Starboard Chain Plate

I removed the starboard chain plate, cleaned both of them up, and took them to Dan the rigger. He will inspect them and give me a call. The starboard chain plate was easier because the nuts were easily accessible from the closet.

Chain Plate

Arnold brought me back to the boat last night so that I could get an early start this Monday morning.

The first thing I did was to replace the faulty cockpit switch that controls the electric anchor winch. Arnold and I had managed to find a replacement at his local West Marine. The entire system is now working well and the wiring at the bow has been upgraded to hopefully give me years of trouble-free service.

Then I replaced a shackle joining two lengths of 3/8" chain on my spare rode with a proper joiner that comes in two halves and is made one by hammering four metal pins. I can't be sure that the joiner is as strong as an ordinary link as the man said, but it does look strong enough. The two halves will stay together because I've flattened out the four pins and the forces on the joiner act to keep the halves together. It passes through the windlass gypsy just fine. I will probably use one of those joiners to add a 22m length to my primary rode to yield 60 m of all-chain rode.

How do you remove a chain plate when you've never done it before? Well, you get started and hope for the best. I began work on the port chain plate at noon. First I removed the surrounding caulking on deck. Then I removed a section of the cabin ceiling to expose the entry through the deck. After that I started the process of removing the three shrouds from the chain plate. I used a spinnaker halyard to secure the mast to the port side then fixed the shrouds one at a time through shackles that I had put on the toe rail. For the D1 and D2 shrouds I used cord, but for the cap shroud I used all metal. Then I spent literally hours removing 11 bolts from the chain plate. Getting the nuts off was easy. The hard part was unscrewing the bolts through the wood one partial turn at a time. At 6 PM I had all of the bolts removed and my plan was to face the task of removing the chain plate the next morning. However, I decided to assess the difficulty of the problem and within 20 minutes I had the chain plate out.

I was extremely pleased to see that the chain plate does not appear to have any serious corrosion. I will clean it up in the morning and take it to Dan the rigger for a professional assessment. One of the tricks of the trade is to use acid to highlight fractures. ... I am convinced that the stainless steel use decades ago - 1983 in this case - is superior to the dodgy stuff we get today.

Tomorrow I'll probably remove the starboard chain plate. I'm confident that it will be OK too but I want to rebed both chain plates. Dan talked about using epoxy for rebedding and resealing. However, I am inclined to use something softer, such as Sikaflex or 3M 4000. The key to my removing the chain plate so easily today was that it had been bedded with soft material. I do not want to use a strong adhesive and leave a big problem later on for myself or a future owner.

When I see Dan we will decide on a priority list of work on the boat. I've already discussed with him the possibility of extending the track at the front of the mast so for storage and deployment of the spinnaker pole. It would be great to get the spinnaker pole off the deck. We might do something about various cars and fittings which have seen better days.

I am looking forward to sailing out of here knowing that my chain plates and rigging are reliable, with no more rain water dribbling down the chain plate.

4th of July

Arnold picked me up on Friday afternoon and I spent the 4th of July at his home with Sandra, Denver the Dog, and the two cats.

We went to Kingston's 4th of July parade which I enjoyed immensely because it lived up to my expectations of small town America complete with town major and cops, fire engines, scouts, pubescent beauty queens on vintage cars, high school band, excited children, pet dogs, etc.

That evening we returned to the waterfront and enjoyed fireworks on both sides of us and across the water from Seattle to the north as far as the eye could see.

Enclosed are a selection of photos. The line of 5 sheriff staff bearing the flags opened the parade.

Salt Water Inlet, Rigger, Windlass Switch

[I forgot to mention in my entry below that I measured the thickness of the hull where I drilled the 1" hole for the fitting. The thickness was 14 mm, or just over 1/2 inch.]

Arnold visited in the early afternoon and we got cracking on drilling the 1" diameter hole in the hull for the new salt water galley pump inlet. The hole cut by the 1' hole cutter that Arnold brought was snug as I had expected but a bit of work with sand paper produced a very tight fit. After a but of effort with the sealant and wrenches we got the job done. The accompanying photos show the various stages of the work. The top photo shows the curious setup where the salt water intake was tee-d off the galley sink drain. The job will be completed when I have obtained a new manual salt water pump.

While we were working Dan the rigger visited. He went up the mast and spent 20 minutes inspecting and photographing. An hour later he provided me with the best presentation on my rig that I have seen. I learned a lot about its strengths and weaknesses, what is urgent and what can wait. He said that the rigging work that Ron had done in Honolulu was very good. There was no glaring problem with the rig but next week we will get together and agree on a plan. In the meantime I will remove the port chain plate for inspection.

Another chap, also named Dan, wandered over and started to speak with Arnold about his motorcycle. It turned out that he works for BUMS, Bottoms Up Marine Services. One thing led to another and I have engaged BUMS to do all of the below-waterline maintenance work. What convinced me was his descriptions of materials and techniques that are far superior to the primitive methods that I have been using.

