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Quetzalsailor

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Quetzalsailor

We winterized and covered Quetzal today. One less thing to worry about as the Northwinds advance! 2011-11-20 Quetzal.jpg Wintertime means working in my basement shop with FD parts, piano roll cabinets, and house projects. I was able to buy a 600' roll of 1/4" white fuzzy braid Dacron for the ho...

Quetzalsailor

I believe that West System epoxy retarded the cure of Interlux's Brightside Polyurethane. When I grumped to Interlux, they said that I had not properly cleaned the epoxy, but, since I had wet sanded it and wiped it down afterwards with lacquer solvent, I doubt much remained of the amine. The Brights...

Quetzalsailor

Cannot possibly work for very long. Probably works just fine for a few seconds, remembering the dead short failure I had in my Volvo a couple decades ago (really great: rush hour, 60 mph on the Schuylkill Expressway under 30th St Station). My AC/DC reverse polarity arc welder runs on 110v 40 amps, a...

Quetzalsailor

One of the Luke boys I met at PE Luke's booth at the Annap Boat Show a few years ago opined that old, vs fresh alcohol makes a great difference. Alcohol is hygroscopic (absorbs water), and the resulting mix does not burn as well. He said that a typical stove sent in for service often will do perfect...

Quetzalsailor

On both the 1972 Morgan 27, and our 1970 North East 38, the house top grab rails are aligned with the overhead grab rails below. There are bungs in the overhead rails and none on deck. Woodscrews from below would seem "obvious". Additionally, the NE 38 has house top grab rails further forw...

Quetzalsailor

Thank you all for your kind and encouraging comments. I will confess, however, that the drips in my life will likely result in at least one more coat on deck and in the interior. I learned, for coat number seven, that a liberal dose of brushing liquid (more than the 15% recommended) resulted in just...

Quetzalsailor

Well, the season is advanced, gettin' too cold to work in the barn, gettin' too cold to cure epoxy or varnish. Here's how far I got; 7 coats of spar varnish on the deck, nearly all fittings reinstalled. Yet to go next Spring includes: finishing the epoxy on the hull exterior, sanding and at least fo...

Quetzalsailor

I had a similar problem a number of years ago for storing my 26' long wood Flying Dutchman mast. We lived in a 20' wide row house and there was no space within the house for such an object. Happily, and with our neighbor's permission, I was able to hang the mast under the open wood decks that spanne...

Quetzalsailor

Third coat on the deck; two more to go. New shroud and forestay fittings made; all holes in deck predrilled for fittings. 2011-10-20 Third Coat of Varnish on Deck 007-r.jpg View from the hayloft. (Modern FD don't have sprayshields; these don't shield anything and snag the genny when tacking; pretty,...

Quetzalsailor

We boarded on 17 September, daysailed with friends on Sunday and finally set out Monday morning to go to Annapolis. Weather was predicted to be pretty windless but we had an nice sail from Rock Hall to about a mile south of the Bay Bridge. Wind went flat so on with the Yanmar and the refrigerator. J...

Quetzalsailor

We spent two weeks cruising Quetzal on the Chesapeake, so progress was somewhat delayed. 2011-10-08 Port rubrail on 001-r.jpg Port inner rubrail. Each rubrail consists of a continuous piece fitted to the angle of the hull, bottom level and outside face vertical. Then the forward 9'-4 has a second pi...

Quetzalsailor

My first thought is that you shouldn't put the trailer in the water and thus don't need a waterline. Perhaps more useful: Find a matching boat and take some measurements. Or float it. There's no reason that the seats would be level fore and aft. The painted waterline is usually higher than the actua...

Quetzalsailor

If you have the pieces, and they are not too mangled, you may be able to have it sleeved and welded. Lots of masts are done that way if long enough extrusions are not available. Our 1972 Morgan 27 came with a joint and sleeve about 4' above the heel and about 2' below the deck. Our 1970 Lecomte has ...

Quetzalsailor

I fretted about using treated lumber when I made new engine beds for the Morgan 27. However, I paid attention to the local Watermen in Rock Hall, MD. They habitually use treated lumber and ply under polyester resin and glass for engine beds and whatnot in their workboats, and none of what I observed...

Quetzalsailor

More progress. The coamings are in. I've roughed out rubrails using wood from a 1964 Hinckley B-40 mast. Great quality wood at the right price (if you don't count the number of trips from back yard to basement resetting the breaker before I realized that the dehumidifier was on and plugged into the ...

