New leaks, old leaks

Today was a boatkeeping day. It hasn't rained nor is the wind blowing but still I could not talk Mandy into going up the mast (and in truth, we had such a huge breakfast today that I wasn't looking forward to having to hoist her up there!) so I focused on internal matters.

I checked and topped off the house bank of batteries, both of which seem to be doing all right. After some corrosion problems last year, I was happy to find them nearly spotless now, and I hit them with some more protectant to keep them that way. Since we'll be aboard all winter it probably won't be an issue anyway, since they will be used regularly and we'll have the whole boat warm and dry.

I checked the bilge and found more water in there than I had expected. Since it hadn't been getting much water in it while it was unoccupied earlier in the summer, I tend to want to blame a leaking plug from the icebox drain. Still, it had something that looked a bit like oil in it. I dripped some detergent in it and it didn't cause the usual bomb-burst in the sheen, so it could also just be regular black slime of some sort. But that got me to checking the engine compartment as well.

The last couple times I have checked the transmission fluid, it has been low, despite my having topped it up the previous time. So I wondered if I had a leak there somewhere. It was impossible to rule out completely, but I felt around the housing as best I could, and stuck a paper towel in the spots I couldn't reach, and could not find any fluid. The engine drip pan is beneath most of the housing anyway, so drips should end up there and not in the bilge, but the housing does slope to the stern so it's conceivable that a slow drip could ooze back along the prop shaft and drain into the bilge. Certainly the area under the shaft was slimy and greasy. But the shaft itself didn't have any signs of drips under it. I also wonder if maybe when I have topped the fluid off if I have just been hasty taking my measurements... the manual says to wait five minutes for the fluid to settle, but I haven't always. Maybe it is just settling after I measured. So today, I made sure to wait before satisfying myself that it was topped off. We'll wait a week and see if it stays that way.

Anyway, I went back and started the engine up to see if it was maybe spraying oil off under power, or if putting it in gear caused a drip. As she fired up, I happened to look down at the binnacle, and think I spotted the problem: our compass no longer has any liquid in it!

In order for the compass card to spin freely, it usually floats in a sea of mineral oil. As you can see, ours no longer does. So that could well explain the oily sheen in the bilge water (although not really the blackness; but that could still just be regular slime).

I stuck my head in the cockpit locker with a flashlight to see if I could see any drips from below the binnacle housing, but it was just too bright out to spot anything minor like that. I could tell, with much gratification, that the rudder post step is bone dry, so the packing seems to be holding.

We're planning to sail to Port Hadlock next weekend, and between our various GPS units and spare compasses I think we can manage it, but after that I'll have to pull the compass and take it in to see what's up. I'm hoping it's just a leaky seal somewhere rather than a cracked housing.

Having developed a satisfying hypothesis for that mystery, then, we set about fixing the drip still remaining from the head outflow connection. I had to rouse Mandy for that, because my hands aren't small enough to reach. It's hard to imagine how the manufacturer could have positioned this to be any more difficult to reach, since it is at the rear of the toilet at the base... that's an area almost inaccessible by definition. To make matters worse, it is also inside the toilet skirt, which is not removeable. So you have to reach in from the front, and around, to get to the hose clamp. And since it's inside the skirt, there is almost no room for tools.

I ended up holding up the head as much as I could with the hose still connected (as it must be, when one wishes to tighten the hose clamp) while Mandy reached underneath to tighten it. After about three tries, it stopped dripping... or at least it has not dripped in the past hour. I am not prepared to declare total victory, but surely we have struck it a grievous blow. Still, manhandling the whole apparatus back into place and securing it to the base again (which must be done from underneath; don't ask how) is not a gentle process and it is easy to imagine all our careful work undone by a wrong twist or an over-tightened bolt somewhere along the way. Anyway; we charged it back up again and will see how it looks in the morning. Even then, a leak may not be obvious, as once the thing is all secured there is no way at all to see what is happening under the skirt in the rear. Ultimately, we may not know for sure until it has again been used in anger and we detect the telltale aroma of sewage seeping outside the sewage system.

Back aboard

It is always a more difficult process to transition back into living aboard full time after a stretch of time in a larger space. We came down yesterday with our truck load of stuff and the inevitable compression back down into 33' is always stressful. When we go elsewhere to house-sit, it's the opposite: our relative paucity of stuff is released into a huge environment where it all flows out and is hardly noticeable. Here, it piles up quickly and all the habits of getting things packed and keeping them stowed have not yet kicked in so it is constantly cramped and untidy.

