Holding Tank Design

We already have a holding tank fitted to the forward heads but with us planning to spend a lot of time in various idyllic anchorages we have decided that we need to fit a holding tank to the aft heads as well.  The photograph to the left is of a mock-up of the tank made from hardboard.  It has been very worthwhile making the mock-up as I have been able to check that it fits through all of the doorways and hatches as it is wiggled into position.  It has taken 3 modifications to get it right so I think the time was well spent

checking and double checking the dimensions.  It has also allowed me to properly visualise the pipe runs.  The sanitation pipes are quite thick with an outside diameter of 45mm so don't bend around corners very well.  Getting the tank made is going to be expensive so hopefully this work will mean that the tank will be constructed exactly right first time with all of the connections in the right place so that the pipes will run neatly.

It's not just the tank that needed careful thought.  The holding tank needs to be able to be pumped out when we are at sea or from a shore

facility, plus it needs to be vented properly and a carbon filter installed to remove any nasty smells.  The photograph on the left shows the carbon filter housing and the new vent pipe running back through the bulkhead.  The run continues aft and the pipe is vented through a fitting on the transom.  The photograph above shows the  new manual pump which will allow us to pump the holding tank out when we are a suitable distance offshore.  With the pump in position I'm making a few modifications to the wooden cover which will hide the pump adding holes for the pipes and the pump handle.  With that complete we will be ready to fit the tank.  The tank will be ordered next week and I'll use the time it takes to be made to 'psych' myself up for pulling apart the old sanitation pipes.  It doesn't matter how much we flush them through, pulling apart and replacing the old 'pooh-pipes' is not going to be a great job!  We've decided to replace all of the pipes that take effluent with high spec butyl rubber and hopefully that will ensure many years of aroma free sailing.

The last job I stared this week was fitting a cooling vent to the enclosed locker that houses the HF radio.  The radio is made up of 3 boxes with just a control facia at the chart table.  That has allowed the main radio box to be tucked away out of sight.  However, the box will get warm in use and the locker needs a vent to allow the hot air out.  The photograph on the right shows how far I have got cutting the hole.  By my next blog entry the job should be done and the wooden vent cover fitted in position.  That will be after a lot of careful trimming to make it a precise fit plus some time spent varnishing the exposed end grain to seal it.

This week I have also managed to book a crane at the end of May to lift BV out onto the hard for a week and to take down the mast.  A marine engineer will change the cutlass bearings for us and we'll change the anode bolts, the anode, polish the prop and touch up the coppercoat antifouling in a couple of places.  The mast will also be taken down so that we can fit the new cap shrouds and intermediates.  That will finish the re-rig as well as  allowing us to more easily let in a sheave for the new storm jib halyard and to attach the track for the storm trysail.  I'm also expecting to spend many frustrating hours replacing the VHF coaxial cables in the mast.  How long that takes will dictate how much time I have left to polish to topsides.

Hopefully in and around all of this industry we'll get the chance to spend a few days sailing as well.

A Long Easter Weekend

Sadly no sailing because Nicky was on call for work and so had to be able to get back quickly.  We were however able to get down to BV and work away at our list of outstanding jobs.  We therefore set about a couple of big tasks that we knew would take several days.  As always, even being pessimistic, everything seemed to take twice as long!

The aspiration was to remove the headlining panels in the saloon and forepeak, prepare the forepeak for a final coat of varnish, add some insulation to the deck-head, fit some fans, and also to lay some coaxial from the chart table to the foot of the mast.

The headlining panels are all held on with velcro and bizarrely we found the best tool to work in and separate the velcro strips was a fish-slice.  I guess that fulfils the adage that everything onboard should have at least two uses!  With the headlining panels down BV started to look a bit of a mess and that only got worse as we started to lay some new cables.  We replaced the coax for the VHF radio between the radio and the foot of the mast.  We will replace the rest of the coax in the mast when we take the mast down later this year.  We also laid a new length of coax which we will use for an AIS transponder aerial also to be fitted to the mast when it is down.  We have discovered that our Icom VHF radio will broadcast fog signals if we fit a loudspeaker.  We therefore ran a cable for that ready for fitting the loudspeaker to the mast below the radome.  To say 'we ran a cable' makes it sound very easy.  In general it was but there was the odd S-bend in the cable runs that left us feeling like experts in keyhole surgery.

