December 23-24, 2010: Headed down to Long Beach to have the mast re-stepped at "The Boatyard". Allan and his team from SeaTek arrived right on time and we got started. By early afternoon the rig was back up and the spartight was poured. Because I was not on a tight schedule we decided to wait until the next day to remove the lines holding the mast in the right place and clean up the last details. This gave the SparTight lots of time to fully cure. The result is absolutely spectacular. Everyone has been saying that the rebuilt rig really makes the boat into a Yacht! I could not be happier with the job the guys performed, they did a great job, on time, on budget, and very professionally performed. There is a link to a review of SeaTek's work down in the "links" section as well as here. The full discussion of the overall mast rebuilding, decisions, etc is this link.

November 2, 2010: Time to visit my mast and see how the project is progressing! The condition of the mast after media blasting (walnut shells) is very nice. I am very impressed by the condition of the surface which is the result, it is obvious that the texture will result in excellent adhesion of the first coat of zinc chromate primer!  Current plan is to have the rig back in the boat by the end of November! I have decided on using Sta-Lok fittings as I have rerigged three vessesls with them (including Little Botany Bay, Amadon Light, and one other) and that all Oysters 575 and smaller are currently rigged with Sta-Lok fittings. My thought is that by going with Sta-Lok this will make it easier for Oyster Aftersales to help me whenever I might need support, especially during the Ralleys. Definitely decided to go with the Lopalight masthead light. 

October 24-25, 2010: Time for the much anticipated refurbishment of the standing rig for Botany Bay! Tom and I sailed Botany Bay down around Palos Verdes into Long Beach to have the rig pulled for complete tear down and rebuilding. The rig was pulled at "The Boatyard" across from the Long Beach Yacht Club under the watchful eye of Allan and Mike from SeaTek Marine of Wilmington. The plan is to dissassemble the mast as much as possible, strip the paint and coatings off and then rebuild completely. This is expected to take about 5 weeks so I should expect the mast to go back into the boat around the first week in December.

Appear to have a very small weep of oil at the connection between the oil cooler and the engine block. Not enough to be more than making your finger a bit shiny after 10 hours of running. Other than that, the engine cooling system rebuild has ben completely successful. 

So, the winter refit projects are in full swing at this point!

October 2-3, 2010: Cat Harbor is always a treat in October for Buckaneer Day at Isthmus. Last year was a bit more interesting that anyone wanted with a couple of boats up on the rocks coming back home in a large storm. The result was finding all of the leaks in the boat. This was the reason for spending so much time getting the boat into as good of shape as possible because the weather can be rather unsettled at times this late in the season. Having just rebuild the cooling system on the engine I was definitely on edge checking the engine every 5 to 10 minutes. However, the amount of heat in the engine room was WAY down even though the engine temperature was running at the recommended level of about 170F.

September 20-October 1, 2010: Took apart the cooling system for the engine looking for the restriction. At first I thought I had found the worst of it when I found many impeller blades plugging up the front of the raw water to antifreeze cooler. By this time I had both of the coolers off the engine (antifreeze and oil coolers) but the cooling stacks looked very good even though  they had never been off the engine! Thinking that there might be hidden plugged up areas I sent them off to my friends at S&W Diesel in Wilmington, CA who took them apart and rebuilt the units. Then over the weekend I found that the little box on the side of the transmission (Hurth HWB 250) was made of aluminum and had corroded to the point where when I wiggled the hose going from the box to the raw water pump it came apart in my hands. The hole through which the water was having to get through was about 1/4 inch! In fact, the back of the box (pressed against the transmission) was so badly corroded that a screwdriver could be pushed clear through it with minimal effort! So, off to Wilmington to get more parts. In the end it all came together Friday evening and after tugging on the dock lines for about an hour without issue we were off to see the pirates! The installation of the oil cooler appears to be a bit twitchy, when I first installed it there was a significant oil leak which dumped a couple of quarts of oil into the bilge in about 5 minutes! There are three bolts which are not quite in line making the torque pattern difficult to determine. In the end I torqued the bolts on either side of the oil passages and then the last one.

September 17-19, 2010: Emerald bay for Comodore's cruise! Based upon the fog coming in late in the evening and forcast into the late morning I motorsailed over in the late afternoon/early evening. Talk about a quick passage, left the harbor at 5:10pm and arrived in Emerald Bay at 7:50pm or about 2 hours 40 minutes! Boat speed was in the high 8's after getting wind in the sails off the R10 bouy. Without sails up the same throttle setting was getting 7 knts. I will be very interested in how the fuel consumption numbers look for high speed motor sailing. The engine seemed to be running without a huge amount of load. 

