Category Archives: Boat Work Projects

Badda Bing, Badda Boom

Posted on by

Warning: This post contains content which may not be suitable for people with sensitive dispositions. Photos of violence to boat parts are forthcoming. There will be non-gratuitous use of curse words.

We’ve got a situation here. I’m going to ‘splain it using Michael’s words.

“We had an interesting day sailing from Loreto to San Basillio and the La Ramada anchorage last Thursday.  We were moving along at 6.5 knots with the cruising chute and main and the wind on our aft quarter for much of the day. As the wind waves started to build and steering became a little squirrely, we doused the chute and proceeded the last few miles with just the main.  The wind was moving further aft and as we turned inshore toward the anchorage at La Ramada it was essentially dead down wind. We had a preventer rigged and had good control in 12 to 15 knots.  The wind was fine but the waves were confused and  we would slew and jump. Melissa hates these kinds of conditions and expressed feeling anxious about them, even though we were doing well, if a bit uncomfortable. We had certainly been in much worse conditions than this.

As we were coming up on the turn into the anchorage we heard a ‘pop’ sound. Curious, Melissa poked her head out of the cockpit and eyed the mainsail. “Welp”, she deadpanned, “We’ve just lost our boom.” I didn’t understand what she was saying. Was she playing me?  “What?” Surely I had misunderstood her. She gestured in the general direction of the mainsail. It was true. We had just lost our boom. “FUCK!!!”. Usually Melissa is the cursing sailor. This time, it was me but I felt justified, with apologies to my mother. With very little fanfare, the boom had snapped completely in two! It made a little noise but wasn’t like the large explosive event you’d expect. It just kind of quietly gave up.”

View from the cockpit immediately after the challenging event. Preventer is that black line to the right.

Le Sigh. Boat repair needed? Check. Exotic location with few resources available? Check. I guess we’re cruisers now.

Mike and I swung into action as the team that we have become. I turned on Hiram, our reliable Beta Marine engine. We had two pieces of boom to secure and a huge sail to take down in stiff wind and seas that, while they could have been worse, would be bashing us as we turned into them. More to the point, with the wind ahead of us, the sail and damaged pieces would be exposed to weather and get blown around alarmingly.

The short end of the boom, still attached to the mast, the preventer, and the boom vang, was not going anywhere. We left that one alone.

Ouch. Dangerous pieces of jagged metal.

The long end of the boom, secured on one end by the mainsheet and the other by the sail and the stack pack, could act as a battering ram against our expensive and beloved hard dodger windows. Our solar panels, on top of the dodger, were also at risk. We continued on our course to get more sea room, past the entrance to the anchorage as we made our plan to address these issues safely. I thoughtfully pulled out my phone and took the above photo of the initial damage. See how I roll in a crisis? Where’s my camera?

Michael went forward and eased up on the halyard to see if the sail would budge without turning into the wind, hoping. It was a no go. There was too much pressure on the sail. I scrambled to close and secure the dodger windows and the open hatches below the boom. He came back to the cockpit where I was securing the long end of the boom, wrapping the attached mainsheet around a handy winch. I pulled it as tightly as I could against the wood of the dodger but there was still enough slack that I had to hold the remaining line in my hand, pulling it tighter against the dodger. Steer the boat with the right hand, hold that boom tight with the left.

The mainsheet wraps around the back of the dodger and is attached at the block and winch back there. I could only get one wrap on the winch, so I had to hold it to secure the rest of the slack. One wrap is better than none. Our anchorage is ahead.

Retrieving our bluetooth radio headsets, we prepared to turn into the wind and face the proverbial music. Even with the sail slack, we were ‘sailing’ at about 5.5 knots away from our safe harbor. You can never feel the full force of the wind when it’s behind you. With wind from the south/southeast we would not be protected until we got behind the land.

As we turned into the wind the sail came down easily and plastered itself over the windshield. By crouching and peering under it I could just barely see the front of the boat, but not well enough to feel confident about steering in unfamiliar waters. We double checked the Blue Latitude charts, the ONLY reliable charts for common anchorages in the Sea of Cortez, and saw that the way would be clear of obstacles like nasty rocks. There were two other boats anchored on the port side of the bay. We stayed well clear of those with Michael out on deck communicating to me where to steer. If I haven’t mentioned in awhile how much we love those Sena headsets, let me reiterate it here. Hand signals, the beloved way of communicating between the foredeck and the cockpit for the saltiest of sailors, would have been completely useless in this situation.

