Not As Easy As It Sounds

SHIP'S LOG:

Trace a wire from one end to the other. What could be simpler? But it is not as simple as it sounds. Tracing the wires for the engine gauges required getting access to the engine which meant opening up the side panel, the front panel and the floor panels in the "In-Law" apartment cockpit locker. Even then, it was not all that easy a tack for a couple of reasons.

The first is that the manual I had for the engine is gone. It disappeared during one of my sojourns on the hard after the groundings. Someone, for whatever reason, "borrowed it and never brought it back. So any and all directions and descriptions of the wiring is gone.

The owner's manual, which I have, depicts the wiring as it originally came from the factor but it has been "modified" over the years and most actually bears little resemblance to what it originally was. Fixes and adjustments by the owners, crazy wire routing and bundling makes tracing a
horror show.

Then there is that routing and bundling. Wires need to be support along their length, ideally ever 18 inches(to keep to code)  and to prevent them from dangling and getting snagged and/or ripped out accidentally. It is hard to follow a wire in a bundle through a bulkhead or wire run  and be sure of where it actually goes.

Then there is the wire color coding. Specific color wires are used for specific jobs. They all had the correct color s when they left the gauges but some "miraculously" changed colors somewhere along the way.  It is a case of using whatever wire of whatever color to affect a repair. It is a total pain.

Then there is the crazy and non-code and unsafe connections that show up along the way. It is something akin to traveling on a freeway through a monstrous work site with all sorts of detours and changes of direction. Just trying to figure what goes where is one hell of a challenge.

One could try to work backwards, going from the appropriate sensors back to the gauges. I tried this but just finding the sensors is a challenge. When I first go the boat, it took me a whole day of dedicated and focus investigation to find the oil dipstick! It was actually hidden behind two hoses which had to be moved to access it. Things are like that on ABISHAG. The diesel fuel filler is "hidden"in the propane lock. I got a call in the fall from the boatyard wanting to know where it was as they couldn't find it. It took me most if the afternoon to find the oil pressure sensor and the engine temperature sense and I was able to accomplish that only by means of a process of elimination.  The only wires "connected" to the engine should be those leading to the alternator and those to the sensors. But there are wires that lead over, under and around the engine and it is a task just to figure out which one actually go to the engine. Access to the engine on a boat is not like that on a car. Usually you have access to one, perhaps two of the six sides.  Of course it doesn't help matters that there are also wires that are near the engine that are connect at that end to nothing.  what a chore!

If I had the bucks, I would rip put every single wire, bus bar and panel, and re-wire the entire boat, marking every single wire and c0onnection as I went and creating an accurate electrical schematic. That will have to await a visit from the Prize Patrol from Publishers Clearing House! ! !! ! ! ! ! !

Getting There

SHIP'S LOG:

Wires removed! Welding job set up. And that's about it. True, it did take most of the day as both were more complicated that you would think, but both got down and basically . . . . that's it. Didn't get to the polishing as I can save that for next week, but basically it's done.

If I have the energy and the inclination I may actually do another wire trace, following and marking all of the wires for the various gauges on the engine panel. Right now, none are marked and the best guess is that "they were installed using the right color wire!" One a boat, the colors of wires mean certain things, basically that the wire is being used for a particular application  and that it should not be being used for anything else. this helps immensely when you have a problem or need to work on a specific piece of equipment. At least you know you are dealing with the right wire. Most wires on boats are under floors, in walls, and above hatches. Tracing them to find and correct problems can be a real task  so it is a good thing that a wire of a particular color that goes in here is the same wire that comes out over there. This means you don't always have to dismantle everything to find the truth. Most electrical problems take place at connections, not along the length of wire in between, so knowing that the pink wire leaving "the whatis" is the same one that slipped off the bus-bar under the settee will, when reconnected, get the "whatis" working again. Then again, yard workers have been known to grab any piece of wire of any color to make a fix. Color then is no guarantee but it is at least a place to start. But like I said, I will need energy and the inclination to trace, label and tag each piece of wire, and with launch day looming, I might not be able to find or summon up either!

Taking Stuff Out! ! ! !

SHIP'S LOG:

Yesterday was a stellar day . . . even with the rain which we weren't suppose to have.  First of all, the boat was dry. No leaks! And if it didn't leak after all that rain, it won't! Even peeling away the masking tape didn't produce any returning leaks so all is good there. And then a strange thing happened . .  . I started to clean up ABISHAG!

