Xmas Rush

I know I haven't posted for some time, but that does not mean I have not been busy. We are headed away for two weeks on the 27th, so we're working hard to have everything ready.

I have been racing to finish the new dinghy mounting chocks on the foredeck before we go. Today I have the dinghy locked securely in place on the foredeck, but still some things to do. I will post some pics later this week when it is more or less finished. Quite pleased with myself on that one.

Besides that it has been the usual endless list of jobs. I just had the sweet task of unblocking the starboard head - for the second time in a week. Sarah decided to throw a big wad of screwed up paper towels down the head, and it seems to be the gift that keeps on giving; you think it's all cleared and then there's another wad lurking in the vacuum tank that gets sucked into the line and jams it all up. I am soooo happy with Sarah....

I have made the tough decision to head away without a single pot of varnish on board; I will not be doing any brightwork while we are away. Let's see how I handle cold turkey...

Waitemata Woodys

Some nice pics of Kamalii on the Waitemata Woodys site, which covers wooden boats in the Auckland region.

http://waitematawoodys.com/2014/11/16/kamalii-sailing-sunday/

A Great Day's Sailing

Headed out sailing on Sunday with friends. Had a great day's sailing in 20 knot winds, ran the gib and reefed main and mizzen, and were routinely trucking along at 9-10 knots. 

Go-Fast Upgrade

It came to my attention a while ago that the fuel lines in the engine room (apart from the much newer genset lines) were for the most part, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty well f***ed. I pulled one off the other week and bent it, and the outer casing just cracked and broke apart. Hmmm, not good.

So the last two nights I have busily replaced the entire supply side fuel lines, including all the manifolds. Now all I have to do is bleed the thing and make sure it's all good. Unfortunately I also have the starting battery bank alternator off the engine being serviced and a few other things, so it's going to be a mad dash this Friday evening to get everything back together and working again so we can head out sailing on Saturday. Fingers crossed.

Replacing the old black hose with new RED hose should make the boat go much faster!  :-)

Skimping on materials?

I had a productive weekend varnishing etc - I reckon I have a few more days worth and that's the topsides all done. Then I can start on putting some fresh coats on the masts...

I pulled the trim off around the hatch up forward in preparation for finishing the painting in the forward cabin. This has exposed the raw edge of the teak decking. Only 1 3/4" thick up here, looks like the builders were skimping.  :-)

The joint mid-image is the plank seam. You can see some oakum caulking sticking out.

It's Spring. That means....varnish!

Finally starting to get some decent breaks with the weather on the weekends, so have hooked back into the varnishing. Basically I just need to finish off the cockpit and a few trim pieces, and then it's just the capping rail to do, which I will probably leave bare for this season as there is no point in doing it until we are ready to paint the bulwarks, and I can't see that getting done this season when there is sailing to be done!

Three coats in on the fascia trim around the seating area. Once that's done just have to do the faces under the seats. Doesn't the freshly re-caulked deck look nice.

We plan on repainting all the white when we do the main cabin top, which we plan on being this summer's big project.

Sailing Again...

Winter draws to a close. Sort of.

We headed out for the long Labour weekend, the traditional start of the sailing season in NZ, and traditionally crap weather. And it didn't disappoint. A mixture of no wind, a little bit of good wind, and a dose of way too much wind. But at least we were sailing!

So we had one great day.

Crew hard at work in a howling millpond.

The autopilot works! Finally free from the helm when short-handed.

Motor-sailing under jib only.

Sarah earns her keep, sorting out a fouled halyard.

Happy to be (motor) sailing again!

25 knots on the nose.

Becs pays tribute to Neptune...   Gusting to 35 knots.

Forward Cabin

We have finished painting out the front of the forward cabin, and now need to paint the aft end walls. The paint never really looked too bad, but once painted you can really see the difference.

Fresh paint on the left hand side of the photo, old paint on the right.

A Major Improvement to Kamalii

What you see to the left is probably the single most important improvement I have made to Kamalii.

Prior to this upgrade, Kamalii suffered from a pretty serious problem. After a full days sailing it was typical to finally lay to anchor, get everything packed away, and then settle in for drinkies, only for the horror to strike.

Lacking a proper latch on the icebox in the fridge, under sail the door would fly open on the icebox and all our ice trays would get dumped all through the fridge, slowly melting in the process. This meant that on many occasions we were left without any ice for sundowners.

"Holy shit!", I hear you say, "I hope James kept his Coastguard membership up to date! What a mayday situation!"

Now, all is bliss. While we defrosted the fridge I fit a proper bolt to the door (which you can see centre of the picture), so now our ice cubes are safely secured within their frozen domicile, even under the harshest of sailing conditions. It's great when you knock off the really important jobs. Life is good.

Interior Decoration

We've started painting out the V-berth. The shot below is after sanding up and prepping for the first coat. After this we plan to move onto the starboard guest cabin.

And the caulking continues...