The return trip was a bit more interesting. Sailing back as far as the traffic separation scheme was a wonderful sail at 7+ knts, however, when a large ship showed up on the radar at about 8 miles and was holding a fairly constant bearing at 6 miles (looking like it would go behind us but not with a huge amount of margin) and the wind became somewhat lighter causing a reduction in boat speed I cranked up the engine to make sure I had a couple of miles of room between us and the ship. The engine overheat alarm came on about 15 min later (it is set for about 200F and so nothing serious) and rapidly came back down to 185 with the load off. At this point we are well clear of the ship. So figuring I had picked up a back or just ran at higher load than I thought did not worry too much about it.

Then trying to sail around Palos Verdes I needed to motorsail for a few minutes to make the point without tacking and the engine almost immediately show signs of overheating (195F and climbing when significantly above idle and significant steam in the exhaust). I checked the inlet strainer and the flow rate was quite low. 

So, I sailed the rest of the way to Redondo at very low speeds (got some nice polar data) and then entered the harbor just off idle doing about 4knts.

I expected that the heat exchanger was plugged up as the raw water flow rate has always been lower than I thought correct but I had no proof. When I got everything apart I found a pile of impeller blades in the intake side of the heat exchanger! I am always careful to collect all of these if an impeller died, obviously some Previous Owner (PO) had not been so careful. Ah well, with the primary heat exchanger and oil cooler off the engine (they had never been removed before, I had to break through original paint!) I sent them off to S&W Diesel in Wilmington, CA for a careful going through and rebuilding.

September 4-6, 2010: Labor day weekend at Emerald Bay! Probably the first warm weekend of the summer! A wonderful event with the Corsair YC. Coming over from Redondo Beach the Boom Vang started acting up. I managed to get everything together enough in route to avoid any issues while putting the sails away. Over the weekend I managed to get the blocks jammed inside the vang apart without damaging anything and then find enough parts onboard to provide a good fix until the mast is pulled this fall.

August 12-15, 2010: Back to Emerald Bay again! Collected a considerable amount of polar data on the way over in the 10knt of true wind range.which has been included in the current spreadsheet. The Corsair YC had an "Emerald Idol" competition which was alot of fun which the crew of Botany Bay participated in by performing "Jammin Hambo". Amusingly we did not have the right music aboard but got a friend to e-mail the right music at the last minute!

July 23-25, 2010: Over at Emerald Bay with the Corsair YC. I collected useful measured polar data on the way over and back. On the way back I paused north of the R10 bouy to try many points of sail as the winds were very steady and the seas were quite flat. Hopefully these will make developing a set of polars relatively painless.

July 10-11, 2010: Portofino Round up at Isthmus, moored in Cherry cove, as usual my efforts with horse shoes were pretty bad. Oh well, another good excuse to Catalina! The weather was still pretty grey!

July 2-5, 2010: July 4th holiday weekend at Emerald Bay! The weather was overcast and drizzily all weekend. The only exception was part of Sunday. However, much fun was had playing cards in the evening and I spent some of the weekend installing new hull to deck / toerail bolts. There are a total of 210 countersunk bolts which go through the toerail, deck, and hull flange. Of these I have replaced approximately 120 of them. The key being to replace the bolts which are local to a given cabin while all of the cabinetry is apart for varnish.

June 19-27, 2010: The forward cabin varnish has gone much quicker than I had expected. Two weekends and the evenings in between managed to get this portion done! The hand rail around the forward berth could use a few more coats of varnish but it will probably get some minor scratches in it while I am installing the new holding tank system 

