Found it, Bought it, Now to repair it !... Pegasus 700

winsbury

winsbury

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Added another boat to my collection a week ago, a Pegasus 700. This is our first proper yacht having raced and cruised dinghies previously so very excited to get her on the water soon.

Surveyors report didnt show anything terribly exciting and generally she looks sound but having had a week to thoroughly look her over there's quite a lot needs doing. Clearly she's been loved in the past but it looks like 5 years or so since any real work has been done her so lots of tidying revarnishing etc to do. Also she's been moored in the Lakes so no VHF / plotter etc installed.

Jobs on the to do list ( so far ) :
1. replace running rigging ( old stuff gone green and horrid )
2. replace companionway hatch ( old one leaking bit of rotten ply )
3. repair forward hatch ( grp gel broken away and hatch catch useless )
4. install vhf, chart plotter, navtex.
5. repair rudder bushes ( old ones worn to non-existence - looks like a nasty job )
6. link up battery charging from outboard
7. install solar panel & combine output with wind charger
8. refurbish interior ( can wait )
9. remove old antifouling, fair and re-epoxy bottom for good measure
10. fix brakes on trailer (they made for an interesting 120 mile journey home !)
11. clean and polish hull & get new graphics
12. replace jib stick
13. check and reinstate wiring for dual battery and new nav gear
14. check all instruments actually work !
15. service outboard
16. repair rotting wood in lockers and reinstate water ways to bilge
17. replace mast lifting A-frame (old one missing)
18. repair table / adapt for heavy sailers to double berth.
19. sort out holes in deck where old mainsheet used to attach ( another nasty job as water seeped into deck inner )
20. free-up/replace sea cocks
21. revarnish all exterior wood

should take a couple of days ... hmmm ... or perhaps not.

Would love to hear from other pegasus 700 owners so we can swap takes of woe and joy.

I've tried contacting Chris Cooper using details from this forum but no reply yet, anyone know if he's still contactable or has any spares ?

Any ideas on how to do the 'nasty jobs' above gratefully received as these are currently outside my experience and giving me sleepless nights.

I'll try and keep this thread updated as things progress, hopefully might help others and trigger some responses from those of you that know more than me ( most of you I suspect !)
 
Had areply from Chris so hoping for some help. In the meantime have dismantled most of the rudder to assess the damage to the bearing and skeg.

Basically the bottom bearing has worn away totally and repairs badly bodged in the past ( not by me !) The result is 6mm of wood worn away from the rudder and some rot; a similar amount of the metal has gone from the skeg P bracket too making for about 8mm of vertical play in the rudder. The skeg is also wobbly laterally on its four retaining bolts but these appear to be glassed into the bottom of the boat and are tricky to reach. At some time in its past someone has cut away some of the steel plate at the top of the rudder and had poured epoxy down the rudder shaft to attempt to connect the rudder to the shaft rather than do the right thing and repair the bearing and skeg. Its nearly all apart now and the epoxy mess removed, just the four bolts retaining the skeg to the hull left to tackle so I'm starting to think about how best to do the repairs.

The plan at the moment is to cut out the bolts to drop the skeg so it can be reseated on the hull with new bolts and sikaflex. While the skeg is removed, to somehow machine/repair the lower bearing seat and make a new acetal tophat thrust bearing made slightly oversize to take up the play in the worn wood and P bearing. Then to weld a replacement top plate to the shaft. It would of course be much easier and quicker to replace most of the rudder components with new parts if Chris has them, subject to cost of course.

Any advice anyone can give would be much appreciated.
 
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How to remove fiberglass from skeg retaining bolts.

Okay I admit defeat - having spent the last hour standing on my head to try to reach the skeg retaining bolts their retaining nuts are covered in old and very hard fiberglass, clearly this wasnt a job the builder ever expected anyone to do.

The Skeg has to come off -
1. to have the bottom rudder bearing seat machined flat and
2. to reseat it on the hull with new mastic to stop the wobble.

How on earth do I get the old fiberglass off the bronze nuts without damaging the hull or the nuts and leave it all in a condition that putting it back together again isnt impossible.. bear in mind access is incredibly difficult, I can just about get one hand in to the space, enough to operate a spanner but not much else.
 
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Two pieces of advice - if there is a Pegasus Owners' club, join it - they are a mine of information. Secondly, you might want to move the charging by outboard work down your list - they tend to produce so little current for so little time that it's not worth it - the solar panel/wind generator will provide much more charging.
 
winsbury said:
Okay I admit defeat - having spent the last hour standing on my head to try to reach the skeg retaining bolts their retaining nuts are covered in old and very hard fiberglass, clearly this wasnt a job the builder ever expected anyone to do.

The Skeg has to come off -
1. to have the bottom rudder bearing seat machined flat and
2. to reseat it on the hull with new mastic to stop the wobble.

How on earth do I get the old fiberglass off the bronze nuts without damaging the hull or the nuts and leave it all in a condition that putting it back together again isnt impossible.. bear in mind access is incredibly difficult, I can just about get one hand in to the space, enough to operate a spanner but not much else.
Click to expand...

The last time I did this I used an old chisel welded to the end of some scarp pipe, the pipe meant I could position the chisel next to the glassed in nuts and give a good hit with a hammer, took about 45 minutes to clear it all away.

Re glassed it with an epoxy resin filler under a new stainless backing plate as access was not at all good, well **** actually.