Surveying the damage. Photo taken from the bow looking aft.

As we got behind the land, the seas lay down, the wind abated, and our breathing was easier. We were safe, the boat was safe. We dropped our anchor in 12 feet of water  under the keel on a sandy bottom and took a well-deserved break before sorting out the mess on deck. We were both feeling particularly grateful about how this went down. We were close to our protected anchorage, no one was hurt, the boat wasn’t hurt in any additional way, and we worked well together. If you’re going to have a catastrophic failure, this is the way to go.

Here are Michael’s thoughts on what happened:

“ The failure seems to have occurred at the furthest bolt hole for the boom vang. The vang connection to the boom is via a steel plate that slides inside the bottom track of the boom. It is attached with two stainless allen head screws to the boom. I think corrosion at that point weakened the aluminum and when the wave hit us just the right way, things went to hell in a handbasket. Interestingly, I had removed those two screws when I disassembled the vang and replaced the tensioning lines. At that point I dressed the threads with TefGel to prevent corrosion. Of course, if the vang had been on there for 30 years, my preventive maintenance wasn’t going to do much.

I also wonder if the preventer we had rigged could have contributed to the problem. There is a pad eye in the bottom track of the boom that we use to attach a 4:1 block arrangement to secure the boom when going downwind. When we bought the boat, there were two such bits of tackle attached to each side and it seemed a sensible arrangement. I wonder if the extra loading from this preventer might have made the already bad problem worse. We may need to rethink our preventer setup.“

In the days since this event, we’ve been in touch with a previous owner of the boat whom I remembered had replaced a boom because of a similar incident. According to this owner, the boat was rigged this way when he bought it. The boat has had this preventer setup probably since it was built.

So there it is. We are moving forward and will find a solution to this current situation. I’m not going to pretend this isn’t a severe hit on our cruising funds, but we will find a solution we can live with and are looking at this as an opportunity to improve on what we had. In boom furling maybe? Finding a used boom off a storm-ruined boat of like size? There’s an answer out there and it will come to us. Michael has already begun contacting people in the San Carlos area and begun getting leads.

Boomless at La Ramada.

In a massive twist of fate, Jamie and Behan Gifford of Sailing Totem are in the Sea of Cortez now, having completed their circumnavigation. We went through Jamie’s company, Zoom Sails, to replace our headsail before we left the Salish Sea. We had been planning to invest in a new mainsail, but didn’t want to buy until we knew how we wanted to re-work the way that system handled.  We had agreed that we would not be crossing any oceans until we addressed these needs. Experience is the best teacher and our year of cruising has given us enough experience to now be able to discuss these things with more certainty. Our priority now is to wait around for the Giffords to get up to where we are located so we can have Jamie on board for a nice long consultation and make a plan of action. Great timing on that boom, Mr. Universe. Be careful what you wish for as it may manifest in ways that are unpredictable.

Meanwhile, Michael has moved the mizzen boom onto the main mast, rigged a topping lift for it, and now we are working to figure out how to run lines where we can at least have a small sail at the center of effort on the boat. Because we rarely use the mizzen sail here in the Sea of Cortez, we had weeks ago removed the boom and stored it upright, secured to the mizzen mast. That opened up the aft deck for the kind of living we are doing right now. It’s good to have that flexibility. We haven’t missed it a bit and now it’s going to come in useful, we think. Of course, we could have just re-rigged the mizzen altogether, but we decided to try this first. Frankly, we didn’t want to give up the ease of moving around the aft deck since we get on and off the boat so frequently and use that area so much.

Re-rigged with the mizzen boom and sail. Not perfect, but better than nothing.

