Lazy jack repair

When we arrived to the marina this weekend, the Vberth was dry as a bone, so my anchor locker fix is holding. That meant a day of sailing instead a day of repairs.

The bay wasn't wild enough to be scary, but it was choppy enough to keep us on our toes. I only managed to snap a couple photos with the iPhone while we were out because it was just too rocky to bring up the expensive cameras.

However, no amount of rocking and rolling could deter Tex from napping. He'd get rolled off the cushions and then just climb back on top of them and flop down again.

At some point during the ride, the wind whipped around the lazy jacks enough that they came loose, so I actually paid some attention to them -- or what was left of them -- while cinching them back up.

The U-bolts that held the line in place towards the end of the boom had chafed  the line through on both sides. I dug through our storage bins and found more line of the same size. We don't really use the lazy jacks, but since it was easier to tape one line to the other and work it through the system than it was to climb the mast and remove the dangling blocks, I replaced the line.

For the most part it was smooth operation, but I was a little ticked that the U-bolt tore up the new line a but before I even finished getting it into place.

Despite the nick in the new line, it's now working properly. Dixie Belle kept a strict watch through the entire process.

Another job done -- that I wasn't planning to do.

And afterwards I was rewarded with a steak so fat it was actually too heavy for the neighbor's grill. The arm collapsed halfway through the grilling process, and he barely saved them from ending up in the water!

Lessons learned: Don't bother with lazy jacks, and don't overload cantilevered grills.

I've got gas

Diesel, that is. I mean, we've always had it, we just had no idea how much.

When we purchased Gimme Shelter, the fuel gauge showed 3/4 of a tank. After a trip to Galveston, it still showed 3/4 of a tank. We'd add five gallons of diesel, 3/4 of a tank. 

I finally crawled down in the lazarette and ground the positive cable on the fuel level sender. Hey, guess what? The fuel gauge moved. I immediately put a new fuel level sender unit on my Christmas list.

Thanks to my parents, one showed up in my stocking, and we finally set aside a work weekend.

Swapping a sending unit is a piece of cake. It's five screws and two wires. The hard part is getting to the tank. Luckily our rusted out hot water heater had been removed before we bought the boat creating easy access, which I don't think the previous owner ever had.

The old sender had some serious nastiness on the float, and it was almost too swollen to get it out of the tank.

When we turned the key, the gauge no longer showed 3/4 full. In fact, it showed less than 1/4. We then poured in a few gallons of diesel out of a jerry can just to make sure it would move. We turned the key back on, and sure enough ...

It felt good to tick a repair off our list. 

But then I took apart the refrigerator lid. It was rotting and growing fuzzy mold. I decided there was no salvaging it, so I had to bring it home to measure and build a new one this week.  There was just no way we could put something that was already molding back into the boat.  

We also thought we had found a newer more modern mid-ship hatch at the Boater's Resale shop, but after measuring about six times we decided it was just a little too small for the cutout, so we resolved ourselves to ordering more acrylic and Dow Corning 791 to attempt lens replacement for the third time and finally stop our leaking. After repairing the hatch twice already and still having leaks, I just can't take any chances that this time will not fix it.  

Then we tried to talk ourselves into buying a 16,500 BTU marine air conditioner, but after even more measuring and calculations, we decided that a unit that big pulling 20 amps might trip the breakers in Gimme Shelter if we were running the AC and any other electric device at the same time.  Not to mention that it wouldn't fit anywhere except in the closet. Even though our closet is not usable right now anyway, I had hoped to use it in the future. Especially when we have so much room under the settees.  

THEN I took the alcohol stove apart to survey the galley and decide if we really wanted to install the propane oven or not. There's enough space, but still no decision on whether it's worth it.  I'm so scared to cut up my kitchen! 

The to-do list and opportunities to spend money never end. However, as my dog was standing on my chest insisting on going outside at 4:30 a.m., I stepped outside and was reminded why we mess around with boats.  

One of those days

We had a busy weekend planned.

I wanted to get the leaking hatch fixed correctly, get Gimme Shelter moved over to her new berth at Watergate Yacht Center, have a huge barbecue with friends at the new marina, and most importantly, do some sailing.

I got there early Friday with a new hatch lens cut from the correct 1/2" acrylic and a tube full of Dow Corning 791.

