MiToS re-built/fit- versilcraft Mystery43

[rbcoomer]

An alternative may be more, smaller holes perhaps? Trouble is any hole is always going to be large enough for something to go through/get stuck that you don't want, but small enough to risk getting blocked... I have to say that I'm with Kashurst on this one however and would rather loose a few odds and ends than risk getting swamped. I'm sure you won't go looking for 20' waves, but personally I'd rather that if I got hit by a rogue one that it can drain rapidly!

 

[kashurst]

what about creating a transom gate above the swim platform. As long as the "gate" is open framed then the opening will act as a great big scupper in case you get flooded. If you create it leaving a low step or lintel that should stop phones, keys etc shooting out the back. Then you can put a couple of small discrete drains as per Rafikis' Azimut 39 to clear any remaining standing water from rain, wash down etc. You can then close up the old scuppers to get a clean look and have easier access to the cockpit from the swim platform or if you later fit a passarelle

 

[jfm]

Hi Vas. I must say that I like your scuppers as they are. They look perfectly good and seamanlike to me, except perhaps I might go for 50mm not 30mm high. I don't agree with Rafiki, but I think he is forgetting the fact he has a transom gate and THAT is his scupper. His little round things are just to stop rainwater collecting in the corners or whatever. MiToS has no transom gate, so these scuppers are your only scuppers, so make them big. I have them along side of my boat too btw, pic below, (to scale the picture, those s/s posts supporting the teak capping rail are exactly 100mm high), easily big enough to take a mobile phone but no-one has managed to lose one yet! I need them for same reason as you - my transom gate is sealed so in effect I have no gate that can serve as a scupper. In those circs you really do NEED big scuppers, in case you are in a big sea and take a wave. If anything I'd prefer mine bigger btw, though they are RINA signed off, and you have to see them in combo with the other scuppers. Anyway, the flow rate thru 1.5 inch deck drain hose with a dirt grille and say 300mm of head (a scary number in itself) is nowhere near enough - it's probably less than 5% of 300x 40m worth of scupperage

BTW, they also serve as very handy steps to climb up/down the side of the boat to/from the tender, if the tender happens to be alongside (eg when in my berth. for example). Not a reason to have them, but a useful little side-effect imho

Just as an observation, Nordhavn fit gates on their scuppers, but AFAIK these are supposed to be opened when underway in any kind of big sea. I do wonder if skippers forget. But come to think of it they might have some elastic device that allows them to open when water is escaping from the boat, and not when it is trying to enter. Anyway, that all seems a faff to me: I'd go for open scuppers

Your 100mm pipes would work but I think the benefit of all that effort would be kinda zero?

Changing topic, I'm surprise by something: you're fitting all these seacocks and bilge pumps and things, but wouldn't it be loads easier to paint the bilge first?

 

[RobWales]

Only thing I would change is the way those scuppers look from the outside, if mine I think I'd frame the openings with some 1.5 maybe 2mm polished 316 SS plate, IMHO it would tidy up the appearance...
Rob....PS have a very merry Christmas Vas....

 

[MapisM]

I also don't see anything wrong with the existing design.
Fwiw, you can see one of my boat scuppers in the previous pic (post #721), right under the hawsehole.
IIRC, it's roughly 120x50mm, and I've got 4 of them each side.
One thing you might wish to consider, and that you will not hear from our friends with frozen snot boats , is that also each frame tends to trap water.
That's not a problem in terms of draining big amounts of green water in heavy sea of course (provided that the scuppers, wherever they are, are big enough).
But every time the boat is washed, or it just rains, I hate to see water stuck between each frame where there is no scupper, and taking forever to dry out.
Therefore, I made some (much) smaller scuppers inside each couple of frames where there wasn't any proper scupper originally.
You can see two of them in the same pic above.
I'm not thinking to compete in any design context with this tweak, but they do their job...

 

[rafiki_]

Yep, JFM et al are correct, I had missed the lack of transom gate, which clearly makes a big difference to scuppers. The Snazi has 2, and makes getting on much easier, especially with the tender on the bathing platform, as this is not in the way of either gate, so mooring port or stbd makes no difference. So, any plans for a transom gate Vas?

 

[petem]

The Snazi

Wot's a Snazi?

 

[rafiki_]

Wot's a Snazi?

Keep up Pete, Azimut, JFM style.

 

[rbcoomer]

Vas posted regarding transom gate in #720 but dismissed on structural grounds. I asked as thought it would be useful because of stern-to berthing and access to swim platform - hadn't considered as a drain too!