Quetzalsailor

Near Greenville, DE. Interestingly, we have to put a new septic system drainage field in. We had identified one tree that looked really poorly, so was chosen for one edge of the field, and the two trees that actually fell were slated to go for the system simply because of the required layout. The tw...

Quetzalsailor

True to my fears, my parent's house took quite a hit. Thank goodness they both had passed on prior to it! They built the house over 50+ years and would not have survived the shock even before each had suffered dementia before their passing. Walnut Ridge Irene damage 2011-08-28 001-r.jpg Walnut Ridge...

Quetzalsailor

Obviously, anything you can stand will work better than something that will fail to seal to a beardie, like me! Got a sad lesson in that recently trying to use a new-style snorkel and face mask. They said to goop my mustache with Vaseline; I said Pffft! The new style snorkel is great! It has a valve...

Quetzalsailor

Dreading this sort of thing but more for my parent's house in DE, rather than for Quetzal on her mooring. There's a dangerous tree within range of the house that's impossible to get down w/o a crane, and we can't get the crane in there until the 1950s cess pools are filled.

Quetzalsailor

Read up in West's information, too. I don't think that there is much to fear in making fairing compounds; that's what you do with West System. I will relate that the real issue for us amateurs is the way various mixes and sequential applications tend to have varying densities. Thus they sand differe...

Quetzalsailor

The last piece of deck went on on Thursday. I trimmed and sanded it Friday, then put the boat away for three weeks (I'm on my way to Borneo). The spray shield is just sitting there, so far; the deck needs to be fitted to it and to the other pieces of trim.

Quetzalsailor

Aaaaand! Here's the foredeck glued and 'clamped' to the boat.

Quetzalsailor

I'd like to do the inner loop: Hudson, Erie Canal, Great Lakes, the Mississippi, the Gulf, Florida, and ICW home. But it'd have to be on a powerboat, I think. Too slow on a sailboat, not to mention pulling the stick multiple times.

Perhaps when we buy our 'terminal trawler'.

Quetzalsailor

Rachel's Alberg's mainsheet starts at a becket on the port quarter block, goes up and through a double block on the end of the boom, down and through the starboard quarter block, back up and through the other sheave on the boom's double block, down through the port quarter block, to the centerline a...

Quetzalsailor

Bet she's wood. Wood transom. Well- and freshly-maintained wood boats' hulls often look better and fairer than 'glass hulls.

Quetzalsailor

The outhaul on our LeComte NE 38 operates by a crank on the side of the forward end of the boom. Crank to tighten; crank to loosen, but you have to pull the fitting or the clew forward. I presume the crank is geared (perhaps a worm gear?) to a threaded shaft to which the outhaul cable is attached. T...

Quetzalsailor

Thank you for your kind comments. Here's more progress: Surcease Deck 001-r.jpg The dining room table was the only place I had that was large enough to lay out the panel halves and plane their edges. I clamped the panels to the table and used a #5 jack plane as well as a little touch-up with the blo...

Quetzalsailor

I'll cast my vote with the prefitted spline guys. It occurs to me that you could cobble together a clamping jig/table such that you could assemble and glue the components in the boat. The halves don't have to be in place in the boat to be glued. They'd be hard to hold, hard to glue, hard to clamp wh...

Quetzalsailor

Four coats of spar varnish over epoxy. Now on to making/remaking the forestay and shroud attachments; the original homemade fittings are inconvenient at best. Whatever solution I come up with has to be installed before the deck. Pictures below are today: Surcease 005-r.jpg Don't look too closely; th...

Quetzalsailor

I think I'll pass...

Quetzalsailor

When I did my rerig, I had RiggingOnly make up the standing rig above deck, as described above. The second part of the project involved installing fiberglass-epoxy fins to the hull below the deck-mounted chainplates and wiring replacement chainplate backup plates down to the fin. I used turnbuckles ...

Quetzalsailor

I've replaced running rigging on the Morgan 27. I measured the bits that came off and drew them in AutoCAD. I then drew up what I thought were the required dimensions of the new rig. Things were changed a bit otherwise I would simply have asked Rigging Only to duplicate things. I replaced spreaders,...