Finally, on the surface it does seem as though we’ve had our share of issues lately. A friend was commenting to me that it seemed like our trip had been full of casualties. I was actually taken aback when she said this and had to think about it a bit because it doesn’t really feel that way. But I can see how other people would get this impression. An encounter with a whale, a cracked holding tank, our dead Iridium Go (literally the only thing on this list that completely annoys me), a close and personal encounter with a rock (minor fiberglass repair needed, no biggie), and now a broken boom. I guess we should feel more frustrated than we do. But for us, that would be kind of like signing up for military service and then being surprised that you have to go to war; or having unprotected sex and then wondering where the baby came from. We signed up for this knowing that boat system failures were inevitable, especially on a boat as old as ours. The fun still outweighs the suck so far. At least most days.

And, after all, our boom was 30 years old. It had done its job. Do we wish we had replaced it before we left? Not really. I mean, sure, we could have replaced every single bit of everything on our boat before we left the dock. Heck, we could have built our own boat from the ground up so everything would be exactly like we wanted it. And we could still be working on that boat 20 years later. Our plan was to go cruising, not have the perfect boat. As Michael is fond of saying, ‘Perfection is the enemy of the good’, or something like that. Sailing a boat is a risky business by definition. We could still be sitting at the dock refitting this awesome hulk of a boat, having lived through yet another nasty Pacific Northwest winter. Or, we could leave the dock with what we had, do the best we could do, and live with the consequences. We get to replace a boom in Mexico. How many people get to say that? Plus, we’ve had a year of adventure already.  Overall, I think we made the right choice.

Everything removed from the boom and ready to stow. Hey, we had to get all this stuff off the boat before we leave in July anyhow.

Fortunately, this isn’t an emergency situation. We plan to haul the boat out at some point soon and do some other maintenance and repair work, hopefully over in San Carlos. But for now the priority is meeting up with the Giffords so we’re going to be in the general area of Bahia Concepcion for a few weeks. I don’t need no stinking mainsail to go snorkeling anyhow. Please clap your hands and spin around, spit, pray, or whatever you do to send your best wishes to us. There are whale sharks. We want to see them.

S/V Galapagos, out.

 

 

 

Temporary Holding Tank Fix

Posted on by

The dreaded holding tank. Everyone who cruises and has a traditional style head and holding tank will eventually need to ‘deal’ with maintaining this system. Unfortunately for us, our time was this week. We had already given Marina Cortez notice we would be leaving, twice, and so, naturally, we came up against a repair that meant we needed to stay a few more days. They probably think we’re a little nuts up there in the office.

A few days ago Mike and I tackled a job we’ve been putting off: we replaced the hose that goes from the holding tank to the aft head. While we were doing that job I noticed some nasty looking liquid in the storage compartment in front of the tank. Yes, the tank was leaking. From the bottom. The amount of sighing this caused cannot be overstated. In order to reach the leak, we’d have to remove the tank. That meant taking stuff apart. That meant the boat was about to get messy again.

We are really lucky aboard Galapagos because our tank is pretty accessible. It’s under the midship berth. You can lift a heavy wooden cover to access it. Getting the tank out requires a bit more disassembly, but it’s not nearly as hard as it would be in our friend’s Tayana 37.  Theirs is under the engine. Enough said. We’re grateful for small things like this.

The crack is located to the right of Mike’s arm, down underneath.

After the marina’s pumpout service came by, we used this nifty little tool to get the rest of the liquids out of the tank. Mike uses this to change the oil in the engine. Makes getting the oil out, or the black water out, pretty easy. By this time, there wasn’t much in the tank. 

After getting the tank free from it’s home, we saw that, indeed, the tank was actually cracked right by the seam. We were hoping that a seam had given way, but it was a real doozy of a crack. Honestly we can’t figure out how this happened. But whatever, it was leaking like nobody’s business. I whipped out the bleach water mighty fast.

The tank is plastic; believed to be made of polyethylene. This is a substance that resists fixing unless you have exactly the right stuff. We didn’t. We weren’t even exactly sure that the tank is made from this stuff. It could be ‘poly’ anything. But we did know that given the right materials, we should be able to heat weld a fix to the tank. But how to go about getting the right materials here in Mexico? We started with putting out our need on the morning cruiser’s net on the radio. We got nothing there. Moving on, Mike’s research brought up a plastic supply place within walking distance. I put on my Teva’s and we went off into the bright Mexican sun, still feeling confident we could get this fixed. We enjoy the feeling of confidence that comes with ignorance.

