Monthly Archives: November 2013

Home is a Fiberglass Hull

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One of the biggest projects on my personal list for Andromeda is insulating her interior hull spaces. The benefit of this effort is brought home to me each time we spend the weekend on Andromeda and realize that it takes running the diesel heater constantly to keep the boat warm and the interior free of condensation just from our living activities. And it hasn’t even been that cold outside yet. This will only get harder as the winter progresses. Without insulation on that hull, even with the good air circulation this boat has, I can look forward to mildewed cabinet interiors and clothing that smells like mold. I feel about mold and mildew the way Mike feels about fog: it is a malevolent  force of nature that is out to get me. And I cannot let it win. Ever. My nose is a fine tuned instrument of mold detection. I can always smell a cat litter box, a wet diaper, and mildew. Gauntlets have been thrown down. Lines have been drawn in the sand. The game is on.

I would really like to find a paint product that insulates against condensation and is easy to apply. I live in a complete dream world, apparently. What I’ve found so far is Mascoat Marine Insulating Paint (or, more accurately, a ‘thermal insulation coating’). It looks like a first class product but it’s expensive and difficult to apply. It has to be sprayed on, and I have to sand the fiberglass first. Andromeda is a 47 foot boat with a ton of cabinet space.  Oy vey, that’s a lot of sanding in weird positions, not to mention all the taping off and the fact that I would have to wait until summer for the temperature to be warm enough to apply this product.

Not to mention that this is how this product is usually applied. Notice there is no cabinetry in this photo. Photo courtesy of Mascoat.com.

I would love to find something easier in an insulating coating; something I could brush or roll on, for instance. Would rubberized roofing paint work? Would the insulating paint they sell for homes work? When I’ve researched this question on the sailing forums, I have generally found ideas about what I can glue on my hull like cork, or bubble wrap insulation, etc. I’d prefer not to go this route unless I have to. I’d like the insulation to extend pretty far below the water line, and anything that I glue onto the surface has to have excellent and complete contact with the hull or mold will grow behind it. In addition, there will always be some condensation as long as we’re in cold water, so I can’t use anything that will get soggy or hold water. Water must be able to get to the bilge. An insulation coating would be much easier in many ways. Please comment if you have suggestions.

Loot!

Anyhow, so while Mike was wrangling with the engine room, I spent time poking around in Andromeda’s nether regions. She has quite a lot of storage space and many cabinets have false floors, opening to reveal yet more storage space that I can only hope I never need to use. All of these need to be empty in order for me to get at the hull, so I got to emptying and suddenly it felt like being on a treasure hunt. So much stuff! At the end of the day I decided there was too much stuff taking up space and I better bring all this loot home. What I found was yards and yards of Sunbrella canvas like this:

What is this thing? It’s folded about 8 times so it’s huge. FYI these tiles are a foot across, to give you an idea of the size of this thing.

Apparently this is some kind of boat cover. It was much too big to spread out on our living room floor, so we’ll have to take it outside during the day and see how it works. I cannot imagine needing something like this in our climate, or using something like this while cruising, so it’s possible that what it represents is hundreds of dollars worth of Sunbrella canvas in excellent condition. Either way, score!

Also this:

Just long rectangles. I thought maybe windscreens, but then there is that zipper…any ideas?

In one cabinet I found a long bag made of polar fleece, obviously protecting something fragile. Upon opening it, I found these:

Maybe this is a score, maybe not.

What we have here are two panels that fit at the top of the companionway: one with a bug screen, and one made of plexiglass or something like that, creating a window to see out into the cockpit. These will be dead useful! Then there are tiny bug screens for the opening ports. These are in very poor condition, but the frames are still good so I’m putting their refurbishment on my project list. Why buy new ones when I’m fairly sure I can make these as new again? They are even labeled as to which port they are for. To the left are what appear to be bug screens for the opening hatches. To be sure, we’ve never needed anything like this in Washington, but I know we’ll want them other places.

In the drawers of the quarter berth cabin I found a pile of soft and stretchy terry cloth covers.

Soft terry covers

I think these are slipcovers for the Bottom Siders cockpit cushions to keep said cushions from sticking to skin in hot weather. A definite score! They are used and faded, and a couple of seams need to be mended, but I am totally prepared to repair  and refurbish these suckers with a little thing I like to call ‘fabric dye’.  I will have to count them to see if there are enough for all of the cushions. Another small project.

In the v-berth, I found this:

Biggest score ever.

