What lessons for this week

I think we launched 12 boats this week and for once only two out so at last we appear to be winning.
The Ovni went in and is looking good however it wasn't plain sailing.
Firstly the c/board wouldn't go down as I discovered backing out of the slip in 20+ knots of wind and an 2.5knt flood tide.
On the positive side I quickly found the new bow thruster worked well !!
I found with the wheel hard over with a blip of forward thrust coupled with the corresponding bow thruster I could make her go sideways into the wind which was really cool.
Once safely moored up we discovered the problem was that the two layers of antifoul on the keel were to blame.
After a few ups and down of the board it cleared itself.
We also had a little issue with the rudder which is hydraulically pumped up and down.
However we found that if you pump down too much the ram goes out of center and you cant pump back up again.
Silly design really and what was really strange is the hydraulic pump manufacturer recommends using antifreeze for the fluid.
Should be fine for the season but we'll have a proper look at it in the winter.
Rest of the boat systems are great, the new windlass, Rutland genny, windows, furlers etc and the new paint look superb.
I've included a shot of the bow thruster taken from the inside below.
Pleased with they way that all turned out as the owner had to take a bit of leap of faith with me.
One of the boats that we did lift was a Nauticat 33 which we'd worked on a couple of years previously and had shipped off by road to Cardiff.
The owner had issues with his gearbox and a number of yards had tried and unsuccessfully found a solution so they sailed her back here over the last year.
Engine is now out and our engineer is having a go, will report back later.
We got in touch with sillette who are the UK dealers for Gori props and explained that with less than 80 hours clocked since the vulcanized bush was replaced was not very good.
A deal was struck and we now have a new prop for the cost of another repair.
Thanks Sillette.
Talking of props we changed a cutlass on a Moody 36 and the prop and shaft had been treated with Prop speed almost a year ago.
The results were impressive but given the cost of application it should be I guess.
Probably well worth it for a diesel hungry power boat but on a yacht I think its hard to justify over our current favorite, International Trilux.
Fitting a 100lt holding tank which has the std 1 1/2" pipe fitings.
However the new loo complete with macerater has a 1" outlet.
A pain but we checked and using a reversed reducer we can go from 1 to 1 1/2 with no drop in performance even over the rather convoluted route the pipe will have to take.

ovni_bt_11.jpg
 
One of the scary things that happen on a regular basis here is watching boats coming along side and sometimes even worse, watching them leave.
The ability to ferry glide into the tide or at the very least have some awareness that the water they are maneuvering on is actually moving either one way or the other.
The frequent Dutch visitors have a reasonable excuse as in general the water they sail in is pretty static and I guess folk who normally sail from one marina to another can also claim some allowance.

We call these folk "pointers" as they point their boat at where they want to go and then panic a boat length off the pontoon as they reach the conclusion they're not going to make it.
For some reason these folk feel the need to be making way over ground forgetting that if they just pulled level with the pontoon and then held station with it they would still be going at 2 knts with full steerage and control through the water.
At least most remember to moor up facing into the tide, however when its time to leave and the tide has changed, why do folk try and leave bow first?

I guess I shouldn't complain as it ultimately brings in some business throughout the year but frankly I'd much rather be doing refits than repairs.

Been having a few issues with a new Rutland 914i wind genny.
This new version of the Rutland looks pretty much the same but its very different underneath the plastic housing.
It came with a new controller as well which with its glowing blue buttons looks quite cool.
The issue is we're getting volts from the gen but as soon as we plug it into the controller we get very low volts which are not enough to charge.
The reason for the lower volts is the blades rotate a lot slower.
So without the controller we get 16v ish on the day we tested, with the controller we get 6v.
Marlec said send the controller back and we'll test it.
We did on Monday and they said today that there's nothing wrong with it ??
Hmmm.
Kinds reminds me of a couple of years back when a similar thing happened with a 913 controller.
We got the controller back having been told by them there was nothing wrong and wired it back up in the exact same way and it worked fine.
I wonder......fingers crossed anyway.
 