The offending crack.

Unfortunately, we speak so little Spanish that we have to use photos and a lot of sign language and Google Translate (which is frequently wrong, by the way) to get by. The young man behind the counter at the plastic supply was having none of it. I pointed to my photo of the tank. He shook his head no and looked straight ahead. Mike brought out the plastic welding rods he did have already (wrong stuff, right shape) and the lad shook his head vigorously ‘no’ again. We showed him more stuff. Frankly, he just wasn’t interested in helping us. We decided to look around the store and see what jumped off the shelf at us. We could smell plastic resin. They make plastic stuff there. Surely…

Mike found some small trays that looked and felt like the exact stuff our tank was made of. We bought two for 85 Pesos, about $4.50. Our hopes soared as we walked back to the marina, still believing in fairies.

I do not understand this face. But these are the trays. Pretty nice trays, too.

Back at Galapagos Mike cut strips of plastic off the trays and set to work. Using the multitool (part of our Ryobi rechargeable tool sets that we cannot live without) he ground out the crack back to clean plastic, then used the sander to sand the surface with heavy grit, then cleaned the surface with acetone.  He got out the butane torch and began laying the plastic into the groove. It looked good. The stuff melted easily and flowed into the crack. We thought we’d hit paydirt.

We were wrong. As the plastic melted some of it began to bubble and when those popped they left pinholes. In the end, the pinholes leaked. Back to the drawing board.

That’s a butane torch.

Well, not exactly that fast. We did a lot of other things like add more material, remelt and try to smooth the existing material, and use the heat gun, which actually worked pretty well. But the weld was not a good one and the tank still leaked. We didn’t know if we had the wrong temperature, or the wrong materials, or what. We’d had to peel a thick layer of rubber off the side of the tank and the plastic underneath was discolored. Mike thought perhaps the plastic was somehow contaminated.  But whatever the problem was, it was wrong. And, by the way, this is why there are professionals who know about this kind of stuff and do it for a living. Most places.

Another cruiser came over and took a look and lent us his wood plane. Mike used that to shave off thin strips of material off the corner of the tank so that we could use the exact same material the tank was made from and try again. I routed out the old material, exposing the area of the crack again. Oddly, some of the stuff we’d just done had welded great. But not good enough to keep those pinholes from leaking.

We laid the small strips of tank material in the groove and commenced with the heat. It melted well, seemed to adhere well, and there was less bubbling. I thought we were onto something. Alas.

Still another cruiser came by and offered us some blue plastic stuff he used to repair his poly…something tank 10 years ago. It was still holding after all that time. He suggested a propane torch, which was what he used. With nothing to lose but our sanity, we sanded and cleaned the surface again with acetone. Because of the wind, the torch had trouble staying lit. But Mike finally got the stuff to melt and the surface of the tank to melt enough to hold it. After letting it firm up he tested it and the strip of blue plastic peeled right off. Things were not looking good. I decided it was time to try to find a professional. At this point I was ready to pay someone else to get frustrated.

We used the propane torch on this stuff. Honestly we thought this would work. Everything went all melty. It peeled right off.

We contacted La Paz Cruiser’s Supply and got a phone number of a guy who welded plastics. It was disconnected. Then I contacted a long time resident of La Paz who has his finger on the pulse of boat works around here and had given us a tour of all the marinas and boat yards. He used to own a yacht management service and is a marine surveyor. He said there were no plastics welders in La Paz. He should know. He said we might have to get a fiberglass tank built to spec or we could probably order a new tank through Lopez Marine for $$$. To me that sounded like a lot of money, but mostly a lot of time, and also our tank should be reparable with the right materials and know-how.  He also suggested a special repair kit for plastic tanks sold by Autozone. Leaving Mike to perseverate over the tank, I Ubered to Autozone, only to read the back of the package where it says, ‘Not to be used on Polyethylene or …’.   Back to square one.

This is the stuff. A different brand than what we used before, but equally good.

