It's Almost Splash Time!

Bazinga with her mast just raised.

Been a busy couple weeks both in life and in working on the boat but yesterday I got the mast back up and the goal is to go for a sail over labor day weekend. Sunday afternoon here and I am spending a much needed day just relaxing around the apartment. I just couldn’t get myself motivated to anything more today. So a bit of a recap of the last couple weeks from my last post. In no particular order except the last step here goes…

Spent another day scraping numbers off the boat and started on the port of call on the back of the boat. Went to put the new registration letters on the boat. First side I thought I would be cleaver and used a level to pencil in a guide line to line them all up on. Got them all on very nicely level with my pencil line and was happy. Then I went down the ladder to look at my work and realized that the boat wasn’t sitting totally level. My letters had a slight downward slope to the stern. Luckily it wasn’t too noticeable so I moved to the Starboard side which was now in the sun too. I decided to line the letters up with the blue paint line down the side of the boat. Needless to say that side looks a bit better. Next spent 4 hours laying over the edge of the boat in the sun and managed to get 3 letters off the stern. I was quite frustrated with my progress and decided to check the internet if there was a better way and the general consensus was applying a bit of heat would do the trick. Headed home with a plan to come back the next day will some sort of heat source. Asked the Sylvinator if they had a hair dryer, they didn’t but one of their room mates had one. They were going to ask permission but forgot. I went to a local hardware store and bought a heat gun along with a couple other necessities for the boat and as I was driving away the Sylvinator called to say I could borrow the hair dryer. Oh well, a bit late. I decided to keep the heat gun as I am sure I will have other uses for it. Got to the boat and within about 20 minutes had the rest of the letters off. Also discovered that I had a very convenient plug-in right next to the boat.

I knew I needed to update the registration for the EPIRB on-board so took it down and looked into that. Well, the batteries are expired so I need to get that updated. Found a place in Alameda that does that and called them to see how best to go about it. Sal’s Inflatable Service is only open Mon-Fri 9-5 which meant I had to take an afternoon off from work and drive over there to drop it off. I also noted that my MOB was expired and needed repacking as well so brought that along. Traffic was good the afternoon I went over there so I decided to drive over to the boat to get a dust cover from the axle as a sample to replace the missing one. There is a place in Oakland that does trailer parts called 6 Robbless and they close at 4:30 so I needed to be quick about getting to the boat and back in time. I made it there by about 4:15 and was able to get a new set of dust covers. That place was in a VERY sketchy area of Oakland - as in people hanging around burned out cars on the side of the road. I survived!

On my home from the boat I decided to go to the West Marine store in Alameda. I was going to get some stainless steel hardware for attaching my fire extinguisher and smoke alarm. The service person there was very helpful and I ended up buying some cheap PFDs for when I have any guests on the boat for a cruise. I also decided to buy a marine fire extinguisher instead of the household one I had bought. I will use the household one and mount it in the truck. I now also have bolts and washers and nuts to attach the mount in the engine well area.

I went through all the lines on the boat and tried to figure out what they are for. Most of them I was able to figure out. Seems I have a lot of double-ended spinnaker sheets to choose from. I also found the mast lifting bridle which is good as I needed that to lift the mast. There were a couple mystery lines but I was sure that when I need them they will become less of a mystery.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how to protect the mast. Since I have it down it is a good time to do anything that I am planning to do before I put it up. Shopped around and came across a product for protecting anodized aluminum called Woody Wax. Yeah it sounds strange but looked like a good product so I ordered some up. I used that on the mast and it does look a bit better although it didn’t look bad to begin with. Now the grey is a bit more grey and bit less chalky looking. Hopefully it will protect it and keep it looking nice.

