The Refit

Solitude III is now over 8 years old.  Through the years, wear and tear have accumulated: bumps and bruises from encounters with docks, fading paint from being stored outside, even a few imperfections that lingered from the original build.   Looking at the general condition of the boat, it was clear that is was time to do some heavy maintenance.  And what better year to tackle such a project?

The jumping off point for the refit was when I decided it was time to repaint.  The sun has beat down on Solitude's hull for years.  The shiny red still looks good from a distance, but the fading and thinning of the paint was clear up close.  How hard could it be to repaint?  Rough up the hull with sandpaper, mask stuff off, and slop on a couple of coats of fresh paint.  If you have ever undertaken any project before, you know where "How hard could it be?" leads.

Looking over the boat, the list got longer.  

- There were some scuffs and scrapes that would need to be filled and faired with epoxy.  

- If I was going to epoxy things, I might as well fix those one or two fillets that have bothered my eye forever.   

- Some odd discoloration in the fiberglass covering the transom developed in the first few years.  The damage didn't extend into the wood, but the fiberglass would have to be removed and replaced to fix it.

- On the topic of R&R-ing fiberglass, last year, I left the boat without it's cover for a week or so.  You won't believe it, but a jay, seeing its reflection in the glossy varnish on the companionway hatch, decided to go ballistic, pecking hundred of holes into the 'glass.

- The boom gallows had met with some damage some time ago, and while fixed and functional, a brand new one was needed.  

- And much, much more...

Since getting loaded on the trail, the boat cannot fit back in the garage.  Since I would be doing painting, I knew I had to get the boat inside and protected from dust, birds and other "outside" stuff.  I look for a while at renting a storage unit, but for the cost of that I decided a better option was to buy a 10ftx20ft tent and do the refit under the bigtop.  

Boom Gallows

Before really committing to project fully, I decided to start with an off-the-boat project, replacing the boom gallows.  The original was two pieces of 1" mahogany, glued together.  For the replacement, I found a nice piece of 2" sapele.  I dug out the original plans, and laid out the shape on the new board.  I cut it out, drilled the holes for the stanchions and routed out the hole for the stern light.  Sanding, epoxying, more sanding and multiple coats of varnish ensued.

Damage to the old gallows

New sapele gallows.

As a side note, with the offcuts from the both the new and old gallows (don't ask why I kept the old offcut for 8 years), I built a little planter.  

Planter made from old and new gallows offcuts

Tabernacle

The aft face of the tabernacle had split at some point, so I built an all new one.  One side of the old tabernacle became the tiller for my Eastport Pram.

Transom Fiberglass

Transom damage.  The discoloration is very deep.

A year or two after finishing the boat, areas of deep milky white hazy developed in the fiberglass on the transom.  Trying to figure out what was going on, I had an email exchange with John Harris, who was puzzled at the damage.  I thought it was likely UV damage from a tie that the varnish got a little thin, but he did not think UV damage would run so deep, and theorized that something must have gone wrong with the original cure.  I suppose this is possible, but I am unsure why it took multiple years to develop.

In any event, the cure was to remove and replace the fiberglass.  This was the point of no return, as the first step was to sand a perimeter all the way through the fiberglass in the area that would be hidden by paint.  I could have gone all the way to the edge of the transom, but decided to leave a 1" perimeter of the old 'glass to overlap the new 'glass onto.  sanding the perimeter convinced me that I did not want to sand every square inch of fiberglass off the transom, so I switched to a heat gun and a large putty knife.  I used the heat gun to warm and de-bond the epoxy (careful not to roast the wood underneath) and the putty knife to then pull the fiberglass away from the hull.  It was better than sanding, but still not a fun process.  I l

Removing the transom fiberglass

et everything cool and then sanded the residual epoxy off, exposing bare teak for the first time in years. 

A sheet of fiberglass and several coats of epoxy later, and the hull was again complete.  Sanding the newly fiberglassed transom was far more nerve-wracking than I remember it being the first time.  The last thing I wanted to do was sand into the fiberglass so that the white weave would show through the varnish in the end.  Speaking of varnish, that would have to wait.

