Not a sailing post, just an anti-gun rant

Americans, and us Canadians too, will have prayers, memorial services and lay flowers in all sorts of places in memory of this horrible and preventable tragedy. All that does is comfort the living. It does not help the murdered. It most certainly won't help the next bunch of victims, and there will be a next bunch, that gun culture will always have a next bunch lined up. Organizations like the NRA don't have an upper limit of deaths where they pull back the reins and say,"Hey, maybe we should do something about this!" . The NRA and people of their ilk, do actually do something when shit like this goes down, they buy more guns and ammo and hoard them "to prevent crap like that from happening again". Go on any gun site/blog/facebook page and that's what you read. It is sickening. They want to arm teachers. Unfucking beleivable. The furor of this will die down, then another event will occur, and the cycle will continue.

New boat, new blog:)

We bought a Seafarer 38, hence a new blog:)

http://sheppard1961.blogspot.ca/

Here is a picture of our new, 38 foot, cutter rigged sloop at anchor.

Congratulations to us!

We just closed a deal on a Seafarer 38. It is cutter rigged and needs some interior work, Ok, needs a lot of interior work. I am 6'3" and there is atleast another 3inches in the galley area. Don't have great pics yet. The Perkins 4-107 works, looks rough but works. We are pumped.

10 days

It has been 10 days since we last sailed.

Outboard motor issues.

The last day we went sailing, I tilted the engine up and unknowingly pinched two (2) wires off. effected repairs while bobing about to no avail. You would think I could connect the wires without any problems, right? Well you would be wrong.

The starter would not fully engage. Thought maybe the starter battery was low the wife suggested we hook it up to the house battery. Same result, an anemic spinning of the starter.

We sailed in to the fuel dock with several power boaters just watching, not one offer of assistance which I find mostly typical of the powered brethren.

Next day, with the help, (OK, he was the nautical driving force), of a friend we sailed the boat into our slip, though it took two attempts. Whe we pulled in, there was unasked help from, you guessed it, a real sailor. he recognized that a boat with its sails up approaching a dock might be in distress.

Sooo, now a day or three has passed during a massive heat wave and I'm thinking like a demon. The starter itself is now shot, I know, I know, the odds are long that two things could go wrong but remember, I am a genius....lol

I remove the flywheel with a puller, but boy oh boy was its nut ever on tight! The starter was a snap to remove but guess what? On the bench it worked like a charm! Some effing genius I am:(

So its back to the book and the wiring diagram. Somehow I must have screwed up big time as now the ignition smoked a bit. Just a bit. So, any day now I am going to haul that sumbitch motor out of its well and really look over the wring.

Any designer that designs a wellfor an outboard should be stuffed down said well head first. BTW, there was an awefull lot of cuss word at the marina this past week.

Oldsail repair kit.

I was visiting my wifes family in rural Nova Scotia, Canada this week and my Mother-In-Law gave me her fathers old navy sail repair kit. Some of the stuff is beyond my ken. Some I know, but I have no skills to use these puppies.

The first tribute to my navy trade!

This is the first tribute to my naval trade, Marine Engineer, (Stoker), that I have ever came across. We stokers worked in ridiculous heat, I seen with my own two eyes, a medic with a machine that measures environmental stress on the human body scramble out of the engine room when he took a gander at his readings. We stokers just muddled on. If you saw a stoker come off watch and his shirt was not plastered to his body, you knew he was skiving off somewhere.

When we not on watch, we had to respond to fires and dress up in fire fighting gear, and sweat your bag off once more. If there was a flood, we stood waist deep then chest deep in the water shouting measurements to our mates who were cutting wooden braces to stop the flooding. There was nothing delicate about my trade so it was very nice and surprising to hear about this monument.

http://watch.ctv.ca/news/top-picks/new-monument/#clip692455

A plethora of sailing days!

Four days of sailing in a row! Granted, two of those days were short sails, we sailed just to our favourite anchoring point and swim, but we sailed none the less. Imagine swimming in Lake Ontario in May! Unheard of. That is proof in the pudding that global warming is a fact. That and that I put $600 worth of snow tires on in November and we had maybe three snowfalls that might have warranted the purchase. In Canada. Wow.

So far that is a total of 13 days of sailing and the boat has been in the water for around 39 days. Not too bad.

It takes the wife and I less than three minutes to unhook the shore power and dock lines and be on our way.

Long weekeng of sailing and a rigging failure.

