2016 / 2017 Refit... A little more than we thought.
It all started with the keel bolts.
Why would they put mild steel nuts on stainless studs? "I had better spin them off and replace them" A simple thought that lead to quite an involved job and the start of the deep and thorough refit.
We hauled the boat out in late October 2016 and started thinking about what we wanted to do. We decided Island Harbor on the Medina was the best yard for us as it is close to home and has a chandlery on site so easy to get bits and pieces as needed.
So the list of works done include
Draw all keel bolts, inspect clean etc, refit, reseal with stainless nuts.
Remove all internal steel sections and mast foot and associated stainless and steel retrofit.
Prep and lay up mast foot area with unidirectional glass and Epoxy resin.
Prep and lay up floor joist areas with Uni, bi-ax and carbon. Refit floor joists as I beams and tie in to keel bolts.
Level floor, paint and finish, sort bilge pump arrangement, make and fit new mast foot raising level 15mm
Mast work. Sort halyard arrangement fitting spare main halyard and second spinnaker halyard. Fit low friction rings and remove blocks. Fit new masthead gear, AIS aerial, new VHF aerial, masthead strobe, LED tricolor bulbs etc. Replace all Clevis pins and cotter pins. Fit lazy jacks and Dynema lower check stays. Fit SW Aerial, ensign pulley and epoxy fill any old holes and mast wear. Refit main slider retainer, fit 2 x Lemar clutches. Fully inspect and clean all rigging.
Hull work. Strip all old anti fouling off. After some days we defaulted to the shot blasters.. a rather blunt tool. Grind off keel bolt area and glass up Sand off any shot-blast residue, epoxy coat, then skim with epoxy mix and fair off.
Fit heads sink through hull and new speed transducer.
Epoxy coat hull again, Clear, then copper mix, building the volumes of copper powder over each coat. 6 coats total with a percentage of carbon in the final coat to give a silky finish. We brought the waterline up 2 inches so that we don't have to do it again if cruising in less salty water heavily laden
Replace most deck blocks with low friction rings.
Electrics. Make new panel to house new Easy Navtex, VHF,existing Plotter, and stereo. Fit new AIS transponder with network capability. Fit all Aerials, fuse and switch gear. Fit new Merlin smart bank and smart gage battery monitor and new battery switches and link. Rewire and fit 100w Sun-power solar panel and new controller. Fit deck power sockets and fit my old CARD system, a great bit of kit for single-handing... The systems now all talk to each other. We have sea-talk depth speed and temp, converted to NEMA 0183, Nema 0183 wind and gps data from the AIS. All instrument data goes into the AIS and is broadcast on a local network so that an Android tablet on deck can pick up all AIS, and boat data and overlay on charts. In addition we have an independent chart plotter and separate hand held garmin GPSmap 468 hand held plotter.... that should be enough redundancy, New hand held DSC VHF and PL1 personal EPIRB completes the package. Fitted all new LED lamps so we are a low power use boat now... Great
Worked on the Webasto heater that decided to quit on a cold October day with the family on board!!! So looking at the error codes replaced the glow pin, burner and after quite a bit of head scratching had to replace the main control board... now works like new... should do there are only a few bits of the original left... bit like triggers broom he had for 20 years.. having replaced the handle and head a number of times!!!
Woodwork. Trim fit and work woodwork so that it all fits correctly and made good any holes that appeared as we moved instrumentation about. Amanda made some beautiful lea cloths and curtains so we are all looking good below.
I bought a couple of new anchors, a delta and a grapnel.. not sure about the grapnel.. wanted a fisherman's but had to do with the grapnel... I will try it our on hard ground, rock...Coral i hope...
New 90% foresail... not exactly new but lovely carbon double taffeta sail with some flatness for upwind work and any wind over about 15kts.. needs some more testing but first couple of sails are very promising.
Fitted my old Sailomat wind vane steering system... Old Sven works like a dream.
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