This week whilst stepping a mast on a Gib Sea 26 I managed to break the mast foot and immediately after I wiped out the cups on the anemometer.
We have a 25 ton mobile crane which we use for stepping masts.
The issue with this particular mast is that the spreaders are bang on the balance point of the mast.
We try and sling below the spreaders so its easy to recover the sling once its up.
So this mast is a bit tricky and you have to keep plenty of pull on the bottom of the mast to stop it flipping over, however its one of the smaller masts we handle and usually presents no problems.
Anyway we got the pin in the base of the mast and then a gust of wind blew the mast to the side a little breaking the mast foot, in trying to get the mast back under control the top of the mast banged into the jib of the crane resulting in bits of plastic falling around my ears.
Lift aborted I trundled the mast back to the yard.
The two magpies I saw on the way back kicked in though.
The mast was a Z-Spar and a quick phone call resulted in the mast foot being put in the post that afternoon all for the very good price of £28 which I thought was very reasonable.
Next to deal with was what we rather unfairly call "Nasty Nasa" anemometer.
I have to say that the prices for spares is not Nasty at all. Another quick call to smgeurope and a new direction vane and cups was put in the post for under £25.
Next day both were fitted and this time I slung the mast three feet above the spreaders and the mast was stepped in 10 minutes flat.
All that was needed was for me to go up on the crane in the bosuns chair and retrieve the sling, job done and lesson learnt.

Sea trails on the ovni were great as there appears to be no noticeable loss of speed or increase in noise with the bow thruster design.
We should finish the Southerly refit next week so we'll test the thruster on that as well but feeling pretty confident.

A little aside is we get a lot of reps from various companies each week.
A strange one is we have a new Van man from Marlow ropes, however we also see a great guy from English braids both of which are owned by the same company.
Strange to see two guys from the same company essentially competing against each other.
 
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Checked the fluid and sure enough the manufacturer recommends "water gylcol" - we live and learn.......
Had a few electronic challenges this week.
AIS transponder that wouldn't communicate with a Navman Chartplotter - turned out that it was wired up using 4800 baud rate instead of 38000 - easy fix one we'd spotted the error.
Then a new digital radar not appearing on the cockpit plotter.
Tested the leads and then noticed that we only had one light on the network switch where we should have had two. One from the plotter to the switch and one from the dome.
A trip up the mast to find the plug had nut fully seated in the dome. The rubber cover covers the thread so it was an easy mistake to make and cost us nearly a day messing about trying to nail down the issue.

Then we had the intermittent shore power issue.
One day we had 240v and the next day nothing.
Tested everything obvious and worked back to the Victron Charger and found if we selected "Charger only" the 240v plugs would work, hmm
Looks like the straight through power controlled by a relay is sticking.
Well that's our guess anyway
This will be a warranty job as the unit is less than a year old.

Customer lost drive from stbd engine at the weekend.
Apparently he had been having trouble for a couple of weeks and it was getting worse until it stopped on Sunday.
A quick poke about found a split in a hose which had essentially emptied the gearbox.
Changed the pipes for new, topped up the oil and all is well except for the god awful mess.

Nauticat 33 that has had its own gearbox issues on a number of occasions.
We took a look and were amazed to see there was no support between the gearbox and the stern gland.
The distance was almost 6' and the 11/4' shaft was left bounce around all over the place and accounted for the bad engine alignment which in turn lead to his numerous gearbox issues.
Quite how the other three yards missed this is beyond us.

Changing a packing stern gland to a Volvo stern gland on a Moody.
Between you and I we're not sure why as we felt the old gland was fine but the customer has had one fail on another boat so wanted it changed.
Has meant quite a lot of glassing and a new bush to be installed.
Similar to the Nauticat there is quite a long run from the cutlass to the gearbox so we suggested an additional support bearing might be a good idea but no.
The customer is always right......