I have several B&G instruments and am missing a couple covers. The small gauges were easy but the chart-plotter was a problem. It is a Zeus 2 7” and the B&G website has the part numbers for replacement sun covers but I couldn’t find them for sale anywhere and they don’t sell them directly from their website. I did find covers for a Zeus 3 7” and the cover looked identical from the pictures. Although It was only a $30 part I decided to call B&G customer support to check - sounded easy. Of course they are East coast Mon-Fri hours so one morning at work I called and was 7th in the queue. 3 hours later I was up to 3rd in the queue but had to hang up as I had an in-person meeting I had to go to. I guessed that they must be dealing with some really difficult technical issues and that is why it moved so slowly. I decided to try a different time of day on my next attempt. Seeing another opening in my calendar a couple days later I tried again. I was 6th in queue when I got on. 4 hours later I was 1st in the queue but by this time it was the end of the day on the East Coast. I stayed on for a while thinking that maybe they would work late. Finally, after seriously falling for sunk cost fallacy, hung up at 5pm my time after being 1st in queue for 2 hours. A bit frustrated by having spent so much time on hold waiting I decided to google to see if there was some tirade on the internet about B&G customer service. Well there totally was! Turns out that they do usually have pretty bad customer service which is frustrating as they are a premium product but in addition to that they recently got hacked and their phone system has been down for a couple weeks. So I put it all together. The only reason the queue moved is because the person at the front of the queue hung up in frustration and so on. I decided to take a chance and buy the Zeus 3 sun cover. Well it came and sure enough it does not fit. It is very close but no cigar. So now I need to send it back to where I bought it from and see if I can get another one that is the correct one. Good thing is that this is going to be a spare as the one on it works. One of the things I am learning about owning a boat is when I buy anything I order a spare at the same time.

I decided to consult the internet on suggestions for a good PFD for me to use. I got some good suggestions and ideas and decided on a model of PFD and also a harness as well. They haven’t arrived yet but are on the way. So will soon be sporting a Spinlock 6D and matching harness line.

There is a hole from where a light used to be in the cabin that I am thinking would make a great location for an iPad mounting arm. I am thinking about how to strengthen it and attach a mounting arm for an iPad. I have the arm purchased which is a nice piece of machined aluminum and carbon fiber. A colleague at work was talking about her husband having a machine shop in the garage at home and loves tinkering and building things. She mentioned that he would love to collaborate on a project and so I figured this would be the perfect project to work on with him. They are currently on vacation so when they get back I will talk with him. I am thinking some sort of plate on the back and front that bolt together to strengthen the attachment point and then attach the arm to it. Problem is to get a large backing plate through a small hole. I am thinking some interlocking longer skinny pieces that can be slid in and then bolted together would work well. Anyway, that is a project in the works.

In the front v-berth area there are a couple hatch covers and one is missing. They are made of reinforced wood. I noticed a wood working shop right next to the lockers at the marina and there was someone there working. I got to chatting and he does cabinetry work on the weekends and this just happens to be where he got a good deal on a shop. I asked him about making me another hatch cover and he agreed to do it. He mused that he should do more marine work considering he is at a marina. He said it would take a couple weeks and he is around most Saturdays. I left one of the remaining two with him to copy.

Met some other people in the marina now and am starting to network a bit. Found a place that I can take the trailer to get it worked on and that I can clean it up and repaint it. Met a guy who just finished the single-handed Trans Pac race so am eager to pick his brain on things. Met another guy who does a lot of carbon fiber work and seems to know everyone so he will be a good resource. He also makes an emergency rudder kit as well.

All of this brings me to mast raising yesterday…

I decided to go over to the boat on Friday night so I could get an early start on Saturday and I am glad I did. Sleeping on the boat was nice. It was quite comfortable and with the hatches open there was a very pleasant breeze going through. That meant I got a good night’s sleep and was able to get an early morning start. First order of business was to do undo all the shipping ties we had on the mast and sort out all the lines. After that I was able to do the mast waxing process. It wasn’t hard but took a bit of time to complete. While I was doing that I also lubricated all the sheaves with some Lanakote. I ate some bars I brought for breakfast and drank the can of Red Bull I had tucked into my box of food. Next thing was to slide the mast down so I could reconnect the wind indicator and instrument package at the top of the mast. That all went smoothly. After that the next thing was to reconnect all the wiring in the mast. That meant moving the mast back to where it steps to the deck and putting the hinge pin in. That took a bunch of tries as things were catching and every time something caught I had to secure the mast again sort it out and continue moving it back. I got stuck at one point sliding the mast on the roller past the spreaders. Problem was that I needed to lift it over the spreaders and at the same time push it back all the while the mast was getting close to its balance point to I needed to keep some weight on it. Luckily there was someone nearby that I asked to help me with that. I was then able to easily get it in place and get the hinge pin in. With that I relaxed a bit as I got ready for the wiring challenge. The mast was at least secure in place.

