All Work, No Play

I promised a list of boat work thus far in another post – after a couple of questions on the subject.  Bear with me, if you’re reading for entertainment, as this is a little slanted toward the technical and probably not entertaining.  Unless, of course, you find the idea of me doing all of this crap entertaining, in which case you could be a sadist. 

There are a variety of sayings about boats/boat maintenance and the expense and time involved.  A boat buck is a thousand dollars, for example.  I can’t remember them all, but here are a couple of my favorites:

“A boat is a floating problem which is never fully solved”

“Cruising is boat maintenance in exotic locations”

“If it ain’t broke, give it a week”

“A boat is a giant hole in the water, into which you throw money and time”

“There is no such thing as a boat without issues, just broke boat owners who insist otherwise”

Maybe that will set the tone for this post.   Let me preface this with the fact that nobody can, truly, understand the amount of work, sweat, tears, and frustration which go into refitting a cruising sailboat – until they’ve actually done it.  And God forbid you want things done correctly.  That’ll cost you much more money and many more hours on every, single project.

Engines

A buddy from Austin (who will probably read this) asked me the other day why I spend so much time with the engines if it’s a sailboat.  I did my best to remember that he lives a very long way from the ocean and didn’t have much experience doing what I’m now doing.  Remembering that helped me to not be a complete jerk and remind him that day-sailing isn’t even in the same ballpark as cruising around between countries, across the goddamn ocean.   It’s not even apples and oranges.  It’s grapefruit and soccer balls.

The dirty little secret of cruising is that you use your engine(s) much more often than most people think.  I remember, before I started cruising, thinking that I wouldn’t use my engines much, simply sail or not.  And if I needed to sail slowly, I would just do that.  Of course, all of the things I thought before cruising weren’t based on experience, so they were usually wrong. 

Make no mistake, the engine is the heart of a cruising sailboat.  Yep, I said it.  It gets you in and out of anchorages – you can sail in, but you risk losing your yacht – something that I’ve seen firsthand.  Too many cases of boats running into reefs in San Blas had to do with engine failure and engine trouble followed by a crappy decision to sail into an anchorage.  In short – very few cruisers risk their boats by trying to sail into and out of anchorages.  And if they do, they may not be cruising much longer.  Especially small or tricky anchorages. Lose wind, you’re screwed.  Get a gust, you’re screwed.  Miscalculate, you’re screwed.  When the wind switches angles, guess what? 

Your engine(s) also help when there is no wind, or when the wind is at an unfavorable angle.  Engines help get you to your anchorage before dark.  Engines help fight currents and tides. 

They also help charge your battery banks – remember you need VHF, lights, autopilot, fridge, a freshwater system, a GPS, a depth sounder, a wind instrument (the list goes on and on and on).  You have to create that energy somehow.   

Engines help set your anchor. They’re absolutely necessary in the case of a yacht drifting into you or in the case of your own yacht pulling anchor.  And in the case of a real storm when you’re at anchor, you better have the ability to push your boat against the wind.

Basically, engines are very, very important on a sailboat.   Paramount to both safety and comfort.   You can get away without them, but in reality – you don’t.  With that in mind, here’s what I’ve done in Cartagena with the engines thus far:

• compression test both engines. When they turned out OK (all three cylinders very similar in compression results), I was alright putting in more preventative maintenance.


• remove, clean, test, repair injectors


• remove, clean, test heat exchangers


• remove, clean exhaust manifolds


• clean, scrape, sand, acid-wash, and paint engines


• adjust valves and timing


• replace a long list of corroded bolts and nuts


• removed crappy engine electrical boxes, replaced with higher-quality boxes and mounted to bulkhead


• wire in new engine room blowers


• wire in lighting in engine rooms


• wire in new sensors, sensor wires, and gauges


• rewire engine control panels


• replace exhaust hose


• replace all fuel lines


• replace gasket on engine room hatches


• Add LED striplights to engine rooms (shit always breaks at night…)

Left to do:

• thermostat replacement, fresh water pumps cleaned and serviced


• paint engine rooms


• install small shelves in engine rooms


• rebuild starboard saltwater pump


• replace seals in saildrives (haul boat)


• replace pneumatic hinges for hatches


• replace soundproofing in engine rooms

Here is a before/after, note this is superficial – most of the real work happened on the inside.  Before the engines were that horrible Volvo Penta green. The soundproofing was falling all over the engine room, leaving a mess.  The blowers (the tubing) were installed in a very inconvenient place, and they didn’t work.  There was no lighting in the engine rooms.  They were rusty.

Before…

 

These pictures were actually taken at night.  Just the other night.  It looks like daylight because there are two LED lightstrips in each engine compartment (they are those glowing strips in the lower pics) that light up the engine rooms very well.  That’s a big deal when you’re rocking and rolling at night and trying to tighten an alternator belt…

Lagoon 380 Engine Room LED lighting

LED lightstips

LED lightstrips

Electrical

Modern cruising boats have a remarkable amount of electronic gadgets onboard.  It could certainly be argued that there are too many.  You need pumps, and alarms and lights and navigation equipment.  There’s no easy way around it – you’ll want/need most of these things, and if they’re onboard, they better work.  You can’t afford to have a bilge pump not working if you’re holed – for an extreme example.  And your autopilot, GPS, wind and depth are pretty important too.  Don’t forget your radar, your VHF and the host of other electric nonsense.  It’s staggering, really. 

