Planning the First Trip: V-O-R!!

On Feb 19th, 2009 Published By B.J.


Hometown favorite Puma Ocean Racing’s Il Mostro during one of the Volvo Ocean Race in port races.

So…assuming my ambitious grand plan for the teak actually comes off and I have the deck reassembled by the first weekend in May, the first trip of the season is being planned. The glorious and exotic location? Boston Harbor.

This year there is another running of the Volvo Ocean Race. If you don’t follow sailboat racing, in a nutshell this is an around the world crewed race (as opposed to an around the world single handed race, like the Vendée Globe). It takes a while to do, and the race is done in a series of legs from port to port. In each port there are some buoy races – visual spectacles for the local fans which count towards the overall total score. Currently the fleet is somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, on the 12,000+ leg from Qingdao, China around Cape Horn and finishing in Rio de Janeiro after some 40 days of racing.

After Rio, the next stop is in Boston. The boats will be arriving some time in late April, with in port racing scheduled for May 9th. The fleet then departs for Galway, Ireland the following weekend.

The current plan is to being Evenstar up to the Boston area the first weekend in May and leave her…somewhere…safe. From her home at East Greenwich yacht club it’s around 110 nautical miles through the Cape Cod Canal to Boston Harbor. That could be done in a single day – around 15 hours of travel. But the Canal adds a dynamic in terms of when you want to hit it, and approaching any strange harbor for the first time after dark is inadvisable. We’re still trying to figure out exactly where to leave her that is reasonably economical, safe and convenient.

So the thought is to break it up into two days. The first day stop some place like Onset, Mass, right before the Canal. The Cape Cod Canal can have a ripping current either direction, an heading through it with 5 knots of current in your face is SLOW. So timing is critical. Fortunately the tides work out well for an AM departure from Onset after a leisurely breakfast, which should lead to a late afternoon arrival in the Boston area. We leave the boat and go home for the week…jobs & school are still factors!

The next weekend we drive to the boat and take her out on the harbor to watch the racing with our family and some friends. Depending on what we decide to do with bringing her home we will either leave Saturday afternoon for home and again stop over night, or we will spend the weekend in Boston and I will bring her home with a couple of friends the following weekend.

We’re pulling for Puma Ocean Racing, a home town favorite out of Newport. We watched their team train in Newport over the last summer and the boat was built just on the other side of the bay. Their training boat was an impressive high tech speedster, the real thing should be a sight to behold!

Here’s to hoping all goes well with an early commissioning…

Posted in Boston, Cape Cod Canal, Onset, VOR | Comments Off on Planning the First Trip: V-O-R!!

Oh Boy! Another Teak Update

On Feb 18th, 2009 Published By B.J.

Hey, it’s what I’m working on and what is consuming my life from a boat work perspective. And it’s February and I already wrote about the damned ice.

Self portrait of grit and determination as your humble author digs out more teak from the top of the dodger with the Fein Multimaster.

Progress is being made, albeit slowly. To date the cockpit, back deck area behind the cockpit, and the top of the dodger are mostly done. We had to take the solar panels on the dodger had to come off for that. (When I say “we” it means myself and Jeff, my classmate that is helping me on this. He’s putting more hours than me on it right now and doing a great job. Mostly though “we” means Jeff, especially if it involves something lengthy, repetitive and unpleasant.)

By mostly done I mean we had pulled out the existing caulk and gone over it in eye-crossing detail with picks and small chisels to scrape out as much of the old caulk as possible. To change from “mostly done” to “ready for caulking” we still need to sand inside each groove and give it a cleaning out with acetone. We will also mask off the edges and any nearby hardware; between the grooves won’t get masked as the extra foul black caulking compound (and there will be lots, everywhere) on the teak will be sanded off. That sanding is actually fairly easy and it is the only thing the nasty goo does easily.

Right now the toughest part is getting all the little scraps out.

As you can see from the two grooves shown here, one is pretty clear of old caulk. The other, if you look to the left side of the groove the caulk that is still stuck there and needs to be removed is visible. That remaining caulk is actually deeper than it looks since it is between two strips of teak.

We have learned that all of the curved teak surfaces appear to be made from interlocking strips of teak, rather than large planks like the flat surfaces. Without this the curved effect of the surface couldn’t easily happen with a simple plank. This makes the clean out more difficult, because the space between each strip offers a narrow spot for the old caulk to have worked it’s way in to. So you have to use a sharp pick to catch those thin strips and pull them out.

The plan, such as it is, is to hopefully start caulking in April. If we can get the raised parts of the deck “mostly done” by the end of February we might be able to move on to the lower parts of the deck. We’ve got a month for that (unfortunately I must take vacation with the family in the middle of that though Jeff will be forging ahead in my absence). So if all holds there is a reasonable chance this can all get done by late April/early May.

The caulking and sanding actually takes MUCH less time than the prep.

Posted in foul black sticky stuff, Multimaster, Teak | Comments Off on Oh Boy! Another Teak Update

Far from Complete…

On Feb 15th, 2009 Published By B.J.