Fiberglass off, down to the teak.

Re-'glassed

FILLETS!

As anyone who has ever built a boat knows, there are always some imperfections that will bug the builder until the end of time (and probably nobody else will ever see).  One of these for me has been the fillets in the cockpit between the transom shirt and the seatbacks.  They never really got shaped and sanded right, and it has always bugged me.

I decided to finally fix this by applying a fresh fillet over the top.  Since this fillet didn't have to be structural, I used easy-sanding microballoons as a thickener.  This process went well enough that I decided to go hog-wild and "fix" several more not-quite perfect (though not bothersome) fillets, some deeper gouges, and places like the cockpit storage cubbies, the surrounds of which just didn't get sanded right to begin with. 

Prepping the Hull

Plenty of wear and tear over the years

Scuffs and dock rash in the paint. 
You can also see just how faded it was getting 

Needless to say, all of the hardware had to be stripped from the hull before painting, along with the spars and rigging.  At one point I imagined that I would just tape off some of it but removal went smoothly enough that everything ended up coming off.  I carefully pulled each piece, labelling it (just in case) and
taping it's fasteners to it.  Then came the fun part.  Nearly everything was bedded using silicone sealant.  This obviously had to go before painting, but removing it is not fun.  It doesn't sand, and solvents don't do much.  It took a lot of picking with a fingernail to clean off of the silicone off of everything.

Removing the bootstripe

And the registration numbers. 
Even these were getting beat up.

The old boot stripe (a vinyl tape) had to be removed, along with the registration stickers.  To prep for painting, every square inch of the hull had to be sanded -- topsides with 120 grit, bottom with 80 grit.  This processes was took the boat from an otherwise passable appearance to looking like a construction zone.  With the boat on the trailer, sanding the bottom paint proved to be a major challenge.  I became clear that in the end the boat would have to be jacked up out of the keel trough and that the trailer bunks would have to be removed one at a time to allow for sanding and painting each side of the bottom.  That would have to wait, however, as another challenge presented itself.

I then started sanding the boat.  She has every bit as much surface area as when I originally built her, and at times it seemed maybe a little more!   As I sanded, the boat took on first a dull, and then a mottled appearance as I sanded through the top coat and in some cases all the way to fiberglass.  Some of the places that were in better shape just needed to be scuffed up.  Others need serious elbow grease.   Of course this is where perfectionism must reign, as every defect left behind will be visible (to the builder's eye, at least) forever.

Sanded down.  This looks terrible, but is
the foundation of a good paint job.

There were several deeper scrapes in the hull side that needed to be filled with epoxy.  There were also some spots on the edges of the port rail where (either in the past or now) I sanded clean through the fiberglass, so that had to get patched.  There was also a section of the cabin top where the paint had developed dozens of tiny bubbles.  I thought maybe there had been some surface contamination, but in  sanding the paint off, I decided the more likely culprit was that I hadn't originally sanded the surface quite smooth, leaving little divots of unsanded epoxy that the paint did not properly adhere to.

For a while I had fooled myself into believing that I would be able to tape off the original waterline to avoid having to level the boat and remark it with a laser level.  In the process of sanding, however, the original paint line was either erased or obscured too much to be useful.  Also, had always thought I had slightly missed-marked the original waterline just a bit.  It, and the boot stripe have always sloped ever so slightly downward.  That, combined with the 1" boot stripe ducking completing under the chine aft, has always made the boat look like it is squatting tail down in the water.  Correcting this sudden became in-scope for the refit.

Leveling the boat was nowhere near a trivial task.  The boat sitting on a slab of pavement that slopes both down and to the side.  The four corners of the trailer would have to be put on jack stands to give it a solid foundation, and then the jack stands would have to be carefully adjusted and shimmed until the boat was level -- I set a tolerance of 0.2 degree, which required some very fine adjustments indeed.  This was trouble, but the real challenge was figuring out which point on the boat to make level.  I think I originally used the bottom of the keel, but that does not work with the boat on the trailer!  The tops of the floors are parallel to the waterline, but not practically accessible when you are trying to nudge the trailer up an down fractions of an inch.  From the plans it looked like both the cockpit sole and the seats were parallel to the waterline.  Naturally, in reality, these did not prove parallel with each other, and in the end I decided to split the difference between the two, with both within my 0.2 deg tolerance.  This resulted in the aft end of the waterline moving up just over a half inch from its original position, which seemed to be about right.