I quickly had the 1/4" lens popped out and spent at least a half hour scraping and cleaning silicone off the metal frame. Then I carefully taped everything up again, opened up my new tube of sealant and fit the new lens in place. Perfection -- or so I thought.

After having my previous lens pop out on me when I began installed the latches, I decided to walk away from this one and let it sit overnight before I touched it. I went to bed patting myself on the back.

Then Saturday morning I got up and tried to install the weather stripping.

Oops. The weatherstripping was supposed to go on the inside lip of the frame with the lens sitting on top of it. With the lens glued in, there was no way to attach it.

I thought, that's ok, there's no way this thing is leaking anyway. I'll save the weatherstripping for next time.

Then I tried to install the latches with their fresh rubber O-rings.

I screwed them in. They cinched up on the acrylic and sealed well.

Then I tried to shut the hatch.

The latches were too far forward.

I traced this lens off the old lens, and the holes for the latches were too far forward!

I ever so gently forced the hatch shut by shouting an expletive and stomping on it.

After wasting $30 the first time around, I've spent another $50 and my hatch still isn't right.

I'm guessing the lens I replaced was not the original and the person who replaced it put the latches too far forward, which is why it was cracked at the latches in the first place. They need to be moved a full 1/4" back!

What's the old phrase, measure twice, cut once? Guess I should have double checked everything.

On the upside, the new lens looks great and doesn't leak at all. I think we're just not going to attempt to open it ever again.

Going cheap and getting burned

I always get on to Mary about planning and taking logical steps -- not jumping into purchases before we have measurements, not sending out wedding invitations before we have a set date and location -- that kind of thing.

When we bought Gimme Shelter, the mid-ship Bomar hatch had a cracked lens and was leaking. It's been on the never-ending to-do list but didn't take priority until I ended up sleeping under the hatch in the rain and realized just how badly it was leaking. That's about the same time we realized the leak was also seeping into the headliner and warping it. It was time to move it to the top of the list.

I DID take measurements before I started. Unfortunately I only measured the length and width of the hatch, not the thickness of the acrylic lens.

Honestly, I was a little excited when I started this project because I thought, hey, this is going to be cheap because I can just use stuff from Home Depot instead of having to buy ridiculously priced boat parts to fix this.

Off I went to Home Depot and grabbed the only smoked acrylic they had in stock, which was only $25. I scored it and snapped it to the size we needed and then proceeded to cut the old lens free, so I could trace and cut the rounded corners. Everything was going to plan.

Once I removed the old lens, I immediately noticed it was much thicker than I had estimated. I weighed the pros and cons of replacing it with a thinner lens and decided that while the thinner one may crack sooner, if it lasts a year, it was worth it and we'd have the leak stopped, so let's just be cheap and progress with the project.

The first setback came when my dremel tool died after rounding just two corners. It was a really hot day and the tool was even hotter, so it wouldn't charge when I set it on the charger. I could have gone and bought a new corded dremel, but I was being cheap and didn't really want to have to go buy new tools for this project.

I got impatient and grabbed the jig saw. I was rounding the last corner when a big chunk snapped out of the plexi. Time to start over.

I carefully measured and scored another piece. Unfortunately, the snapping didn't go so well.

I was down to the last portion of my sheet large enough to make a new hatch. I decided scoring and snapping this one was too risky, so I began cutting it with the somewhat charged dremel. It died again. I let it charge another half hour and then got another five minutes out of it. After suffering in the heat all afternoon my neighbor loaned me his corded dremel and within 10 minutes I finally had a correctly cut sheet of plexi. Why didn't I just save myself a ton of frustration and go buy a new dremel in the first place?

Once the lens was cut, I rummaged through the toolbox and grabbed a very old tube of silicone, unplugged it with a drill bit and used that to seat the lens. Why did I use old silicone?

The next morning I stopped by West Marine to see what kind of UV protected silicone they had for the outer bead. The cheapest stuff was $16, so I went back to Home Depot and grabbed some indoor/outdoor waterproof window silicone for $3. The cheap disease had me in a death grip at this point. I was going to get this lens replaced for less than $30 and then brag about it over beers for at least the next two weekends!

Mary took time to mask off the lens, so our outer silicone bead would look nice.

I then went to town with the white silicone around the edges and did my best to get it into a nice smooth bead. It didn't look half bad.