This year, just about the time we re-learn all those habits and things start to get ship-shape again, we're going to be off house-sitting again... the bad habits that come with living in huge spaces will only be reinforced.

At least yesterday was a pleasant spring day and we got to go for a walk and enjoy the benefits of being back in the marina. We have a fairly easy month ahead. We decided we did not ultimately have time to take any trips up to Canada in between now and our next house-sitting engagement, so we are just going to stick around Puget Sound. We might take some short trips to the South Sound, or to a weekend yacht club event or two, but otherwise we'll hang out at Shilshole until we go back up to Port Townsend in mid-June. We'll be back again in mid-August and have no idea at all what we'll do after that. August itself is pretty well booked up with events in Seattle or Idaho, so we won't be going anywhere then. After that, we're really up in the air. Gas prices being what they are, it's an open question whether or not my parents will need anyone to look after their place next winter. The RV is a thirsty beast! We almost certainly won't find a new boat by then, and there are some business opportunities that may be coming up for Mandy in the Seattle area anyway, so I guess the odds are that we will stick around here for fall and winter, at least. We may take some short trips but fall is not the time to be heading north.

I managed, eventually, to get the starter problem fixed with the truck. It turned out not to be the contacts at all, but the gear assembly, so I did end up replacing the whole thing. The new one was a little quirky at first but it seems to be functioning smoothly now. Next up: a vacuum leak (I suspect) that is messing with my idle speeds.

As far as the boat itself goes, it's in pretty good shape except for the head seal leak that needs fixing. The head is all cleared out and ready for me to get started, but I have not been eager to dive into it and it may be mandatory to wait for a day that is nice enough that I can have all the portholes and vents open before I start cracking it apart. Looking at the forecast, I am hard pressed to find anything of that sort coming up.

Getting ready for summer

We had to go into town last week to see our accountant, and it was our first opportunity to catch up with friends and family there after a month of dog-sitting had pinned us down in Hadlock, so we turned it into a three day mini-trip. It also conveniently overlapped with a monthly yacht club meeting, which we have missed the last few of, so we were also able attend that.

It was the first time we had a chance to spend any significant amount of time on the boat for a few months, and I was a little worried about what I might find. I already knew there were a couple projects to be done. The leaky head has been on my radar since last fall, but before tackling that we needed to pump her out (as clean as possible, thank you!) so that was on the agenda this trip, and also some AC wiring needed to be replaced/reterminated after a melt-down earlier in the winter. What else might have happened in our absence was what I was most apprehensive over, however; boats left sitting on their own do not fare well during the winter months and I attribute our relative lack of troubles this past couple of years to a continuing presence aboard even during the off-season months.

Our trip to town did not start off well; we had a ten AM meeting with the accountant so we planned to catch the eight o'clock Kingston-Edmonds ferry, but when I got in the truck and turned the key, all I got was: click! My first impression was that the battery was out, but that didn't really make a lot of sense since it had only been a week since I had been anywhere with it, and it had started without any hesitation then. Sure enough, when I hooked the charger up to it, the only change was: click!click!click!click!click!click!click!click!click!click!

So, most likely the starter, not something I could do much about right then. Fortunately, my parents left their car here over the winter so we grabbed the keys for that and made the next ferry and got to our appointment on time. Just before we went in, I got a call from someone and had to make some notes; the pen I grabbed exploded while I was making them, and got all over my hands and notebook. So I looked really poorly prepared when we went in to go over our tax return. At least that part went well.

Afterward, traffic was terrible, the weather was miserable, and Mandy was hungry, a very bad combination. We had to get gas before going to a restaurant, and since the Costco gas station is right next to Home Depot, I had to buy my project supplies there too. Instead of just being able to pick the wiring you want off the shelves now, they have some big fancy motorized rack that only store employees can use to access the wire spools, so I was further delayed explaining what I needed and waiting for the Home Depot guy to figure out how to get it.

Eventually we got the girl some food, which was helpful, and then I dropped her off at a Starbucks to get some work done and stay out of my hair while I was working on the electrical system. It was, I think I have mentioned, cold and miserable, but while I was working on the AC system the whole thing had to be off, which meant no heat. So, I fumbled around with numb fingers stripping wire and crimping and re-attaching various connections. In some ways I got lucky: the main trunk from the shorepower connector had been melted right at the switch terminals, but it still had enough slack I could cut that away and re-terminate it with clean wire. The length of wire to the aft AC circuit was completely trashed, so I replaced it with some outdoor wiring, hopefully better suited to the harsh engine compartment environment it runs through. That was a pretty short run so I didn't have to do much to replace it. I was worried that it had damaged some of the other circuit cables, but fortunately it had not.