Repairing the nose block

I used the laser level to remark the waterline.  I also decide to abandon the vinyl tape boot stripe and switch to a painted stripe, 2 inches vertical.  This makes the strip itself vary in width with the changing angle of the hull, and extra wide as the bottom of it wraps around the chine, but sets the upper and lower edges at constant waterlines, which is much better visually.

With the boat jacked up, I also noticed the the leading edge of the keel had been beat up.  I refaired this with silica-thickened epoxy and a layer of fiberglass.

Bottom Paint

Setting up the painting tent.

After what seemed lite decades of sanding, I finally started applying new paint, starting with the bottom.  To keep the boat out of the weather and dust while I was painting, I bought a cheap 10-ft x 20-ft tent online.  I threw up the tent up over my boat and got started.  There's nothing more rewarding than applying paint.  

Painting the bottom while on the trailer translated into painting one side at a time; to access the whole bottom I had to remove a trailer bunk and leave the boat leaning against the bunk on the opposite side.  

Under the bigtop

Things started off well, only to fall apart with I was 75% done.  I had prepped the bottom for repainting had two fresh coats on one side and one coat on the other . Painting goes pretty fast and I was excited to get the bottom done so I could move on to the sides, so I took advantage of the work-from-home world and ran out to paint during lunch. I must have been in a rush, or thinking about work, or something, because I opened the can of Pre-Kote and happily slopped it on top of my coat of Trilux33. I was about most of the way done when I figured out what I was doing. A few panicked emails to Interlux ensued, and I was finally convinced that the only option was to sand it all off and start again. Let me tell you, on its own, Pre-Kote dries and sands wonderfully.  On top of bottom paint, it was a nightmare.  I let it dry for a few days and it still clogged up the sand paper instantly.   I fought with it for some time, and burnt through a massive pile of sandpaper, but 

Masking off

finally got back on track and finished painting the bottom.

While painting the bottom, I also has the new bootstrip masked off and got it primed.  The topcoats would come after the whole side was primed and sanded smooth.

Bottom paint and bootstripe primer

Hull Paint

Primer

I decided that I would re-prime everything rather than just put fresh topcoat on it.  One reason for this is that when I originally painted the boat, I realized that I didn't have enough gray primer for two coats on the hull, so my first coat was white primer, followed by gray.  Sanding down the gray before painting, the high spots would sand all the way through to the white, leaving streaks of white primer.  The Brightside topcoat is very thin, and even from day 1, there was a hint of the mottled undercoat visible through the paint.  This only became more pronounced as the paint aged and faded.  Two fresh coats of gray primer in the refit went a long way to fix this, as did the five, count 'em five, coats of Fire Red Brightside topcoat.   

Fresh coats of Fire Red.  The wider, painted bootstripe can also be seen

Painting the topsides

For the topsides, I made several tweaks to the original paint scheme.  The brown/tan/burnt orange color had always been quite a bit darker than my original vision, so I selected a lighter shade, Bristol Beige, for the cockpit and anchor well areas.  I also wasn't really ever happy with how far (or not-far, rather) I wrapped the white into the cockpit, so I decided to extend that a bit. 

The revised paint scheme, now with Bristol Beige.
This is close to m original vision.

As before, I knocked down the sheen of both the white and the tan with flattening agent.  I had long since lost my original ratios of paint to flattening agent, but came pretty close, mixing it 1/2 part flattening agent to 3 parts white, and 1:1 for the tan. 

By the time I started painting the topsides, it had been nearly two months since I first started peeling the fiberglass off the transom, and fall was beginning to set in.  As the daylight hours waned, it became a race against the clock -- would it all get finished before the temperatures dropped.  Evening after evening, I would rush out to wet sand and apply another coat of paint.  Nights that required  more work, such as re-masking often resulted in the last of the paint being applied by lantern light.