Have now finished the cockpit. The foredeck is next, but I think that can wait for some time - summer is nearly here and I bloody well want to go sailing!

The caulking at the lower edge of the picture is after having removed the tape, with no sanding. Couldn't do that with Sikaflex; this Simson product is way easier to use.

One Down, A Rather Large Number To Go...

Locker completed. Plan on painting out the V-berth area next.

Daylight Saving has arrived. Soon we'll be able to get into the rest of those outside jobs, and then (hard to believe) we might actually do some sailing again!

Bilge Troll

Found our resident bilge troll hidden in a locker, redecorating.

I love you, honey. x.

Spent yesterday stripping, painting and reinstalling the raw water take-off on the engine for the transmission cooler, as it had developed a weep. And of course have been doing some of the never-ending deck caulking work, as weather permits. I do hope we will have it all done for summer... (he says unconvincingly).

Interior Painting

The interior of Kamalii is pretty good, but there is painting and varnishing to be done etc. Sharon has made a start, ripping (slowly) into one of the large forward cabin lockers.

Sand, fill, fair, repeat...

As an added bonus, getting the panel off you can see in the picture means I got to fix up the switch for the gas solenoid control panel - Off is now actually Off (A minor triviality that has been bugging me since Day 1).

Regulated

I have finally, after 18 months, gotten around to installing the smart alternator regulator that has been sitting in a draw all this time. This replaces the standard alternator regulator on the house alternator and allows for more efficient charging, proper float voltages, and other goodies like equalisation charges.

In true Kamalii style I have gone over the top on the installation and installed the regulator in an IP-rated stainless steel housing with a set of control switches and indicator lights, so you can see what is happening at a glance and easily switch modes.

Just need to add some decals so you know what it is you are looking at. And yes, that is a solid bronze watertight bulkhead it is mounted to - well spotted.

The internals. It all gets a bit complicated once you start hooking the temperature sensors, oil pressure cut-in switch, remote controls, etc, etc.

While doing the install I also took the chance to fix up something that has always annoyed me. The main house alternator is a 150A 24V unit which requires some fairly heavy cabling. In order to keep the cable runs short "they" have hooked up the alternator directly to the batteries without going through the battery isolator switch (same thing for the engine start bank and alternator too). This means if you isolate the battery bank the alternator +ve is still live - as I found out early on in the piece in California. I have now installed a separate isolator switch in the +v line between the battery and alternator, which is actually a nice set-up since I can now isolate the alternator if I want without shutting off the house supply.

Some Progress...

We have just about finished re-caulking the aft cabin top, and are now doing the cockpit. Once that is done we'll either re-caulk the forward cabin top (and install the chocks for the tender), or finish the varnish in the cockpit; I'll wait and see what type of gunk I feel more like being covered in. A big thanks to my Dad, who continues to help with the hard jobs.

The boat awning is back up. I took it in for some repairs after the last big blow when it got a couple of tears in it. I told them to "fix the tears, clean up the work leather, and generally do what needs to be done to make it good."  I should have known better than to give "general" instructions. They ended up completely restitching the entire thing! It'll be good for another 20 years, but "bill-shock" is an understatement...

I've switched to Simson caulking, much
easier to work than Sikaflex.

Going through lots of tape...

Lazarette hatches.

Cutting out the old caulking is the real work.

The circus is back in town.

Isi does her part. Did a good job too - unlucky
for her, as she is now officially "Ship's Polisher".

Update

Uh-oh! Another post titled "Update", you know this means nothing is happening.

Well, not quite, but the weather has been crappy and work continues to interfere with my boating, so progress has been patchy. Here's what I've done in the last few weeks.

• Half way through installing a smart regulator for the big house battery alternator.
• Half way through installing a dock-side water hookup that directly feeds the house water system, so we don't have to keep filling the tanks.
• Done a little more deck caulking (the weather's making that impossible).
• The starboard side shower always had this annoying habit of turning itself on, so we shut it off. I was going through some boxes of bits the other day and found a replacement cartridge for the mixer, which has fixed it up nicely.

Lot's of half-done jobs. Sigh, winter sucks.

The galley oven is playing up, and I have to accept it is probably nearing the end of it's serviceable life. As we have two monster generators which get run for everything else I'm thinking of replacing it with an electric oven, but keeping gas for the stove. Happy to hear the thoughts of anyone who has done this on their boat...

Danger, Will Robinson!

Kamalii can now communicate with me. Or rather, she can spit out a panic if she starts to fill with water.

I have installed a GSM telemetry unit that I have hooked up to the existing bilge alarm system so that if any of the three bilge alarm zones (Forward, Engine, Aft) should activate then Sharon and I will get a text message telling us which alarm is going off, and also when the alarm ceases. If either of us do not acknowledge the alarm within 5 minutes it will then send a text to my father as back-up.