One last job remained -- screwing the hatch dogs back onto the lens.

One problem -- the lens was too thin to snug the dogs up.

(As an aside, Bomar has a horrible latch design. These sort of mushroom shaped stoppers stick down through the hatch on a very small O-ring and then the handle screws onto them. Then the entire piece turns. It's like a third grader engineered it. In fact I called their customer service department to ask if they had an updated design because cinching down an O-ring when you still need it loose enough to turn is never going to be a great seal. The Bomar lady on the phone got pretty defensive and said if the O-rings on a hatch that was 31 years old were leaking, that certainly couldn't be considered a design flaw and I just need to do proper maintenance. I'm just going to say that the dogs on the Lewmar port on my Starwind sealed on the outside and only turned internally, so there was no chance of a leak ever. They could also be tightened or loosened. In other words, Lewmar actually engineered a real solution, they didn't just poke a stick through the hatch lens and call it good.)

We'd spent Sunday morning cruising through other marinas in our friends dinghy and showing off the pool of the new place, so at this point it was late Sunday afternoon. Once again it was super hot, and we were starting to get pressured for time.

I made a run to West Marine for large washers that I could shim the latches with. Now they DEFINITELY weren't going to be water proof, but maybe I could at least get them tight enough to lock the boat.

I think it was during my second attempt to install the latches that the unthinkable suddenly happened. I tipped up the latch for a better angle, and the lens fell out of the frame.

Yes, the super old silicone from my toolbox that I'd applied the previous day completely failed to hold the lens in the frame. I managed to grab it before it fell completely out and got white silicone on everything, but the damage was done. It was at this point I began cursing, and I'm not sure poor little Tex will ever be the same after hearing the things I said to the boat.

I calmed down, I gummed the lens back down in the frame and squished the white silicone back into place -- destroying the nice bead -- and I left.

Mary wanted to tarp up the boat in case it rained, but I just didn't care. I wanted to go home. I was tired of that hatch. I was tired of plexiglass. I was tired of silicone that didn't cure. I was tired of the horrible latches that only fit one particular thickness of plexiglass. And above all, I was super mad that I had been so cheap and muddled through this project instead of being patient and buying the correct tools and supplies for the job.

This morning I ordered a sheet of 1/4" acrylic for $36 and a tube of black Dow Corning 791 for $15. I'm also going to go pick up a new corded Dremel for $50.

Instead of telling stories about how I replaced my window for only $30, I'll repeat my cautionary tale about how I once went cheap, ruining an entire weekend, just to end up spending all the money I should have in the first place.

Repairing the damage

Our first weekend at Redfish Island had shaken us around so badly that an unsecured door to the bathroom ripped out of the bulkhead. Then we (Mary) ripped the mainsail on the way to Double Bayou. The Garmin GPS was in and out. The gear basket had been ripped off the binnacle, and the holding tank needed to be pumped out. After two weekend trips, Gimme Shelter needed some TLC.

I tackled the easy stuff first. Just a few dabs of wood glue and a new set of screws had the door back on its hinges and the gear basket back in place. Then came the tougher task of sewing up the sail.

I can put a button on a shirt, but that's about as advanced as my Boy Scout sewing training ever got. Luckily, Mary is quite the seamstress and even attempted to start a business doing boat upholstery -- until she realized she hated sewing boat stuff. It's just not that fun to do anything non creative. Then people wanted me to do all kinds of weird shaped seats, and they never came out as nice as I wanted.  Plus people would bring me their disgusting old motor boat seats, and I'd have to take them apart and work with the moldy fabric all day. I'm done with that!

Despite having all sorts of sewing implements it still took another $50 to get the correct Dacron patch material, heavy UV resistant thread, and large needles needed to patch the sail -- but at least we now have it ready for any future rips. West Marine and Sailrite both had more expensive options but all you really need is thread, a large sail needle and a patch. I did get a blister on my thumb from pushing the needle through, but a thimble would have solved that.  It took me a second to remember my zigzag stitch but once it came back it was a fairly quick job.  I think with any bigger of a rip though it would have been worth it to take the sail down and opt for basting and non sticky patch material.  Sewing through anything sticky is never fun.

Mary got down to business while I cleaned, cheered and checked out some baby ducks. We still haven't sailed with it so it is left untested.