With the middle headlining panels down to run the cables we went the whole hog and removed all of them so that we could run the cables and fit some fans.  We fitted one fan in each of the cabins, one by the galley and one over the chart table.  Hopefully these will help with airflow to keep things much more comfortable in hot climates.

The really big job we embarked on, however, was to add in some insulation between the headlining panels and the deck-head.  For this we had found some plastic insulation which looks like thin bubble-wrap with a layer of reflective space-blanket on each side.  It took a day and a half to cut out and fit the insulation in the saloon and at the end of that our arms, necks and backs ached like mad.  I guess it's not often you spend that long with your arms up above your head.  The insulation was thin enough to feed in against the deckhead with all of the cable-runs below but it took a bit of care to mark out and cut holes for all of the wooden pads that are the attachment points for the headlining panels and teak strips.

Now it is all complete the insulation looks very good.  After all of the hard work it almost seems a shame to cover it all up with the headlining.  It was fiddly work but we hope that the insulation will help keep the saloon cool in the summer and warm in the winter.  With everthing down Nicky also managed to touch up the varnish on a couple of the teak roof strips.  A couple more coats on those and hopefully we won't have to remove the headlining panels for quite a while.

All in all a pretty successful long weekend with some more work ticked off the list.  We never managed to prepare the forepeak for its final coat of varnish though.  Probably just as well as it rained and that doesn't create the best atmosphere for varnish to dry.  Maybe a job for next weekend?  Having been impressed with the insulation we have fitted we now intend to fit the same to the deckhead above the aft and forepeak cabins.  So with a few jobs ticked off the list we find that we have now added a couple more.  Notwithstanding that, with some larger task now completed it is starting to feel as though we are making headway in out preparations which is fantastic.

A Practice Cruise!

Nicky had to take some leave before the end of the financial year or lose the days off so we have just come back from 2 weeks sailing down to the South West of England.  A great cruising ground and we were blessed with some unseasonably good weather.

Trimming the Lowers

It was not all sailing though; we started the 2 weeks with some work replacing the lower stays.  Good for ticking off another job but we picked the worst weather of the whole 2 weeks to take down and replace the lowers.  It all worked well though; trimming the length and fitting went without a hitch.  Another session with the Loos Gauge helped set up the tension and we were able to correct a slight imbalance in the intermediate shrouds to straighten a bend that was being induced in the mast.   The shiny new rigging-screws look great but we had to get the stainless steel cleaner out to clean the chain plates, which is fine except that it now makes the stainless steel stanchions look like they need a clean.  Yacht ownership and full time cruising is starting to look like it could be a never ending polishing and cleaning session as we won't have the excuse of work getting in the way of having a gleaming yacht!

Enough of the maintenance - what about the sailing?  We aimed for Falmouth near Lands End and sailed down as fast as we could so that we could enjoy a variation on our usual cruising ground of the Solent.  We'd also arranged to meet up with my son, his girlfriend and my daughter for a few days so we had to make Falmouth as that was the arranged rendezvous.

Polperro mooring

Nicky and I sailed to Yarmouth IOW and then, after the tide had changed to be favourable again, on another 89 miles to Salcombe.  We made good progress and worked the tidal gate past Portland Bill to our advantage.  At the crack of sparrows we slipped and headed for Polperro; a beautiful little Cornish harbour which is normally too busy to fit a yacht of our size during the summer.  We had the mooring to ourselves which was a delight with the settled weather.  The entrance where the mooring buoys are is very narrow so we moored bow and stern to a buoy to avoid blocking the path of the fishing craft.
Inside the harbour is beautiful but it dries at low tide so is not ideal for a yacht with a 2 metre draft.

Polperro Inner Harbour

After enjoying walking around Polperro we sailed on to Mevagissey; a 'huge' passage of 12 miles.  However, the short sail meant we could enjoy a night at another small Cornish harbour full of character.  We  managed to buy a crab from the fish stall on the quay and thoroughly enjoyed pulling that apart for dinner.

Continuing in the theme of small Cornish ports, we anchored for lunch off Polkerris in glorious sunshine.  Just a pub and a restaurant there, so no thriving metropolis but very picturesque non-the-less.  Over a glass of wine at lunch we hatched a plan to head for the Isles of Scilly for a couple of days.  Indeed we did actually head off  after lunch in that direction but by early evening we had heard the updated weather forecast and the weather no longer appeared to be as settled as we would have liked for the Scilly Isles with much stronger winds forecast.  We turned around as dusk fell and headed for St Mawes.  It's always difficult to abort a plan but better to be on the safe side.  We crept into St Mawes well after dark and picked up a mooring buoy with the aid of a large torch and enjoyed a nice meal and some wine onboard before bed.