This is a full cockpit enclosure. Yay! It looks like it is quite well made and needs only to be cleaned and one zipper replaced. When the weather warms up, I’ll give it a good scrub outside and let it dry in the sun, then take it to a canvas worker and have that zipper replaced. I am so looking forward to having an enclosed cockpit in this area.

Cheap Tricks in Boat Decorating

And speaking of refurbishing, before we left the boat this weekend, I got a wild hair and took down the curtains in the quarter berth, aft head, and master cabin. These curtains are really well made and of high quality. The fabric, however, is faded badly from the sun and from just being pretty old. However, these things are expensive to buy, and I am not in the mood to make them. Whoever did these did a damn good job on them so I’m going to reuse them.

Really nicely made curtains, faded from years of use.

I brought them home and washed them with laundry detergent and bleach, then decided I would try my hand at dyeing them. I am planning to use a combination of blues and greens, perhaps some lavenders, in the interior of this boat and I had two packages of teal green dye in the cabinet. So why not? I had no idea the fiber content of this fabric, but it felt like it was a cotton/poly blend. I brought out my big canning pot, filled it with water, added a cup of salt, a dash of laundry detergent, the two packages of dye, and some eye of newt and set it on the stove to heat. The curtains were already wet and clean so I placed them in the dye bath and commenced to saying my incantations while I stirred. There is something about dying fabric that feels so much like magic!

Lovely dye bath!

After about 30 minutes in the hot water it looked like they were dark enough. I figured they would not be perfect, but that’s the beauty of hand dyeing fabric. All those little imperfections are fine and will totally go with my vision of casual comfort below deck. Turns out the color is great, and I saved the dye bath for the next batch. Total cost of this redo? Less than 5$. That’s my kind of remodeling. Et Voila!

Once we start heading south, I’ll put some clear UV film on the ports to protect the color from fading.

I can’t wait to hang these back in the cabins and do the ones in the salon and v-berth areas.

If you have insulation on your fiberglass boat, speak up. Let me know what you use and what the pros and cons are of that substance. I’m hoping for a paint-on solution but my dreams may not fall on fertile soil.

 

 

 

 

 

Must… Keep… Working…

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It was another whirlwind weekend in Astoria for Melissa and me as we continue our monomaniacal efforts to prepare Andromeda for her new engine. The Betamarine 60 horse engine has been delivered to the shop that will build the mounting hardware and cut the prop shaft. Now there is really some pressure on us to finish our cleaning and painting. And find someone to help us move the boat. And schedule a haulout. And, And, And.

But let us celebrate the small victories of this weekend. All of the cleaning and painting of the past few weeks are really starting to show. Just take a look

Almost hate to put a red engine in this clean, white room.

You will note that we have taken the head and holding tank hoses off the wall temporarily so that we could paint behind them. Early on, I envisioned removing and re-installing this arrangement but have lost courage. It still seems likely that we can simplify or at least shorten some of these hose runs, but we  will save that effort for another day.

Next weekend I will move the fuel filter and valves up higher on the wall and then paint that area. I wanted to make the fuel system a little easier to access so that maintenance and switching can be done closer to eye level. The raw water strainer will be removed for painting and re-installed where it is.

In addition to the all the painting, we installed a pair of 12 volt LED flood lights in the engine room. At fifteen bucks a piece, I can hardly believe how much warm white light these tiny little lights put out.

Each light draws less than an amp and is roughly equivalent to a 55 watt halogen floodlight. I think I will add two more which will surely light up all but the furthest recesses of the engine room. The lights are really designed as outdoor landscape lighting so they are waterproof and powder coated aluminum, making them great for the marine environment as well.

Lenbo LED Floodlights

But if you want to buy LED lighting and pay five times more, Melissa found what appear to be the exact same lights at Englund marine for $80 each. The only difference between the two is that the ones at the marine store have a longer cord. Put the word “Marine” on a product and you can charge whatever you want. Go here to check out the expensive ones.

I also installed a new bilge pump switch for the aft bilge. Better now than later.

Let’s step out of the engine room for a moment. The paint fumes are making me woozy. Another project that bears sharing is our effort to steal WiFi from hardworking Americans (or Canadians, we aren’t choosy). I had read an article in Practical Sailor describing a number of systems designed for the marine environment that act as powered antennas for WiFi signals. Most of these systems use a PoE (Power over Ethernet) amplifier attached to a marinized antenna and cost $200-$300. After spending countless seconds on the Google, I found a device that not only brings in WiFi from all over town, but delivers it to a small wireless router which gives every computer on our boat its own connection. With this setup, we now have a fast wireless connection that works just like connecting to your router at home. Price? $85.

