Fuel Tank Removed

11 March 2016 and the fuel tank was removed. Found a couple holes on the starboard side of the tank and lots of pitting all over. I was also able to remove most of the foam that was holding it in place.

Decided to show some of the cuts I made during the process of cutting the tank out the previous several weeks.

tank popped a bit when this cut was completed.

stack of foam that held the tank in place

What's left for the scrap metal guy

Thanks for stopping by.



Engine Is Out

Just a quick post showing I got the engine out today so I can get to work on replacing the fuel tank under it.

Slow Work Day

Slow day this weekend. Not a whole lot of work on the boat. I spent more time chatting with a couple other guys who are about to head out on their boats down the ICW to Florida. Not really with the snow bird crowds but moving there.

I did some measuring of hoses to see what I may need. The cockpit drains have a white plastic hose that I'm thinking to replace with rubber wet exhaust hose. My reason is that the hose clamps can get better compression onto the seacocks. Speaking of which, I found out one of the seacocks has worked loose due to the wood backing plate getting soft. Good thing they're getting replaced anyway. The only other work I did was to drill out a couple small holes on the deck that had failed patches and filled them in with thickened epoxy. I also had a quick look at placement of the access ports for the water tanks.

Safe travels to all these coming weeks.

Chainplates Are On

Had some rain a couple weeks ago and saw water was finding its way into the boat. In order to stop the leaks, I put the new chainplates on the boat over the last couple weekends.

 Looking at the hull, I may have to wet sand it down and wax it.

On to the next project(s)...

Engine Preparations

Oct 2 2015.

 

Rain, wind and more rain. Still, a good day to be on the boat. Bad thing, is finding more leaks because of the rain, but in a way, still a good thing to try stopping them.

 

I started getting the engine ready to move out of of the way so I can get to the fuel tank under it. I was able to undo three of the bolts holding the engine to the motor mounts. Those things wanted to hold on tight. The one bolt I wasn't able to loosen/remove was directly under the exhaust hose. Still, I removed the alternator and air filter and raw water filter to have more room to reach around the engine. Worst part of taking those off happened to be finding oil covering the air filter. I don't think it's necessarily from an oil leak in the engine itself. I'm thinking it may have been from the oil leak from the failed valve cover gasket I already replaced. Something else for me to keep an eye on later just to be sure.

 

Removing the alternator really helped to see more around the sides and just how much the engine has started to rust. It was looking pretty good until last winter when water hit the the engine due to snow covering the cockpit drains. Doesn't seem to be worsening lately so I have some cleaning up to do. I have a wire brush I can clean some of the parts with. I intend to replace the raw water hoses. I know they're filled with deposits and fresh hoses will help keep the lines clear. Thermostat is pretty green and may replace that too. I'll get a better look at things as I continue to disassemble everything. I was given some advice to find a "rust converter" spray, then just spray paint it. Going to look into options available. I'm also interested in upgrading the standard Hitachi alternator that came with the engine with something larger since I intend to increase the battery capacity.

 

When I took some wires off the alternator, I saw other wires around the engine and disconnected them too. Once I disconnected a couple plugs behind the engine, I realized the wires I disconnected on the front of the engine were part of a bundle attached to it. So I just created more work for myself than I should have.

 

I need to remove the prop and shaft. I was looking online at how others do it and apparently a puller is needed but those things are expensive. I'm going to see if I can find a place that can rent one out or see where I can borrow one. While the shaft is out, I may have to replace the cutlass bearing too so that's another piece I will need to figure out. I will need to replace the hose to the stuffing box. I was going to measure what's on the boat now but forgot about it. Still, no hurry since there's plenty of other things to work on.

 

Lastly, I sorted out the new chainplates to hopefully install soon, and still need to figure out where I put the new bolts for them too. I'd like to first paint a couple more coats on the red stripe by the toe rails.

 

View of the cutlass bearing

wire below oil filter was disconnected, but could have stayed

oily air filter, will be replaced.

two white plugs were all that needed disconnected for the wires.

getting a view of wire connections behind the alternator

View without the alternator or the air filter

Another view.



chainplates layed out

Home Sweet Home

Rhapsody now has a new home.

I got up and left the house around 7:30 this morning. Just in time for rush hour traffic. I knew that but didn't want to wait half the day for traffic to clear out. Still, it took a little more than an hour and a half.

I got to Deale, Maryland and talked with the owner of Rockhold Creek Marina, Jon. Jon showed me around and they had some space where I could put the boat/trailer.

I first backed it up into an open spot in the yard. Then they brought a small tractor around to put it in place. So, at the moment, this is Rhapsody's new home while I work on her and get her ready to go sailing again.

Backing into place

Unhooking from the tractor

Home Sweet Home

View into the rest of the yard

 On another good note, the replacement wheel studs came in today so I should be able to get those on the trailer during the next visit.

70 MPH to Windward

Nice long weekend for Labor Day.

I decided to go get my boat. I drove to Clarksville Tennessee, cleaned up and put away everything in the boat and drove back to northern Virginia all in two and a half days.

Thurday (Sep 3rd): Drove 700 miles to Tennessee. (11 hour drive)

Friday: had breakfast, checked out of the hotel my wife and I stayed at and went to get the boat ready for the trip.

Checking Tires

Wrapping Mast

Wife: "Where is the mast held up at?" Me: "up there."

