As it looks right now, we don't have a lot to worry about there....yet! Here's yet more projects that needed to be done, and some that didn't need to be, really.

If you are building, let this be a guide to things that you should have/make that you probably, like us, never thought about.

               Click these little pictures to view section, or browse using the side buttons at each section

It fell apart as I tried sewing it, got jammed in Genas 20 year old sewing machine, and basically wrecked her machines  mechanics. (I'll blame that on the material!) It turned me right off the whole cushion project.

I'll admit I'm no expert, but the choice was wrong, the material stretched, and became ugly quickly.

  Anyway, we found some nice soft surfaced plush type of upholstery cloth, that is 4 times the weight and almost the same color and look.

I hand sewed the backs, zippers are on the seats. Looks great!

The alcohol stove has been working well, except for the methyl alcohol issue which has been rectified with 90% ethyl/10% methyl which is the proper mix for enclosed areas with poor ventilation. Actually I was getting headaches a lot, especially when it was cold as the hatches were all closed with only the exhaust fan going. Anyway, the issue of making toast came up. I was holding it over the burner with a fork but that doesn't do a very good job. It just basically singes the surface so it tastes like charcoal and bread.

  We found this stainless grill thing the guy at the store swore by as he's used his for years. Obviously he has a propane stove because on an alcohol stove it toasted the top edge of the crust and that was it. After mucking around with that for a few loafs, we decided to buy one of those toaster ovens. It's surprising how cheap they are. Ours cost $18 I think. It can broil, roast, toast, and has accurate timers on it. What more could you want for $18?? Problem was we had planned to store it in the oven when not in use. It was 1/2" too big to fit. Seems there's a standard width for those things, so we had to decide where else to put it. As can be seen in the photo, it found a place over the sinks. As if the galley isn't small enough already ha ha! We've yet to wire it in permanently, as we wanted to be sure it'd be ok there, but after over a month I think it'll do. Gena stood it off with the bolts from the wood so it wouldn't singe off the finish.

I have cooked toast, roast, salmon, pork chops, steak, lasagna, and even hamburger in there.

  A coffee perker was also early on the list. Gena and I like our coffee, and couldn't do without a small one on the boat. In amp-hours 4 cups doesn't amount to much. 10 AH is worth acouple of cups in the morning! The perker has found a home bungeed onto the forward bulkhead counter (not shown) but as there's no plug there (yet) it must sit on the bread board during the morning.

  Speaking of the breadboard (right) I rebuilt to fit the freezer lid, it's not big enough for a full size salmon. Darn! I had to cut it's head off anyway... The breadboard/freezer door flip-up now has a simple catch made from a screw and piece of wood. Works great!

  The exhaust fan is obviously doing it's job getting rid of sticky cooking grease etc. I've cleaned it twice, the second time was really gummed up. It may need an overhaul next time lol. Everything else works perfectly, the gimbled stove gimbles well, and the new latches to stop it are far more solid. When the hot water tank is on, it only takes a couple of seconds to get from the tank down the 8 feet of pipe to there. Even the hand pump works, good for blasting stuff off strainers. Best of all, I have gotten back into the habit of doing dishes immediately after eating. One must. They are a hazard in a boat.

I drilled a hole in one of the stanchion mounts and attached a clevis for this purpose, as  it had been suggested we attach it this way. When out on our first sea trial with Ian, he tied it to the bulwark rail. Bad idea. It was constantly coming loose and had to be watched continually. Not to mention the fork rubbed the paint off of the rail to bare steel!!

While at anchor, we just tied rope around the cable as a running hitch and held it in place that way for the trip back.

  The solution, so far, was to cut it short enough to be attached to the inner forestay (staysail) chain plate via (yet another) large clevis. (photo left) A large used turnbuckle we found at Mariners Exchange attaches to the forward chainplate, tied onto the furling frame for now, makes up for the lost length when attached.

  The stays consist of a 5:1 block arrangement, with a convenient cam-cleat built in, attached to 3/8" cable going aloft to the second spreaders area on the mast. The length of the cable, including minimum block height, has been cut to allow tying up to the aft shroud chain plates while not in use.

We have found that some support can be added to stop any pumping of the mast in short rolling waves by attaching them to the aft end of the bulwark track. Care must be taken to remove it if turning off to a run downwind as the boom will hit it!

 For "real" support though the runners can be moved aft to the dual backstay chain plates where we have recently attached a wider clevis as on the inner foresail chain plate for the solent. Luckily (and I think it's luck!) the boom, even over length as it is, doesn't hit the stays.