In the past 5 days we have been sailing on 4 of them! Only 2 minor glitches that marred an otherwise perfect stretch of days. On 2 of those days we sailed to anchoring points that we liked and basically picnicked on our boat all day, reading, drinking, eating and napping. It can be an easy life style to fall into.

The first glitch was that the starboard block for our jib sheet exploded! We have a multitude of spare blocks on board so it was an easy fix.

The second glitch needs a bit of background here. Here in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, most of us sailors stay in the Hamilton Bay as to get out to Lake Ontario proper you have to pass under a lift bridge that open at the top of the hour and the bottom of the hour.

Earlier this year a cable snapped on the bridge, trapping a couple of lakers (Large commercial freighters) in the bay until temporary repair could be made. Repairs were made and things seemed good.

Well, one day we decided to go on the lake so we approached the lift bridge at the bottom of the hour. It didn't lift. We putted around for another half an hour, again, no lift. We tried raising them on channels 12 and 16, no response. We know our radio works, we can hear and speak on it. So, here we are in a restricted waterway, limited maneuvering room and a snotty bridge operator to boot.

On the other side of the bridge an RCMP, (Royal Canadian Mounted Police, our national police force), marine unit approaches as we miss yet another bridge raising deadline. The cops hail the bridge and the bridge answers! The bridge tells the cops what time the bridge will lift, no explanation why it is so. The cops leave.

Eventually the bridge lifts, we do our thing and repeat the process coming back many hours later. After some investigating and phone calls we find out the cable wire repair was temporary and they will only lift 1 hour after the lift bridge was lowered so as to not overheat the repair job.

The thing is, when we, or anyone else tries to contact them, we identify ourselves as SV this, or MV that. The bridge only responds to commercial vessels. Assholes, and no, there is not a multitude of vessels trying to make radio contact. They are just assholes.

The road trip

Here is the boat, bow on. There is a lot of work to be done on her, which works out in our favour if and when it comes down to offer time.

I am 6' 3" and there is at least 3 more inches headroom in the galley/dinnette area. A plus considering my present boat has 5'6".

Boom roller furling, though I suspect it isn't used as it is also equiped with lazy jacks. The thing with this particular system is that the main wraps around the boom itself, which requires the removal of the boom vang. Good news is that it does spin freely.

Minimal, and I mean minimal electrical system on board. My Coronado 25 has better. Another plus in our favour.

Boat viewing

We are going to look at this boat this comming Saturday. If we like it, we will put an offer down, conditional on what a surveyer reports of course. This is so in my price range and chosen life style. No debt and we can afford to put $900 a months work into it without hurting ourselves.....much:)

http://torontoyachtsales.com/used-boats-for-sale-ontario/38-seafarer-cutter-38-1974-19990/?show=gallery

Don't know how old this shot is but I do like her lines.

To rehash the chain plate repair, here is a shot of the severely cracked gel coat. It was cracked so deep that the wood core was wet.

The second picture shows the fiberglass ground away along with a very thin layer of the wood core. I then taped plastic over it. Then, every day for two weeks I lifted the plastic and wiped it dry. The core was desert dry after that. I used a light fiber glass mat and resin to rebuild the deck. After that cured, I used a thickened, and I mean really thickened, resin and built the deck up slightly higher than the original. After that cured I sanded it down, using a sanding pad used for drywall, as it was long enough to make a nice even and level sanding job in relation to the original decking. Yes, after that was done, I still had to fill in a couple of low spot and resand.

Then I located the positions for the new stainless steel base and backing plates. This should eliminate the causes and stresses that created the crazing in the first place. I am pleased to report that they were placed perfectly. Yay for me.

Finally, here is the finished product, all primed for painting. The product is seemless to the original hull. The only draw back is that when I applied the primer, there came a big gust of wind that dropped grit in the wet paint. Oh well.

New backing and base plates

Here are the new base and backing plate for the chain plate. The smaller piece, backing plate, seems to be cut odd/uneven because it is cut odd/uneven. I just followed the cardboard template I made from the very, very cramped location in the bow.This is replacing the very thin strips of 1/16" stainless steel that was originally there. There was nothing wrong with those strips per say, but I do prefer the 1/4" SS plate I made.

The larger plate is 3/8" SS. Metal Supermarket ran out of 1/4" but only charged me for the price of 1/4". Great service like that will keep me going there again and again. Drilling hint; buy a cobalt drill bit and a good cutting fluid. Wow. I went through three 3/8" jobber drill bits before I gave up, that is not including the 1/8" pilot holes. The cobalt bits are pricey, but well worth it.

