First blood is spilt

Sat 24 Apr, HHN day 11: Dorade vents finished, genoa furling motor started… then stopped, GoPro plays games, and my first injury of this maintenance session.

Not a great night. I always seem to suffer badly from asthma, particularly at night, for a week or so after returning to the boat. But this time seems worse. It’s very sleep-disturbing to need my inhaler countless times throughout the night. Oddly, I only get it inside the boat, never outside.
While talking health: I get my first real release of blood for this maintenance session (psss don’t tell Oana, please). Last job in the evening was to rebuild, again, the mast connection for the spinnaker pole. Previously, I had put the track fittings on upside down! Well, I pay the price: removing 1 of the 4 split pins ends with cutting the end of my finger badly. You’d think in this modern world someone would have come up with a better design than the old split pin, eh? The most annoying part was that I had to stop what I was doing because blood was getting over everything! Why is it that fingers and toes bleed so prolifically, I wonder? Anyway, I manage to get myself patched up, but I could have done with my Bunny-nurse!

Two jobs on today’s menu. Firstly, finish the dorade vents. It’s a good day for it because it’s cold in the boat, cold outside, but very pleasant on deck under the tent. As air is still for once, I first spray paint the parts that are seen inside the boat. They had yellowed and got some staining, so beautification was in order.
Then I set to rebuild the vents on deck after cleaning them. For what they actually do, these vents are pretty complicated items. Each with 12 balls, 21 screws, 3 O-rings and 5 plastic parts. And there are 7 of these vents all told. The idea of the little yellow balls is that if/when the dorade vent fills with water, the balls float and block the vent, preventing the water from going inside the boat …. in theory. But the one time we didn’t reverse the vent cowls on a passage, we got waves over the deck and into the cowls which then dripped water into the cabin through these vents ☹. Let’s hope my cleaning and re-sealing will prevent the same happening again. Not that I will EVER again forget to turn the damned cowls to face away from the weather!

Next job is the last furling motor. The big one, for the genoa. Just as I’m ready to start the rebuild, I remember about the corrosion pitting on the top of the gear housing. A rubber V-ring sits up there to prevent water entry around the shaft. But the v-ring had failed and salt water got retained there, pitting the sealing face over time.
There are 3 choices on how to remedy:
1) just put it back like it is and hope grease and new V-Ring will stop water ingress;
2) buy a new housing (too expensive);
3) have the pitting welded, then faced off on a milling machine (expensive and will also likely damage the housing’s anodizing);
4) attempt to fill the pits with epoxy and then sand flat.
Doing nothing is out of the question because I have to cut the forestay to get this motor off for a service. In other words: I am hoping not to have to remove it again for many years to come. Or, even better, never again! I choose option 4 and set to cleaning and applying epoxy.
While the epoxy is drying, I get the bearing seat installed in the lower housing. Same as yesterday: the seat gets cooled in the fridge while the housing gets heated with heat gun. Then the bearing seat slips into the housing perfectly. With the epoxy sanded tomorrow morning I should be totally set to finish the motor rebuild, and another major item ticked off my long list.

Today I was very careful to film everything, because yesterday the GoPro tricked me. I’d taken a lot of time-lapse film while I was rebuilding the motors, only to find in the evening that the little shit-of-a-camera had taken a jpeg photo every half second, instead of a time-lapse video. So, I was greeted with 7842 photos when I went to do my usual evening download from the camera memory card ☹ The Captain was not amused! Mr.GoPro and I had strong words and today it seems to have behaved perfectly, including (for once) obeying each and every one of my voice commands – a very handy feature when your hands are covered in grease.

With my wounded and throbbing finger, I am forced to take it easy in the evening. I even blue-tooth my music to the boat stereo and relax a bit. Well, it is the weekend right? Would it be OK to have an evening off… please? I am wounded, you know.