I was able to start varnishing while painting the interior beige.  Ideally, I would have liked to revarnish the companionway, spars, and grab handles, but by this point the available after-work daylight was too short, and the weather window was closing too fast.  So, I settled for applying some touch-up coats to the rub rails and multiple coats to the transom; springtime will bring another chance to touch up the varnish in general

Re-rigging

After completing the painting and varnishing, it was time to bring the boat back into sailing form. 

After spending hours scraping old silicone sealant with my fingernails when I was removing the hardware, I decided "never again."  In re-rigging the boat, I bedded things with butyl tape wherever possible.  I only ended up using a little silicone sealant where things were held with screws instead of bolts.  This seemed to add quite a bit of time to the whole process; reinstalling all of the hardware took several evenings and a full Saturday, far longer than I recall it taking originally.

Upgraded: new LED nav lights

One errata in the manual that has caught many a PocketShip owner is the dimensions for the hole for the thimble for the centerboard pendant.  The manual gives a dimension that is too small for the specified thimble, and having been lulled into a false sense of security by the excellence of the rest of the manual, many a builder has drilled the hole without confirming that it is the right size.  For the past eight years, my thimble has hung precariously, half wedged into the hole.  With all the work that I had done on this project, I finally decided that the time was right to fix it!

Despite carefully labelling and storing everything when it was removed, it always seems like things go back together slightly differently than they came apart.  The stays had to be re-adjusted, every halyard was completely and incomprehensibly knotted, some fasteners were the wrong size...  It all came together in the end, though.

The final details were installing the registry numbers and a new vinyl name on the transom.  I have not yet had the chance for a post-layup shakedown cruise, but am looking forward to seeing my refreshed boat out on the water again!     

Centerboardless Sailing

A Taste of Heaven

Recently, many questions have been coming in from various quarters about the status of Solitude's centerboard.  So, after a lengthy period of silence about the issue, it is time for an update.  In short, the status can be summed up in two words: still stuck.

It it not totally for a lack of trying, though resolving the issue hasn't received a lot of effort due to competing priorities.  I had a go at trying to dry out the centerboard and trunk over the summer, in hopes that the suspected swelling would go down.  But, it was to no avail.  On the bright side, it did lead to my one voyage under sail this year.  When I dunked the boat to judge the efficacy of my drying efforts, I also was able to take her out for a short cruise downriver.  After turning around, I found that the wind was favorable for running back up river.  Unfurled became the jib, and carried on the wings of the wind was I.  It was short, but blissful.

So, now, I am resolved to build a new centerboard, and see what happens.  I have the new board cut out and read for lead, shaping and fiberglass.  Stay tuned.

A new centerboard.

Unchain My Heart (Or At Least My Centerboard)

To quote Dr. Henry Jones, Sr., "this is intolerable."  With the days getting longer and the weather turning finer, being precluded from sailing by Solitude III's jammed centerboard is becoming increasingly annoying.  Thus, fixing this problem has scaled my priority list with astounding alacrity.

I made my first attempt to fix the centerboard just over a week ago.  My goal was to check for any debris that might be jamming the board.  My original plan had been to careen the boat, and thinking it through all winter, I couldn't come up with a better idea.  But then, just a few days before I was ready to make my attempt, I realized that maybe I could get sufficient access just by heeling the boat over dockside.

Solitude III with all or her ballast and gear removed.

So, I dropped the boat into the water, pulled out the internal ballast, anchor, and other gear, secured a line to the masthead and hauled her over onto her side. I figured that with the 200 lbs of internal ballast removed,  I would be able to get to boat on to her side without any additional tackle.  Well, I was wrong, and that 100lbs of ballast cast into her keel kept her on her feet.  Fortunately, while I was struggling, a nice couple came by and lent a hand.  Soon, we had a 2:1 tackle rigged and between the three of us, got the boat heeled over to where her portlights just kissed the water.  The bottom of the centerboard trunk was still about 2" under water, but it was close enough.

In the end, she was actually heeled over a little more. 