I texted Mike and told him it was a ‘no go’ in terms of the plastic repair kit. He decided to try one more thing. This is the ‘one more thing’ that will get us off the dock on Saturday for however long it holds up; the ‘one more thing’ that will buy us time until we can find someone who can do an appropriate repair.  And that one more thing is this wonderful Pro Flex All Weather Water Proof Butyl Roof Repair tape we keep on board. This is the stuff we got to replace the sealing around the little rectangular ports on our hull above the waterline. It has worked so well that we keep it on board for other possible uses. And now we found one.

When I returned to the boat the tank was standing up on the dock, full of water and not leaking. The rubber was holding the leak back. I reinforced Mike’s taping with a couple more strips of this magic tape and now we’re good to go, as long as this holds. We have no idea how long that will be. I mean it could last as long as next week, or as long as 5 years.  But however long it is is better than sitting here on the dock right now. We can easily keep an eye on this since now we know exactly where the leak is.

Now that the tank is back in place we’ll be getting a can of that expanding foam and putting a bead of that under the leading edge of the tank. We believe there is not enough support for the tank in this location and that led to the eventual cracking. There is plenty of room for the foam to expand without causing a problem.

All taped up and ready to rumble again.

One of the good things that came out of this little setback was that we were able to get a good look inside our tank. Remember that fun science experiment we did with the Zaal No Flex Digestor; the one where we demonstrated what a good job it does at dissolving solid waste and toilet paper? Those results held true. What could have been a nasty, stinky job was really not bad at all. When we opened up the hose connections we could see into the tank and there was zero buildup inside. Much to people’s dismay, we actually do put about half of the toilet paper we use into the holding tank. So let me state this again: we had zero buildup in the tank, and the aroma was nothing like you’d expect. No gag reflexes were engaged.  I’m sticking with my Zaal NoFlex Digestor and the toilet paper is going to continue to go into the tank.

And now we are hoping to leave La Paz on Saturday to go to the islands and really begin seeing the Sea of Cortez. Shh. Don’t tell the gods of cruising. We don’t like to tempt them openly. Nothing to look at here….nothing at all.

Before we sign off, someone is bound to bring up getting a composting head. We’re not ready to do that at this point. We’d have to order it and wait around for it. Then that’s another boat project. We’d rather be cruising. In the future, if this tank issue can’t be resolved, then maybe. But it’s been a bulletproof system until now. It’s a good installation that has lasted since the 1980’s. If we can fix what we have, we’ll keep it.

S/V Galapagos, out.

Well Dang It!

Posted on by

We try to keep things family friendly here on the blog site. There are a lot of words I could have used in the title, but ‘dang it’ pretty much sums it up. While we’ve been playing ‘musical anchorages’ in San Diego, other things have been happening and not all of them involve sitting in the cockpit drinking wine with friends. Some of them involve frustrating turns of events that could, if we had worse manners, have resulted in words being thrown across the water in frustration, only to land in someone’s tender ear. So even though I thought my next post would be about the Cruiser’s anchorage in San Diego, it’s not. It’s about this episode, which is filed under ‘it ain’t all pretty sunsets and tequila, people’. If you follow us on our Facebook Page you’ll already have been among the first to know this story.

My point here is that shit happens when you are busy living life. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

Newsflash: There are always projects going on aboard Galapagos. It’s a big boat, it’s an old boat, and some of the systems on board are getting a bit long in the old tooth. Even though we are kind of ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ types, sometimes that’s not the best way to go. Today, it looks like we paid a price for putting off something we should have done back in June. I say ‘looks like’ because I’m still not certain it wouldn’t have happened anyhow. Here’s our tale of woe.

Our boat has an old Profurl headsail furler. For the non-sailors, that is the thing you see on the pointy part of the boat that allows you to pull a string to unfurl the big sail in the front, then pull another string to roll it back up. The idea is that you then have your sail ready to go all the time. It’s supposed to make things easy. And generally it does. Until it doesn’t. Lately Mike had been noticing that the furler unit was a little stiff; it was hard to get it to turn. He’d look up at the top of the forestay but couldn’t see anything amiss. That’s because the mast is more than 50 feet from the deck of the boat, so it’s a long way up. Even with binoculars, it’s hard to see that one small little area on a moving boat in the glare of the brilliant California sunshine.