After a break I started feeding wire down the pole that supports the mast inside the cabin. After a couple tries I was finally able to get it feeding and went down in the cabin to pull it through. It was a tight fit so it took me lots of trips up and down to get it all fed through. I had to fix one bit of wire that had the insulation torn off by the process. I then spent the next two hours inside the cabin all twisted up around the wiring junction box putting all the connections back. It took me a while to get it all connected up. Luckily it all appeared logical based on the couple pictures I had taken of it before pulling it apart and also just general thoughts about what should go where. Lots of zip ties and several different configurations of leading the wires later and I had it all wired up. I tested all the instruments connected through it and everything seemed to be working. Sealed up the box and on to the next step in the process. I took a long break and re-read all the instructions for raising the mast several times. I spent a lot of time sorting out all the lines, halyards and everything else that attaches to mast and pours out of the various holes, sheaves and the bottom. I also got the spinnaker pole out and rummaged around in the box of lines for a line to winch the mast up. The manual calls for a spinnaker sheet but all the sheets I have are double-ended ones and not suitable. It also called for a snatch block for the bow. It was then that the purpose of one of the mystery lines from the previous week’s review of lines made sense. There was a single long line with a rather large block on it. I was wondering what it would be used for and as I was thinking about raising the mast it all made sense. So I went ahead and rigged it up, along with the mast lifting bridle and did a last check that all my lines were free and clear and not tangled. At this point I asked my neighbor a couple boats over to help me. He was move than happy to help and ended up making it a lot easier. I could have done it by myself but it would have taken much longer to run around the boat at every moment to check things. I winched the whole thing up and it went very smoothly. Only one problem we had, well sort of two problems but one main one was that when we had everything up we had snagged a halyard and it was rather tight. In the middle of sorting that out someone needed us to move vehicles so they could get their trailer out. My new friend Todd went down with my keys and moved my truck while I sorted out the line. I was able to release the shackle end of the halyard which was attached to the bow pulpit and with a bit of a twang as it released got the halyard untangled.

At this point I was pooped and took a break and drank quite a bit of water. I ended up going through over 3 liters of water for the day. Rather than putting the boom and vang on I decided to tidy up and call it a day. Well, tidying up took another hour. I had to figure out the backstay and then tidy up all the halyards and run them through all the blocks making sure they weren’t tangled and ran free. I tidied up inside the boat and then made several trips to the locker to put things away. Finally just before 5 and with a 10 hour day behind me I headed home exhausted but happy since I had accomplished what I set out to, mostly.

I was looking for somewhere to get some dinner but couldn’t get signal on my phone to get any good recommendations in the Richmond area. I will have to check out where the local good places are before I head up there. Instead, I decided to go to my local ramen place, Dohatsuten, for dinner. I enjoyed a nice big bowl of ramen, some edamame and a couple draft Sapporo beers. It was a good end to the day.

I wasn’t sure what I would do on Sunday. I could have gone back to the boat to put the boom on and sort out the boat cover, I also could have gone to Stern Grove to see Patti Smith in concert. I could have done any number of other things but when I woke up in the morning I decided to do none of those and just hang around at home and relax - so that is what I have done today. I have done laundry and a couple chores around the apartment but mostly I have just relaxed and I feel good for it. Two weeks to labor day and I am determined to get the boat in the water. Next weekend I am going camping so probably won’t get any boat work done. I do need to pick up the EPIRB and MOB, I also need to change over the AIS transponder and the VHF license. So, there is still lots to be done.