 

[vas]

what about creating a transom gate above the swim platform. As long as the "gate" is open framed then the opening will act as a great big scupper in case you get flooded. If you create it leaving a low step or lintel that should stop phones, keys etc shooting out the back. Then you can put a couple of small discrete drains as per Rafikis' Azimut 39 to clear any remaining standing water from rain, wash down etc. You can then close up the old scuppers to get a clean look and have easier access to the cockpit from the swim platform or if you later fit a passarelle

Vas posted regarding transom gate in #720 but dismissed on structural grounds. I asked as thought it would be useful because of stern-to berthing and access to swim platform - hadn't considered as a drain too!

Kashurst, Rob has a v.good memory
Yes, original plan was to cut a transom gate but was dismissed once I had to dismantle all the carp in the transom capping, remove the davits and rebuilt the capping with a series of iroko strips bend in two axis and epoxied/screwed one to another. Now have perfectly sound and solid transom ending to support the hydraulic passarelle and I'm not going to jeopardise that for the gate. If it was a GRP construction, I'd definitely do it, not now though.

Hi Vas. I must say that I like your scuppers as they are. They look perfectly good and seamanlike to me, except perhaps I might go for 50mm not 30mm high. I don't agree with Rafiki, but I think he is forgetting the fact he has a transom gate and THAT is his scupper. His little round things are just to stop rainwater collecting in the corners or whatever. MiToS has no transom gate, so these scuppers are your only scuppers, so make them big. I have them along side of my boat too btw, pic below, (to scale the picture, those s/s posts supporting the teak capping rail are exactly 100mm high), easily big enough to take a mobile phone but no-one has managed to lose one yet! I need them for same reason as you - my transom gate is sealed so in effect I have no gate that can serve as a scupper. In those circs you really do NEED big scuppers, in case you are in a big sea and take a wave. If anything I'd prefer mine bigger btw, though they are RINA signed off, and you have to see them in combo with the other scuppers. Anyway, the flow rate thru 1.5 inch deck drain hose with a dirt grille and say 300mm of head (a scary number in itself) is nowhere near enough - it's probably less than 5% of 300x 40m worth of scupperage

thanks J,

Have to admit that wasn't considering a transom gate as a scupper initially, I see the points, as well as understand fully raf's setup with the small drains working complimentary to the two transom gates. So, I'll stick to what I have, do my maths (vol of water vs total area of scuppers) and possibly enlarge them a bit. Mind mine are a tad longer than both yours and MM and I have a much smaller aft deck. I also agree that the 100dia in not engineering correct, so I'll skip that altogether.

Changing topic, I'm surprise by something: you're fitting all these seacocks and bilge pumps and things, but wouldn't it be loads easier to paint the bilge first?

haven't actually fitted ANY seacock or skin fitting on MiToS yet, just laying them inside the hull at the right place to keep them out of the various plastic bags littering the craft as it stands now. This way I feel slightly better (as I see a smaller number of bags with stuff in them around) and I also check that I'm not missing an bits that I have to buy on my next visit to Athens.
I have indeed secured temporarily the blackwater tank diaphragm pump but that's on only two screws.

Which BTW, brings up another issue I have with painting the bilges:
Original setup was one or two coats of rather diluted bilge paint (that's what it felt when I sanded all clean!)
Local "experts" claim I should coat everything with lots of oil based primer to soak in the ply.
I feel that the parts that are NOT to be soaked on water (under normal conditions) as in hull sides above the chine, or anyway everything over 1m from the keel, COULD possibly remain clean unpainted ply.
Alternatively I could soak them with a couple of coats of CPES.

The bottom of the bilges in e/r and lazarette could?/should? be sealed. Problem I personally have with that is that having an epoxy mat plus 4coats of epoxy (two CPES, two normal) plus another 4-5coats of epoxy based copper coating means that the outside is well and trully sealed.
IF some water manages to soak in, IF I've sealed the inside as well, where the hell is the humidity and condensation going to go?
Slightly theoretical Q, but it's the type of things that create the larger damage (invisible until sometimes it's too late)

So I'm still thinking what to do
as always ideas welcomed!

Only thing I would change is the way those scuppers look from the outside, if mine I think I'd frame the openings with some 1.5 maybe 2mm polished 316 SS plate, IMHO it would tidy up the appearance...
Rob....PS have a very merry Christmas Vas....

Spot on Rob, I don't particularly like the looks of a plain scupper, added to the fact that the carpentry related to sealing and finishing a butt joint is not exactly engineering correct or visually appealing in my book. We shall see.
Thanks for the wishes, will be around with new progress report over the w/e so not disappearing yet. BTW, still waiting for progress report from your end

I also don't see anything wrong with the existing design.
Fwiw, you can see one of my boat scuppers in the previous pic (post #721), right under the hawsehole.
IIRC, it's roughly 120x50mm, and I've got 4 of them each side.
One thing you might wish to consider, and that you will not hear from our friends with frozen snot boats , is that also each frame tends to trap water.
That's not a problem in terms of draining big amounts of green water in heavy sea of course (provided that the scuppers, wherever they are, are big enough).
But every time the boat is washed, or it just rains, I hate to see water stuck between each frame where there is no scupper, and taking forever to dry out.
Therefore, I made some (much) smaller scuppers inside each couple of frames where there wasn't any proper scupper originally.
You can see two of them in the same pic above.
I'm not thinking to compete in any design context with this tweak, but they do their job...