Sounds strange, I know, but when you are working on a boat, you have all sorts of stuff scattered everywhere. Tools on table, cleaners and lubricants sealers on every flat surface. Cleaning cloths and scrubbies and sponged in the strangest places. But now, the tools could be put away, accessed when needed from the tool box. Sealers and lubs were oput into their respective lockers. Painting tools and paints hauled down from the boat to the car. Indeed, everything not essential to the running and on-the-water maintenance of ABISHAG was transported to the car. 

Lockers were also cleaned out. Items that I need or anticipated I needed, from diesel treatment(several different kinds in partially used containers) to empty plastic gallon jugs got the heave-ho! Back-ups and redundant spares were emptied from lockers, their places taken by items that would be regularly used in the daily running of the boat.

And the boat was cleaned. Vacuumed(inside and out) and washed down and polished (where needed) and lockers were emptied and carefully and thoughtfully arranged so stuff could be found.  All that remains to be done before launching is a weld-job on a stanchion( the yard has to do that), remove two wires and and seal the remaining ends of those unused and un-removed, polish the hull and return to the boat those items such as charts, books and clothes. It is an almost overwhelming feeling to know that ABISHAG is "good to go" for another season.  Now I have to book a "launch date!"

Greetings From India! ! ! !

SHIP'S LOG:

Yesterday it was supposed to rain (it didn't) and I was planning to take that opportunity not to go to the boat and do some work on line. I had to use this computer because it was the one that had WIFI Internet Access via Verizon. Unfortunately, my back up computer, the one that made the trip up & down the ICW, the one that perform so brilliantly the whole trip, developed a bit of a problem. The key board decided not to work all of the time. I was typing along and suddenly some keys wouldn't type, not unless I hit them repeatedly. Not the same keys but all of them in a random manner.

Now two months ago, the keyboard on that computer stopped working completely and when I contacted DELL, they very kindly sent me a brand new keyboard( for free!) which I had installed by my friend Mark who is an I.T. guy and all round computer wiz. Now that the keyboard was crapping out again, I called DELL again and spend a good 4 hours on the phone with Sanjay Gupta's brother, "Bob," and they did a complete cleaning, updating and re-alignment of my backup computer. After this stint, during which " Bob" controlled the computer from Mumbai or Cleveland, I'm not sure which, the conclusion was reached that it was not a software problem but a hardware problem and I was promptly transferred to "Out-Of Warranty-Hardware-Tech-Support." They immediately wanted $59 for this "technical Support Incident."  When I asked them how they were going to fix the machine's hardware when I had the machine with me and they didn't, Sanjay's other brother, Larry, decided that didn't make much sense. So he went and talked with his supervisor and they came to the conclusion that they would send me another keyboard "for which I would have to pay!" When I protested, saying that the keyboard I had was new, only two months old, and asked if it wasn't still under warranty, they said that it had been sent to me "as a favor" and I would have to pay for another new one.

After one long day on the phone and online, eating up minutes that I would eventually have to pay for, it wasn't what I wanted to hear. I hung up the phone and stewed.  Nothing like being semi-cut-off from the world for stewing. So this morning, I took my new computer to Skip & Nancy's, got access to the Internet, downloaded VZ Access Manager and can now get online again in my latest digs. I will get my backup computer to my I.T. friend to see if he can do anything. If not, I'll check with the Nerds/Geeks at Best Buy and see what they can do.

While it didn't rain yesterday, it is pouring today. This is both a good and a bad thing: bad in that I find the rain "depressing"; and "good" in that it will test out all the leak repairs I have done. All should hold and hopefully no new ones will be discovered.

Gremlins In The Goop!!!!!!

SHIP'S LOG:

Yesterday was a beautiful day. I was warm and sunny and was a great day t be outside. A good thing to as I had several caulking projects to attend to. Caulking is ever fun as it is always messy despite and in spite of whatever precautions  and preparations you take. The easiest projects were the four stanchion bases that had to be caulked, but even these were a bit messy. I had to put tape around the bases so that I could force the "goop" under and around them creating a decent seal.There is no tool to d this, only fingers will do the trick.  So I had to wear rubber gloves to keep the "goop" off my hands as I did the work. The stanchions were on the far edge of the back deck so they were relatively out of the way, but it didn't seem to matter as I still got fingerprints of goop on several unintended places.

