Month: July 2020

After 3 weeks on land, Scooter was finally dropped back where she belongs.

We couldn’t trust the boatyard about when we’d be back in, but now we’re at anchor and can conclude the saga of life on the hard.

We were so sick of being on land. It’s expensive, the walk to the bathroom is long, it constantly smells of either sea-undergrowth coming off our neighbor’s dinghy or diesel fumes. The worst part is they initially quoted us 5 days and $1900. 19 days and $3400 later, we’re done.

Let’s focus on the best of it.

We sanded our acrylic port side window. The results were fantastic.

This one was such a relief after living a year in the left-half-opaque-world.

Another one of our windows leaked all last summer. I guess the previous owner just kept squirting silicone caulk into the gaps and hoping. After some research, we found out that the best way to ensure a strong leak-free window was… TAPE. So we spent a ton of money on 3M VHB neoprene double-stick 5952 tape and went about taping our window on (there was also some sealant involved but pretty much just tape for structure).

Lots of old crap being used to seal/secure the window needed to be scraped off.

Tape now, ask structural questions later.

Sealant time! (and in the background our neighbor’s dinghy which (not pictured) is covered in 3 inches of mussels and barnacles baking in the hot summer sun).

Done! It actually felt really secure and although we haven’t experienced any 30-foot waves crashing over her, the window seems like she’ll hold water.

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The prop was in good shape, well-aligned, and sized appropriately (there were several doubters including the resident diesel mechanic), but it was in dire need of a barnacle barrier.

The batteries are in the mail but in the meantime, we’re doing everything we can to cut energy use. The cabin lights had to go LED.

Our hull was the focus of the haulout ‘week’ yet they neglected it for the first 2. When they finally did, the results were fun to see.

Mid-wash.

Post pressure wash, pre sanding. Lots of rust bubbles getting through the paint which apparently make us slow in the water and quick to deteriorate.

Post sanding, post epoxy. The keel should be smooth and protected now.

The first layer of iron sealant (I actually don’t know what the grey layer was but it apparently bonds with the iron keel best).

The first primer layer.

The second primer layer.

One coat of paint…finally.

Fin (keel).

Thanks for coming along for the slideshow of the last 3 weeks. I’m sick of this type of boat project and eager to get to the next round of wiring electrical systems, autopilot, fishing gear, sailing drills, and visitors.

It’s harder the second week

The first week on land was filled with urgency, progress, and success (as detailed in the previous post). The second was filled with less enthusiasm and more questions for the boatyard about when they’d actually start working on our hull and when we’d be back in the water.

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Since the day we moved onto the boat, Joe insisted on carrying an American flag the size of a football field (maybe not quite, we’ve never unfurled it) in the hopes that some 4th of July, the winds would be strong and we could fly ‘ol glory’ in all her glory, extending three lengths behind the boat, hovering just above the water by pure patriotism…but instead, Scooter was on land, with no inhabitants this year, and the flag remained in its dry-bag taking up most of our important storage locker.

I desperately hope I can reference this update in 363 days when Scooter is dwarfed by the flag next independence day… or when our sail rips and we have to use it as a spare head-sail to make it back to land.

Tay and I left briefly for Montana to see family. Hannah and Joe were stuck in portland with an anxious dog (fireworks have some drawbacks), and Scooter was stuck in a parking lot.

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Anyway, back to the important stuff: they have finally touched our boat (barely) and we think we’re within a week of being ‘splashed’.

Last week we made progress on our motor, waxing the hull, removing our propeller shaft, fixing our grill, step 1 of fixing our rudder, and a few other things.

This week is more cosmetic.

Boat windows are all acrylic (logically) but they scratch and oxidize badly. This is after a thorough cleaning.

sand sand sand

The big windows will be the most satisfying change, but we finished the first one after dark so the before/after pictures didn’t work out.

The ‘coote’ project was the best (our helm chair contains most of the ‘Scooter’ decal). This restoration made me so proud of Scooter. She must’ve been a looker in 1989.