Looks like we've got a bit of a job coming soon as one of our regulars had her YM 5 tonner t-boned in a race lat weekend.
Pulpit and all the stanchions, chain-plates, lowers and cap shrouds all demolished in the port/starboard collision.
Quite how she kept the mast up we'll never know.
Will have to jury rig her and bring her back from Ipswich very gently next week sometime.
 
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Sorry been a while since I've updated.
The Southerly we did the bow thruster on is now on the baltic and reports are great although apparently there's a problem with the ICS Nav6 navtext which is not receiving navtext although the nmea repeater functions are very good.
I mention this because we had a similar issue with the self same bit of kit on the Ovni, where all the extra functions worked well except for the receiving of text info.
The antenna and diagnostics all work out so its a bit of a mystery.

The Ovni, another we did our new design bow thruster on has sailed up north and round and according to AIS is moored up at Tobermory.
The owner is happy with our mods and new North sails and is really happy with my redesign of the reefing system which is totally different from the North one.
North and tbh a lot of other sail makers, for some strange reason which frankly is beyond me set up the reefing with No1 and No2 reef as single line and Reef3 at conventional slab.
To me that's plain daft.
The one time you don't want to be bouncing around on the foredeck fighting with horns etc is when you need reef 3.
Reef 2 its to my mind 50/50
Reef 1 I think is usually pretty easy to do at the mast.

So reef 3 is a cockpit two line system.
Reef 2 is a single line but with a secondary inline clutch so it can be done at the mast if wanted.
Reef 1 is a conventional slab.
The Main halyard runs back to the cockpit clutch but there is also an inline clutch on the mast.
This gives you a lot more flexibility especially when shorthanded.

Got a ton of other stuff to report on rudder bearings on a Nic39, Ovni and 3/4 tonner.
Amazing escape for the rig on the YM 5 tonner where during the collision the bow sprit of the other boat snapped both lowers and the cap shroud leaving unused running backstay to keep the mast from falling over the side.
A rant on Lewmar windows, what are they thinking?

Oh and on the river this year it appears that seajet emperor antifoul is useless !
It was pretty good last year, this year it looks like its a food source.
 
Javelin said:
Oh and on the river this year it appears that seajet emperor antifoul is useless !
It was pretty good last year, this year it looks like its a food source.
Click to expand...

Is this because the marine life has evolved so the anti foul isn't effective, or because the formula of the paint has changed? Odd that it works one year but not the next.
 
Javelin said:
North and tbh a lot of other sail makers, for some strange reason which frankly is beyond me set up the reefing with No1 and No2 reef as single line and Reef3 at conventional slab.
To me that's plain daft.
The one time you don't want to be bouncing around on the foredeck fighting with horns etc is when you need reef 3.
Reef 2 its to my mind 50/50
Reef 1 I think is usually pretty easy to do at the mast.

So reef 3 is a cockpit two line system.
Reef 2 is a single line but with a secondary inline clutch so it can be done at the mast if wanted.
Reef 1 is a conventional slab.
The Main halyard runs back to the cockpit clutch but there is also an inline clutch on the mast.
This gives you a lot more flexibility especially when shorthanded
Click to expand...

Whew! Someone who agrees with me at last!

BTW this is an excellent thread, but where do you find the time to type?
 
Is this because the marine life has evolved so the anti foul isn't effective, or because the formula of the paint has changed? Odd that it works one year but not the next.
Click to expand...

We find it's more to do with which type of grotty stuff is having a good year.
Last year barnacles were in, this year it appears to be sea squirts.

We know this how?
Well having launched the Ovni during the sea trials we noticed the steering was heavy so we took her out again to have a look.
She had been in the water no more than 5 weeks and was pretty filthy.
We had noticed a lot of play in the lower bearing when we had taken her out at the beginning of the year, so I made up a new heal bearing and fitted it.
The top bearings didn't seem that bad so we decided that they'd be fine for this season.
Oops, we were wrong. ("We" being me in this case :( )
Turned out that the top bearings were worse than we thought as as soon as load was put on the rudder the top bearings would give a little allowing the shaft to move to leeward which in turn jammed up the new lower bearing.
A temp solution was to open the lower bearing a little which did the trick and we'll fit a full set in the winter.
The solution seems to work as she's up on the west coast of Scotland right now.