But this was child's play compared to sealing the two seams. Sometimes you need more than one person for a job, like the time I had to hold up the ceiling in the aft cabin with my feet while I screwed it back in place At other times, one person seems like too many. Caulking the seams was one such time.

After outlining both edges of the seams,  had to spread the goop. It has the consistency of peanut butter. I had to put down  bead in the seam and then force it into the seam with a putty knife, spreading it over the edges of the  seam and onto the masking tape. You want the goop o extend beyond the seams so that as the deck flexes it doesn't pull away from the edges of the seam defeating the whole caulking effort. Due to the configuration of the deck,I literally had to sit on the panel and caulk the seam around me. It is something akin to painting oneself into a corner.  And of course, moving around on this too large/not large enough panel, I got  goop on my hands and arms and shorts and transferred it to every place I moved. The only two good things: 1.) the seams were righteously sealed; 2.) I used white colored caulk, as opposed to black, which meant that random goop placement was not so obvious.

Before leaving for the day, I ran a line of erasable marker inside the boat at every place leaks had indicated their presence. Today, it is suppose to pour and if any of the former leaks are still active, the marker lines will show them. Wednesday will tell the tail!

Leaks & Leaks & Leaks . . . But All Fixed!

SHIP'S LOG:

I have been out of touch for a couple of days as I am now living in a place without an Internet connection . . . but then I remembered that I have an WIFI connector for my old computer so I hooked it up and WHAMO it worked.

Over the last few days, I was able to fix and cure several leaks that have been plaguing me forever. Two were in the salon where the water was getting in through two pipes that drain the seating space in the cockpit. The ends of the pipes were fiberglassed in place but the connection was merely painted over with some high-grade-through-34-year-old-paint that had cracked and so allowed the water to seep in. Over the years, the seepage became greater and greater until whenever it rain or water got on the seating, it never drained simple entered the salon via the ceiling panels. I had to take down the ceiling panels and epoxy the pipes, kill the mold and mildew and reinstall the ceiling panels. Sounds relatively easy but, while not a complex chore, it was hard enough. Fiddling with the ceiling panels, getting them back in place and screwing them back in tight was a real pain. I need two more hands that I had. Fred was able to help with one but the other was all mine.

I caulked the exterior of the secondary hatch in the aft cabin as it showed signs of leaking too. Usually a puddle on the floor! While doing that, I decided to take down the ceiling in the aft cabin as it was laking back there some where too. It turns out that two of the aft stanchions had flexed over the years and allowed water to get beneath them and damage the wood into which they were affixed. They are set on the aft deck which is a piece of marine plywood laid over the fiberglass of the deck and painted. Once the paint cracked, water got into the wood and the rest is history. I am going to leave the actual re-beding of the stanchions until next spring as I just know they won't be the only two that have to come out. So I dug out the rot, put in some wood strengthener, filled it with marine epoxy filler, and will caulk the hell out of it today.

There is also a seam that runs around this aft deck that I suspect in leaking in places so today I will go through the process of striping and caulking that. There is a similar seem in a place in the cockpit and it will get the same treatment. And for the heck of it, I will also do the main hatch in the aft cabin. Might as well as I am on a roll!

I also painted the bottom and now ABISHAG looks ready to go. There are several small projects yet but none of them effect whether or no to launch her or her seaworthiness. I will do as many as possible until launch date which is . . . I am not sure. It depends on whether or not I can pay the remainder of the yard bill. I am off to a convenience store to "remedy" that issue!

The Never-Ending Search

SHIP'S LOG:

Tuesday's search for wires ended up with me dismantling the cabin ceiling in search of wires and, since it was raining, leaks. I have had two leaks that have driven me crazy since I have had ABISHAG for though I have often been able to staunch them  they would always begin again. These two are far end of the main cabin hatch and the one that shows through the seams of the rear ceiling panels in the salon. Find the first shouldn't be that hard as it has to beat the main hatch somewhere, though just where is what is the mystery. Fred was around ( he is getting no work done on his boat working one mine) and joined in the hunt ( after he knocked out 3 of the four thru-hulls). It required taking down two very large and unwieldy ceiling panels  where we eventually discovered that the leaks were come through the joints of pipe drains.  ABISHAG has two drains behind the cockpit dashboard and two at the front end of the cockpit seating. Over the years, the piping has rusted a bit and this loosened the painted fiberglass holding the two ends, allowing rain, waves and other forms of wetness to seep between the fiberglass and the pipe and drip on the ceiling and eventually through the ceiling into the cabin.  It would be a simple fix in that re-sealing the pipes/ fiberglass joint with epoxy is a five minute task ( especially if you are using Five Minute epoxy), but nothing is as simple as it seems. Taking down the ceiling revealed black mold , not a lot but enough, which had to be dealt with before the repairs could be made.