Cleaned Up / Organized For The Trip

We went to the scales at a local truck stop to weigh everything. The truck, boat/trailer came out to 19,520 lbs. We hit the road around 1:30pm (CST). I wanted to drive past Nashville to get away from the city and get to a rest area East of the city to look things over. 1.5 hour drive, I stopped to check things out. I found out two lug bolts on the front right wheel and sheared off.

The trailer wheels have 6 lug bolts. The middle and rear axles have surge breaks but the wheel with the broken lugs doesn't have anything else on it.

I made sure the lug nuts were tightened all around and drove for another hour and a half to look things over again. No changes. By now, I was almost at Knoxville, TN. Decided to drive and see how far we would get. By the way, the road conditions on I-40 between Nashville and Knoxville was not pleasant at all. Things improved a lot once we got to I-81.

We got up to around Roanoke, VA by the time we stopped. Towing the boat used up a lot more fuel than I would have thought but understandable since the engine needs to work harder to pull all that weight. Stopped at another hotel for the night that thankfully had space to park the trailer without any issues. As I was looking things over on the boat, a guy stopped by and we chatted for a few minutes. He complimented on how nice the boat looked and talked about his time sailing out of San Francisco.

Saturday morning was a late start. But, we drove the rest of the way without any issues and got to the house around 2:30pm (EST).

So looking at Pacific Trailers website, it seems they do have parts for replacing the lug bolts. Which is good, because I was starting to think I had to replace the whole hub. Big difference between spending $50 for a hub or $2 bucks each for new lugs.

A nice lady in the neighborhood saw me and commented to me how nice the boat looks when I dropped it off on Saturday. I was messing around the boat and she came up to say hi and told me she saw a police car by the boat Sunday afternoon. She explained my situation that I just moved to the area and I'm going to move the boat somewhere else soon. Apparently, someone called the police and they gave me a warning ticket for having a trailer parked in a residential zone. If it was a paying ticket, the fine would be $40 bucks.

People sure do like their stupid rules around here.

Overall, I'm happy that I finally got the boat moved and I can move forward with my refit. First thing, is getting the lug bolts/nuts replaced, and a storage place for DIY work.

Lug Bolts Knocked Out

Broken Lug Bolts

Hope everyone had a good and safe Labor Day weekend.

Working On It

Almost 4 months without updates?

Yeah, I know, it's been a while without any updates. Unfortunately, there isn't too much to update right now.

I moved from Tennessee to Virginia, near DC. The boat, is still in TN. So, not much I can do. I've been to a few places looking for storage of the boat. They all have long waiting lists and it is so much more expensive between VA and MD. Still, the boat will come eventually.

I do have my spreaders with me. The paint was raised in a couple spots along with some pitting. There's a high concentration of pitting around the ends. I wanted to repaint the mast, eventually, so I decided to start with the spreaders since I have them on hand. I sanded down the paint. The hard part was getting it out of the grooves around the welded part on the end.

I cleaned them up pretty good, I think. I got some Alumiprep 33 and Alodine 1201. With these two chemicals, they are suposed to clean the metal and protect it from additional corrosion. Next will be zinc chromate primer that will start the rest of the process of the paint job... which will come later.





after the alodine, it leaves it with some color

I also have my tiller and rudder cheeks. Those are getting some coats of varnish and will be standing by until it's time to put on the boat again.

What next?

I need to re-bed the cockpit drains and may make a cover for the cockpit to protect  it from rain and more importantly, snow during winter time. The reason I mention snow is because of a leak I had last winter when it snowed heavily then rain immediately followed. Since the snow covered the cockpit drains, the rain water had nowhere to go and ended up going through the engine panel, down the engine (which has started to rust) and filled the bilge. I re-bed the engine panel so that should be good, but still need to re-bed the cockpit drains as I found out those are leaking slightly too.

Well, I have an idea for replacing the fuel tank. When the boat is here, I'll start work to remove the engine and the old fuel tank and prepare for the tank replacement. Since the engine started to rust, I need to take care of that too. While it doesn't really need a full overhaul, I might have to, to clean the rusty areas off of it. Anyone have ideas?

I'm looking at getting some supplies, like seacocks and pump service kits (bilge/galley pumps), I can work with until I can get on the boat but some things, I need to be on the boat to confirm exactly what I need, like the water-lift muffler size.

Two Weekends Sailing

May 4th

I went to the boat to get work on a couple things. I decided to take the boat out on the lake and just as I was about to get the boat ready, my dock neighbor invited me to go out with him on his Catalina 27. I took his offer, we went out on the lake and he showed me a few bays that people anchor out into. We didn't go into the bays, but just sailed down the lake. It was a good day. It was nice that his boat had a bimini to provide shade from the hot sun.

 

Total Sail time: 5hrs
Total Engine run time: 15min


May 11th

Went out only for the day. I went to the boat, I didn't want to do projects, so I got the boat ready. I ran the engine as I took the main sail cover off, untied the dock lines and unplugged the shore-power cable. I motored out and had a nice sail for the day. It wasn't very long but it was still a relaxing day out on the water. Got a good sun burn and I got rained on pretty good too. It was nice having the refinished tiller back on the boat.

 

 

And took video of my day on the lake. You can see a little about how much it was raining at the end.

 

Total Sail time: 1 hr
Total Engine run time: 2hrs