Projects / Maintenance – boat maintenance related news & photos by Cloudy Bay, Hallberg-Rassy 54 sailing yacht, cruising around the world. sailcloudybay.com
Monday 12 Oct, HHN, boat winterizing day 12: Wet and miserable
It started to rain last evening and continued through the night and all day today. I had planned to make a trip to Baltimore to deliver our anchor chain for re-galvanizing but really don’t fancy a long drive in the rain. So the maximum I go is to the local mini market for some essentials. And while I have Ray’s pickup, I also bring all the heavy rigging items that I polished yesterday back to the boat. And that was the morning, gone in a flash it seemed.
The good news is that the shrink wrap tent is not only dry inside but also makes for a good aft-deck workshop. Now that all the various rigging parts are cleaned, I take the time to categorise and bag them, ready for when the rig goes back up again.
Then I set about trying to dismantle the 2 Furlex upper swivels in an effort to give them a good cleaning. The grease in the bearings is very dirty now. But I’m snookered by internal lock nuts that are no longer held in place by the plastic. Meaning that the securing bolts just spin but do not unscrew. Try as I might to slide thin objects down inside in the hope to lock the nut, no tactics work. It’s very clearly a design fault because I have the same issue on both the genoa and cutter top swivel. Very annoying. Looks like I will just have to leave them together and try to clean out the old grease by simply submerging them in kerosene.
With that task thwarted, I turn my attention to the cutter hydraulic section. I have decided to try my best to dismantle these gear boxes myself. Or at least get as far as I can and send the rest (bag of bits) to a Selden hydraulic specialist to finish the service job. I get to the point where it’s going to get VERY messy (dirty grease oozing out of everything) so I halt the operation for another day, when I have other dirty greasy jobs to do.
And that’s as far as I get with outside jobs today. Not really sure where the day went to. My evening is as usual, eating, showering and doing research on various services and parts. Let’s hope tomorrow is a little more productive!