The two products are the Alfa 2 watt long range WiFi antenna and the Alfa R36 Repeater/Router. The setup is a bit more complicated than I would have liked but the results so far have been very good. The Port of Astoria has free WiFi but the signal was poor at our location. With the antenna mounted about ten feet up the mizzen mast, that signal and about twenty others come in strong. Many of those are password protected, of course, but enough of them aren’t to make finding an open network pretty easy.

Next weekend I will be going it alone to finish up a few tasks in the engine room and try, once more, to find someone willing to tow us to the haulout. Melissa volunteered to have a spa day in Seattle with Claire so that I could have a day of rest. Ha! Must…keep…working!

Swan Song

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Mike and I spent 2 1/2 days aboard Moonrise this weekend, sailing up to Blaine to do a delivery for some new boat owners. The boat we delivered? Moonrise. That’s right, she finally found the perfect new owners and as part of the deal, we agreed to sail her up to Blaine, WA from her home slip in Tacoma.

Long term readers will know we’ve had Moonrise on the market for about 2 years and until recently, no serious buyers came forward.  No one, not our brokers, not potential buyers, could tell us why she was still sitting on the market. But we knew there must be a reason that had nothing to do with the boat or the price. She is a well kept boat, cleaner than most boats on the market, and she was reasonably priced.

Just north of Seattle, Mike checks the wind vane. Or maybe he is praying to the weather gods.

The reason became clear on the day we bought Andromeda. Apparently the Universe was waiting until we had found the perfect boat for out next adventure before it would allow us to release Moonrise into someone else’s care. The Universe knows we would hate being boatless. On the very day we closed on the loan for Andromeda and she became legally ours, we showed Moonrise to Stephan and Anita, a sailing couple from Vancouver, B.C. They had owned sailboats before and had been trying to get down to Tacoma to see Moonrise for a couple of months but the timing had never been right. They fell in love with her. I knew after they left that these were the new owners. I just felt it, and I was right. They soon made the offer and arranged to have her surveyed.  And lucky thing for them, too, because since that day we’ve had all kinds of interest in her. We actually had a waiting list of people interested in case the sale fell through for any reason. Wierd times!

Who’s that tapping with his little hammer? Yes, it’s our favorite marine surveyor and all round good guy, Tony Allport. He gave Moonrise the ‘thumbs up’ after she passed her tests.

The buying of Andromeda before the selling of Moonrise created a bit of a stir among those who read the blog, those who know us, and those voices of “common sense” in our own minds. But consider this: There is a kind of ‘knowing’ that is purely beyond the realm of logic. This kind of knowing doesn’t look good on paper. Numbers do not necessarily add up, things do not appear to make good sense in the realm of the physical world. People think you are crazy, when what you are really doing is following the heart that is speaking to you. Somewhere inside is a small, quiet voice, a lantern in the dark, that whispers, ‘This is the way to go. Go this way.’  And so you do. And it comes to pass, just as though someone planned it that way. You step into a stream of life energy and when it’s the right thing, it simply carries you along like a leaf on the current. This was the feeling we had in this entire process. No real questions, just some solid faith that we were making the right choice for us and it was our job to allow the story line to unfold.

I’d like to say we made the offer to sail Moonrise to Blaine because we are generous and kind and wanted to sweeten the pot for the deal. But that would be only partly true. We made the offer because it gave us one more chance to have a long weekend aboard a much-loved boat, to feel the water under her keel one last time, to allow her to shine on the sea and surf down a wave once more with us at the helm. Sure, we were glad to help Anita and Stephan out, but what we really wanted was one more chance to say goodbye.

The Port Townsend cut. Will Andromeda be able to go underneath this bridge? We are not sure yet. This was the calm before the storm.

And what a terrific trip it was! Mother nature threw all of what she had at us this weekend, from wind, to a little rain, to sunny skies and tall seas. We anchored for the first night at Port Hadlock and settled down for a calm and secure evening, only to hear the wind begin to scream through the rigging, and feel the boat bouncing and tugging at anchor. The weather report had changed and we were in for a rough night of 30 knot winds, but the anchor held fast. No one got much sleep, and I remember thinking if this didn’t make us seasick, surely nothing would. Mike slept in the salon so that he could get up regularly and check the anchor, but I believe he got the better end of that deal as I was in the forward berth being slammed to heck and back. We were so glad we had decided on Port Hadlock rather than our usual Port Townsend anchorage, which would have been so much worse.