I should say that Kamalii's bilges are dry to the point that a fibreglass boat would be envious, but better safe than sorry (and of course I can never resist the opportunity to be a geek.)

Bilge alarm junction box (left) hooked up to isolation relays that signal the telemetry unit.

Telemetry unit.

All assembled. The extra cable glands are for cabling for a Low Battery alarm input, and for an output from the telemetry unit that will trigger the bilge alarm so I can remotely send a text message and confirm that everything is working. Will finish installing those this week.

Sump Dramas

How complicated can it be to get water from the galley sink to the outside of the boat? As it turns out, pretty damn complicated.

The galley sink sits pretty much at the waterline, so just draining through a seacock is not going to cut it. I don't know what the original set-up was like, but the previous owner installed a new sump system which, to say the least, has been the bane of our lives since Day One. Float switches that get jammed, plumbing hooked up to the wrong ports on the sump, a pump not suited to pumping dirty water full of scraps, fat and food scraps building up in the sump until it completely clogs, and all with the end result of dirty sink water spilling into the bilge on a regular basis. Every four weeks or so I would have to pull the whole sump out to clean it out in order to keep it working.

Enough is enough!

With the latest failure causing large amounts of crap to pour into the bilge and the ensuing clean-up, I marched up to the chandlery store in a righteous rage and bought a proper macerator pump, new fittings, hoses, etc, and proceeded to deal to the evil little ****.

So, here is a graphic of how you transfer the water from the sink to the outside of the boat on Kamalii.

I'd previously installed a capacitive level sensor hooked up to a timer circuit and relay, with a manual/auto/off control switch, which has been a load more reliable than the old float switch. Now with a proper macerator pump (instead of the old Par diaphragm pump) which is hooked up to the proper pick-up, all the crap actually gets vacuumed out of the sump; I went from two inches of rice and pasta scraps to clean bottom in just three cycles.

Still some tidying up to do, but that will wait for a month until I am 101% happy that all is good with the new installation. And here's hoping I never have to open that bloody sump again. (Dream on, it's a boat...).

Decks

The weather has continued to be crappy over the last week, but we have more or less finished the port side of the aft cabin. We have re-caulked the timbers, re-plugged as necessary, and given the whole thing a moderate sanding; not down to completely fresh timber, but pretty much smoothing it out and getting rid of all the really worn sections. Even though the teak has been sanded and scrubbed to death over the decades there is still loads of meat left - at least 1/2", which would be gobsmackingly thick for any modern teak deck. And that's just a laminate on the cabin tops!

Freshly done decks compared to the lazarette hatches which we have not done. I'll try and get the next photo in focus...

Rubber Fetish

So, after my last post, Winter decides to turn it on for a weekend, and we were able to rip into some of the deck caulking. We managed to get the port-side aft cabin top done, which has nailed the leak near the mizzen mast. One more leak off the list, just three to go...   We plan on re-caulking all the cabin tops and cockpit floor over winter, so here's hoping the weather plays nice.

Cutting out the old caulking. Note the hole at the mizzen base (partly covered by the sheet), this is where the radar cable goes through the deck. The caulking under the teak capping had failed and was letting water in.

I found using a Dremel with a drill bit in it was perfect for cleaning out the grooves of any remaining rubber.

Minty-fresh decks.

I'll post a shot of the finished work in a few days when the rubber has cured properly and we have given it a final sand (weather permitting).

New Toys and General Update

Winter sucks. It's official.

Progress is slow because it's dark and wet, and my motivation levels seem to be low. We had a big blow come through the other night that was way stronger than forecast - clocked 60 knot winds in the marina. Sharon and I were up all night, and unfortunately the sun canopy copped some damage before we could get it down. Let me tell you, running around in your underwear at midnight in 40 knot winds and driving rain in the middle of winter trying to pull down what has essentially become a gigantic kite is not a great deal of fun!

Apart from some repairable damage to the canopy, we got a couple of slightly bent stanchions and a burst fender, but otherwise were fine. Not so for a lot of other boats in the marina - one yacht a few slips down from us had moored his aft lines to his cockpit winches, and they got ripped clean out of his deck.

Turning to positive news, we now have a new autopilot installed. Yay! Have not had a chance to take it out for a sea trial yet, but I'm hoping having a working autopilot is going to make short-handed (i.e. less than 4) sailing a lot easier.

At last, my instrument cluster is actually a cluster!

The size of a piece of electronics on a boat is in direct proportion to its importance. On the left is the autopilot computer. On the right is the stereo amplifier.

And speaking of stereos, I found the main saloon speakers were clear but very weak in the bass. So I fixed that.

Monster sub-woofer installed in port saloon locker.

A Boring Post

I have nothing to report. I have been away overseas on business the last few weeks, so nothing has happened.

I do, however, have a brand new autopilot system sitting there ready to be installed...

Chill'n at Great Barrier Island

The view from the top, 2000ft up on Mt Hirakimata. Izzy and Sarah were troopers to climb up here.