completely. That also required to remove the opening of the wastewater tank (Yikes!).

Suspected area, looking towards the front

After removing wastewater outlet

The hole for the wastewater tank was just drilled through the deck!

So I did that first and found to my surprise that the hole through the deck for the wastewater line was simply drilled through the deck without any epoxy reinforcement or embedding. So that had to be redone as well. Luckily there was no moisture intrusion (yet!) through that hole and the core look dry and sound. Originally I had thought the water intrusion was coming from there, but apparently that was not the case.

After removal of rotten core and top skin 

I started cutting the outer skin off and found plenty of rotten balsa core, of course. Thankfully it extended only half way through the marked area, but I decided to cut the whole thing off anyways to be able to finish it better at a later stage. Otherwise the new non-skid would have probably looked funny attaching to the old one in the middle of a panel. It took me the whole Saturday afternoon chiseling away at the rotten core and removing the old outer skin. It also turned out hat the chain plates were not the source of the water either, even though there is no epoxy barrier around the chan plate openings either on the T34C :-(. That leak looks to come from the refitted bathroom window, which really surprised me as this window is relatively new and hasn't been dripping inside at all. So that one needs to come off too and has to be rebedded I guess.

New balsa core fits nicely!

I had bought some 1/2 inch end grain balsa core from Jamestown Distributors, along with a roll of biaxial fiber glass cloth. Fitting the balsa core is relatively easy as it is segmented in 1x2 inch segments. so cutting it to length with a Dremel tool is no problem. After making sure everything fits I cleaned ervything off and called it a day, covering the whole with some plastic to avoid moisture coming back in during the night.

New varnish!

Cockpit coamings portside aft

Had to take a break for the last 3 weeks due to intensive varnishing work being done on the boat. Looks like new now! The guys did an amazing job and I'm really afraid of touching anything now, everything is shiny and glossy, from the cockpit coamings to the hand rails, toe rails and rub rails. Altogether 140ft of rails plus the cockpit and hatches, that had to be stripped, treated for spots, sanded, coated with 4 layers of varnish and 1 layer of gloss! I'm so glad I didn't have to do it myself. The good news is that in the foreseeable future this won't be necessary to be repeated, as the new coat material just needs a light sanding and 1 layer of re-apply every year. Kudos to the guys from dupeymarine.com for doing a great job!

Hazy morning

The Golden Gate partially shrouded in low hanging clouds

Had a nice sail this weekend around SF Bay. Even though the weather looks kind of grim, still lots of fun sailing here. We were able to sail all the way back without having to use the engine! Usually this time of the year the wind dies somewhere south of the Bay Bridge and only picks up late in the afternoon around SFO airport. 

Some wind!

Jerry at the helm

has returned to the Bay! Took my friend Jerry out on Constance. Wind went up to 22kn on our wind meter (which is reading about 5kn low), so we had to tuck in a reef and roll up the jib somewhat. High speed of 8.1 knots on the return while beam reaching!

Battery monitor!

Spent the day to install the new battery monitor. After the sudden death of the previous main bank batteries I realized that it is quite important to monitor the charge state of the batteries and not let them go deep cycle too often. Actually, better avoid any charge below 80% is apparently the best to maintain battery life. 

The installation is actually quite a brainteaser with 6 different cables you need to install in the right sequence. Also, additionally to the actual monitor I needed to install a shunt and rewire the ground cables for the main bank and the starter battery across the shunt. As usual I only found out when half way through the project that one cable was missing, and so off I went for another Westmarine shopping round! In the end came the anxious moment after the last connection was made: Will the darn thing work? Guess what, first try and it worked like a charm without having to troubleshoot and fix anything! 

The picture shows the battery monitor display. This is a Xantrex LinkLite. It can display the actual voltage, amps drawn, and charge state of the battery for the main bank, and the voltage of the auxiliary starter battery. I mounted it below the companionway to reduce cable length. That way you can also see the display at eye's height when switching on the battery main switch. Checked all the different circuits to see how much they draw. The masthead tricolor is the biggest power drain at 2.2A. Who would have thought! The normal running lights draw only 1.2A, even though they consist of 3 individual bulbs whereas the tricolor has only one.

Battery monitor

Maserati!

Soldini's Maserati at Pier39

Ran across Maserati on Saturday, just after they finished their record breaking NY/SF Route d'Or voyage. They finished the whole distance of 13000+ miles in just a little over 47d, shattering the previous record by more than 10 days!  

Ayala Cove!

Moored at Ayala Cove

Went over the weekend to Angel Island, Ayala Cove. We ended up moored next to a Tartan37, another classic S&S design, very similar to ours (center board, cabin layout with quarterberth,..). The owner came over to say hello and it turned out we had actually talked to each other on the tartansailing group! Quite a coincidence, but I guess the good spots are known among the locals.

After taking a quick plunge in the ice cold waters, we hiked up the island to check out the views of San Francisco and the Golden Gate. Even though it was a bit hazy, the view from top of Angel Island is always breathtaking. The photo above is actually taken from the Sunset trail, high above the cove.