But it’s a start at the project list. It feels smaller than last year, so maybe I’m actually accomplishing something.

I have a spread sheet where I am planning the projects and upgrades for the next 2-3 years; this is a partial list. Only those things labeled as “Winter 08/09” and “Spring 09” are included.

Most noticeable in it’s absence is a complete upgrade of the electronics on board, as well as the addition of some wind power. The electronics overhaul was supposed to happen over this winter, but well plans change. While our personal position has not been made especially precarious by “these troubled times” it seemed prudent to not drop a huge chunk of change on something discretionary. Especially since the other stuff works (albeit not the way I want it to) and we’re not planning to cross any oceans in 2009. Also with electronics it never hurts to wait if you can, for example by the time I get around to replacing radar HD & digital radar should have the hinks worked out of them, and maybe even gotten a little cheaper.

Delaying the wind is directly tied to the Electronics Upgrade. I plan to dispose of the giant open array radar tower installed on the aft port quarter of the boat and replace it with a Radome either up the back stay or into the rig. Today’s Radome models offer better resolution and range than the monstrous thing spinning around on the end of my boat. Until the radar tower is gone though, I don’t have a permanent place for a wind generator.

This project is definitely happening, but it will require a massive amount of research on components, designs, and vendors. I’ve even discussed the feasibility of doing most of the installations myself – which I would see as a big win both financially AND from a long term maintenance perspective since I will then know where the bodies are buried. My teachers seem to think I’m technically up for the task based on what they’ve seen of my work, and I would always have a “Life Line” to call if I got stuck I think. So those upgrades are on the horizon, but don’t expect a lot of long winded rants and diatribes on those topics until close to the end of the 2009 sailing season.

  • Re-caulk teak deck; AT LEAST the raised deck parts of the deck and cockpit complete for 2009.
  • Figure out why I the SSB barely works. It’s probably me, not the radio.
  • Add a small electric bilge pump hard wired to 12V house
  • Fix the oven control knob (yes, this should take 30 seconds…in theory)
  • Fix the oil change and 2nd emergency bilge/fire pumps
  • Repair/Replace the manual bilge pump
  • Install last two solar panels on the dodger.
  • Move the propane tanks back to the propane locker, add a solenoid before I blow myself and my boat to hell.
  • Add a salt water washdown to the anchor locker; freshwater is too precious to waste on nasty bottom mud!
  • Install cabin fans in the cabins still without; switch installed ones to 24V house power
  • Clean all the rest of the crud out of the lockers, lazarettes, under floor compartments that I still haven’t gotten around to doing
  • Replace cables and repair Davits
  • Clean out engine room and re-seat the floors catwalks properly.
  • Fix the trim & caulk on the head countertops
  • New curtains (this is SO not my job!)
  • Fix some chips in the hull (I can do that now!)
  • Get a new life raft (maybe)
  • Replace caulk in galley counters
  • Add a salt water washdown for the anchor rode
Posted in projects | Comments Off on Far from Complete…

The Teak Blade

On Feb 12th, 2009 Published By B.J.


In case anyone was curious, it’s really quite simple. It has a U shape at the bottom of it which is roughly the width of the teak groove. The circular portion is where it attaches to the Fein Multmaster, which vibrates the whole thing to give it it’s cutting action. You just run the tip of your blade along the teak groove. It’s about the length of my pinky.

Why they get over $50.00 ($59.99 MSRP) for a 1/2 ounce piece of metal is beyond me. The price of ingenuity I suppose.

That and I would probably pay a LOT of money not to have to strip the teak out by hand. Wait a minute…

Posted in Cool Gear, Teak | 1 Comment

So it wasn’t four hours…

On Feb 12th, 2009 Published By B.J.

But I did get over there to work on the Teak a bit today.

More tomorrow – it’s actually warm here, I wish we were ready to do some caulking.

There are two sorts of grooves in the teak – shallow more ornamental ones, and deep ones that run all the way to the deck and run between two planks of teak. The shallow ones presumably are to add more no skid capability, but they only run a few millimeters deep.


The shallow ones are easy compared to the deep ones, almost fun. They are generally straight, and the Fein Mulitmaster with the teak caulk blade skims over 90% of the caulk out of them in seconds. The remainder takes a mix of running the Multimaster over it a few more times, then WAY more time with little picks and chisels staring at the lines up close picking out the caulk until your eyes cross and your hands cramp up.

The deep ones are an unholy b***h to clear out more often than not. First of all they are three times the depth of the decorative ones, so there is way more caulk to get out. It’s deep enough so the Multimaster blade sometimes gets bound up in it. It is harder to GET it all out, and the bottom of the groove is boat – some sort of epoxy glue/sealant than holds the teak to the deck, not teak. So the caulk sticks better. And you can dig up the underlying gelcoat if you’re not careful. And there are little staple like things in the groves to catch (and dull) the blade. More importantly, the DEEP structural grooves are often not straight at all, or form funny angles with other pieces of teak. For curved grooves you can not even use the Multimaster, you’re going in by hand.

