The Last Seacock

With the last seacock installed for the cockpit drains, I thought I'd show what I did to get it ready.

I have a sheet of G10 Fiberglass board, I used a couple hole saws to cut to size. Drilled holes for the bolts but then drilled out a larger size on the bottom to epoxy the bolts into place. I had a small tube of LifeCaulk on hand and used it to seal the threads. I think I used 4200 or Sikaflex 291 before but it should still work just the same.

One difficulty was having to use a couple wrenches to tighten the fittings together. Having the pieces already together helped for alignment when installed on the boat.

Really not a lot to it. This is the same way I prepared the other seacocks I've installed with new G10 backing boards.

There's sitll a couple old seacocks on the boat. I'd like to get rid of the one in the starting battery compartment. There's also one in the head under the counter top. Right now, if I tried doing that work, It would further delay getting the boat ready so they're going to wait right now.

Last Cockpit Seacock

Had another good weekend. Got the last seacock installed for the cockpit drains. Trying to do it myself wasn't easy though. I used the boat hook to keep the thru-hull in place and got the seacock base started on the threads. I then used a zip-tie to attach to another seacock to keep it from spinning. Got out of the boat and tightened the thru-hull down. Epoxy squeezed out from the base, that needed cleaning up. Luckily I was able to do this early in the morning where I could wait the whole day for the epoxy to cure. Unfortunately, I didn't finish curing. The outside of the fiberglass base was solid but when I removed the thru-hull, the center was still pliable/soft. I put the blue drain hose back through the hole for rain water to drain in the meantime. Soon, I'll be able to seal this seacock, and get new hoses on the hose-barbs. The current hoses on the other three are not very secure, at best I was abe to get one hose clamp around the hose.

Other project I wanted to do was attach the anchor chain to the boat. Not sure there was ever a place to attach the chain or rode, so I got a U-bolt, drilled holes to attach it. Then I put a soft shackle I made on it and the end of the chain, so now, when I deploy the anchor, the chain is not all going to find the bottom. The chain is about 140ft, so I could probably cut some of that down and attach some rode. Not sure the rode that came with the boat had ever been used or if it's even good to use.

These two things were projects I've had on my list a long time. I'm happy I can cross off a couple things. A good part of the visit, I was working on the rudder. When I tap on the rudder, there were hollow sounding areas, I cut part of the skin out to get epoxy behind those areas. I plan to post more on this when I have more work on it completed.

Squeezed epoxy into the gap before tightening thru-hull

I may cut the extra length off the threads

Last couple weekends have been pretty productive. I've been able to cross off a few projects off my list. Every little bit helps. Thanks for stopping by.

Electric Bilge Pump Ready

This past weekend was very productive. I got some work done on the electric bilge pump. Everything was previously mounted on a wooden board but got a piece of plastic board and remounted everything on it. The pump is at the bottom, with the float switch just above it. The next float switch, I used a yellow plastic scraper to mount, is for the bilge alarm. At the top, you can see all the wires, it's a relay switch. For the most part, everything is mounted the way the boat came. If you look closely at the closeup of the wiring/relay, you'll see a yellow and brown wire that isn't connected to anything. It was previously wrapped in electrical tape. It goes to the bottom float switch but no idea of its purpose. It's kept tied high from any possible water contact.

I still want to work on the manual pump by replacing the rubber pieces but the screws holding the flappers inside the unit doesn't want to budge. Going to try spraying some PB Blaster to see if that will help loosen things up. Otherwise, there doesn't seem to be much I can do with it.

After the bilge pump, I worked on mounting the base the Airhead is sitting on. All this time I've had the Airhead, it wasn't really secured. I had a small tube of LifeCaulk on hand, put a bead of it around the hole the old holding tank sat in, then screwed down the base. The vent hose was also not attached to the Airhead itself. I haven't used the head yet, so didn't have a need to. I got the hose cut down enough to connect everything together and now it's ready to use.

Didn't get any other pictures, but this is just screwing down the Airhead base. Predrilled the base for the screw to pass through but a smaller hole drilled below for the screw to bite into.