It appears we might have made the same mistake on a local Nicholson 39 as we've reports of the rudder being stiff now after we fitted a new heel bearing earlier this year.
I've checked with the three other boats we've done full bearing changes recently and all is well so it appears the moral is if one bearing is shot it's probably best to fit a full set.

Lewmar have lost a lot of business this week from us.
We're replacing windows all round on three boats.
In one case the 8 side windows are 750mm long by 200mm high.
Lewmars window sizes are bizarre.
Max length is 646mm by 191mm high
I thought ah that's probably because they're done in inches but no, in inches the sizes are even more obscure.
Anyway the above is what they call Size 4.
They also do a nice looking tapering window which is a Size 4 and they're handed, so left and right, fair enough.
However the sizes are 708mm long by 195mm high ??
These are supposed to match the others?

Anyway, although I could probably live with the 191mm high I need 750mm long.
Lewmar will make longer ones for special orders but at over double the price and a 5 week lead time its a non starter.

So Seaglaze will get the order as they will make any size I want within reason but I'll still have to wait 4 weeks for them which I'm not overly happy about.
Apparently if I pay an extra 25% I can fast track them which I'm even less happy about.
Got the windows to do on a Fisher 25 and on a Nauticat 38 in the next few weeks so may well be looking for another supplier.
 
Short week this week as we're of sailing to Holland on Thursday with any luck.

Three changes of standing rigging on a Sadler 26, Fisher 25 ketch and a 1940's Yachting Monthly 5 tonner.
On the YM 5 tonner the change was forced due to a crash during a classic yacht race a month or so back.
The sprit of the other much larger yacht pulverised the pulpit, ripped out all the stbd stanchions and most amazingly snapped the stbd lowers and cap shrouds bending the chainplates.
The teak gunwhale 4 ft back from the bow was smashed and some of the foredeck had lifted.
Must have been horrendous on board when it happened.
The solid wooden mast was saved due to the running backstays which had been missed which at the time were just aft of the aft lowers position.
Anyway we need a fast turn around on this one so we've had three guys on it.
The mast is terribly bendy and secretly we've been hoping it would snap so we could persuade this regular customer to buy a "decent" mast.
Ironically I think the whippyness of the mast saved it from destruction.
We've used 5mm 7/19 wire instead of the usual 1/19 because its does stretch a little more and has some give in it.
I took the opportunity to get rid of at least 10 pretty hefty shackles aloft and used Stalok forks instead saving I reckon a couple of kg.
Using the stalok forks and at the other end, thread for turnbuckles looks really neat and enables us to cut the wires to the correct length using the crane to steady the mast.
The lengths had mostly all changed due to mods to chain plates etc.
Though pricey the stalok fittings are easy and quick to use and I always carry a couple of terminals on my boat just in case.....

The Stalok 7/19 wire terminals are a little trickier to use than for the 1/19 but it still only takes 5 minutes to do each one.
The only issue is sometimes they lock up if you try to undo them, essentially cold welding themselves together.
 
