elixir: spa month(s)

After a two week cruise in September, a two day trip to Port Townsend in November, and four races here and there, it was winter. We had decided to haul out again for a month.

The keelbolt backing plates needed replacing, the thruhulls and seacocks needed replacing, and we wanted to look at the hull again, and the zincs. That was all for safety.

The companionway hatch stuck when it rained, and the deck leaked here and there still. And, the cockpit didn't drain well because the existing drain was small, and because when the boat is heeled over the water sloshes around instead of going to the drain. We'd caught a few waves in the cockpit and carried them around parts of a few race courses, so we wanted to add a couple of new drains going to a new thruhull. And, the manual bilge pump currently pumped out of the flagpole hole, and deserved its own permanent thruhull. And we had two thruhulls for two speed/depth sensors, when we only needed one.

So we took the sails off and hauled out at the beginning of December.

With the boat not thirty minutes in the stands, some nice guys who were chatting it up nearby over came over to check us out. They were very nice and thorough, and one of them pointed out that the pin holding the folding prop together was too small in diameter and the prop would be a lot quieter if a slightly bigger pin were substituted. And, the pintle (the rod that connects tiller to rudder) similar knocked about in its tube, and wouldn't it be nice if it didn't knock about so much after adding a bearing to it (yes it would be nice in fact - it knocked about quite a bit in fact, eliciting slightly alarmed inquiries from one of our new racing friends.) So, two more tasks were added to the list, but these were good tasks that would pay off in tangible ways later, so we didn't experience grief.

We first took shot at sanding the hull, wondering what the tan stuff was under the old bottom paint. Someone said it was Bondo, which for a while was a thing commonly used to smooth out a hull but is not waterproof so it fails eventually. Then someone decided it was just old failed epoxy paint, which is a better thing to have if you are the type of person who just likes to start over. So we decided to try to sand it off, at first using a rented sander but then buying a new sander and using 40 grit sandpaper.

And we decided we would be out for January as well as December. The wet weather in December wasn't helping our growing plans. We would be missing January races, but so it goes.

For a while, we also contemplated a new engine on Craigslist because it was reconditioned by professionals and we didn't know the condition of ours, other than it so far had been reliable but was crusty on the outside. And the CL engine was 12 HP, not 8. We consulted with a reputable diesel mechanic friend, and thought bravely about using the boom to lift old engine out and new engine in. But in the end we passed on that project because it would have required widening the engine hatch to fit, and the transmission was different.

After some sanding, it was determined that the rudder, which was embarrassingly blistery and bumpy, was actually in good shape under the failed epoxy. And this brought up another project - making the rudder bigger. Aphrodites of our vintage (1978) are known for having rudders that are too small, of all things. From http://www.aphrodite101.info/:

What's that new rudder all about?

Size matters. The original rudder had problems providing sufficient grip under certain conditions. Heavy wind and sudden winds often made the rudder loose its grip whereby the boat tacked spontaneously. Not good. Sometime back in the mid eighties they decided to fix this by enlarging the rudder. The new rudder is deeper and longer.

I have received quite a few request for info on how to distinguish the new rudder from the old one. Here's the deal. The new rudder measures approximately 1290mm on the aftward edge, 270mm on the bottom edge and 1020mm on the forward edge. The top edge is 470mm, and the longest diagonal is 1132mm. That oughta do it.

We had indeed been losing some steerage a lot in winds over 20 knots, when close-hauled and heeled over, such that the boat felt loose and mushy. But this is not supposed to be a loose and mushy boat. And there was that bit of eternity at the start of a November race when we were in tight quarters, and tacking and then tucking just a few feet behind the stern of another boat, and avoiding collisions with boats approaching on starboard, when we went heeled over and I lost the ability to steer, and lost sight of BoB behind the sails, and so I held course and my breath. We made it, but those few seconds didn't feel sportsmanlike. So, we decided to see about making the rudder deeper and longer. And we decided we would probably be out for February too.

Progress so far:

always take a before picture before headed out for hard time. we have a great slip in the marina right now - view of Jetty Island, and Whidbey Island behind it, and the Olympic mountains when they are out, and the boats coming and going from the marina, and the fishing boats fueling up at the fuel dock across from us (not shown.)