With the boat on here side, I waded into the water and set to work. Between prying with a screwdriver and applying excessive force, I managed to get the board all the way down. The was a little bit of seaweed and the like on the board and in the trunk, but nothing major. I cleaned it as best I could. I then tried running the board back in. Still stuck. In fact, it was a pretty big struggle to get the board all the way back in the trunk.  Well, that was enough for one day.

The sticky centerboard is visible just beneath the water's surface

In my mind, I've eliminated lodged debris as a cause for my centerboard woes. So, it's likely that there was some water intrusion into either the centerboard or the centerboard trunk that caused the wood to swell.  I didn't really investigate it closely enough at the time, so I don't know whether it's on the board side of the hull side, though on reflection, I'm leaning toward the latter. If it was the board, I would have expected that spending a 5 months out of the water would have dried it out a little. On the other hand, the bottom of the centerboard trunk sits in direct contact with the keel trough on the trailer. Despite the cover on the boat, I can easily see the carpeting on the keel trough being continually damp throughout a rainy Pacific Northwest winter, and (assuming the not-unlikely scenario that the epoxy got sanded through somewhere around the centerboard trunk opening) water wicking up and into the sides of the centerboard trunk.

As far as next steps go, I'm planning on trying to get some ventilation going in the centerboard trunk and see if that helps.  I will then dunk the boat again and (unless the problem has magically gone away), do some more careful measuring and diagnosis.   More to come.

Back in the Water

The past few months have been rather soggy around here, but in the last week or so we've started to get a dose of seasonable weather. Thus, it was only a matter of time before Solitude III again took to local waters for an after-work sunset cruise. 

I had planned on working on unjamming my centerboard over the winter, but have not yet actually done so.  I was hoping that maybe something had mysteriously changed, or that with a little persistence I could get the board down, but alas, it wasn't to be.  That slab of plywood, that creator of lateral resistance, that enabler of upwind sailing, exerted all of its stubborn will to remain in the full upright and locked position.

I wasn't going to let this ruin my day, though, no sir!  I have no need to be purely a purist.  A sailor's biases against the dread gasoline beast hindered me not from harnessing its propulsive might to get me away from shore.  Happily did the little noisemaker purr as I left the dock, steadily did it chug as I turned my bow down-river, bucking the 3 knot current created by a monster incoming tide, dutifully did it push, as I entered the golden waters of the Sound and headed into the sun. 

I had no particular destination, but rather a plan to get as far from the shore as possible before my turnaround time.  The seas were calm, the air was warm, and the sky bright and graced with wispy clouds.  Onward I went, no, onward we went, Solitude and I.  But we were not alone for long.  Just as it was time to turn around, I heard a sound, distinct and instantly recognizable...the breathe of a whale.   I spun my head around and caught sight of the great mist of water that had been sent skyward by the whale's exhalation drifting slowly back to the surface.  Then another, and another.  I found myself in the midst of a pod of gray whales, apparently tempted away from feeding around Hat Island by tastier morsels in the vicinity of the mouth of the Snohomish.  For a while, I just took it in, as the whales surfaced and dove around me, each time spouting a column of water skyward as they came to the surface, and occasionally displaying their magnificent flukes as they headed for the depths.

Too soon, I had to leave and return to terra firma.  It was a good start to the season.

Centerboard of Doom

The past few times I've have taken Solitude III out, I noticed that it was becoming increasingly difficult to get the centerboard to go up or down.  I had to resort to opening up the inspection hatches and using a combination of fingers, screwdrivers, and the handles of a pair of pliers to apply what could gently be described as a flabbergasting amount of excessive force to get the board down.  Finally, the last time I had the boat out, no amount of persuasion was successful in getting the board down.

Diagnoses of the problem has proven problematic at best.  I've tried using a mirror to look down into the trunk to see what's going on, but I can't see the problem...or much of anything. I've also tried looking up from underneath, but most of the centerboard slot is covered up by the keel trough on the trailer.

Right now, the sandy shores of Jetty Island are the leading contender of a beaching site.

My current plan is to careen the boat, pull her down onto her side, and see if I can get a good look at what's going on.  Doing this will require the right combination of free time, weather, tides, and daylight.  This time of year, getting the right combination of those things isn't easy.  So, for now, I wait.