Back to the larger plate, it is probably redundant and won't add much more strength to the whole job but I wanted it.

Small side bar here; I initially bought a fairly large piece of SS for the bow and was shaping it in a modified triangular shape with a curved base roughly matching the contour of the deck shapes around the bow but, alas, I fucked up the measurements and ended up with two pieces of 1/4" plate that I could not use (for this project).

I should have place a ruler in the shot to give you some scale, the big piece is about 7" long and 3" wide.

The wife and I have already glassed in the bow after over sized the through holes in the deck. This will allow us to drill the bolt holes in the resin alone and assist in keeping any leaks from getting to the core of the deck.

We still have to mix a final batch of resin, thicken it to a peanut butter state and spread it of and form it, sand it smooth, drill the correct sized bolt holes through the above mentioned over sized, resin filled hole.

I had a lot of mixed resin left over and the wife went around cleaning out the crazing in the deck around the boat and brushing the resin in them while informing me we will be painting the deck this year. I think she read my copy of Don Caseys "Hull and Deck Repair".

BTW, all cutting was done with a die grinder with cutting discs installed, edges removed with a bench grinder then sanded smooth with a sanding wheel in a drill press.

Costs:
Small SS piece = $12
Large SS piece = $17
Fucked up SS piece = $34
1/8, 3/8 Cobalt drill bits and cutting oil = $34 for a total of $97. Should have been $63 except for that screw up of mine...lol

GPS course

The wife and I just finished a GPS course with the Burlington Power Squadron. Learned a lot from it....I KNEW there was more to the unit that I could figure out. I now know what all the initials and acronyms mean, it actually makes sense...lol My unit and compass will now read the same bearing. Before, the GPS was set on "True North" as opposed to magnetic. It was worth the $60 each fee just for that.

New rigging, more $$$$ spent

Pictured is $182 worth of wire and rope halyards. The roller furling jib halyard had to be replaced as the roller furling swivel failed to swivel last year and as we tried to furl it it, the wire halyard began to unwind. Fortunately, this happened on the last sail of the season. In an attempt for this not to happen again, my rigger friend, Martin, suggested we put a swivel clip on as well. Much like wearing belt and suspenders, I like the idea. I am also replacing the two lower mast shrouds as one looked dodgy.

The furling failure just emphasized my paranoia about all mechanical systems. The more complex they are, the greater the chance they will fail. A simple hanked on jib would not caused us that problem. Just saying.

I know a picture of wire and rope will not appeal to most, but I have seen similar pictures in other blogs and I like them so I figure someone will like mine.

Chain plate repair

Spring is here and I finally removed the chain plate and ground down the rotten and cracked surface.

The plan is build it up with resin and fiberglass. Drill over sized holes and fill them with resin. I have a stainless steel backing plate made and a friend suggested making a stainless steel top plate too. Makes sense to me so I will take some measurements and visit the local http://www.metalsupermarkets.com/. No order is too small for these people. The bow is now sealed with plastic and duct tape. I will open it up every evening this week and remove the moisture. It should be totally dried out by next Saturday when I apply the resin, weather permitting.

Our new skill: Splicing

The wife and I took a two hour seminar/lesson on splicing doulble braided line. It was most informative. The first photo are my three attempts when we got home, the first two were failures but the third was spot on perfect.

The second photo shows my wifes three tries, one wrong and two perfect. The marks you see are reference points for us rookies.

She is the better rigger.....

I learned you cannot splice used rope. Rope that has been wet, nor rope that has been stretched.

Being able to splice loops in lines will save a bundle of $$$ as buying unsliced lines is cheap, cheap, cheap.

Road trip to a boat wrecker

What you see here is our new to us ST2000+ Autohelm plus four turnbuckles. Not shown is our man over board bouy and a tiny anchor for our dinghy. All for a mere $140. Another boating couple and us went on a road trip for this place.

The autohelm does work, we ran it through its paces at the yard. What sucks now is waiting for our launch in spring to put her through sea trials.

Thanksgiving sail.

Our friend taking our picture while my wife was taking their picture.

Me looking the happy fool.

Waiting for our friend to pull in. Look at the algae, it is thiiiick.

Here is my wife Ellie showing off in our brand new to us dinghy. She had never been in one before and just clambered in and stroked away.

Here I am rowing a dinghy for the very first time. I found it very tippy.

This is where we store it.

Me looking cool and nautical.

Ellie in the fore hatch.