So with Mary kicking up the action and doing the sail repair, I felt like I better do something too. When we got back to the house I got to work on the propane oven, cleaning all the nozzles, installing the new thermostat, painting the burners, and picking up new fixtures and hose. By the end of the weekend, we had fire. I was so scared Freddie was going to light himself on fire or explode the house the whole time!

However, now comes the task of crafting new gimbals to mount the oven and building a propane locker in the cockpit. With a boat, the work never ends.

Poop hose

Just when I thought summer was here, another cold front came through. The north wind blew all week and did two things, it tore apart our ratty bimini that we had left up, and it blew all the water out of the marina. Everyone was trapped at the docks, so with no sailing to be done, we tackled the first project on our list.

I don't know if the hoses in the head were originals, but it is quite possible. Hoses that had started their service a pristine white had turned brown, were very sticky to the touch, and stank worse than one of Dixie's farts.

Just opening the closet or an access panels to the bilge released the stench, and it was causing a problem because we couldn't actually store anything in the closet or under the V berth for fear that our sheets and towels would forever be permeated with that odor.  I ended up hanging all my "just-in-case" sweaters up on hooks all around our bed.  The hanging closet was one of the big selling points for this boat, and to me it was a priority to get it working.  Not to mention that we have only been using a small percentage of our storage on the boat because of the general smell and dirtiness.   

We opened all the ports, tore apart the bed, and got started. The clutter of having things apart is always a pain for us, but Dixie didn't seem to mind having extra pillows and blankets for her afternoon nap.

I thought I'd be smart with the entire project to minimize any spillage of refuse. We had pumped out the holding tank, so it was already "empty," but I knew from experience when replacing hoses and the head in the Seahorse that there was always something in the lines. I thought I was quite clever when I put a siphon into the toilet and sucked out all the standing water in that line. Then I suggested we prepare plastic bags and rubber bands, so that as soon as I removed a line we could tip it up and get a bag rubber banded over the end to keep filth from dumping all over us (mostly me).

This procedure had some success with only minimum drippage as I started with the hose running from the toilet to the Y-Valve. I thought to myself, "This might not be so bad."

It was bad. I genuinely can't tell if Fred was doing that much more work that me, or if he was just being a baby. 

I yanked the next hose which ran from the Y-Valve to the top of the tank, and the brittle plastic of the aged valve snapped right off. I suddenly had pee water running out on me from that hose and from the line that ran from the Y-valve to the overboard. Things only got worse from there. Every hose got harder and harder to pull -- most of them having to be cut.

Mary didn't escape the shit shower either. That's disgusting. While I was up in the V berth, she had started disconnecting the vent line and pump-out line in the closet. As I mentioned, we had avoided putting anything in the closet because it smelled horrible. Well, it's lucky we hadn't because she discovered our pump-out fixture was leaking and had dripped down the wall. Many Clorox wipes were used once those lines were removed.  Thank God I didn't have any clothes in the closet.  I don't know how I didn't notice how gross it was in there before.  My secret to avoid gagging is to just not breathe and pretend you're cleaning up something else. I had totally convinced myself I was cleaning dirt and sand out of the closet. 

Of course, the worst part was when I finally had to pull the outlet hose from the bottom of the tank. I knew there would be something in it, and I was ready to catch the mess. However, I wasn't ready for all the little petrified toilet paper balls that flooded into the bilge around my feet. This was the only time my gag reflex really got the best of me.

We took a break to clorox and vacuum out the bilge, so that theoretically the rest of our work would be completed in sanitary conditions. By the time we had all of the old hose out of the boat to begin measuring, I was not happy.  This was when the grouchiness really started come through. You know that moment in a project where everyone stops pretending to put on a good face and everyone is ready to say aloud how unhappy they are? We had reached it.

We needed 25'4" of hose. I was estimating this project at $500 because we were planning on using the black waste hose that runs about $11 per foot. I have yet to decide if it was fortunate or unfortunate that West Marine only had the white hose in stock. It was only $4.90 per foot, but if I have to do this project again in three years, I might just scuttle the boat.  You will not!

Around $250 later we returned from West Marine with new waste hose, new vent hose, a new Y-valve, a new T connector, and a few new clamps.  We really felt victorious at this point, little did we know how much work was left..