I pulled everything off the AC bus and cleaned and shined up the switch terminals. I suspect poor contact there led to a lot of the excess heat in the first place. In a perfect world, that panel would get replaced, but here I settled for cleaning and sanding them up. The subject might get revisited next winter if we need to run heaters frequently again.

That work took me all afternoon, curled up like a contortionist over the engine, and I was cold and sore and in a spectacularly negative mood by the time I was done.

The next day, though, things were a little better. The wiring all worked, and despite running the hot water heater, battery charger, and a space heater all night long, it wasn't warm at all. Then I fired the engine up for the first time in six months and despite having forgotten to switch the battery over to the start bank, it turned over and caught on the first attempt. No water in the fuel, and I only had to top up the transmission fluid slightly. The transmission itself was no worse than ever. The much-patched muffler spat out a load of rusty water, but didn't leak at all. It's getting replaced this summer anyway, but it was still gratifying that all the patches held over the winter. Perhaps the rust has reinforced them.

So we went over and pumped out the holding tank in the rain, and flushed it through as many times as I could convince Mandy to do so. We pulled the access plate on the toilet and it was as clean inside as I have ever seen it. I'm going to let it set for a while to dry out, then pull it apart to hopefully find and fix the leaky seal.

There were no other leaks anywhere; the forward part of the bilge was bone dry. There was a little water in the after part but no more than was there last time I looked at it, months ago.

While I was mucking around with all those systems, Mandy cleaned up the galley and icebox and took off the rails that hold the ice box lid up, which were beginning to fracture and need to be repaired. We'll have to do something similar with the larger and more fragile rails that support the nav desk at some point, so fixing these up will be a good trial run.

So things are fairly good on the boat front, even as we continue to look for a replacement. As far as the truck goes, I found a rebuild kit online for about ten bucks, so that is on the way and I should have time to pull the starter and make sure that's the problem before the kit shows up. And as for the rest of our summer, we have a slightly better picture of what it's going to look like than we did a month ago. Some friends of my parent's are planning to go to Las Vegas for July and August, and they asked if we could watch their cats while they are away. Since we didn't really have anything else planned, we said sure. So we are going to be house-sitting for most of the summer, too. If there is time in between, we might duck up to Princess Louisa Inlet, which we still have not seen after passing by it five or six times. Otherwise, we finally got official liveaboard status at the marina, so we can hang around at the dock as long as we want or take short trips around the Sound without respect to watching our dock-time to stay under the allowed limit.

It's probably not going to be much of a sailing summer, but that's okay; we'll be able to get more work done, and hopefully afford a better boat when we find one!

And so it begins

Well, Mandy is on her way on the long road back to Wisconsin, marking the beginning of two or three or four weeks of complicated travel, moorage, and provisioning arrangements we are making to bounce back and forth between here and the States on various business and personal trips.

I am anchored out here on my own for a bit in False Creek, in Vancouver, enjoying the heat and the sunshine, if not all the other people out enjoying the heat and the sunshine. Despite efforts the city has made to clear out various derelict and "permanent" residents, it's pretty crowded in the outer parts of the Creek (note: not really a creek). In the inner basin, which was blocked off entirely for the Olympics (being adjacent to the Olympic Village) things look a little better, but that's on the other side of a bridge that is too low for us to pass, and out here, it doesn't look like there is a lot of compliance with the 14 day maximum occupancy rule. I could be wrong, some of these tubs that look like they haven't moved in ages may go out every other week, but it sure doesn't look like it.

So, anyway, that's mostly me grousing about getting a somewhat shoddy spot among the few allowable anchorages left in the outer area. Really, it's not so terrible... it is pretty secure here, and while there are a lot of wakes, generally people seem pretty good about keeping below the 10km/hr limit, so it's tolerable.