Polkerris

The 15 kt easterly wind and a relatively smooth sea created great sailing conditions as we tacked east to visit Fowey. We joke that it always rains or it is foggy when we visit Fowey and we were not disappointed this time with some rain en-route and a morning of fog after we had arrived.  However, after a slow start we put on our walking shoes and followed the coastal path around to Polkerris which we had anchored off two days before.  Once the mist had lifted it was stunning weather (picture left) and definitely not what you would expect in March.  After the day's 'route march' we treated ourselves to some fizz at sundowners and dinner ashore at a great restaurant in Fowey called "Sam's".  Much seafood was munched!

Saturday 24 Mar saw us move from Fowey to Falmouth to meet up with the kids and having got them onboard we enjoyed 3 days pottering around Falmouth harbour and across to Helford River.  Then, having said goodbye to the kids, we commenced a long predominantly motoring journey back towards Portsmouth because there was too little wind to sail in the dominate high pressure.  Typically, having got back to the Solent with a day in hand (we always seem to do that with work on Monday!) the gradient filled in and there was wind.  Ho hum.... in a few months we'll be free of the ties of work and can sail when the wind is good: happy thoughts of the sailing adventure ahead.

Time to start focussing on BV

Well after a long hard slog the house is now fully painted and has been put up for sale.  All on the planned end of February schedule as well!  That means I can switch my focus to much more enjoyable work on BV.  I have just abandoned Nicky for 2 days and have had a busy time onboard.  The company that are going to make our new sprayhood, Bimini and cockpit tent have visited BV to take measurements so that task is off and running.  We are changing the canvas work to beige so I have started to measure up and  make the new matching beige covers.  We have also had our gas system updated with a new regulator, gas leak detector and a set of connections that will allow us to use the system with any gas bottles we find abroad.  That should be pretty useful if we can't get our UK gas bottles refilled of find Camping Gaz.  The pipework is a very neat job:

The last thing I have looked at is our safety rails.  To be on the safe side the wire needs to be replaced so I have removed the rails and they are now with the rigger so that new ones can be made up.  There is still a long list of items that need to be checked and serviced which I will start to work my way through and there is always the question of how many spares we need... the 'you can never have too many spares' policy, aside from the cost, is attractive in that it would keep us moving but it would make BV a very heavy boat.  One to mull over.....

Stay Focussed!

Well, Nicky has handed in her notice at work so we are pretty committed now!  Feels great... but also 'kinda scary'.  Reading about other peoples experiences it is clear that getting everything ready to go seems to take longer than the 6 months most seem to allocate.  It was recognising that that led to my early departure from work to give us a full 12 months to prepare.  Nicky still has several months at work so for the time being we are still a bit inefficient with me working as a one man band.  I am focussing almost entirely on getting our house ready to sell so life seems to revolve around endless hours of painting and the smell of white spirit.  I keep telling myself that every brushstroke is a step closer to setting off.  Selling our house and buying another close to Nicky's parents is the really big event we have planned for this year.  That has all got to go well for us to be able to set off early 2013 as planned, so the priority order has got to be house first and BV preparation second.  'Stay focussed!' I keep telling myself.

It has not all been painting though.  Aside from finishing putting in an new upstairs bathroom I have managed to escape from home for a few days to go back to the classroom.  Three days of study and half a day of exams now means that I am qualified to work SSB and INMARSAT C  communications equipment.  We are not planning to fit an INMARSAT-C but getting the qualification was one extra multi-choice paper and a practical exam so I went for that as well as the SSB qualification that we are really after.  SSB Nets seem to be a really fun part of keeping in touch with what's going on (parties as well as Maritime Safety stuff).  The SSB radio and laptop will also allow us to send e-mails and position reports from mid ocean, plus receive a whole load of sources of weather synoptic charts and GRIB files.  Now I have the license to use an HF/SSB radio, another job for this year is to get really familiar with using the radio, and the laptop connected to it, to get the variety of weather information.  We can also check out that the radio and aerial fit works as well as it can do.  From all of my studying it is clear that interference can be a big problem as well as the grounding of the antenna.  Testing out the radio should give us an excuse to do a bit of sailing as well as other preparations for our sailing adventure.