Re between the frames (above deck level) I should be ok as the inner skin of the hull along the aft deck is fully sealed so not an issue.

However, picking on that, I had a similar issue between the frames at hull/keel level. Haviong discussed it sometime last year (iirc) and the consensus was that I need a 10-12mm dia hole on each frame to let the water move freely within the sealed compartment and be sucked by the bilge pump. That was original feature on the iroko frames, albeit with various layers of dirt and bilge paint most of them were blocked. I've spent a reasonable amount of time cleaning and sanding the frames and restoring these holes, so I'm happy with that.
PROBLEM is that if you have a bilge pump in there, you got to decide which side of the keel you're having it or you put two of the buggers sucking one on each side of the keel. After much headscratching I decided that life's too short...


not going to say merry xmas as yet as w/e should find me working a lot on MiToS and reporting when recovering

cheers

V.

 

[MapisM]

Re between the frames (above deck level) I should be ok as the inner skin of the hull along the aft deck is fully sealed so not an issue.

Vas, just to be sure that we aren't at cross purpose: I understand that MiToS was built (hard to tell now from your pics) with wooden panels covering the frames internally.
In other words, the same as I have along the stern in my boat (see pic below). Is that correct?
My previous comment was because I would have thought that along the hull sides your boat was built as mine, i.e. with no panels covering the frames.
Btw, this construction avoids even worse potential water traps: with panel covers, if some fresh water does find its way inside, it can really get stuck there forever, which is a recipe for wood rotting.
If you will cover the frames with wood panels (which I accept most folks might prefer, aesthetically), you'd better make sure that they are VERY well sealed.
Just my 2c....

 

[MapisM]

if you have a bilge pump in there, you got to decide which side of the keel you're having it or you put two of the buggers sucking one on each side of the keel.

Fwiw, in my boat the pump sucks from stbd side, so that's bound to be the right choice.
Jokes aside, in the lower point of the bilge, which is (obviously) where the pump sucks from, there's a hole also through the keel, hence "joining" the whole bottom in terms of water flow.

 

[rbcoomer]

...
Which BTW, brings up another issue I have with painting the bilges:
Original setup was one or two coats of rather diluted bilge paint (that's what it felt when I sanded all clean!)
Local "experts" claim I should coat everything with lots of oil based primer to soak in the ply.
I feel that the parts that are NOT to be soaked on water (under normal conditions) as in hull sides above the chine, or anyway everything over 1m from the keel, COULD possibly remain clean unpainted ply.
Alternatively I could soak them with a couple of coats of CPES.

The bottom of the bilges in e/r and lazarette could?/should? be sealed. Problem I personally have with that is that having an epoxy mat plus 4coats of epoxy (two CPES, two normal) plus another 4-5coats of epoxy based copper coating means that the outside is well and trully sealed.
IF some water manages to soak in, IF I've sealed the inside as well, where the hell is the humidity and condensation going to go?
Slightly theoretical Q, but it's the type of things that create the larger damage (invisible until sometimes it's too late)

So I'm still thinking what to do
as always ideas welcomed!

From my limited knowledge and reading, I'd avoid sealing up both sides of the ply as I think it's unlikely the CPES would penetrate right into the central cores of the ply and as you say, there'd be no ability to breathe. That said, I'm not sure how well the inner layers breathe anyway as they're surely bonded together with epoxy anyway? Presumably that will have the same effect? I certainly wouldn't want to leave the bottom part of the bilge 'bare' either however and I think I'd look for a quality bilge paint that would provide a barrier to water but not penetrate into the ply and then paint the minimal amount - to allow 6" of water perhaps?

PROBLEM is that if you have a bilge pump in there, you got to decide which side of the keel you're having it or you put two of the buggers sucking one on each side of the keel. After much headscratching I decided that life's too short...

I think on a vessel that size, I'd want two pumps anyway - fed from two different battery banks each with their own float switch and one float switch higher than the other. This way, the 2nd one really is a backup and should only kick in when the 1st is either failed or overcome (panic stations! :ambivalence I'd wire the manual override to either the backup (to ensure it gets run from time to time) or (even better) both.

+1 for the hole through the keel however to join the two sections.

