Baby it's cold outside

While the spring weather continues to oscillate between almost mild and freezing cold, Seascape remains in the shed in  Universal with the heat lamps on her trying to wick out the damp in her bones ready for Coppercoating which requires a low level of humidity and mild temperatures to properly cure. So after a number of weeks of playing cook it, measure it, cook it again the moisture is coming out of most places except for the engine bearers and a bulkhead in the heads. Inside the boat is a heater and dehumidifier which is moved around and can so times fill up the extracted water to a point where it safely cuts out overnight. The bilges were also emptied to the point of using some nappies to extract the last drops.

Bottom warmer

Each blue spot on the hull is a piece of masking tape labelled with the moisture readings which are taken by a hand held meter with range set to GRP this device measures levels of moisture into the hull and can reach in a few cm to spot issues such as Chains in lockers! Bilge water in keel Mooring legs and water tanks Propellers in lockers   Nuff said! Next time I need to remove these items before measuring spurious results

Rudder always moist but epoxied and faired

 

Mystery of the skin fitting

Whist admiring the coppercoat the other day I noticed this fitting

      Now this beauty is a bit odd, because it is not bronze like the others and it appears to have an external filter fitting missing, when one looks inside it there is a corrugated metal inside disappearing internally.     Now if there wasn't a bloody great engine on the saloon floor, an easy follow up would have been possible

A bit in the way!

Anyway after some googling I managed to identify a close match with an Isotherm fridge cooler, a clever device that uses sea water as a heat sink. Apparently it can have an anode attached although the jury is out on whether it is really necessary . The hell with it with the boat out of the water I would be foolish not to replace it just in case. I would not want a corroded fitting without a seacock.come to think of it I would not want any fitting without a seacock! Add that to the job list first mate.

 

Taking water, making water

Well the drying of the hull continues and so in the meantime I have taken to starting work on fitting the Watermaker which will osmotically extract clean drinking water from the sea. The kit arrived in big stainless frames which although they make a nice modular kit, do not do much for fitting small spaces.

Framed up water maker

As tempting as it is for an easy life to just use multiple lockers, I feel that frugal space saving will pay later and so I have dismantled the pump units and built a temporary jig to fit them into the bulkhead. When the pipe work had been sorted I will make up better looking mounting frames and re optimise the space again

Temporary fit

In the meantime, just to be careful I am taking photos of the wiring as the manual is pretty thin on detail 

Photo of wiring

So now I have to order more plumbing fittings to connect up the kit over longer distances and also to complement the fittings that the manufacturer did not supply to complete the install. They arrive tomorrow so we will see how we get on Here is progress today with more BIG plumbing

Plumbed in

 

A watched boat is like paint drying

Well we can only dream of the day when we get to Copper coat, the hull of Seascape although expertly blasted and in fairly good nick for a boat of her type and age is still rather too damp for epoxy! So the plan has been to cloak her hull in polythene, to put on heat lamps and dehumidifier and sweat out the water moisture from the outside and the inside.

Seascape tented up

This has involved also marking up the moisture readings on the hulk and measuring them periodically to see if the moisture levels are dropping. So far this has taken a month and although the heat has resulted in buckets of dehumidifier water, the structural beams (floors) are still damp despite drying out the lockers and the keel bilges with nappies. We have also ground out some earlier repairs which were very wet. Top tip - do not be tempted to slap in car filler on a boat unless you want a soggy bottom! So far the worst readings are off the scale at 20plus, the lowest at 10-12 and for coppercoat we need less than 12-14 so we got to cook her some more! Time though is not on our side and although located in the shed at great cost , we have had to move her in and out a few times to make way for other projects which has not helped the condition of the tenting. Oh and it's hot working inside with the heating on and humidity so it does make life a tad uncomfortable too Let's hope we dry out soon 

One step forward .....

So remember the saildrive leg?

Saildrive

  It was sent off for painting under advice from my friendly engineers to be two pack painted It came back looking beautiful aesthetically, unfortunately when the engineer tried to turn the gear chain, he discovered that it was full of grit and blasting crud! So now I have to negotiate with the painer and get the gear train rebuilt with tools only available to a main dealer at main dealer prices. And another two week delay at least  Star Wars Day May 4th After chasing the main dealer  following many left messages and phone calls asking for a progress report I am told by them that "the special tool"  they use has broken and that there are no "chosen ones" around so they have to get volvo to get someone to make them another which could take a while! I was wrong it's three or four steps back Watch this space