Good luck and fair winds. :)
 
+1 for using an old heavy wood chisel for chopping away fibreglass. An old mortise chisel that's designed to be hit with a mallet is the thing.

Look at what sort of backing there is to the skeg fastenings... consider improving it if appropriate.
The reason I say this is that I knew someone with a Pegasus 800 which sank in mid channel, he said because the skeg fastenings pulled through the hull.
 
Thanks for the replies, nice to know I'm not entirely alone...

Pegasus Owners' club
Click to expand...

would love to join but cant find any details on the www, all links go to a defunct facebook page. I know the northern rivers sailing club has a few of these so perhaps they're worth a try but everytime I go to their website my PC crashes - a bug in their java title animations I think.

charging by outboard
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Sorry the list wasnt meant to be any specific order ( and has in fact got a lot longer ) , the critical jobs are fixing the topside leaks: being forward hatch refurb which Ive not yet started, washboards have now been replaced with an Acrylic set (loverly and lets loads of light into the cabin) and replace one of the deck cable sockets which has also now been done. The rudder is the next most critical item [ bad joke warning ] because everying hinges on that !

I believe the dc output from the 8hp Mariner Saildrive was only intended for navigation lights while motoring so you're probably right about its low current capability, I'm planning on a solar panel being the main trickle source as I would rather the wind gen was disabled when I'm not on the boat. However it might be worth linking it up via a switch specifically to power the nav lights as a backup source.

chisel
Click to expand...

Excellent idea except holding it and a hammer looks to be close to impossible in the space available but will give it a go. I was also thinking to try a dremel with a grinder attachment but wasnt looking forward to all the dust and concerned it might damage the nuts. Another thought was a hot knife ( I have one for cutting ropes ) as that might soften the grp and allow me to slice off chunks without using any significant force.

stainless backing plate
Click to expand...

I had also read the story about that skeg failure which is one of the things that prompted me to check mine, the lateral wobble I have is only 2-3 mm at the bottom of the skeg ( ie <0.5mm at all at the hull ) and there's no stress fractures anywhere so dont thing there's any danger of the same at present but its only going to get worse so needs seeing to. I have yet to see whats under the retaining nuts, its certainly built up much thicker than the surrounding hull but a load spreader might still be a good idea.
 
Skeg is off ... YAY !

In the end I decided hitting it with a chisel was a bit violent and, by dint of having no room to swing a mallet, impractical. The rope cutter hot blade did a good job of making an incision around the bottom of each nut and then a dremmel with a grinding attachment cleaned off any remaining bits of fiberglass. This was an extremely smelly and smoky process, a gas mask or blown ventilation would have been a good idea in retrospect.

Once cleared of fiberglass the 17mm nuts undid without any problem, the coach bolts needed a few taps to get them moving and then skeg came away from the hull easily.

Its easy to see why it was wobbling though - although the fiberglass all looks good, there was only a dab if sikaflex around three of the four bolt holes which had been compressed beyong its useful life. So nothing serious, Phew ! It should go back together easy enough once I get the bearing set machined flat and a top and bottom bearing turned.
 
winsbury said:
Thanks for the replies, nice to know I'm not entirely alone...



would love to join but cant find any details on the www, all links go to a defunct facebook page. I know the northern rivers sailing club has a few of these so perhaps they're worth a try but everytime I go to their website my PC crashes - a bug in their java title animations I think.



Sorry the list wasnt meant to be any specific order ( and has in fact got a lot longer ) , the critical jobs are fixing the topside leaks: being forward hatch refurb which Ive not yet started, washboards have now been replaced with an Acrylic set (loverly and lets loads of light into the cabin) and replace one of the deck cable sockets which has also now been done. The rudder is the next most critical item [ bad joke warning ] because everying hinges on that !

I believe the dc output from the 8hp Mariner Saildrive was only intended for navigation lights while motoring so you're probably right about its low current capability, I'm planning on a solar panel being the main trickle source as I would rather the wind gen was disabled when I'm not on the boat. However it might be worth linking it up via a switch specifically to power the nav lights as a backup source.



Excellent idea except holding it and a hammer looks to be close to impossible in the space available but will give it a go. I was also thinking to try a dremel with a grinder attachment but wasnt looking forward to all the dust and concerned it might damage the nuts. Another thought was a hot knife ( I have one for cutting ropes ) as that might soften the grp and allow me to slice off chunks without using any significant force.



I had also read the story about that skeg failure which is one of the things that prompted me to check mine, the lateral wobble I have is only 2-3 mm at the bottom of the skeg ( ie <0.5mm at all at the hull ) and there's no stress fractures anywhere so dont thing there's any danger of the same at present but its only going to get worse so needs seeing to. I have yet to see whats under the retaining nuts, its certainly built up much thicker than the surrounding hull but a load spreader might still be a good idea.
Click to expand...
Your PC will not crash from a bug in their java title animations so have a Look.
http://homepages.rya-online.net/nrsc/
 
From experience, "ready to sail" is relative when it comes to older boats and I tend to be quite picky so I was expecting to do some work no matter which boat we bought. What has caught me out was just how difficult a couple of the jobs have turned out to be compared to similar jobs on a dinghy but its all basically the same but bigger. Enjoying doing it though and it will be comforting to know the work has been done right at the end of the day.
 
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