Tuesday 29 Oct, HHN day 18: And the work continues…
Another day, another set of jobs. First thing we do when we get out of bed is check the backing plates, how they glued. Rock hard, brilliant. They will not be coming apart, and they won’t be rotting! The new sea-cocks and thru-hulls also seem to have bonded solidly, with the 5200. We are finally making visible progress.
The activities start in the engine room, with sanding around the engine inlet hole to make the surface more even. Last night we noticed some lumps there which make the backing plate sit awkwardly.
Few more parcels have arrived today and Liz from Free State Yachts kindly delivers them to us: the galley sink faucet from Hallberg-Rassy Parts (which I am very happy about), and the rest of the skin-fittings from Defender (3 more sets).
Ray stops by for one of his daily visits and we have a chat about mounting a boat anode on the hull and wire all the new thru-hulls to it. The reason we consider this now is because the zinc anodes on the FrigoBoat keel coolers (2 anodes on each plate) were completely gone after only 5 months in the water.
So we pay a visit to West Marine to see what choices we have for such boat anodes. Ideally, we would want one with only one bolt, so that when it comes to changing it we don’t have to match for the holes to fit.
Back onboard, I keep nagging Glen about the two short hoses for cockpit drains. These blue hoses would ruin the look of our “renewed” engine room so have to come out. Not to mention that they had wires poking out and the hose clamps were not aligned properly. One pair was even crossing over each other. What was the HR technician thinking when he fitted these? Must have been a Friday afternoon job. Glen is rather reluctant to remove them, because technically there is nothing wrong with them. But eventually he does so.
His concern is a new hose needs to be flexible enough to fit 2 1/4 on the upper side and 2 1/2 at the other end. Luckily, we have a black hose which he removed previously from a cockpit drain, and that one seems to do the job just fine. Brilliant, we’ll have matching hoses. And on this occasion, the 2 brass joining fittings get a very good wire brushing too, looking like new again.
Last job for the evening was to remove the old backing plates from bow thru-hulls. These were in better condition than the ones in the engine room, but still only made of thin marine ply. Like the other fittings, these will be replaced with Groco backing plates, which will never rot.
While in the bow looking at the bow toilet intake, we decide this one needs to be enlarged. The original thru-hull is a 1/2″ and we will upgrade to 3/4″. By the time you have a few layers of antifoul in a 1/2″ thru-hull, there isn’t much space for seawater to actually enter. So out comes the drill and as usual, work continues well into the night.