I don't have a lot going on here and not enough time between now and my own imminent departure to start with much, so I am cleaning and airing out the boat... projects much more easily done with only one person aboard. I went ashore and took a walk over to Granville Island this afternoon and explored Leg-in-Boot Square on the south side of False Creek. There are two grocery stores near there, a good find for us as we have always had trouble provisioning here. There's a neat park nearby also, which I didn't know was there, and Mandy told me that she quite enjoyed her walk to the train station through the former Olympic Village earlier. It seems clear that we have barely scratched the surface of things to see and do here... but although I would love to be able to be in two places at once, we're jumping around so much I fear there will be little time to explore while the boat is in this area.

Ancient Boatkeeping Secrets

There are certain things on this old boat that I know must simply be tolerated. Some things are just plain old, and replacing them opens cans of worms that aren't worth the risk. Our hatches were well within this category. They had long lost their transparency, but they still are operable, they (mostly) don't leak and light can still pass. Since they still maintain their primary functions, an attempt at replacing them just so I can see the sky through them again seemed destined to create new leaks in this boat where there are currently none. So it has been, so it will remain. I thought.

Last week I was browsing through our copy of Aiken's Good Boatkeeping, a text we picked up at Half Price Books a year or two ago. I was flipping through it, not looking for anything in particular, when I came across a blurb that said Brasso can be used to clean pockmarks and scratches from plexiglass hatches. "Really?" I thought, surprised. Metal polish on a smooth, plastic surface?

I have no idea what could have caused the pockmarks on the interior of our hatches. They existed already when we bought the boat. I assumed it was some attempt at a chemical cleaning that had gone awry, and I never tried removing them with any other chemical besides general window cleaner. It seemed a recipe for further damage.

Yesterday Scott got a bug in him to polish the chrome stanchions and dug out the Brasso. Since he had it out anyway, I tried my experiment. On a small corner of the mid-ship's hatch, I scrubbed a small circular patch of Brasso, hoping that if I wrecked it further it would be in an inconspicuous spot, at lease. To my amazement, the pockmarks slowly disappeared, turning my rag black in the process. I continued on one of the two panels of the interior.

Then I went to the exterior, and polished the opposite side of the plexiglass that I had done inside, hoping to see a comparison with the unpolished side. The exterior had many more layers of grime and oxidation, but slowly a shine appeared where before had been a dull, dark grey surface.

I went back inside and looked out. I could see details! I could see the stays and the underside of the boom where before would have been only a dull shadow. It isn't perfect; it isn't like new, but it does look about 25 years newer than it had looked before!

This is the kind of knowledge that seems so esoteric, maybe because we are surrounded by folks with much newer boats that don't yet have similar old-boat issues, or maybe because owners hire boat detailers to fix things up so nice. Maybe people are just resigned to some things being old and looking their age. I don't know, but I relish every trick I find for returning things to their previous luster and beauty.

Boat Week

Although we've been back aboard full time for almost a month now, we've been so busy working and catching up with friends in town that we've done little more than basic cleaning and tidying with the boat. That is all changing this week, which I will call "Boat Week."

Boat Week kicked off yesterday as I cleaned the decks (somewhat pointlessly, in view of the fact they are going into a grimy, messy boatyard in two days) and Mandy cleaned and de-stained most of the hull. I also checked over the engine, which looks a little rough but fired right up and ran well, and we motored over to the fuel dock to pump out our holding tank and fuel up. As usual, I was surprised by how little fuel we had used since the last fill up--about ten gallons. I was even more surprised at the price; almost sixty bucks. We've been watching gas prices on land drop these past few weeks, but apparently the marina kept a Memorial Day premium price or something. Marine diesel should be cheaper yet as you don't pay the "road tax" on it, but next time it looks like it's going to be cheaper to take our fuel jugs up to Safeway and lug them back.

Apart from that, the who evolution went well, and we are all ready to head north to Port Townsend Tuesday afternoon for our haul-out. The weather is just about the worst possible combination; Tuesday should have southerlies, but they are supposed to be "light" which for all practical purposes means no sailing, since you quickly outsail the wind when going the same direction in that situation. Wednesday and Thursday, days when we hope to be painting, promise to kick it up a notch, with southerlies to twenty-five knots... great for sailing, terrible for painting. Particularly because the yard in Port Townsend is moderately well protected to the north, but wide open to the south... those winds will whip across the bay and tear right into us. I have some tarps I can rig as a sort of wind/rain screen (oh, did I forget to mention it's supposed to pour rain as well? yeah) but I don't know if that will be sufficient.

Actually, as I check it this morning, the forecast has moderated somewhat, leaving Thursday not quite so terrible, but the fact remains that it's not going to suddenly break out in sunshine and chirping birds... one way or another it's going to be pretty grim outside.