We started the vent hose first because I had to unstrap the holding tank and move it around to get to the rear vent connection. I connected the two tank connections to a T and then shoved the vent hose through a hole to Mary in the closet -- didn't reach.

We re-checked our measurements we had made off the old hoses.

We re-checked our cuts to see if there had been an error.

No errors.

It still didn't fit.

Mary made the second trip to West Marine for another three feet of hose, a coupler, and more clamps. (We later discovered a different hole in the closet that would have shortened the vent line's run, which explained why we came up so short, but at that point we had already added the extra vent line and strapped the tank back into place, so c'est la vie.)  At least it wasn't my math...

I managed to run the hose from the toilet to the new Y-valve and the hose from the Y-valve to the tank before the sun started to set and my arm strength completely gave out. I didn't know the heat gun trick until after the fact, but I will definitely never do another project like this without a heat gun to assist with sliding the hoses onto the tank, etc.

I gave myself a sink bath and stepped outside to enjoy the sunset.

It only took a moderate amount of rum before we forgot all about the lingering poo problem and were enjoying the evening with our marina friends.  I should also add that we were treated to a great prime rib dinner by the crew of the Tina Marie, which also helped alleviate the grouchiness. 

It was also one of those rare evening with low humidity that was perfect for sleeping with the windows open. We tried out our screen-covered companionway board for the first time. I love this thing so much, I wish we lived in a place where we could use it all the time.

Because we had no working facilities on the boat, and I made the mistake of drinking heavily before going to bed, I spent most of the night dreaming about waterfalls, so the dogs and I were up very early to make a walk to the bathhouse. That translated to me starting work on the hoses very early. I probably should have waited until after some coffee.

By 8 a.m. I had broken the nozzle off of the manual pump that pumps the holding tank overboard. This was disheartening because I knew it just added another $100 to the project.  I woke up to some loud profanity.

While we had cleaned the bilge after removing the hoses the previous day, when I unscrewed the broken pump and began lifting it out of the bilge, it proceeded to dump what seemed like a gallon of filthy water out all over me, and I ran with it dripping through the boat to get it out into the cockpit.

Mary went with me on our third trip to West Marine. On our way up the car we spotted this crab greedily eating another crab. It has nothing to do with the story, but I just thought it was weird.

After much searching on several different aisles of West Marine, we found an almost identical pump to the "Guzzler", and it was an open box special for $69!

The only problem was that there was a well-worn, barbed T-connection at one end of the pump, and although it seemed in re-usable condition, I could not get our hose over the flanges no matter how much dish soap I used as lube. I even tried talking dirty to it -- no luck. That's when Mary suggested the grinding attachment on the Dremel. 

I spent the next 15 minutes making a huge mess of plastic shavings and pitting and destroying the T connector. Total fail. I might have hurled the T through the boat. At this point Fred was pretty grouchy, so I let him go to West Marine by himself. I went over to the Tina Marie to enjoy some breakfast, and swap stories about male temper tantrums during projects.

I made the fourth trip to West Marine.

When I got back to the boat, Dixie greeted me at the bottom of the stairs, but Tex was nowhere to be found. Then I heard some rustling noises in the bow.

I guess curiosity got the best of him. I mean I had spent two full days hanging down into the bilge. Apparently he decided to investigate and got himself stuck in there. It was a nice moment of comedy relief until I realized he was soaked up to his armpits in the pee water that had leaked out of the broken pump. I carried him to the cockpit and called Mary back to the boat to wash him.

Thankfully the rest of the hoses cooperated and within 20 minutes I finally had everything connected and clamped. Everything in the system except the toilet, the tank, and the through-hull was new. 

It was at this moment, when I was exhausted and at my crabbiest that Mary was at her best. She gave me a hug (without even mentioning that I smelled like pee) and sent me off to have a beer while she re-cleaned the bilge. It was really my only choice. Poor Fred was noticeably frustrated and definitely done with this project. When I see him like that the easy part is when I can take over or help him out. It's much harder when there is nothing you can do.

The project still came very close to our $500 estimate because of the unexpected valves and pumps, but the boat now smells like roses. Well, actually it smells like rubber or new tires or something, but it's much more pleasant than before. I'm also now confident that after surviving that project, we can survive about anything. Well I'm sure it won't be the hardest thing we do, but the harder the project the greater the sense of accomplishment. Maybe that's what has us hooked.