Boracay Star not working memorial weekend or for Bowlegs

Have been so busy!  Well, the AC unit on the boat leaked its guts out because the condenser and compressor were rusted out.  I knew about this, but the 1900$ for a new Mermaid unit hurt.  And I hadn't exactly planned for this expense.  But it's hot and I want AC.  In the mean time we have the window unit in the companionway which is a pain but works somewhat.

I managed to get a used Xantrax 40A charger for 80$, so score there.  And I went crazy and spent 100 on replacing some lamps with LED's.  Works well and looks nice but too early I think.

I finished the head project.  It seems to work quite well.

I started rebedding the deck hardware starting with the mast partner, mainsheet deck-mounted blocks, and dorade box screws.

So we have been having a major annoyance, the entire boat only has 2 AC receptacles!  So I need to wire the entire boat.  I will install wiring for port and starboard legs.  For now I'll keep them going to 1 breaker but may eventually split them.  I'm trying to not cut any holes in the pretty wood so the ones in the saloon are flush mounted on the bulkheads behind the cushions, quite invisible.  On stbd, I'll install a GFCI near the chart table and run a leg behind the quarterberth there, 3 receptacles,  into the head and replace the faulty GFCI there, and put 1 up in the V berth.  On port I'll replace the faulty GFCI in the galley, run 2 on the quarterberth, and a last one up in the vberth.  I'm also going to run a separate line for the microwave to a breaker marked as spare.

Showering is so nice and so is a separate head.  Rosa is getting things organized the way she likes them, we bought a bunch of plastic boxes.  The oven doesn't currently work, stove burners do.  I can try to fix it but I'd really like to just buy a new oven.  It will be safer with safety shutoff in case the wind blows them out.  But 1000$ vs. 200$.  I'll get to that.

I actually broke our FM stereo radio while trying to hook up the sirius satellite radio.  I don't know what's wrong.  So I think we'll need another stereo.

So I bought a rebuild kit for my salt water pump on the engine, supposing it came with a shaft.  No, just 2 seals and an impeller for 130$.  Crazy!  And I needed a shaft because mine was pitted and would chew up those seals fast.  So I ordered another one from torrenson, with a shaft for less than 100.  Returned the kit to Haynes, and bought a new pump for 260 from torrenson.  Now the bummer is that I have to wait for next week for everything to arrive.  That means the engine is nonfunctional for a little while.

We're also working on sewing up curtains.  Rosa picked out a nice pattern that I'm working on sewing.  We're getting some boat curtain tracks.

I'm really hoping we can get the boat running again and soon.  We have Nadesico cleaned out and ready to sell, but the big boat is broken.  It will probably be that way a while, as I still have to replace the fuel tanks and replace the rigging.  Unfortunately we've been spending too much to currently afford those 2 projects, but i'll get to them as I can.

I'm just hoping this weekend I'll get the AC wiring done and get the marine AC unit installed and cranking out the cold.

Boracay Star at the dock and boatwork

What a busy few days!
Wednesday we went to the boatyard to put the prop together, a Max Prop is quite complicated.  Well it was raining and I was doing the work under the dripping boat.  The company sent me the wrong replacement bolts and retaining pin, so I machined a replacement pin with my dremel tool.  I got it back together and realized that I had installed the prop 'left-handed' instead of right-handed, dooh!  Anyway bugbitten and cranky we went home triumphant.
Thursday we decided to take it easy, went to turkey creek and took pictures with a borrowed DSLR.  Taking it easy.
Friday morning we called the boatyard and she was already in the slings, ready to dunk.  We were expecting a late afternoon dunking. Anyway we got her in the water and motored away.  I repitched the prop up a notch and the boat did really well.  Except for one thing, the bilge came on.
Then it came on again.
And again.  The boat's sinking!
So I had adjusted the rudder packing, but not well enough.  It was a veritable fountain!  Ok a few minutes with tools and contortions and that was fixed...   But it wasn't!  An hour of motoring and it was gushing again.  Still we kept bilging.  What's the deal.
Anyway we had a good motortrip.  I don't want to sail until I replace the rigging.  Rosa cleaned and cooked.  Mostly we just enjoyed it, and the autopilot did a real good job despite being 30yo with NO electronics.