April 30-2, 2010: Took Friday off to sand varnish... This is a huge chunk of varnish to be doing at the same time. Currently I have the nav station forward of the saloon bulkhead and all of the galley sanded out. It has taken 3 evenings and all of Friday to get it ready for a first coat of varnish. The first coat of Epifanes gloss went on thinned 50/50, while the nav station went pretty well, the galley was a nightmare of wood grain which did not fill and "fish eyes". Even after two rounds of sanding and applying TSP several times first (actually a new substitute) the result was rather disheartening. Sunday morning some of the varnish was still slightly sticky even though the heater had been on all night, a classic case of the oils in the wood grain slowing down the cure. But eventually it sanded well enough to get a 75% Varnish/25% thinner coat applied. I probably used a bit too much alcohol to clean the surface and ended up with what looked like dust but this coat did appear to cure reasonably. I will be out of town until Wed evening so hopefully by Thursday evening it will be hard and I can start sanding this coat out. From the looks of things it is getting better but I suspect it will take at least two more coats of gloss to get the grain to fill and have a good base for a total of 4 coats of gloss. Then two coats of rubbed effect should get to the final coat. This bit of varnish will get everything in the saloon/galley/nav station complete except for the grab rail around the saloon and the locker doors. Those should be able to be completed in one remaining chunk.  Well, the 7th coat of gloss varnish on the companionway hatch is very smooth but has dust!!! Arggg. The agony of the varnish! I think it is time to put off the last coat of varnish on that piece until later. Hopefully Thursday evening I can sand out the worst parts and get an additional coat on in an attempt to fill the wood grain and fish eyes completely on the first coat of the weekend. It would be nice to get a first coat of rubbed effect varnish on the whole area next weekend.

April 30, 2010: Finally ordered the 24V version of the Raritan Marine Elegance toilet with Smart Fresh. The price ended up being $949 with $30 shipping. I also ordered two spare joker valves and a spare electronic solonoid at the recommendation of Raritan. It will take a couple of days for them to build the head and then about a week to ship across the country.

April 24-25, 2010: The only exterior teak (three pieces around the companionway) now have 6 coats of gloss varnish and look very nice. I am definitely going to have to replace the hatch boards with smoked Lexan to have a consistent look. The first couple of coats had significant color variation as the exposed teak after much sanding had dark and light colors. After a couple of weeks of exposure to the sun the color is definitely becomming more uniform. The piece of teak on the hatch cover has some brush strokes which are showing so at least one more coat. The ladder came out beautifully with rubbed effect varnish and we decided to do all of the interior woodwork around the companionway in the same coating. Absolutely stunning. The base for the second electric 66 winch went back down.  I have been cleaning winch parts in the evenings during the week. It is currently taking me about  6 hours to pull a 66 series winch apart, clean it, make sure all of the screws are not frozen, check pall springs, etc. The newer Lewmar 54's only take about 2 hours to go through the same process.

April 17-18, 2010: The aft bulkhead now has four coats of gloss varnish and the grain has finally filled! It really looked bad above the galley originally, I was not sure if it would ever fill in completely. A couple of coats of rubbed effect varnish and it should look very nice. Three of the eight removed cockpit winches have been reinstalled (the two newer 54's, one of the electric 66's).  

April 9-11, 2010: The cabinetry in the saloon on the port side is now mostly assembled with only minor sanding here and there to get things to fit again after adding 5 coats of varnish on all of the surfaces.  The aft bulkhead of the saloon, the companionway frame and the companionway ladder have been sanded and the first couple of coats of gloss varnish have been applied. We had rain over the weekend and the forward edge of the mast partners was leaking a bit. Going to have to chase that down and work it some more. 

April 3-4, 2010: The two aft chainplates are back from the machine shop having had the scratches buffed out and a deep shine applied. At the same time I had the frozen screws pulled out of the toerail fittings for the dock lines. Now three of the four primary chainplates have been completely worked through and now have no leaks. I also tried to plug up the leak around the mast. of the 13 bolts holding the fitting on the deck I can only get 10 of them out without pulling the mast. So, I pulled all of those bolts and rebedded them with polysulfide. However, the next rain confirmed one leak remaining. All of the leaks from the 10 bolts pulled and rebedded have been sealed up, however, there is a small leak on the starboard side of the mast forward which drips between the mast and the deck where the mast wedges are found. It is not clear if it is the one remaining bolt forward of the mast (unlikely) which is in the cabin just forward of the Saloon (the bunk cabin) or if it is the mast boot which I replaced last year (does not look likely) or is between the plate on the deck and the deck itself. Some research will be required to see what is going on.

March, 2010: The saloon windows took three weekends of hard work to get them re-installed! A total of 21 tubes of ArboSil sealant were used up! The comments from the peanut gallery noted that I would apply 3 or 4 tubes of sealant at $15/tube, push the window in, scrape off 2/3 of the sealant applied using $5 worth of paper towles! Probably true, but no leaks yet!  

January 16-17, 2010: The varnish project is now underway! The first coat of Epifanes high gloss varnish has been applied to the teak paneling around the large windows in the saloon. After much discussion and sole searching I have decided on the following buildup: 2 coats of high gloss traditional varnish then 2 coats of rubbed effect traditional varnish. Any areas which sand to the bare wood get one coat of high gloss traditional varnish thinned 50/50 prior to building up the remainder of the layers.