Work Is Fun! Work Is Fun! Work Is Fun!

SHIP'S LOG:

It was not supposed to get cold again!, but it did. True, it wasn't cold, COLD, but it was cold enough. And with the wind honking at 40mph, it was no fun to be working outside. and when working on a boat, it was not much fun working inside either. Boy, it gets cold and damp inside a boat at times . . . one of which was yesterday. For most of the morning, I had to go up on deck every once in a while just to get the feeling back in my fingers. That's cold!

I removed to old counterpoise and the "old "new"counterpoise as well. The really, really old counterpoise was in a lot of little pieces and had obviously be replaced "sometime" by the "New" old counterpoise. A counterpoise is a 50 foot by 3inch ribbon of copper that runs from the Single Sideband antenna tuner, through the boat to a grounding point. It is necessary to produce a good radio signal. But even the "new" old counterpoise had fallen victim to corrosion and was in several pieces so it had to be removed. It had laid in the bilge for so long that it was coated with "distilled essence of engine droppings," a greasy tar that coated the copper and as so as I touched it , coated me. According to those in the know, the counterpoise is supposed to be kept "clean" to facilitate its function, this one was not. All my previous efforts to clean years of oil drips from the bilge evidently never quite impressed the counterpoise which kept hold of its oily covering despite all efforts previous to remove it. Out it came and into a trash can I was using to collect copper for later sale.

One annoying problem on ABISHAG is that the salon table is very unstable. It rocks side to side and even the slightest bump sets it in motion. I decided that this had to be fixed. The table is set on a pedestal which is bolted through a large piece of teak to the floor. It was held in place by four bolts with a decorative ball-top. Probably viewed at one time as a "nautical accent," they now merely made tightening or removing said bolts impossible. Looking at the base of the pedestal, I saw that one bolt was missing and that that was probably the reason for the wobble, that and the former owners attempt at a quick fix, shoving what appeared to be the corner of a magazine under one end to stabilize it. That it didn't work at all is to damn it with faint praise. Reaching under the floor I found a couple of things. One, there were no nuts on the undersides of any of the bolts. And two, the one bolt that was missing, well it wasn't actually missing. The rounded head had been sheared off. The bolts had to go. Attempting to unscrew them merely sheared off the remaining heads which allowed for easy removal of the table. The it was a "simple" matter to drill out the shafts of the bolts from their resting places in the floor, being careful not to drill too far and puncture the water tank. It didn't take long and only cost one drill bit. The bolts themselves were actually "marine bronze" which 30+ years ago was the metal of choice for all marine fittings. I discovered that the reason there were no nuts was that when the pedestal was set in place and the orignal holes drilled for the bolts, the holes were lined with a sleave of some metal which, when the bolts were set in place, held them tight. It was something like one of those plastic inserts you use to set a screw into plaster board when you are hanging something heavy. Anyway, it evidently worked fine until one of the ball heads sheared and set the table to rocking. It will be a simple fix. Fill the holes, drill them to size, insert new stainless steel bolts, washers, locking nuts and bingo, a stable table.

I also spent sometime in the fore-peak and under the shower pan in the forward head. New discoveries every inch of the way. One major discovery was the wash down plumbing system. A system to draw raw water to an outlet in the anchor locker to facilitate the cleaning of mud from anchors and rodes ( really could have used that in the Carolinas last year) was installed sometime in the misty past. There was a thru-hull with a hose that led to a pump that sent the water through another hose to an outlet in the anchor locker in the bow. Simple but effective and completely non-functioning. The real problem was the pump which while of marine grade was not intended to rest in water. It had simply been placed in the bilge where it was subjects to the ravages of the sea . . . .so to speak. In addition, since it wasn't fix in place, the movement of the boat eventually ripped the electrical connections away so that it wouldn't function any way. Disconnecting the plumbing and setting all the pieces out, it is clear that, if the pimp works, or replaced, the system will work . . . provided I get a new outlet for the anchor locker, as the one there I discovered was cheap and corroded and broke when I tried to move it.

This area in the fore-peak is prone to retaining water which is not a good thing. It doesn't drain and I was trying to come up with a solution, everything from raising the sub-floor to installing a pump.I thing I will go with the pump, less work and less expense. This area was also filled with miscellaneous wires connected to nothing, pieces of hose that went nowhere, and what important wires and hoses there were, were all twisted around each other in a real tangle. So the unneeded, unwanted and useless was removed and the rest was laid appropriately and neatly back in place. One other point: as with the drain in the aft head, the shower drain in the fore-peak, had no drain hose. Actually it did but it had been cut off short and led merely to the area under the shower pan. I presume that as with the aft head shower, the former owner decided to let gravity do the job of drain the water as it was too difficult to do it right.It would have meant cleaning the bilge and removing extraneous and unnecessary items so that you could place the appropriate hoses. That always seems to be the problems with boats, successive owners simply add more stuff, more wire, more hose, rater than first removing the old items you are replacing.It makes upgrading and repair a real pain in the butt!