Its been a while since I did an update.
Frankly we've had a manic year with workload and lucky enough it looks like next year will be the same especially in our restoration sheds, with five 40'+ restorations underway and more in the pipeline.
Most of my time is in the repair and refit section of the yard and possibly the worst aspect of this job is when you get a boat in with a seemingly small issue which turns out to be a major issue.
One such recently is a Offshore 30 with a 370hp Yanmar.
She was towed in by the rnli after overheating.
The owners description pointed towards a simple impeller fault which is something we see a lot, but subsequent inspection found it was fine.
A check of the dipstick showed signs of a little water in the sump so thoughts moved to head gasket though the very small amount of water in the sump and no obvious external leakage didn't quite add up.
So we just had to work through the possibilities one at a time starting with the intercooler through to the turbo and exhaust before removing the head.
To cut a long story short, at anchor whilst fishing, given sufficient heel to port due to a combination of waves and weight of people, water was able to pass up the exhaust, past the totally inadequate one way valve and enter the engine via the turbo.
Only a dribble but enough over time to rust the bores to the point where the engine would partially seize.
The trouble is, it took us four days at £28 per hour to track down the problem having had to remove an item, clean and pressure test.
A new engine would cost well over £20k, a rebuild around £14k and then we still have to redesign the exhaust system to avoid the problem occurring again costing another 4 or 5k.
Hell of a difference between that and the £140 for a new impeller the the owner thought it would be.

We all like to save money and cut costs but sometimes, as we also all know, it can backfire.
One of the most common examples is with anodes.
A customer decided to leave his boat in for the winter and pop it out mid season for a wash.
Yes you guessed it, the anodes were totally eaten away and so was his starboard trim tab, hinge and assembly.
Another customer decided to save money by buying cheap anodes on ebay and have us fit them despite our reservations and when we hauled he the other day the anodes hadn't been touched but his bronze pintle and gudgeon, prop and P bracket were shot to pieces.

Where you can save money is with a wooden mast, which frankly was a surprise to me.
A customer recently bought a Vashti Class from us and part of the survey condemned the existing aluminium mast.
We costed up a new ally mast and how much we would charge for making a wooden mast and also looked at getting a wooden mast made externally.
In round numbers the new ally mast came out at £6k, we could make a wood one for a bit less but a specialist wooden mast builder can make one for £4.5k
On the strength of that another customer with a Maurice Griffiths Tideway is going to swap out his tatty aluminium mast for a new wood one.

Whilst on masts, were refitting a lovely little Fisher 25 for a Belgian customer.
He wanted his spars re painted white.
We removed every fitting, stripped off the old paint and ground and filled any corrosion we found.
I intended to use the International etch primer but for some reason they no longer market it.
So on advice we've used Interprotect, which I have to say was really good to use.
Four coats of that, two of prekote and finished off with four coats of white Toplac and the spars look really good, though I say so myself.
I'm thinking I may do the same to my mast next year.

We hauled out 9 boats last week.
I'd say that fouling was medium with not so many barnacles this year.
Seajet shogun looks to have worked ok but not great.
Jotun mare nostrum and International cruiser uno slightly better.
Though its difficult to say as half these boats didn't go out very much so the self polishing never really got a chance to work.
The silly expensive International trilux on the prop and sail drive did seem to work this year.
Copper coat, as usual here on the river, seems to be a food source and the two examples we have here were by far the worst.

Talking of antifoul, we have a mobile guy (Jim) who does our shot blasting.
He really is good as he can fine tune it down to a layer of paint at a time which is very important on older wooden hulls which can have soft areas.
I scraped mine by hand last year and it took an age. Never again.
For £400 ish, all the old rubbish is gone in a morning whilst it took me a week of evenings and a weekend.
Well worth considering if your bottom is looking a bit second hand.
 
Hi Javelin,

please keep going, we are all learning from your stories.
Just disregard user Robin, who should abide by the RTFD rule before posting.
 
Fendant said:
Hi Javelin,

please keep going, we are all learning from your stories.
Just disregard user Robin, who should abide by the RTFD rule before posting.
Click to expand...

Are you reading a different first post date from me? I just wondered about a posted reply talking about needing last minute pre -launch jobs, bit unusual at a time when many are still afloat. But feel free to ignore me. WTF should I care.
 
Robin said:
Are you reading a different first post date from me? I just wondered about a posted reply talking about needing last minute pre -launch jobs, bit unusual at a time when many are still afloat. But feel free to ignore me. WTF should I care.
Click to expand...

Launch stuff .... Just thinking ahead :)

But Javelin does post some great stuff and has done so recently. Worth reading through from the start.
 
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