We've got some barnacle scraping to do. We've never had that problem before, being primarily in fresh water in the past, so it will be interesting to see how easily, or not, they come off the bottom of this thing. Our paint sands off quite easily but I don't know how deeply they dig in.

I also am beginning to think that we have another leak toward the stern, in addition to the rudder post (which I already knew needed to be re-packed); I'm thinking we have some holes in the muffler. It's impossible to say for sure, because the muffler is wedged in beneath the fuel tank and I can only see one end of it. There is certainly water dripping out from beneath it at a fair flow while the engine is on (perhaps a drip a second) but you can't tell if it's coming from the muffler itself or somewhere further aft. If we have time, I'll want to yank it out and see if it can be patched up or welded. It doesn't absolutely have to be done while we're out of the water, though; it's below the waterline but there is no water in it unless the engine is running.

Ditto with cleaning and painting the engine. I would like to do it while I have extra hands around, most of who are more patient and methodical than myself, but it could happen another time if need be.

The keel is going to be the great unknown. I can't see a thing from above the water so I have no idea how dinged up it may be. The cool temperatures are not going to help with any work that needs to be done on it; epoxy and paint both dry slower when it's cold, and it's going to be pretty cold. My hope is that, one, it's repairable, and two, it's repairable inside our time frame... if we miss our splash time scheduled with the lift, we could get stuck. The yard is busy this time of year. Last time we were there, we were next to a guy who had missed his splash date and wound up having to sit there, paying yard fees, for an extra two weeks before they could schedule him back into the water. Of course, if the repair is that complicated, yard fees will probably be the least expensive part of it.

Anyway, rain and all I am excited to get out for the trip up and back. It's been rough, even with the terrible weather, just sitting here watching all the other Memorial Day boat traffic going in and out. We'll still have the terrible weather, but should have the Sound pretty much to ourselves for the trip.

Magic

About a week in to taking up life aboard once again, Scott and I are getting nicely settled and readjusted. Yesterday I tackled two projects that had been mildly irritating me for a while now: the cabin overhead and some (unrelated) melted wax.

Between using the diesel/kerosene stove and lighting candles aboard, the fiberglass overhead continually gradates from a shiny beige-ish off-white to a dull grey. Cleaning it again is no easy task. Soot isn't like regular dirt. It is greasy, grimy, and embeds deeply into any tiny nook and divet the fiberglass might have. Plus, the overhead is, not surprisingly, physically over your head. Cleaning it means looking directly upward, with your arms above your head, and gravity assisting the dirty water in trickling back down your arm and into your shirt sleeves. The best way to clean our fiberglass overhead is with a super-scrubby sponge (the yellow sponges with the very coarse green scrubby side, not the blue ones with the no-scratch scrubby side), plenty of Dawn soap, a washcloth, and a sink close by to continually rinse with. Scrub (hard) with the sponge, then immediately rinse with the washcloth. It sounds simple enough, and it is, it just takes a really long time. Cleaning the overhead is also a high-satisfaction project, if it manages to get completely finished, which it did. This morning I got to wake up, stick my head out of the v-berth, and see a shiny, clean ceiling. Lovely.

The other project that had been awaiting some attention was a rather significant amount of wax that found itself melted into our navy-blue cushions during the February trip to the Olympics. I'd scraped at it before, but had found little luck. Yesterday I thought maybe going after it with a needle might allow me to pick the wax out. Nope. White wax remained embedded in blue cushion. A quick Internet search led me to the solution. When I first read that the wax could be melted into a paper bag, I envisioned only a bigger mess, more deeply embedded than the original mess. But it seemed the Internet had formed a consensus that this was the way to go, even on fabrics much more delicate than boat-seat cushions.

So I found a paper bag and dug out the iron. I set the iron to a low-medium setting, and I began ironing on the bag over the spilled wax. Immediately, every spot of wax (of which there were many) began to seep through the bag. I moved the bag to some fresh paper, and repeated, and repeated, and repeated. It worked like true magic. Places had been waxy and white were returned to their original blue. The cushion even became soft again. I couldn't believe it. A while after it cooled, the places that the bulk of the wax landed had turned a little lighter again, but, if I hadn't known the original problem existed, I probably never would have noticed it. Magic, I tell you. Magic.

I call that a successful Sunday on a boat!

Cheers,
Mandy