We took the boat to Don's house to get the dinghy, bimini frame and some extras.  Well we had a good time but wrong bimini frame!  So Don put the wrong frame on another boat that was getting ready for shipment to california!  Anyway we traded frames with a beautiful Shannon 38 and got the bimini installed.  By now were hot and tired, but the bimini is really nice!
By the way the boat was still sinking, and the water pump wasn't working for the freshwater.
Anyway we got back, docked with some docklines from Nadesico, and cleaned up.  Off to Nadesico for showers and Rosa prepared a fantastic meal even though she was tired.  I woke up at 3am and the boat was still floating, but it was still sinking... grrr
Today I worked on installing new head hoses and lavac head.  I'm getting better at boatwork, no cursing!  Anyway I discovered why the boat's sinking.  The head discharge thru-hull won't close all the way, and it was letting a slow trickle through.  Well new hose installed fixed that leak.  Also discovered that the pickup for the freshwater was mislabeled, so that was fixed.
Anyway I got the head mostly installed, and Rosa cleaned the boat and started moving things over.  A fun tiring day.
Complete pictures at https://picasaweb.google.com/110765536047581031371/May192012?authkey=Gv1sRgCJjx-deT-sbMMg

More fun today, Rosa and I pulled out the head and all related hoses.  Thankfully the hoses only had a bit of stale, stinky urine in them.  The job only took 2 hours and didn't get either of us too nasty dirty.  Thank goodness I planned this at the start, because one hose was clogged at the anti-siphon loop with a barbasol cap and some nastiness, and never would have flushed even 1 turd.  Also there were 3 vintages of hose, some of which was original 30yo.  Suffice to say, we're glad we did this first, because it would have been a very nasty job otherwise.  I also sanded the fairings applied to the bottom of the boat, now she's ready for the yard to sand the bottom and paint!  Maybe we'll get Boracay Star this week.

Another bit of work at the boatyard.  Today the epoxy is mostly cured from the resin infusion, but is still a bit soft so I couldn't sand the fairings.  I sounded the entire previously hollow-sounding area and it's hard as a rock.  I think I'll be able to sand down all the fairings by either sunday or monday.  If I can just get the parts to reinstall my MaxProp I'll be good to go!

Today was the day to resin infuse the keel delam.  We've been washing the keel out with naptha and denatured all week.  I could have done this earlier but I was waiting on epoxy and composites stuff.  See my pictures!

This is the basic setup.  I have my vacuum pump pulling through my improvised winebottle accumulator on the left hole.  The middle hole is a resin 'window' and the right patch is the original blister that has a tap for the resin infusion.

Basically I played with leaks until I got it all tight, then the liquid gooze was sucked into the winebottle.  At really low vacuum all the liquids boil, so basically I was vacuum distilling out moisture and solvents i'd been washing the cavity with.

After a few hours most of the nasty liquids had been distilled out, so I mixed up some epoxy and let it get sucked in.  You can see how the resin wants to spread everywhere.

Mix and pour!  Keep that resin cup full.  A single air bubble would ruin everything!

A closeup of the infusion tube.  We could see bubbles and see how the resin was flowing, which was very slowly.

This is exactly why you should improvise an accumulator when doing this, rather than making a permanent one (although that was a 9 dollar bottle...)  This gross stuff was liquid and was boiled off.  The bottle was cold also.  Definitely don't want this gunk in my pump.

Improvisation has troubles also.  It kept sucking in the tubes and making a leak.  At least I can throw the whole thing away when I'm done.

Gross stuff coming out of the suction side!

This whole thing took about 4 or 5 hours.  Look at the epoxy jugs!  I reckon the cavity ate 1/2 gallon of epoxy.  At least it will be nicely sealed and stuck together, prevented from delam forevermore.

Keel delam repair pt 1

This is the site of a rather large keel delamination

What I think happened is the small blister that used to be here pumped water in between some layers of glass that had not been properly bonded or something like that.  The blister here was shallow, only going through the top layer of mat and 1 layer of roving: not structural.

This debond stretched downstream a bit to that last hole on the left.  I've injected and drained Naptha and denatured alcohol to clean the thing out.  The glass behind those holes is 3/8" thick to the cavity, and it's a mess to grind it all off and then have to redo the glass. 

