More shed progress

Making headway on the boat shed.

The boat shed

Started working on the new boat shed. Having the boat in the field away from the house has make it difficult to get much progress in sanding and painting. Also I am planning on doing some major work on the deck that would be difficult if the boat wasn't inside.

The new paint job is under way!

Sailing with Natalie

Finally my wife Natalie and I were able to spend a weekend on the boat sailing since the day of the dead engine. We came out on Friday evening and stayed till Sunday evening. Sailed on Sunday but the wind all weekend was either becalmed or 4-5 knots. We left the boat on Saturday to go see the X96 Big Ass Show. No there were no large donkeys there its a rock concert that this year had 12 different bands and runs all day long.

Engine Finally Fixed and Sailing again

I managed to install the last piece of the exhaust today. An adapter to adapt the 1 5/8" exhaust hose to the 1 3/4" hose at the through hull fitting. My son Sean came by (today is his 19th birthday) to take the boat out for her first sail since the engine died in August. I had to make a small adjustment to the new shift cable to allow it to fully shift into reverse and we were off. Sean took the helm for the entire trip and we reached a top speed of about 4 knots. The wind was pretty dead running from 3 to 5 knots all day. At least it wasn't dead calm like the last time Sean came out for a sail.

New foward hatch, Sad Atomic 4

Well I finished building a new forward hatch and got it installed on the boat. I originally tried to repair and refinish the old hatch but I reassembled it with the new Acrylic oriented 90 deg off and disassembling it caused the cracked wood to break up even more. My final solution was to get some rough cut Mahogany from the Wood Craft store and make my own from scratch. I wish I had a before picture to put hear, my fault, I need to take more before pictures. The bad news is after installing the hatch I was unable to start the engine. I had to remove the head because the #3 and #4 exhaust valves were stuck. Once the head was off I found the #4 valve broken. I removed the exhaust from the boat and took it home to test and found there was an open seam inside the wet muffler that allowed sea water to run back down the exhaust and hit the hot exhaust valved #3 and #4 being the lowest point on the engine. So every time I shut off my the engine cold water would quench the hot exhaust vales eventually causing one to fail. I'm now waiting for a new valve and gaskets from Moyer Marine this week and I'll be fabricating a new water lift exhaust system for the boat.

Picture of Natalie and I sailing

Another sailor from the marina took this picture of Natalie and I out for a Sail on June 25th.