Boat projects

Let me start with good news - authorities here in Canaries think the peak of pandemics here have been reached already a couple of days ago, the numbers of infected and dead are sinking. While state of emergency is likely to be prolonged until 26th of April, it is possible that also non-essential businesses will start opening on 9th of April. I hope it will work and more and more restrictions will be lifted in April.

We're ok and got somehow used to this situation and established new routine. It revolves a lot around food - going out for shopping, planning meals, cooking and eating. We will definitely not get skinnier during this pandemics.

Occasionally we manage to also get some boat project done. Here are a few that we remembered to take some photos of.

Since last year we have new solent sail on solent stay - it is a smaller sail between mast and genoa stay. In lighter wind we often sail with both front sails, but we only had one set of winches for genoa sheets (škote), so we always improvised where to put solent sail sheets. We bought two new winches already a year ago, and we installed first last August in Sardinia - you can find the post here. Now we finally got to install the second winch. The procedure was much the same as for the last one - first Captain drilled some holes in the deck beside the big genoa winch. The holes were bigger than needed, because the soft balsa core, that is sandwiched between fiberglass layers, need to be scraped out, and holes then need to be filled with epoxy resin, that seals the balsa core. When it's dry, usually the next day, the smaller, right-sized holes are drilled into epoxy. This way the water, even if it gets into holes, doesn't get into balsa core.

After that, we disassembled the winch, greased it, installed the base - after applying lots of SikaFlex under the base - and assembled the winch back together. This is how it looks now.

And this is the one we made first, last August in Sardinia. They are not symmetrical, the winch handle has limited work space, but it's fine.

Next bigger project was the sealing off of the mast. Our mast is keel-stepped, which means it is going through the deck and through the saloon down to the keel, where it's attached. This makes boat more stable, but it is almost impossible to prevent some water to drip down along the mast and get into the boat when it rains or if the sea gets over the deck. While the boat moves, the mast and deck move as well, not necessarily synchronised. We try to disassemble both collars around the mast base on the deck, but we only managed to lift the upper one for couple of inches, and even for that we had to remove all the lines and blocks that were installed around the mast base. We cleaned everything and scraped away as much of old sealants as possible (there were several layers of different kinds), and then put lots of sealant everywhere and let it dry.

After putting all the blocks back we tied them so they didn't disturb the sealant while it was drying. We put lost of sealant around the base of the blocks as well.

From below, on the ceiling in the saloon, we put some more sealant...

...and tucked away all the wires.

Next day, after the sealant was dry, we made the "wet test" - since rain is very rare here and we wanted to know right away, we used the water hose to pour lots of water around the collars at the base of the mast. And it stayed dry inside! So the covering panels were installed as well, and now it all looks pretty again, as it should.

Then we needed to reconnect all the lines through the blocks...

...so it is again functional. How well we sealed the mast off will be seen in next months and years, when we're sailing and boat is moving and either rain or sea is washing over the collars. I'm a bit sceptical, for how long it will manage to stay completely dry inside, but we hope it will be better than it was now, for quite some time. And then we'll need to do it all over again.

Besides eating Captain is mostly spending his time on internet and I'm reading. Mostly e-books on my phone.

Next project was cleaning of the speed log. It is installed in front of the keel and it's measuring the boat speed over the water - it contains a small paddle wheel that rotates when the boat is moving over the water. Since it is in the water, it gets overgrown with algae and barnacles and especially after longer period of being in marina or at anchor, it often doesn't work. While GPS devices gives more accurate speed of movement, the water speed log can give us very useful information of the speed of current if it is compared with GPS speed. To clean the speed log one must remove it from the hull and clean it with some acid. It is no big deal if the boat is on the hard, outside the water, but if it's in the water, one has to be very fast and after removing the log one needs to quickly plug the hole, before too much sea water gets into the boat.
Our speed log is in our front cabin. We raised original flooring for 12cm, so we got space for all the tools Captain needs. After taking the log out there was a geyser of sea water that made more of the flooring and the tools wet then was planned. Oh, well...

This is how log looked before...

...and after cleaning in acid.

A small crab came into the boat with the log, but we managed to catch it and released it into the sea.

Because of the sea water got all over the place, Captain removed all the tools, we washed all the floorboards and removed any salt, then let it dry. Captain cleaned and greased all the tools before putting them back.

Occasionally we also get a nice sunset.

There are lots of cats here on Lanzarote and in marina we met this cute little cat. It is very friendly and was begging for food. When I realised its breasts are full of milk, it became an emergency and we had to feed her. First day, last Sunday, we gave her half of can of sardines with some bread and she loved it.

Next day Captain bought a big bag of cat cookies and we fed her that. I couldn't believe how much she could eat! We also brought her some water, but she wasn't interested.

I named her Juliette, since we met her near pontoon J and J in sailor alphabet is Juliette. After couple of days we saw that lots of people are feeding her, which is good. We also noticed she was often climbing into a bigger wooden sailboat on next pontoon, so I suspected that's where her babies were. And today we got to see her kittens - she brought them to the parking lot and hid them into the engine room of a car that's next to the van in which the surfer dude lives that's giving her the most of the food. I only saw one kitten, for a short while before it disappeared  back into the engine room, but the surfer dude told me there are four. So she brought them closer to the food source and to the person she trusts the most. Nice. Nevertheless, we'll still bring her food from time to time.

Next project we did was the insulating of our water heater. It can be heated when we are on shore power, then it works just like any electrical water heater at home, or when the boat engine is running - by the heat of the engine. Heater is located under the beds and between two back cabins behind the engine.

It is the shiny metal box down there.

In fact it is round, but packed into the square box and the space between the two is filled with insulation. 

But it is not insulated very well - as the thermal camera shows, it was pretty warm on the outside of the insulation. That means water cools down faster and we need to heat it more often, if we want hot water for showering or washing the dishes, and the back cabins get warmer, which can be annoying in the summer. 

So Captain decided to put some layers of additional insulation around the heater. First we glued it on the back...

...then the sides...

...and on the top.

Front required more work, since there's lots of hoses attached to the heater there.

But we managed that too. It might not get the best marks for aesthetics...

...but on thermal camera it shows that the temperature on the outside of the insulation is pretty much the same as that of the surrounding air.

After all this work it was time for gin&tonic (with Menorcan gin, lemon and cucumber)...

...and a beer. This is as close to summer vacations as we can get at the moment.