Ventilated

John has opened up the hull at the stern where we found the soft planking. The water had indeed been coming in from under the mizzen runner backing block. The rot was quite localised, but unfortunately has affected the rib at the transom, so he has had to start cutting that out and will scarf in a new section. Of course, to get the bad inner planking out involved taking more outer planking out, and so it goes...

It's all a bit annoying, as it could of been easily dealt with when the transom was rebuilt, but at least it hasn't turned out to be a major job.

You can see the partially removed rotten top of the rib on the right hand side. 

Frankenplumbing

Well, the house water pump gave up. I had her serviced in California before we left, but I always suspected they didn't put the service kit in her they said they did, and sure enough the rotors are flogged out.

So, I have dropped in a triple-diaphragm pump in its place so we have running water, with the resulting temporary plumbing bomb site you see below. The thing is, I can buy three of these pumps, which combined will deliver the same water flow, and higher pressure than the old pump, for less than the cost of a service kit for the old pump! And they run way quieter as well, with the added bonus that I will have some built in redundancy in case a pump fails. So I have ordered two more and will plumb them all up in parallel using the existing water pressure switch as a master to switch them all together.

The old house pump, which is still a serious bit of kit (bronze double-displacement pump driven by 1/8HP DC motor), I'll keep and get round to servicing at some point and probably use it as a washdown pump.

Incoming!

Big blow on the way. We have managed to come up with a "quick stow" solution for the awning.

Slow Progress

The weather has been a real shit of late, which has made progress on brightwork, etc rather slow. We have finally gotten the rear of the cockpit finished, and have completed a quarter of the inside cockpit. Sharon has also been busily stripping the paint from the cabin sides, and both sides are now stripped.

The aft deck brightwork is almost done.

We've been doing a few inside jobs as well; fixed a leaky seal on one of the heads (such fun), and I am part way through plumbing, wiring and installing the frame for the washing machine. I also rewired the battery selector panel, which was previously a real screw-up of a setup, so now we can independently select house supply and engine supply from either bank. I've also started fitting new LED light units in the various lockers, and generally chipping away at that multitude of small jobs.

A Bit of History

Kamalii came with all the original drawings from Philip Rhodes office as well as letters between Rhodes and Doheny, and various other documents. An interesting document is a copy of a presentation given to the US Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers on the construction of Kamalii, which was delivered prior to her launch. I have scanned the report and posted it here for anyone interested.

Fizz, or lack there of

Should mention that I got "the man" down today to conduct a full galvanic check on the boat, as I have been concerned how fast we have been burning through zincs. She came up A1, with just the right amount of zinc and no bonding or stray current problems. Seems that with the huge amount of metal below the water (remember that bronze centreboard...) vs. the fact that we cannot over-zinc for fear of damaging the timbers, that we just have to accept that we will have small zincs that we burn through quickly.

The Little Things

I got the freshly varnished anchor chocks back together on the weekend. A little thing, but as with all little things on boats they turned out to be a protracted, fiddly, pain the arse. (And you can really see we need to get to those bulwarks...)

More Pics

I found a reasonable shot of Kamalii on the hard that I missed, and also a shot I took on the weekend from the other bank of the marina. Lighting was not good, but I think you can see the *massive* improvement.