 

[BartW]

I would have thought that along the hull sides your boat was built as mine, i.e. with no panels covering the frames.
Btw, this construction avoids even worse potential water traps: with panel covers, if some fresh water does find its way inside, it can really get stuck there forever, which is a recipe for wood rotting.
If you will cover the frames with wood panels (which I accept most folks might prefer, aesthetically), you'd better make sure that they are VERY well sealed.
Just my 2c....

exactly,

this is a weak spot / known problem on BA
moisture that get in there through the rail fittings, or deck lights, etc..
is absorbed by the plywood, and will rotten the wood on a long term,
but on a short term the paint will get bubbles

during my 2012 winter rebuyld,
the IT carpenters replaced all that rotten pannels, with new, threated on the inside with a good protection sort of a thick paint...
all new and existing panels were nicely filled, sanded, and painted on the visible side,
after 1 winter and 2 summers seasons, we now have bubbles in the paint, in one area, on the old pannels AFAIK
2 weeks ago, I took out the deck lights in the bubbled area,
I temporarely placed aluminium louvres over the openings to avoid rainwater going in,
so now there is some fresh air behind the panels, and the ply can hopefully dry.

just alone for this reason, I have been thinking, to make more scubbers, in the bubbled zone, so that the backside of these ply pannels could dry much better

 

[MapisM]

this is a weak spot / known problem on BA
moisture that get in there through the rail fittings, or deck lights, etc..
is absorbed by the plywood, and will rotten the wood on a long term,
but on a short term the paint will get bubbles

B, just a thought:
I can't remember exactly how the internal plywood panels are made on BA, but IIRC they are basically just a cover of the internal side of the hull and its frames, with no structural function, right?
Because if so, it might make sense, instead of trying to seal them perfectly (which is an almost impossible mission), to cut a very small gap (I mean, min 5/max 10 mm) along the bottom of all panels, where they touch the deck.
This way, the aesthetic would be almost unaffected, because a linear thin cut goes much more unnoticed than any scuppers, and water could freely escape out.
I guess it's not easy to make such a cut, linear and well finished, on the already installed panels - it would have been much easier during build, in fact.
But other than that, I can't think of any cons to such solution, so maybe worth checking with some good carpenter?

 

[Tender_aft]

B, just a thought:
I can't remember exactly how the internal plywood panels are made on BA, but IIRC they are basically just a cover of the internal side of the hull and its frames, with no structural function, right?
Because if so, it might make sense, instead of trying to seal them perfectly (which is an almost impossible mission), to cut a very small gap (I mean, min 5/max 10 mm) along the bottom of all panels, where they touch the deck.
This way, the aesthetic would be almost unaffected, because a linear thin cut goes much more unnoticed than any scuppers, and water could freely escape out.
I guess it's not easy to make such a cut, linear and well finished, on the already installed panels - it would have been much easier during build, in fact.
But other than that, I can't think of any cons to such solution, so maybe worth checking with some good carpenter?

I was talking to a very well thought of marine surveyor about this just yesterday, and he said once the moisture is in, it's in and you can't do much about it. I imagine this has something to do with evaporating liquid rising (like when you boil water), so it will get into any places it can get trapped and do it's damage anyway in some small way (at first).

I had a thought (a flippant one), why not paint all the surfaces with a strong solution of salt to help preserve them.

 

[burgundyben]

First three rules of wooden boats.

1. Ventilation.
2. Ventilation.
3. Ventilation.

 

[MapisM]

he said once the moisture is in, it's in and you can't do much about it.

Well, it depends on what he meant by "in".
I would agree that once moisture finds its way inside a fully enclosed wooden "box", it stays there forever, eventually doing its job of rotting the wood.
That was the whole point of my previous suggestion, in fact: if such box is open along its lower corner, instead of fully sealed, at least water can't stay (and actually cumulate) inside.
Of course, not having any plywood panel covering the internal hull sides (as in my boat, see previous pic) grants an even better ventilation, which as BB said is crucial.
But on a vessel as elegant as BA, internal panels are definitely a very nice touch...
...Compromises, as usually!

 

[Tender_aft]

I see your point Mapism. We need hull/cabin dividers for cosmetic effect, pushed a little forward to allow a gap all round, rather than solid wood panels making a box. There is insulation in there too though isn't there?

Not sure that Vas is as soft as the rest of us (...or should I just say me and let the rest of you decide for yourselves). Are you having airco Vas? I can't remember it being mentioned, but what about running airco vents into the void so that when you run the airco, it will also dehumidify the hull at the same time...and you will have 'cool walls'

 

[MapisM]

There is insulation in there too though isn't there?

Oh yes, if you mean below deck, where the cabins are.
But I was talking of the hull sides above the deck, i.e. along the gunwales.
That's were the construction of my boat and BA (and also MiToS, as I understood) is different.
Under the deck, also mine has wooden panels covering the frame, and insulation in between.
But below deck, moisture and rain are much less of a problem - as long as the deck and seams are properly sealed, that is...
...that's another chapter, though!