O by the way, taking down the ceiling also means taking down whatever is attached to the ceiling, such things a lighting fixtures, which would eventually have to be re-attached . . . in working order. I also discovered that there was a leak around the wood trim of the cockpit cabin hatch. On further inspection the wood backing it was found to have the consistency of wet cardboard. It wasn't a case of it having to go but rather a case of it already being gone. It had been glued in place and the wood trim glue to it when set in place but with the terrible condition of the wood, the trim separated easily was was salvageable. Rather than gluing, I screwed it in place and re-caulked it. It looks just fine.

With the ceiling down, it was a chance to see where the wires I was tracing went ( off into another space of course) and to fix any bad connections that existed( of which there were several). Someone had a love affair with connecting two wires by the expedient of stripping a little insulation, wrapping the wire to be connected around the bare spot and then sealing it with friction tape, the per-cursor to electrical tape. It is not a good or safe way to make an electrical connection and they all had to be disassembled, cleaned and connected with connectors. More Fun!

Wednesday saw the attack on the black mold. My friend, Skip, a home contractor by trade, had this chemical that could be sprayed on the mold to make it go away. Mixed with bleach and water, and sprayed on with a garden sprayer, it really did the job. Of course it was not quite that simple. First you had to mix the ingredients. Next you had to cover all of the areas of the boat around the sight where the stuff would be sprayed as it would do a job on more than just mold. The I had to spray the stuff, wearing my rain gear,  goggles, and safety mask. One application did the job but then I had to wash down the surfaces sprayed to get rid of the chemical. Then I had to dry the cabin and remove all of the surface covering and trash them.

The mold was gone and next on the list was the leaky drain pipes. I first had to scrape off all the loose rust, scale and paint.  Next I had to clean the pipe with bronze wool so that it was shiny. Having down that, I had to rough it and the fiberglass up with an abrasive so that the epoxy with adhere well to both.  Having down that, I had to mix up a batch of five-minute epoxy for each joint and spread it on the joints in question.  The stink of the epoxy and the stink of the mold killer and bleach was enough to gag a maggot. You should also realize that getting to the joints required, as most projects on boat do, physical contortions that would earn me a 10 in any gymnastic competition.  And in that I had 5 minutes at most to epoxy each joint, I consider it a major accomplishment that I didn't permanently affix myself to the interior of the boat! But, case closed! In addition, I re-opened that block drains that some had plugged in the cockpit. I flushed water through them and discovered that  if the "blocker" had done so to stop a leak, he actually plugged the wrong pipe. Those drains were no the source of the cabin leaks. In point of fact, the drains down work too terribly well to begin with, but at least now they have a chance to "sort of do their intended job."

There was one thru-hull that I was unable to remove. There was no way to get a screw driver into the area above the screws holding the gland in place. It was probably the reason why this particular thru-hull hadn't been serviced in years. In my case, I didn't even know it was there. I found it mere by extrapolation -  hole in the hull equals thru-hull inside the boat. I have 10 holes and knew the whereabouts of only 9 thru-hulls which set of a search.   But how to extract it.  I was simply not able to get a screw drive where I needed it to go.  So in desperation, having hit the thru - hull with almost a whole can of PB Blaster to eliminate the corrosion, I used a trick I picked up on the ICW. I griped a quarter in a pair of vice grips and was able to get it into the slot in the screw head. After the PB Blaster had done its thing, and getting myself into another "10" position, I was able to slow, and with great care, remove the machine screws and the gland and the plug of the thru-hull! Success, and with no banging! Of course, after cleaning and lubing, it was a bit of a chore to get it all back in place but I did and it works, so what more could I want.

I siliconed the gasket on one on the ports where I had discovered another leak and I hope that it does the job as I don't have the time or the money nor the energy to pop out the ports and re-bed them all. I also cleaned a grove on the main cabin hatch and laid in a bead of silicone. I am hoping that this will handle the leak without popping that hatch. Popping a main hatch of that size is a long and labor intensive process and now is not the time. Perhaps during the summer when I have a day or so, but not now. Hopefully the silicone will do the job for now.