Wednesday 4 Nov, HHN, boat winterizing day 35:
Stunningly beautiful day today. Sunny and warm, so all workshops (and worker) are kicked off the boat to do outside jobs. I’m determined to get the boom completed and all back together again before I leave, so that is the main project of the day.
Firstly, the outhaul cylinder gets a quick wet & dry sanding in preparation for the final coat of paint. Then I move onto the boom. More precisely, into the boom. There are some internal guide sheaves which are not turning, plus the main outhaul anchor sheave doesn’t look happy. Lots of drilled rivets and conquered difficult bolts and I have all the fittings removed. In fact, I go one step further and remove EVERTHING from the boom, leaving it just a hollow tube. No point in a job half done.
I can now tackle all the corrosion that was under each and every fitting and put it all back together nicely, using Tefgel. I’m glad I did, because I found the mainsheet anchor fitting was badly worn on one side, so that will get switched around. Also, the outhaul anchor sheave was truly on its last breath, its axel completely worn, and the sheave about to fall off. New sheave needed there. But the internal guide sheaves all simply had aluminum oxide stopping them from turning.
With everything out, the boom looks pretty odd to be able to see right through it when normally it’s a jumble of hydraulic piston, hoses, running rigging and electric wires. It has no chance of withholding any more surprises now that I have it bare naked like this!
Next is to clean off, best I can, all the oxidation before I reinstall the fittings. I do this with a mixture of scrapers and wire brushes and a lot of elbow grease (effort). The front end of the boom is the worst affected area and it is obvious to me that’s because it has this stupid cut-away on the underside near to the gooseneck. When going into a big sea, all the salt spray and green water has easy access inside the boom through this cut away. I will design some sort of cover plate to go over this void. It will need to be removeable to allow me to get a look at the business end of the outhaul cylinder. Maybe Perspex or maybe just easily removeable. I shall challenge Ray with that project 😊
After an early evening trip to Weaver, I return with all the fittings looking shiny and new again, and Weaver’s buffing wheel another few mm smaller! And that takes me to mid evening. How on earth did that take me all day?
Last job of the day is to pack up the GoPro Hero8, to send off for warrantee. But before doing this, I decided to put the battery into it and give it just one last chance to fix its frozen Date/Time issue …. like it could miraculously mend itself without help. But guess what, that is exactly what the little bugger did! As soon as I turned it on, a new screen appeared not previously seen before: “would you like to update the date/time manually or with the app?” I can almost hear the camera giggling as it watches my total disbelief! So, I set it manually (like I’ve done so so many times, to no avail), only this time, when I check back an hour later, the time has actually moved on an hour. Unbelievable. Its working correctly again. It must have known it was heading for the gallows tomorrow!
But what do I do now? Send it back anyway? Nothing to lose really. GoPro will send me a new camera. But it will certainly arrive after I leave here, which means I won’t actually lay eyes on the new camera till next visit … like 2021! Hmm. Will have to sleep on this one. Maybe I should have clouted it with a hammer last night after all, before it got all smart-arsed today 😊
3 comments
It is intriguing how much corrosion you could get on ship parts that are actually not carbon steel! …Ball bearings aside. The aluminum mast should have been – in my eyes at least – happily free of corrosion for many years to come. I guess the sea water works miracles in teaching us Murphy’s law that if things could go bad, they will.
Not so intriguing, though, that a GoPro will miraculously get better when there’s a scent of rope and soap and a slipknot in the air. They will do this without fail every time a clear solution is on the horizon, but not before! Perhaps if you ever bring Cloudy Bay to Constanta, have Oana bring a priest to chase away the evil spirits :). Maybe there will be fewer nasty incidents afterwards!
Hi Glen,
Question about the hydraulic outhaul: Do you like having it, overall? I imagine the benefit that it is a push button function and one less beastly line to handle? I had to google the part diagram for the Selden hydraulic outhaul, very interesting. That an insane amount of force on the hydraulic ram!
Do you know if it is an option or standard issue on the 54?
I have a 342, which is the largest boat I’ve ever sailed.
Big fan of the blog and the channel. Thank you for sharing your stories!
Matt
Hi Matt, yes, that piston is a beast and yes I love the push button controls and less ropes everywhere. Make sailing and particularly reefing very easy. I believe all HR54 have this as standard.
Both our previous boats were engineless racers: a J22 and a classic West Solent One Design (34ft, 5 tons). SO the jump to Cloudy Bay was pretty daunting at first.
Glad you like the blog.
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