Cabin Top

We finally committed, and ripped into the cabin top properly. Yesterday we did the first full sand, today the weather has been crap and I've just been tinkering, but I am hoping by the end of tomorrow we will have the filling and fairing done and sanded and it will be ready for priming.

Actual visible progress.

After removing the horn I got to see why Kamalii
 used to be called The Green Machine.

Pad-eyes on the cabin top for the mizzen staysail used
to be painted. Props to Isi for her top polishing job.

Gas Warfare 2: This Sucks

Oh shit. Literally.

After being proud of myself fixing up the holding tank last week, yesterday we had to have the tank pumped out again. Having observed how pathetic the vent pipe for the tank is, we told the dock staff to only partially crack open the cock on the vacuum line so we could slow the flow rate.

It started well, until Emma called out that there was a loud whistling coming from her cabin. I raced down, pulled her bed apart, lifted the covers, and...holy crap! The "rigid" 200 gallon polyethylene holding tank had collapsed like a plastic bag - I thought it had to be stuffed. Quickly shutting off the vacuum the whole tank immediately rebounded to almost correct shape again - don't knock modern materials!

Now I have to empty Emma's cabin out again so I can get to the tank level sender unit and fix up the seal again (that is where the whistling was coming from) and will need to check all vent line plumbing. Given that the fitting for the vent line is just too small to handle any kind of serious suck, I have made use of a spare fitting point in the top of the tank and fitted a sizeable ball cock on a riser; now when we empty out using the dock's nuclear-powered pump-out we can open the cock to ensure the tank can vent fast enough.

Remember folks, 25%...

Gas Warfare

Kamalii's holding tank for the heads is located under the port side cabin berth, where Emma "dwells". For some time she has been complaining of bad smells in her cabin, especially when a head is flushed, but quick checks of the plumbing etc found nothing. On the weekend we got serious and stripped everything out of her cabin and opened it up so I could have proper inspection.

The tank was retrofitted in the '90's and is a very large plastic tank. As soon as I put some pressure on the top of the tank and it flexed I got hit with a scent that I'm betting Chanel will not be launching any time soon. Some bouncing around for a bit  revealed that the o-ring seal on the tank gauge sender unit was all distorted, and the gases were leaking out around it. I had noticed the last time we emptied the holding tank that there was big vacuum formed in the tank, with air continuing to rush in through the vent pipe for several seconds after we disconnected the pump. It turns out that the dockside holding tank pump-out system is so bloody powerful that the tank vent pipe can't keep up with the flow rate and the tank actually collapses slightly under vacuum, which also sucked the o-ring out of position. All fixed now, and I replaced the old vent hose for good measure. We will have to tell the dockside staff to go easy on the pump-outs. Oh, and guess what grows on the surface of the contents of a holding tank? Nothing good...

Someone once said to me they reckoned the average boat owner spends about 10% of their time just fixing toilet problems. That's a ridiculous assessment - it's at least 25%.

Upper Saloon Almost Done

The headliners are all back up, new lighting in, etc, and she looks great. We have some varnishing we will do this week, and that will be that job ticked off.

Josh Doheny

Very sad to learn that Josh Doheny passed away in February. Josh welcomed us into her home in Hawaii when we passed through and was such a delight, telling us stories about Kamalii and Larry, and so thrilled that Kamalii had been brought back to life again. Despite age and health starting to take their toll Josh was full of the joy of life and made me realise that by "adopting" Kamalii I had become part of a much larger story.

Josh told me about a trip to New Zealand back in the day, and how excited she was that Kamalii was going back there again. The other month I had taken my daughter to the doctor, and while we were there one of the senior doctors came into the room exclaiming "You own that boat!". Turns out he remembers the day Kamalii first sailed into Auckland back in the '70's, he said "She was the first real super-yacht we had ever seen!". No doubt Josh was on board. Small world.

Josh Doheny

Cool Pic

Simon sent through this cool shot from our trip down from the USA, which I had not seen before.

Headliners

Finished painting the upper saloon headliners today. We also did a bit more scraping of the cabin top. Just a bit. You could almost be forgiven for thinking we are kind of dodging that job...

I have also finished installing new LED pelmet lights in the saloon, which have made a big improvement in the overall lighting situation. I also have some new LED down-lights to replace the crappy old incandescent units. With the headliners out I also found wiring terminations above the nav table for overhead lights which had never been installed. I'll probably install some red lights for night running.

Hopefully tomorrow I will start reassembling the saloon.

S*** of a Day

So I spent several hours disassembling and unbolting the dodger. No major problems. Then the time came to pull the frame off the cabin top. Oh shit. It has been bedded down in some sort of uber-compound, probably 3M 5200 or some other hyper-adhesive crap that should never see the light of day on a boat. In any case, getting it off was going to do more damage to the cabin top than it was worth, so I decided that it will have to stay in place and we will just have to do the standard mask-around when painting.

As always, bolting it back together took twice as long as taking it apart, and the weather gods decided to start hitting me with short, sharp downpours as soon as all the bolt holes were open. Ugh. Long story short: a full day of hard work with nothing to show for it.

Rum time.

PS: Thanks for all your help, Sarah!

Stripped Naked

To strip the cabin top properly we need to remove the dodger, which means removing the aft headliners in the upper saloon to get to the bolts...which means I may as well strip all the headliners out to paint them now...which means I may as well tidy up all the unfinished wiring from when she was being refitted...which means I may as well rip out the pelmet fluorescent lights, convert the circuits to 12VDC and fit in LED strip lighting...are you starting to get the idea of how things go when working on boats?

The upper saloon after today's efforts. Note the removal section in the middle for lifting out the engine.

Didn't actually remove the dodger today - constant rain showers. Hopefully tomorrow.