It feels like there is still such a huge amount to do and the time seems to be disappearing quickly.  However, we have achieved quite a lot already and it should feel much more like we are preparing for sailing away when the house is on the market and we can switch our attention to preparing BV.  Finishing the re-rigging, fitting a track for a trysail, getting a trysail made and designing and installing a holding tank for the aft heads are the jobs that have migrated to the top of the list.  For the time being though... it's back to the painting!

Early Winter Work

Boy oh boy - any jobs on  yachts seem to take at least twice as long as you would expect, plus there is all of the extra time needed to drive to the marina!  We have also been tempted to go sailing rather than do maintenance more than perhaps we should.  Even so, we have achieved quite a lot.  We've fitted new AGM batteries and the anchor windlass has been completely stripped down and the rather 'graunchy'  electric electric motor replaced.  That took two attempts.  First time round we replaced some bearings and seals, cleaned and regreased all of the cogs. It worked well for a couple of anchor 'raisings' until the electric motor decided that it had had enough.  Having stripped it all down again it was clear that the motor bearings were also on their last legs and the carbon brushes in need of attention.  We didn't want to take the risk of 60 metres of 10 mm chain stuck out with a 'kaput' motor so a brand new electric motor was the order of the day.  Nicky discovered that she could crawl into the anchor chain locker so she became Chief Anchor Windlass repair lady.  Refurbished internally, and repainted/polished  externally we are hoping for many years of trouble free anchoring.

The other major job we have tackled has been to change the rake of the mast.  I worked out we had over 2 degrees of rake which is at least double what we should have.  I had also suspected that we were suffering from more weather helm than we should be as a result.  So... rather than taking the mast down to replace all of the rigging we have broken it down into two steps.  The first we completed in the fortnight before Christmas.  Nicky wound me up to the top of the mast and I let down the forestay with all of the Furlex gubbins.  Nicky spent many happy hours degreasing the Furlex components with paraffin and regreasing and reassembling them whilst I measured out and cut a new forestay several cms shorter than the last one to bring the mast rake to one degree.  The forestay can also be shortened a little more if needed using the adjustment which sits inside the Furlex; now working beautifully after Nicky's attentions.

Back up the mast to reattach the forestay followed by the same adventure to replace the backstay.  Here we had to cut a new longer backstay and also took the opportunity to add radio aerial isolators ready for the HF/SSB radio.  It was a bit nerve wracking when it looked like the ends wouldn't connect because of the sag but with lots of careful jiggling eventually everything went back together.  And so it was back up the mast to replace the inner forestay for the staysail and more fun with paraffin and grease to service the staysail Furlex.  The inner forestay needed to be shortened too, plus the lowers needed to be re-adjusted.  After all of that work, which took several days and trips to the riggers to get swages done, the mast looked a lot better in shape and rake.  The proof of the benefits would only come with a test sail and that opportunity arose at New Year.

After all of the Christmas festivities and family get togethers, Nicky and I have got into the habit of escaping at New Year for a few day's sailing.  Some years have been a little icy but this year wasn't too bad and the F5 winds proved to be excellent to test out our new mast rake.  BV handles very much better now.  With a gust she now reacts in a balanced way just heeling a little before accelerating.  She requires minimal weather helm now and carries her sail more comfortably than before.  Previously we always felt that we had to reef the main earlier than expected to keep her balanced.  All in all, stage one of the rig replacement and tuning seems to have gone well.  Makes me wish we'd done it ages ago!

Jobs on the house, fitting a new bathroom, and repainting are taking priority for the New Year but the next major task will be to take down the mast and replace the remaining stays.  That will prompt a whole new round of rig tuning adjustments but at least we know that we are starting from a much better position having got the mast rake correct.

We'll keep you updated!

What's Happening

There is a lot to do!  Even though BV is in excellent condition everything needs to be checked over and serviced.  We will add a Bimini Hood, a cockpit enclosure/tent and renew the spray hood.  The other big job will be to renew the rigging.  To achieve that we will need to drop the mast so we'll take that opportunity whilst it is down to instal an extra staysail halyard for the storm jib, fit a speaker below the radome, an AIS aerial, and an extra track for a storm trysail.  Feeding the various wires needed will be interesting!