Vang plate and goose neck

Friday 26 October: Herrington Harbor North MD, yard day #9 – deck rig inspection, boom slider for vang, goose-neck, speakers, and it rains over the bed! It was a very long day, hence a long story.

Strong nor-easter is coming and it’s getting colder. But we still have jobs to do outside. Glen finishes the keel bulb and bottom of the rudder with the second coat of epoxy primer. And he has permission to change into clean cloths now! 🙂

Steven (East Coast Marine Rigging) comes onboard for a general rig inspection. Only at deck level for now, and he will come back for the aloft inspection once we are back in the water. There are few issues he points out.
– The lower life lines are worn at gates, almost through one wire strand.
– At the goose-neck, the boom is sitting about 4mm low in the fitting, allowing metal to run against metal. It needs a spacer to raise the boom. Glen had noted this previously but was worried about how to disconnect the boom, given its weight. Steve explains how to do it very easily, especially as the vang is currently disconnected.
– He also suggests we should check hydraulic hoses connection points regularly at the bottom of the mast and on Furlex. The fittings themselves are stainless steel, but stupidly the small balls in the quick-connect ring are normal steel and rust like hell. The Furlex connectors we just did, few days ago and indeed they were pretty rusty. But the ones at the bottom of the mast (for the outhaul and mainsail furler) are a bit of a pain to put back on once disconnected. The pressure in the hoses is just too big, and last time it took two strong men to push the connections back back on. And then with hydraulic oil squirting all over the place!

Steven suggests to Glen how to fix the vang sliding plate in place. The holes in the boom are already too ovalised to upgrade to M12 bolts, and he suggests moving the plate along 2cm and drilling new holes in the boom.
After hammering the sliding plate yesterday, we feel guilty about it and we go on a mission to make that edge look nice and smooth again, with a bit of grinding and sanding. Back at the boom, start to drill the new holes as Steve suggested. Ouch, we don’t like drilling holes in the boat! Glen drills them slightly smaller than the bolts and cuts a M10 thread into each one. Soon the job is done and the 4 screws locktited in. The plate is now very much firmly in place. Hope it stays that way!  Next time it moves we will have to weld some more metal in the slider recess for the bolts to secure into.

Its very cold outside, and we go inside to warm up with a cup of coffee, and make ourselves happy opening yet more deliveries (which Liz kindly brought to us earlier). The Gori propeller parts: end anodes, shaft anodes, rubbers, screws and the cone nut. The replacement laptop had arrived too, that is a relief. The big test will be when we power it up in the lounge.

Outside activities resume back at the boom. The goose-neck needs our attention as pointed out by Steven. We lift the front of the boom with the spinnaker halyard to take the weight off, and secure the aft end to the backstay to stop it moving forward once we disconnect the goose-neck. Now we can remove the large bolt to insert a spacer washer to lift the boom a few millimeters to re-center the fitting. With some refined tweaking the tension comes off the fitting, and the bolt is removed leaving the boom hanging perfectly balanced, in place. Easy peasy. Thanks for the advice Steven!
Then the next object of attention is the bolt that secured the goose-neck fitting to the boom. It needs half a turn to tighten it. Glen removes the safety pin and takes the bolt off, to clean the rust marks. And a new safety pin, longer this time is put in place. It should have much less play in it now.
There are plenty of stories of goose-neck failures in ocean sailing, all with bad consequences. Given the monster size and weight of our boom and mainsail, a goose-neck failure would be extremely dangerous, so Glen likes to keep a very close eye on this area for inspection and maintenance.

Once the boom is connected back to the mast, we move to the lower vang connection. Back in Martinique, it seemed like a good idea to grease the pin and fittings here. But proved not to be. It’s just a black greasy mess now. So we take it apart to clean it all off.
There, all done and polished. Looking like new again. But the real test won’t come until we are again downwind sailing with the mainsail. That’s when all these fitting experience full working stresses.

While on rigging, we lower the cutter Furlex and reconnect the hydraulic hoses. The only one left to service is the hydraulic quick connect fitting at the mast.

Then the rain starts and we move activities indoors. Not for long though, as Glen is determined to help the rain wash the boat. And keen to wear his new rubber boots. Half waterproofed and armed with Dawn dish soap he goes out in the rain, to wash the bearings in the two upper swivels of the genoa and cutter Furlex. Lots of Dawn squirted inside each one, then agitated the best he can, then a rinse through with the hose. The rain can rinse the rest out. By the sound of patter on the deck I thought it’s raining quite hard. Not according to Glen… he switches the water hose to the decks. And what was supposed to be a “squirt the soap in the fittings and let the rain rinse it” turns into “wash the bird poop and the entire boat”. He is completely soaked when he comes back in, but bird poop is no more… not that I have any intention coming out to inspect. Not in this rain!

The dry-off-and-get-warm activity is installing the new speakers in the saloon.  We didn’t like the look of Cloudy Bay’s saloon speakers ever since we bought her. We tried to change them in Gibraltar with better looking ones, but the sound was not good enough. Looks was the less important criteria to buy new speakers but the size was the limitation of choices (teak hole diameter is just 9cm). So we settled for the bad looks-good sound of the ones we had. Till the sound was gone – we blew a speaker, don’t ask us how because we don’t know. So for the last year we only played music on a small WiFi speaker. Now, USA is the land of Amazon and online orders, and we found some round speakers that fit perfectly into the holes we have in the teak. They arrived yesterday, installed this evening. Luckily, these ones could be fitted with electrical connectors, without having to solder the wires. They fit perfectly, sound is great, and look prettier.

Late evening Glen enjoys some solitude in the engine room, hugging the generator and contemplating how to connect the new small bilge pump to circulate the raw water system with RidLime. And tightening two hoses under the water heater, which he noticed were leaking slightly.

We check weather on Predict Wind and looks like southerly wind will be coming in Wednesday and Thursday next week, meaning high tide. So ideally, we should be back in the water on Wednesday and out of the marina by Thursday lunch time with enough water depth. We can only hope that Karen can finish installing the Ceramic Pro before then. Fingers crossed for good weather.

By now it’s passed midnight and we are certainly ready to go to  bed. Glen hears a scream from the aft cabin, and rolling his eyes comes to investigate what the fuss is about. My side of the bed and cupboards are soaked, including the clothes in that cupboard. We trace it to drips pouring through the rear window. How on earth can such a strong leak suddenly appear? Curtains off, and Glen tightens the screws around the window and most of the flow stops, but not all of it. So he goes outside in the dark and rain trying to tape a plastic sheet over the window. But of course, the tape doesn’t stick too well. So we go to bed with kitchen towel soaking up the drips. And we make jokes that if we had a tent on board, now would be a good time to erect it on our bed! Like we are not camping enough here in the yard!

Again, we get the feeling that no matter how many issues we fix, an even greater number keeps coming up!
That said – it’s cozy in bed with the heater on, listening to the rain on the decks and wind whistling in the rigging. Let’s just hope we don’t awake with a wet duvet, and in need to wear our wet suits to bed!