Unless someone has a forklift, Travelift, or other contraption I could borrow...

Rigging a PocketShip

In response to several inquiries, both via email and on pocketship.net, I've put together a short tutorial video on how the quick and easy process of preparing a PocketShip for launch. Enjoy!

Photo Bombed

I am always on the lookout for ways to get new and different photos to support these blog posts.  Pursuant to that goal, on a recent after-work sail, I set about playing around with a feature on my camera that lets me control the shutter from my phone.

I waited until the sun was going down, set up the camera on a tripod on a deserted section of dock, got the phone and camera talking to each other, hopped in the boat, got the sails up, and set up for a beauty pass. The strength and direction of the wind was perfect for my purposes, filling the sails majestically as I set up on a reach for my run past the camera. My finger was on the trigger as Solitude entered the frame. Just then, out of nowhere, a stupid little plastic motorboat came out of nowhere, pulled up right between Solitude and the camera. Not wanting to ruin my opportunity at the shot, I spilled the wind from my sailed and tried to slow down enough for the stupid little plastic motorboat to get out of the way. But the yokels in the stupid little plastic motorboat decided to slow right down too. They finally drifted past me, just as I was sailing out of the frame. Giving up, I sheeted in the sails, snapped a photo (just because), and bore away to make another pass. Unfortunately, the camera's batteries had started out low, and by the time I got back into position, they were done for. So, that stupid little plastic motorboat had robbed me of my chance of getting the shot that day. Oh well, there's always next time.   

Imagine what this shot could have been with proper composition and no stupid little plastic motorboat.

Bowsprit Cam

From the same people who brought you "Gaff Cam,"  here's a new view.

Small World

The Pacific Northwest has been suffering a heat wave recently.  Hoping to beat the heat, a friend and I went out sailing the other day.  A wise choice as it was cool enough on the water to actually enjoy a magnificent day!

I had forgotten to top up the fuel in the outboard's massive 1/4 gallon tank before leaving the dock, and we were just exiting the Snohomish River when fuel starvation struck.  As I bound towards the motor, jerry can in hand, I looked up and, much to my surprise, saw a Devlin Winter Wren bearing down on me.  I recognized her instantly, Nil Desperandum, with Captain Larry Cheek aboard.  Larry wrote about his experiences building Nil Desperandum, and reading his blog provided both motivation and a voice of sanity when I was building Solitude.   I've met Larry and his wife briefly in person and been aboard Nil Desperandum twice at the Wooden Boat Festival.  And now, here he was, circling his boat around me, asking if I needed help!   What a small world!  Thanks for standing by to render aid, Larry!

Fortunately, I was quickly able to splash of gas into the tank and  get the noisemaker up and running again.  Shortly thereafter, the engine was silenced again, this time deliberately, and my friend and I were enjoying a great day sailing!

Nil Desperandum, under sail.  Larry is modest about her, but she sure is a fine looking boat.

Sunshine

We have a lot of cool, gray, wet days here in the Pacific Northwest.  But the sun does come out from time to time.  And it turns out that when it does, living through the gray and the drizzle is well worth it.  The daylight hours are long.  The most sophisticated man-made climate control apparatus can only dream of making achieving the temperatures and humidity that we get naturally.  The wind carries the fresh smell of the sea, with just a hint of sweetness of land that it picked up as in funneled in through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and tumbled down in the the Puget Sound basin.   All around, the waters turn a sparkling blue, the greens and browns of the land pop out, and sparkling white snow capped peaks form the backdrop.  Yes, sunny days in the Pacific Northwest are nothing short of idyllic.

Of course, the natural thing to do when blessed with such a day is to take to your boat and surround yourself in the glory of it all.  Yea verily, it would be ungrateful, almost immoral, not to enjoy such a blessing by gliding about under a full spread of canvas!

Yet the perfection of the moment is always fleeting.  For, at least during the spring, these days never come on a weekend, and the tug of responsibility that comes with remembering that work comes again tomorrow compels one to return to the dock.  Which is well, because lacking coercion, it is quite likely that one would never turn for home.

Link to HD Version on Youtube



I was playing with Time Lapse video...