Here’s what I’ve done so far:

• wired in four additional 1100 GPH automatic bilge pumps (two in the engine rooms, one in each hull).  If holed, I need to be able to make it to somewhere safe, and have at least one bilge pump in all but the front crash lockers.


• wired in two LED worklights over the dingy davits (handy at night when you’re working/drinking/cooking/cleaning fish on the back deck)


• replaced and rewired my main A/C electrical panel


• replaced and rewired my main D/C electrical panel


• rewired all of the major systems (with the correct wiring)


• replaced all navigation lights

Left to do:

• add LED’s to cabinets


• fix remote windlass switch


• fix wind gauge


• wire in two 75W solar panels, one on the outside of each hull (total solar 710W)


• wire in a saltwater washdown pump


• wire in an LED spreader light


• decide on radar (this is an expensive and tough decision)

Here’s a picture of the old AC/DC panel.

Old Panel – Lagoon 380

Here is a pic of the new panels, the additional bilge pump switches, and my water-tank gauge.  I went with a Paneltronics panel, WEMA gauges, and a pretty standard bilge pump switch from Rule.

New A/C D/C Panel, bilge pump switches, water level gauge

Behind the scenes…

Sails, rigging, etc. 

Surprisingly, this is an area that I haven’t had to pay much attention too.  There have been a few small things, but overall – my sails and rigging are in good shape. I do sail a fair amount, it’s just that sails aren’t mechanical/electrical and thus aren’t as prone to failure.  The real enemy here is saltwater in furling systems/winches and (most importantly) sail degradation by the sun. The next real “investment” here will be a downwind sail – I’m hoping to get into a roller-furling Code Zero style sail that I can leave on my bowsprit semi-permanently.  Naturally, those are very expensive. Same story, different day I reckon.

So far:

• mainsail luff repair


• minor gennaker patch


• rigging tensioning


• replacement of lazy jacks, rerunning them to spreaders


• replacing batten cars on sail track

Plumbing, etc

Plumbing is another one of those skills you have to understand to cruise around.  Not in great depth, but a little.

Here’s what I’m up to:

• fixing the watermaker (I hope)


• improving the connections, etc of the watermaker


• rewiring the watermaker (maybe this is electrical)


• saltwater foot pump at kitchen sink


• plumb saltwater washdown and run hose to fish-cleaning table


• finish rainwater collection on new bimini (see previous post)

 

Welding:

I’ve had to do more than a couple of things that involved welding.  So far:

• replaced rear lifelines with stainless tubing to support side-solar panels


• strengthened bimini supports with additional stainless tubing


• increased seating on the back of NOMAD (see previous post)


• strengthen my dinghy-engine lift (it’s an intelligent idea but was built very lightly, which was unintelligent)


• new dinghy davit system (see previous post)

 

Carpentry, cushions, etc:

• replaced cushions on captain’s chair


• backrest made for new seating


• dinghy cover made


• stackpack alteration


• shade enclosure for rear seating area


• Eisenglass for cockpit (for bad weather)

I need a spot to store tools and other commonly used items without having to tear apart my boat.  Especially when things break at night, shorthanded, or when I’m underway.  Pulling up cushions with greasy hands is dumb. So I decided to convert my chart table to drawers to solve this issue.  So far, so good – though I have to make some minor modifications to get it the way I want it.  Check it.

My new tool chest

I needed a couple of new wooden panels created to replace the old ones (around the electrical panels), where there was a hodgepodge of equipment thrown by previous owners. 

Finally, for my ground tackle I had to make some decisions.  In the South Pacific, there are many anchorages that are very deep.  Assuming a 3:1 rode/depth ratio (in 10M of water, I only use 30M chain – the minimum) – if I’m anchoring in 30M of water (common), I need, minimally, 90M of chain… Right now I have 45 meters of 3/8″ chain.  The usual advice is to simply increase that 45M to 80-90M.  

But that’s not ideal.  It puts a crapload of weight in the front of NOMAD.  Catamarans are super weight-sensitive.  My girl is already on the heavy-side.  So that additional weight is a problem. After thinking, talking, researching – I’ve decided that I’m going to run 5/16″ chain (smaller, lighter) in Hi-Test (from ACCO).  This chain weighs quite a bit less, and is stronger than the 3/8″ BBB from ACCO.  As a plus, it’s also cheaper.  Better and cheaper really don’t go hand-in-hand, but in this case I kinda got away with it.  I say “kinda” because that change in chain-size means I have to replace my gypsy on my windlass, which costs money.

This is far from an exhaustive list, but it’s a solid start.  I would say it represents the majority of the work I need done, but I am remarkably adept at creating more work for myself.   I hope to be done in the next month or two, considering what I’m able to actually procure in CTG.  From there, I’ll just sail and fix things along the way.   This is a couple of months of mostly working, and not mostly playing.   A couple of months of living in a boat that’s a project, but is supposed to be mi casa.  It’s stressful to live with your boat like this:

Living in a project…

Hopefully this shows the amount of actual work that’s involved in preparing for this kind of voyage. It’s not for the faint of heart or light of wallet.  The question – is it all necessary?  – is a good one.  The thing is – there’s nothing in the South Pacific.  Once you start heading West, from Panama – you’re out there on your own.  You have to make do with what you have onboard and hope it works.  So, getting this work done now – hopefully – will provide me with more cruising and less boatwork in the future.  Hopefully.

Upon rereading this, I realized I used the word “hope” more than I usually do. That’s another good indication of what cruising and boat maintenance can be like.  Lot’s of “I hope” and “hopefully.”  Alas.

All Work, No Play