  As just a note, I need to mention that all of these pin-to-clevis modifications have me a bit concerned. Because they are made in Chine, the 3/4" clevis pins weren't exactly 3/4", they were larger. All but one needed to be ground down slightly to fit in the very holes the fork pins were actually loose in. I hope the steel is good quality, as we now have one on each backstay, 2 on the shrouds, and one on the staysail stay. If they start failing ( as "made in china" does often ) we will be in  a real pickle!

They don't look as bad as I thought they would, mainly for one reson: they look like they were carved out of thick aluminum plate, and therefore look really cool!

Gena insisted on this one as having only 1 PC on the GPS that can handle charts at the flick of a switch might be dangerous in a night/foggy navigation of a tricky pass. I agree, 2 is better. Also one can play video games while navigating, and we are just posting the rest of these Fujitsu 3400 tablet PC's with windows '98 on to eBay anyway.

  Below is my violin hidden behind a door, mounted firmly on with screws so whenever I have the desire, it's right there ready for me. Under the lockers, strapped firmly in place, is my electric guitar. I had to let the 2 acoustics go because of their size, and my trumpet, big Moog synth, my other Kawai, and of course the drumset, but it's nice to have these 2 happily having found a home with Georgena's help.

  The braces for side to side was a little more challenging. We don't have any metal working tools remember, so something had to be fabbed up with only a grinder and a drill. Gena found some left-over stainless hydraulic tubing in under the floor and bent then flattened it into this shape using a hammer and one of the boat stands. Wow! and it actually looks good! I may even polish those up one day. The liferaft issue is solved, well for the next 30 months anyway. After that we'll need to get it re-packed, especially if we're in Aussie was.

I could see what the guys over at Ocean Rigging were talking about going up a mast while the boat is on stands. Something doesn't feel right. The mast wobbles strangely in the wind. They won't go up unless it's in the water.

The safety harness I also wore as backup may have been designed by a man for a man as my body (except maybe my boobs!) would likely slip through it no problem even though it's so tight around my waist I can't breath.

I'll chalk it up to the winter hibernation feasting for now.

They do look good though hey? Now the neighbors don't have a clue what the hell we're doing in here.

  Among the myriads of other "small" projects, we decided to convert a wind direction meter we bought off EBay a while back into a Rudder meter. I even put a couple of low level red LEDs behind the Danforth button in the center to light things up a bit at night.

I made a tiny board to adjust it like a +V, -V sort of Wheatstone bridge with adjustments for gain, center, and zero, that fit nicely into a flash card container.

Now a new job has begun. We decided to clean out and pump out the septic tank today. Keep in mind this is only the 4th or 5th time we've ever used the pump. It's a Jabsco macerator pump, and Jabsco is supposed to be a really good brand. No water. No anything. The housing began heating up and making a funny hissing sound. So Gena pulled it off the tank and lo and behold, only 1 of the six impeller blades is left! I am astounded at how poor quality this is! It is a self prime style pump, yet even though we know it was wet, it chewed all of its blades off. So now we must see if we can get another impeller or pay more $$ for a new pump.

For more on this past week or so, yes we have been really really busy, check out news.htm

Genas arguments are equally as persuasive. The prop should be stopped because:
a) The wear on the bearings over weeks and weeks of sailing does add up
b) Even though the transmission manufacturer says it's ok, it likely wears the innards anyway
c) "Scientific" studies have proven that the drag is the same whether or not the prop turns

The funny thing about (c) is that I have pulled a hand held prop (similar in shape to ours) through the water and have noticed the drag is much less when the prop is turning. A 3 blade may have different drag than a 2 blade.

  As can be seen in the above photo, Gena got her way, or, I just gave in. The yellow strap is to be hooked on to stop the prop.  Using a shaft anode for a catch was my idea though. There's quite a bit of torque there, so hope it holds. A fellow anchored near us at Nanaimo has a slow turn alternator (rare-earth magnets) and he claims it can generate 20 amps! We may be making another change.

The camera works great, and the monitor can be flipped so port is left and starboard is right, just like those in motorhomes. Best of all the whole thing only uses .5 amps.  The receiver unit can be seen to the right of the monitor.

There are other projects that we never thought of doing until the need arose:

A Riding Sail, a bridal for the dinghy motor, home made radar reflector, and more. Stay tuned!

  I had noticed strange drops of rust sprinkled around on the decks aft from time to time. It didn't seem to have a source, so I thought it might be exotic bird droppings or something else unfamiliar. After the radar stopped working it became all to clear what the rust was. It had been coming from the metal parts in the bottom of the radar antenna as they waded in 2 inches of water! In the above photo, you can see where the water line was.