Quetzalsailor

Frankly, I cannot imagine a clutch that you cannot adjust! Someone must know how! If not, pull it apart yourself and see how it resembles other similar systems. For example, the clutch on an Atomic 4 has a cylindrical housing with longitudinal grooves that you use to rotate with a screwdriver to tig...

Quetzalsailor

Another way to see what Dave is saying about 'stronger' is that care with laminations tends to disperse faults in the wood, such as the grain runout. Thus, the laminated part will not be as strong as a perfect example of the wood (unless the veneers are themselves perfect) but it will be much strong...

Quetzalsailor

Coating a wood surface with epoxy does a number of good things: the coating is quite proof against water intrusion so that the underlying wood is more stable in size; the coating makes a good base for varnish. And, of course, a number of bad things: the epoxy must be protected against UV, that is, w...

Quetzalsailor

Seen on a power boat (or is that redundant?) on the Chesapeake last Sunday: "IV Play"

I thought maybe the owner was a doctor.

Quetzalsailor

Chris, indeed the port covers are for sun control. At the mooring, when we're off, they'll keep the boat cooler and will slow sun damage to the interior. The original deep red of the Makore is now a mundane tan. When we're aboard, they definitely keep the boat cooler and we use only the sunward ones...

Quetzalsailor

I've made port covers using the cheap wall surfacing fiberglass sheet you can buy at the Despot or Lowes for about $26.00. Patterned on the 'show' side and fairly smooth on the other. Lest this sounds excessively wasteful, I used about half the sheet for a shower ceiling in the house. It's the stuff...

Quetzalsailor

Used the winch for anchoring and retrieving last night for the first time and for anchoring tonight. Works well, so far has not beaten the deck to death, nor even shown any tendency toward that. I did manage to wire the remote/wireless backwards so up is down, etc.; easy (in theory) to reverse the l...

Quetzalsailor

I will add that our engine control is all cadmium-plated steel inside the lazarette. Perfectly reasonable for it to corrode to junk. So far, so good! The Martec (?) two-lever control on the Morgan 27 was all aluminum and stainless and had corroded to iffi-tude. I made stainless sleeves out of rather...

Quetzalsailor

Your current lever sounds similar to ours. Single lever, lift an annular ring to get it out of neutral, pull a button out to disengage the shift function while revving the engine.

I'll say again, pull the button out about 1/8" to disengage. (Remember to push it in when you want to move!)

Quetzalsailor

As said, disassemble the beast and clean the bearings on the eccentric or the two on the motor with whatever solvent is handy. You'll get some more time out of it. You can buy the replacement bearings from such places as McMaster-Carr or Philadelphia Bearings Inc. Read the number off the side and th...

Quetzalsailor

I attached the Vetus into my old Morgan 27 by applying pats of reinforced epoxy with lengths of threaded stainless rod (might have been bolts) stuck into 'em. Might have installed bolts and nuts into the holes in the Vetus and smooshed 'em into the waiting epoxy. The bolt head would be embedded alon...

Quetzalsailor

Ours were pretty foul and would not stay clean. I started by ordinary cleaning sprays, Fantastic and similar; unsatisfying. Then I went to wiping them down with lacquer thinner which dissolves a bit of the surface of the vinyl: looked great for a year. I decided that the surface was degraded by sunl...

Quetzalsailor

Isn't the usual trick to add a partition arranged so that the rodes drop into their own side? A similar idea to the bucket can be seen in multipurpose halls for Symphony Orchestras, Operas and other uses. Such halls have vertically movable ceilings over the stage and sometimes over the forward part ...

Quetzalsailor

You could use spread footings, say, 1 meter square at intervals or a 50 cm wide strip footing, bearing on the rock, if it's only 30 cm down or so. Even if it were 60 cm, it would be a lot less concrete than the slab. You'd end up continuously trenching to the rock anyway if you were using a slab for...

Quetzalsailor

I built winders in my former residence, in about 1977. The house was made from both halves of a twin, each of which had a set of tiny winders. I built the new set just like the originals except that, instead of being in a well about 30" x 60", the new well was about 38" x 74". Ma...

Quetzalsailor

That's a Lapeyre Stair, or an 'alternating tread' stair: http://www.lapeyrestair.com/. Not all that uncommon for tight industrial applications.

I think it'd scare me to death on a bouncing little boat. On the other hand, you get a full tread depth.

Quetzalsailor

1000 posts before this one. Should I quit?

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