Dodger Fitted

Now you don't see it...

Now you do...

Now we "just" have to finish sanding all the grab rails and varnish them and we can call the coach-roof "done" - except for all the paintwork touch-ups that I will leave until summer to do.

And the mainsail is off for some love and care, and while it is away we will get started on making a new mainsail cover, since the existing one passed it's use-by date about two seasons ago.

Varnish Time Again...sigh...

Doing some varnish maintenance in the upper saloon, just finished sanding. Using traditional varnish, not the Awlwood/Uroxsys product, so just one coat a day. Extended inconvenience for everyone.

Wheely Cool

My Mum and Dad gave me my birthday present tonight....f**king awesome!

How cool is that!

Have to get the boss machined to suit the helm. I'm conflicted a little; replacing the original wheel seems a bit sacrilegious. But the original wheel is a boring alloy number, and this is seriously cool!

And I'm Back...

Arrive at Auckland airport just before midnight, drive an hour to get home, sleep till midday, jet-lagged all to hell, get up and....fix the leaking shower sump pump. Welcome back to boating, James.

The Cabin Top Is Painted

Woohoo! Unseasonally warm and dry May weather made life easier for us, and we have finished painting the cabin top. Just as well, because tonight I fly out for Europe for two weeks, and when I get back I think I can be pretty sure the weather won't be so compliant.

Once we had the second coat of undercoat on it became pretty clear that a gloss white finish would be a poor choice - even with the matt undercoat the glare in direct sunlight made you flinch. So we went with the traditional blue, and I'm glad we did, as it has come up looking great.

We used a single-pack Altex enamel paint system, but for the top-coats we added their 2K additive which basically converts the paint into a two-pack cross-linked polymer, and makes the paint harder and glossier. It also made it really nice to roll on. Will definitely use the product again for other outside jobs.

And now, I give you the finished result...

Second undercoat. I think you can get a feel for the "glariness" of it.

First top coat.

Final top coat.

OK, not quite finished, we still have to varnish the handrails and reinstall the dodger etc, and I have a couple of small patches I want to touch up, but I'm ticking this one off the list!

Off to Europe, so will be silent for next few weeks.

Gas Warfare 3: The Final Crapter

The extra vent on the holding tank has worked! Pumped the tank today and no collapse of the tank at all.

Now I'll just brace myself for the next toilet-related job...

Painting At Last

We've started painting the cabin top. Got the primer and first undercoat on this weekend. We had all but decided to finish it in white, but had some concerns that it might be a bit bright and "glary", and now that we have the undercoat on we think our concerns may be well founded. So may end up going with the traditional sky blue after all.

Primer.

First undercoat.

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%.