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Also, we adopted a kitten…

Meet Captain Eunice. Taylor (and my aunt Anita) saved her from her un-interested barn-cat-mom. Bottle-fed her and her brothers. And after all that, we just happened to be back in Montana 8 weeks later which, I’m told, is prime adoption time.

I told Taylor in our vow’s that I’d take care of any pet she brought home. But, it felt like exploiting a loophole cause I had to help drive the dang cat home.

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If you’ve read this far, you care about the little things so this one is just for me. I found out its possible to operate a navigation system from a raspberry pi. It took me a few weeks of troubleshooting but our Chart Plotter is up! It’s basic right now but the possibilities are endless.

For someone used to this world, this isn’t impressive. But a marine navigation system could easily set back a budget $10,000 so doing it on a $40 computer is exciting. I hope there’s more to come on this topic.

Monday morning, scooter motored into a sling, and was hoisted free from her natural habitat. As she came up, the hull had a normal amount of green fuzz, the ocean moss and a few barnacles here and there, but nothing surprising. When the bottom of our bulb keel was pulled into view, there was a several-inch layer of pink…stuff. Upon closer inspection, what looked like a coral reef was mussels and barnacles, holding up plants, and other mysteries from the ocean.

When the lift had Scooter over pavement, 3 eels fell out of the forest onto the pavement. I hope they were just new roommates that morning, but I cant help but wonder if they made the previous sail from Port Orchard.

Scooter was pressure washed, and set on stands. Our new home for the next week was pretty much the same as every other week, except we couldn’t use our own bathroom, or our own sinks, and we weren’t allowed to sail anywhere.

The downside of Gig Harbor Boatyard, is they’re pretty restrictive on what projects you are allowed to do yourself. They’d prefer to get paid for all the work being done, and I suppose liability reasons. So the one thing they allow us to do: Buff the fiberglass above the water line. We set about collecting materials and knowledge, and went to buffing.

Buffing was slow. Our boat feels very large when you’re trying to scrub oxidation off of every exposed inch of fiberglass. And to make the process worse, the final result after wax was not the mirror finish we dreamed of.

Enthusiasm for a shiny yacht waned, and we turned our eye to other projects.

All winter, the diesel engine was our ‘main’ failure point. I say that in quotes because this week, we’ve had to come to terms that we may never have our engine at 100% and thats ok. It’s unlikely a 1 knot difference in power will be the thing that kills us.

Anyway, I randomly started asking every boatyard employee for buffing advice and the first guy to entertain my line of questioning eventually said “you’ll have to find someone else, I’m not a fiberglass guy, I’m the diesel guy.” Huzzah. Everyone we told our tales to this winter told us to just get a mechanic, and here was Chris. Tall, lean, seasoned and friendly. Here to help cool off our hot little knocking powerplant. He said he’d take a look and do some research. I got him our engine and transmission’s make, model, serial, favorite color etc. and we were in business.

Chris first had some questions which I proudly was able to report we had thought of last year and checked off the list of possible causes. Mixer elbow: Clear. Saltwater impeller: new. Thermostat: tested & replaced. Heat Exchanger: Cleaned & rebuilt. Radiator cap: new. He climbed aboard and started investigating, and then the fun began. before making any significant progress on Greg (our engine’s nickname) he noticed the hose to our stuffing box was very old and would need replacement.

I don’t even know what a stuffing box is, so I seriously doubt that Chris… Apparently its a little 4 inch section of hose that surrounds our propellor shaft, just inside the hull, that has seawater on the inside, and the boat on the outside and if it fails, Scooter would sink. He mentioned some other projects to tackle while we’d have the prop disconnected so the list was growing.

He had some suggestions about the engine too, but nothing out of the ordinary. some hose might be blocked, the design might be bad, we may be over-propped. Someday I’ll write a long boring post about the engine’s saga, that only this boat’s future owner will be interested in but for now, lets say we’re still chipping away at replacing every part, and are awaiting our next sea trial.

I think the haul-out experience is best told as a two part saga. If only because it’s been 7 days on land, and aside from the first day’s pressure wash and a couple inspections they havent touched our boat. No sanding, no painting, no hull inspections or running gear cleanings.

Here’s to another 7 days on land, hopefully not more.