Yesterday (while he was sick enough to cough up a lung) he was putting on the new jib lines (see, we really DO keep upgrading things) and he needed to unfurl the headsail a bit so he could reach the old lines and untie them. The thing didn’t want to unfurl. Hmmm. He looks high and low, then notices he can now see with his naked eye some fraying at the top of the halyard. The NEW halyard. That’s not a good sign. “We’ve got a problem”, he says. “What else is new?”, I think. He puts ‘go up the mast and look at that dang fraying’ on his never-ending list of things to do before we get to Mexico, coughs up his other lung,  and goes about his business getting the new jib lines attached to the sail. I sigh deeply and go back to whatever I was doing.

There used to be a very pretty splice here.

A few minutes later he pops his head down the hatch and says we now have a REAL problem. The fraying he noticed was the harbinger of doom that was REAL problem: The halyard has just snapped while he was standing there. Literally. He hadn’t touched anything. It just snapped and popped down into the mast. Let’s just pause for a moment of silence while all the sailors who read this heave a huge collective sigh. I know you’ve been there when it comes to halyards in the mast. So now we have a broken BRAND NEW halyard, an unscheduled trip up the mast to trouble shoot this,  and possibly more parts we need to get before we can leave for Mexico. By the way, that’s just a few short days away.

On the one hand, DANG IT!  And other more forceful words. But if you are going to survive this lifestyle, you have to look at the bright side of things and the bright sides are considerable, including that we were anchored at La Playa and rafted up to friends on S/V Blue when this happened, not racing across the water on a nice broad reach. Also we are not in Mexico, land where finding parts for sailing boats is not easy and importing them from the U.S. is expensive and not for the faint of heart. Not to mention the usual language barrier.

See that hook on the right? It’s not supposed to exist. Mike found fibers caught in that gap.

So we hoist Mike and his deadly cough up the mast to assess this latest turn of events and he sees that somehow the halyard has wrapped around and rubbed against the halyard swivel at top of the furler. The friction created has actually melted the side and created a sharp edge. In a Hercule Poirot moment, he found tiny pieces of shredded halyard caught on that little hook in the photo. This sharpened edge sawed through just enough of the splice for the entire splice to let go. Oy.

These Profurl units have a ‘wrap stop’ that is supposed to keep the halyard from getting wrapped around the forestay and this is where our powerfully bad decision making came in. (Also in reading on the interweb about this problem, I see that it’s a common problem with the Profurl units and that leads me to surmise that it’s a poor design. Which leads me to mistrust it in the future. Which leads me to want a new furler, which we probably need because this one has been nothing but trouble and Mike has had to fix several issues with it on this trip already.  I see a newer furler unit being carried in a suitcase in our future because we can’t really get one right now.)

The new unit, which is basically a piece of plastic.

This summer we had a rigger climb the mast and to have a look around. He told us that ‘wrap preventer’ was worn and would need replacing. So we ordered a new one. But we didn’t replace it right away. Why? Let’s not even go there. The ‘why’ gets lost in all the other things we were doing at the time, all the projects and details and all that stuff. We probalby could have used a project manager for all the projects we had going at once. It wasn’t broke, so we didn’t fix it. Now it’s broke, and so is our halyard. Pretty much that sums it up. Dang it. Do we feel like rubes? We do. Oh well. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last.

So here’s where we are at: we have the part. We pulled the halyard down, reversed it, and pulled the good end  back up the mast so now Mike can do the eye splice on the end and it will be ready to go again. He’ll install the new ‘wrap stop’, and when everything is put back together I’ll pull the headsail out while we are tied to the dock and he can watch the unit working from his perch at the top of the mast. We still cannot figure out how that halyard had enough slack to get against that piece of plastic and create that much friction. The angle must be all wrong. And this is what he will observe in situ. Then he can decide if further action needs taking.

Yes, we are at the visitor’s dock at Shelter Island until this is sorted. It’s 1$/foot, no matter what size slip you get. So we got the slip where you can pull straight in with no turns and it’s terrific. There is zero security here, and apparently some nefarious goings-on happen here. But there is electricity, which we needed for a different issue I’ll write about later. And there is unlimited water. Our decks are looking grungy and could use a rinse. Galapagos is sparkling in the sun with all the salt on her.  S/V Blue pulled in next to us. So it’s all good.

So far, we’re still on target. S/V Galapagos, out.