  The interconnect board is covered with non-gold connector plugs that are crimped on to copper wires.
So let's see: we have solder lead and tin, copper, steel, aluminum, and zinc. An electrolysis utopia! The plugs below the water line were toast, all gross and corroded. I tried pulling some apart to clean, but after seeing the crimped ends forget it.
It's amazing it worked at all. We're not sure how long the water was in there but judging by the corrosion I'd say some time.

  Being tech's we weren't overly distressed by all this, and Gena made sure we have backups for this and that. The motor was replaced with a fresh one, while the old one was cleaned, oiled, greased, and dried out. I bypassed all of those  nasty plugs by wiring all of the connections directly. It's hard to stand on a bar and do delicate soldering when the boat is bobbing up and down. Takes practice. 

So far so good, fingers crossed and all that, it's working again!

Gena drilled and tapped a drain plug into the bottom for future checks. Later on a fellow on the boat behind us asked, "Does it have a drain plug?" having observed us throughout the procedure.
"It does now!" I answered.

  Speaking of "waterproof-ed-ness ", the case I made for the pedestal PC has been giving us constant greif. It was sealed well enough, but I kept needing to pull it apart for different reasons. Wires breaking (don't ever use solid wire for anything!) and me messing up, water accumulating because I had to pump the thing up over and over, wrecking the connector board etc.
 I though I had pulled it apart and put it together for the last time after finding the leak and fixing it. Suddenly, the damn plug started dripping water. I inquisitively pulled it off and I swear 1/2 a cup of water came out of the plug! The socket was fine. The gold contacts had stopped any corrosion, but all the rust came from the "sealed" casing of the plug. 

Gena got me to hoist her up the mast to get her home-made radar reflector mounted. It's been rolling around in the boat for, uh, 3 months now.

It was pretty easy to make out of 1/16" aluminum, after we saw one in a package (and measured it). We just can't pay that much money( $80)  for a card with 3 pieces of aluminum in it.

Notice how Gena is mounting it? (below,  right)   Clamped on with rubber wire clamps, then a cord attached to a pad eye on the mast to keep it up. It won't be flopping in the wind in any case. I think that a flopping reflector wouldn't give very good results on a radar, intermittent at best, but then who knows?

We're not sure how well it works , but no ships have hit us yet hey.

 Gena made a nice little pouch and screwed it on to the transom of the dinghy. Inside the pouch are things that should be in a dinghy:
Extra long cord/rope for tying up, a patch kit, and some engine tools just in case.
  Pretty cool Gena!

Anyway, I had used this plastic wood, hollow but waterproof. Bad idea. It breaks like it's made of particle board. After a while it started to break up pretty bad, so while at Pender I decided enough was enough. We found some rough cut cedar at a local lumber place, and I cut/finished it and glued it in. A few coats of oil every now and then  and it'll last forever!

  The exhaust plug was one very imortant "to-do". Last year, we installed a rubber flap, but it didn't have enough give which resulted in the side of the boat getting sprayed with black soot. YUK!!

  Gena was going to just make a stainless flap from a hinge and a thin piece of plate when it dawned on her: "Why not just make it fit inside the hole?" There is a little shelf where the SS 3/8" plate meets the SS pipe so it'd be perfect for that.

  The photos show how it all worked out. A string will be attached to the fishing swivel to pull it up when required. When a wave slaps against it with the intention of going up into the exhaust system, it'll slam shut!

  The top corners of the cloth are secured via rope through grommets leading to cupboard door handles screwed to the bulkhead and berth enclosure. I stretched a rope across and hung from it to be sure it is strong!

  The lee cloth also offers something to snuggle against when on a port tack, as the berth is quite wide for one. Notice the long block cushions we made? There's 3 of them 3 feet long x 6" thick x 10" deep that are handy for leaning against while reading, or putting along the side as a type of "bumper".

  The way the light was rigged blocked the view so bad you'd have to sit down to see the heading. If you have been to dollarama lately, you may have noticed (or bought) some of those solar charging lawn lights.

  These ones are quite nice, made of stainless on the body and shaft, and have a white LED, removable battery, and a switch. I took the top off one, exchanged the white LED for a red one, and drilled holes in the existing mount to screw it on top with the LED shining through the original mounting hole.

   The result is a perfectly illuminated circle that only lights the compass card. I can't figure out why there'd be green LEDs in the original! Green is blinding to night vision.

 Anyway, we just leave it on as the light from the day charges it up enough to go all night with energy to spare...all for $2!

As can be seen below, we're all ready to go on a real passage, and we're going come-what-may!  I hope this page can be of help to someone out there in the future, and many of these projects will be covered in the second video DVD at filmbaby.com.
"The Big Sailboat Project". Happy boating everyone! S&G S/V Dulcie-Darlene May17,2010