My solution is to put a vacuum pump on the whole thing and pull a vacuum on it.  The vacuum will dry the cavity out with the help of a heat lamp.  Then I'll allow the vacuum'd cavity to suck up a bunch of mixed epoxy.  Once it's full of epoxy it will harden to be rock solid, and I won't have any more cavity growth (hopefully).

The boat is 30 years old, so it has a lot of gelcoat blisters.  These are unimportant and just ugly things.  They have little potential to get much worse.

There are however plentiful blisters of this size that are underneath the layer of fairing mat.  These aren't structural either, but they will slowly grow over the years, eventually pumping a blister under one or multiple layers of roving.

The good news about owning a good old boat is that the glass is thick, on the order of 3/4" most places and more around the keel

Here's another blister on the other side of the keel.  It was shallow so I'll just fill the holes and cover with epoxy.

The Survey

I've also uploaded the survey to google docs and am making it available.  The boat is pretty well set up!

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BytoKu-zUfyrclpQVE16eGtRLVU

Boat Costs

So what does it really cost to own a big boat?  Well I'm going to try and keep a log of my costs in a google docs spreadsheet, and much to my shame and embarassment make it available to the public.  This might be a bad idea in the future, especially after a few years I can see the price going up and up.  Ooh well spend it while you can,

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AitoKu-zUfyrdEVYVEZXNHlMMG1US21VVlV0S1Q3ekE

NEw list of projects

New status of projects:
Immediate project, is clean and fill a hull-keel delamination 20" long and 8" high, total volume enclose about 10 fl oz. This delam seems to be caused by a baseball sized blister that appears to have pumped water between the hull and keel, debonding them. I ground the blister and it was shallow, only going through the first layer of roving, but a channel down deeper was evident. I'm daily washing out the cavity with denatured alcohol (to remove water) and then the next day naptha (to dissolve all the other nasties). After a week or so I'll hook this up to a vacuum pump with bagging stuff installed and hold this under vacuum with heat for a day or 2. I'll then break vacuum and inspect. If all seems good then I'll re-vacuum and perform a resin infusion, allowing mixed thin epoxy to be drawn into the cavity. If all goes well I expect taps on the keel should no longer give that unsettling thumping noise.

Also a bit of fairing on the skeg. The old fairing over the brass plates was chipping off.

I have my maxprop cleaned and ready to reinstall. Does anybody know what pitch setting is best for a 5444?

There is definitely a leak from the fuel tank. I'm preparing to destroy it with my wonderful jigsaw, and have my wife guard me with a fire extinguisher. Maybe this weekend if there's time. Probably not. She wants me to do it at the dock. I'll probably rig up a 5 gallon jerrycan day tank to get us by until I get it all back together. At the suggestion of someone somewhere I will install the fills inside the lazarette.

Removal and cap of a thru-hull intended as an intake for the AC, but poorly installed, no backer plate, and the SS screws on the outside (it's a strainer type) have messed up the fiberglass. Also it has a yellow brass plug closing it off.

Having a slight bit of fun here. My wife says don't work on projects too fast or I'll be bored with this boat soon, but I think that will take me a few years.

S/V Boracay Star
P367 #26

First post

Hello all,
The opportunity just arose to buy a P 367 just around the corner from my other boat, a Hunter 31. Literally 2 miles away and I've known about it for 9 months, but I was waiting for the stock market to improve so I could cash out. We hope to make Boracay Star, Hull no. 26 our new home and ready for some far cruises in a few years. Once out of the boatyard we will keep her in Niceville, FL. We're both very happy to have a much more capable boat than our Hunter.

Priorities: Fix some blistering and keel delamination so the yard can sand, paint and splash hopefully soon. The standing rigging must all be replaced before we can sail it: I am doing everything with Hi-Mods. Chainplates need inspection and probably replacement. I'm replacing the raritan head with a lavac and all new green stripe hose: head system is clean now, the best time to do this stuff. Water tanks needs to be cleaned. Suspect aluminum fuel tank has a pinhole leak somewhere, although I'm wishing that it's just some plumbing. All deck hardware will be re-bedded with butyl to halt rot. That's the short list. I'm going to try and do all this in 6 weeks because we want to use our boat for summer!

Mike and Rosa
S/V Nadesico (Hunter 31)
S/V Boracay Star (Pearson 367)