Arnold and I then turned our attention to the engine water temperature sensor and we concluded that it does indeed need replacing. Unfortunately SABB has not responded to my query of several days ago so I may have to find the VDO part elsewhere.

The Arnold looked at the problem that I had with the anchor windlass foot switch. After some electrical sleuting he found the fault: the master switch at the cockpit was faulty. When he jumpered the switch the widlass worked just fine. I'll try to find a replacement tomorrow.

The boat is a shambles but that doesn't matter. It was a good day of good progress.

Pump story

A phone call from Trevor of the local chandlery “Yacht Grot” : Have I got a surprise for you!! Can you guess what it is?

I couldn’t so he told me that a parcel had arrived – one that none of us had expected to see. Robert had ordered from Yacht Grot a salt/fresh water pump. It was posted, airmail, on 8 November last year, destination Papeete, Tahiti. By the time that Pachuca was ready to leave on 21 November it had not arrived. Robert left a forwarding address (Arnold’s home) at the Bureau de Poste. The forwarding address was written on the package but so was a sticker detailing two payments owing ‘magasinage’ and ‘renoi’ (keeping it in the PO and forwarding it?)

There was no one to pay the 12.03 French Polynesian francs. Ultimately the package was sent on its way to the return address, completing its round trip on 28 June, still unopened.

Only a few days ago I had purchased another pump just the same for Pachuca. Trevor offered to give me a refund on that one and so now I will be able to take the prodigal pump to Seattle.

Post Written by Brenda N.

Working Chaos

These photos show the mess that is created out of necessity to open up sections of the boat for work. I stored material on the deck, in the cockpit, and in various parts of the cabin.

The lower photo shows the AWG 16 bare copper ground wire that I used yesterday to ground the HF tuner to the keel bolts.

Hosing and Windlass Foot Switch

The effort with the hosing in the lazarette turned out to be much more modest than I had expected. I removed two hoses from their thru-hull fittings and saw that they are made for hose connections and have no threads for attaching a shut-off valve. I looked at the other hoses, thinking how they are under no pressure and their outlets were above the water line and decided to leave well enough alone. I don't want to risk opening a Pandora's Box of grief by trying to replace those thru-hull fittings. However, I did raise the loop of a half-inch hose and who knows, it may solve my water ingestion problem. I still don't know what that hose services because it disappears under the cockpit and I won't have access to that area until I remove those large batteries.

The top photo shows the hoses from the two whale gusher pumps joined to the one outlet.

The second photos shows the red drain hose for the electric bilge pump and the mysterious half-inch hose removed from their thru-hull fittings. The big black hose is the exhaust hose.

The third photo shows the hose outlets at the stern. The two large outlets below the water line are for the cockpit drains. All of the thru-hull fittings below the waterline were professionally replaced in preparation for this trip.

Above the water line to the left is the exhaust outlet with the dark streak running down from it. Next to it is the outlet for the mysterious half-inch hose. The large outlet on the starboard side is for the whale gusher pumps. The small one below that is for the small drain at the back of the cockpit.

In the afternoon I had a go at fixing the foot switch for the electric anchor windlass. I replaced the cabling between the switch and the solenoid with thick gauge tinned wire with professionally soldered terminals. I hooked it all up confident that it would solve the problem but the foot switch would still not work. I don't fully understand the circuitry between the master switch in the cockpit, the foot switch at the bow, and the solenoid. At this point it looks like the foot switch is OK and that the master switch is not sending energy to the bow. Arnold is visiting tomorrow and I'll ask him for advice.

I got a visit from the rigger today and we looke over the tasks. I was impressed with his approach to the job. Tomorrow he will send someone to go up the mast to check out the upper ends of the standing rigging. At first glance the shrouds and backstay look OK but he will use his tricks of the trade to look for any evidence of corrosion or broken wires.

I am going to remove the port chain plate for inspection. I'll first brace the mast, of course. Whether they are replaced or not the chain plates will be rebedded in epoxy and will not leak again during my tenure. He will guide me in the procedure and send someone to help if I require it.

We discussed setting up a track and block arrangement to store the spinnaker pole up the front of the mast. He will cost out two options.

Yesterday Doug Roth the refrigeration man phoned me. He had tried to call me but I had garbled my telephone number and he could not reach me. Fortunately I phoned the second morning and was clearer with my message. He asked why I though that I needed to replace the refrigeration unit. It replied that it was because of its age and that I had heard that older units cannot be charged with modern gases. He said that the Danfoss compressors are practically indestructible and seemed to indicate he can re-gas it to get it working again. He will visit next week.

I tried to contact Richard on the HF radio at the indicate hour and frequency today, with no success. I missed the first two sessions and he may have given up on me. The HF radio seemed to putting out plenty of power.

Arnold will visit tomorrow. I'll drill through the hull with a 1" hole cutter and install the salt water pump inlet fitting. We'll also test out the VDO temperature sensor. He recalls that it tested OK earlier. That would mean that we have either a wiring or a meter problem.