This is my ‘Ralphie’ look. Wool long johns, polypropylene over that, then a one piece fleece sailing suit, then my foulies and jacket. Two hats. Oh, and hand and boot warmers. It takes me 20 minutes to use the head. Stadium pal, anyone?

Saturday dawned bright and beautiful with blue skies and warm temperatures and we started across the Strait of Juan de Fuca off the coast of Whidbey Island.  The seas were confused and rough after the previous night’s storm. With no wind at all, we motored through 8 foot swells, coming close together and growling with foam. Mike was trying to get a little sleep in the cabin. Ha! That was not going to happen. In the middle of the strait another storm system was blowing in from the coast and the winds increased, temperatures dropping about 10 degrees. With winds clocking around 30 knots according to the radio, we had a small headsail flying and skittered down waves at 9.5 knots, grinning like demons. In spite of the big waves and spray, it was some of the best sailing we’ve had in a long time. Moonrise was in her element and the weather gods were smiling on us, leaving us with the wind and swells, but dumping the rain somewhere else.

Those are the San Juan Islands ahead. What a glorious day! Why do photos never accurately show the sea state?

With wind and tide pushing us from behind, we soared up Rosario Strait, feeling particularly fortunate the wind and currents were in our favor.  But it was getting late in the day and more high wind from the West Southwest was expected that night so we needed a place to anchor for the evening. Doe Bay offers the only protection from that wind direction on that side of Orcas Island. We set a course and found a reasonable anchorage just north of the park, surrounded by private mooring balls with nobody on them. After dinner and a game of Scrabble, we were both pooped and went to bed early. We had a quiet night and slept deeply, one last night in our comfortable big v-berth.

Sunrise. Yes, it’s really that monochromatic, for those who don’t live here.

And now a little more light.

Wanting to catch the tide going up the strait, we were underway in the dark by 5:30 am with 20 knots of wind behind us and big following seas. There’s nothing like hanging ten down the front of a wave, foam flying, only to be lifted by the next one. We flew out into the Strait of Georgia just as the sun was coming up, thanking the gods that we were going in the right direction and not trying to beat to weather. We made record time into Blaine and Moonrise performed perfectly under sail.

Beautiful day on the Strait of Georgia. Orcas Island behind us.

The only bad part of the trip was trying to get docked in the Blaine marina in about 40 knots of wind. No kidding, the wind was just screaming. I had to gun the engine going through the entrance to the marina for fear the wind would blow Moonrise into the concrete barriers if she went too slowly. We bulleted through the entrance at a brisk 4 knots. To get docked I had to keep the throttle at full reverse to keep the boat from being blown into the boat in front of us. And that was INSIDE the protected marina. We were both pretty stressed out by that time and just glad to have her safely tied off. We love being on the water in those conditions, but being in a marina with high winds kind of sucks. I couldn’t help being a little stressed out about learning to handle a much larger vessel in tight quarters.

Love this photo, except for that little green water spot on the lens. Still, maybe it’s a luminescent sea creature?

Claire drove up from Tacoma to collect us and our personal items from the boat, and Anita and Stephan drove down from Vancouver to finished the deal. They will be berthing Moonrise in Vancouver where they can learn to sail her at their leisure. They are very excited to have her and we are very happy to have found new owners who will take her to the Gulf Islands and explore the coast of British Columbia. Moonrise will show them all of her old haunts!

Happy boat buyers!

It was important to us to sell our boat to someone who would use her the way she was intended to be used and not let her languish at the dock.  We are excited for Anita and Stephan and know they are just the people we were looking for. We look forward to seeing photos of Moonrise at a beautiful anchorage next summer and hope they will stay in touch. Maybe we will meet them in a beautiful anchorage sometime in the future and we can give the old girl a pat and a little kiss from us.  Bon voyage, Moonrise. We shed tears as we say goodbye to you. You will be in our hearts forever, with thanks for all the adventures and learning.

Anita, looking excited as she puts their foul weather gear in the hanging locker. That’s a good expression on a new boat owner’s face!

Mike ‘splains the finer points of the GPS to Stephan and Anita.

Have wonderful times on this good boat, Anita and Stephan! Fair winds and following seas to you all!