So being the, er, nice guy that I am I go join my classmate that I talked in to helping me with this job. He’s working one side of the boat removing deck hardware and playing with picks, so I grab the Multimaster and start buzzing out teak on the other side of the deck. Only as I was finishing did it occur to me that he was probably thinking “when I finish doing all this crappy, curved, deep caulk at least I have a nice big section of the deck over there to do which should be a nice break”. Ooops.

Fortunately he’s a good sport, and of course with a 53 foot boat with a 16’beam entirely covered with teak there really are plenty of wide, straight shallow grooves for everybody to do.

If you ask me really nicely I might even let you do some of them.

Posted in hell, Multimaster, Teak | Comments Off on So it wasn’t four hours…

The Blogger in Winter

On Feb 10th, 2009 Published By B.J.

Thanks to Digital Heretix for this image.

Writing a sailing blog in the New England winter is like…is like…

Well the general feeling is “loss for words” I suppose.

My view on all of this was stated very early on here – it is largely a self indulgent activity with little merit beyond scratching my own itch to babble on about what has been plaguing me lately.

Not so much plagues me in the winter time though, at least not in terms of problems or issues with the boat – it’s all tucked away. No real adventures either, at least not on the boat. But it’s not my intent to make this a monologue of my life; I’m pretty sure the demand for what I am doing with my life away from the boat is less than for a play-by-play recall of cleaning the bilge.

So until the summer; we’ll see what I can come up with that’s interesting. Or not…boat work actually DOES start soon for the 2009 season and this is supposed to be about the boat, and our adventures.

Until then, well I wrote this little bit of piffle to find an excuse to use the picture I borrowed, because it made me laugh out loud when I stumbled across it.

Posted in blogging | 2 Comments

Motivation…Calling Matt Foley!

On Feb 10th, 2009 Published By B.J.


“If you don’t get all that Teak re-done by May, you might end up spending your whole summer in a VAN, down by the RIVER!”

I’m finding it REALLY easy to find things to do that do not involve digging teak caulk out of my deck.

The biggest excuse of course is my poor classmate that I’ve recruited – after all I don’t want to mess with what he is doing, right? He’s busy busy over there, and I will just show up and mess with his work space and lose his tools. Yeah right. (note to self…it is your boat)

The cold is a good one. It has been fairly cold here of late, and working on a boat under the shrink wrap when it is 12 degrees outside and the wind is howling is not in my list of “Top Ten Ways to Spend a Snowy Afternoon.” I’ve got a little propane heater for under there but it’s really not enough when it’s that cold.

There there are the other things…meetings, volunteer work, classes, working out. Yes…I did type “working out”, which for the last 42 years has been one of my least favorite past times. But it is quite warm at the gym, and no one can fault me for trying to take care of my health, right?

Of course this is getting serious – we are already thinking of plans for the next sailing season, some of which are quite early like a trip to Boston to watch some of the Volvo Ocean Race in port events. And the teak needs to be DONE before I do this.

Or, that part which we are going to get to this year needs to be done at least.

So this week, in spite of needing to prepare for a GBSA board meeting, to attend a public safety hearing, to work out several more times, to help get a GBSA mailing out, to pay some bills, to update my blog, to wash my hair…see, I’m doing it again.

At least four hours of caulk peeling this week or ELSE!

Posted in hell, procrastination, Teak | Comments Off on Motivation…Calling Matt Foley!

Do I at Least Get to Wear a Cool Hat?

On Feb 6th, 2009 Published By B.J.

Commodore (noun) – an officer in temporary command of a squadron.

I’ve been a “Commodore” in the Bad Way before, more than once, through every fault of my own. What I am referring to of course is having more than one boat. In the past at least twice I have somehow convinced my wife that we’ve found the perfect boat NOW, and we don’t want to take the risk of missing it and enduring the dreaded “boatless” condition where we’ve sold the Old Boat and not yet found the Dream Boat. So far, what inevitably happens is the closing on the Dream Boat arrives long before the Old Boat has become someone else’s Dream Boat. I am two for two on this, with the pre-Evenstar vessel actually taking an uncomfortably long time to sell for less than I’d wanted.

I strongly advise against this situation BTW, both from a financial perspective and that of marital harmony.

I am a bit of a day dreamer, and I tend to some times speak my thoughts aloud when I shouldn’t. Thoughts like “wow, that would be a COOL little powerboat to zip around the bay on with the kids and go fishing” when we already have a rather largish sail boat. Although it does not, technically, “zip” anywhere. While only semi-serious (because I know in some deep reptilian portion of my brain this makes no financial sense, especially with an eye on cruising some day), on more than one occasion I have been chastised because I “already have enough boats.” Or worse, I already have “Too Many Boats.” That makes me think of the Emperor of Austria explaining to Mozart what is wrong with Figaro in the film Amadeus…”too many notes”…however it is much more chilling from my spouse.

What brings this meandering rumination about is the acquisition of yet another boat, specifically a new Optimist dinghy for my daughter to race next summer. In my mind I have one, and only one boat – Evenstar. However when you start counting the little boats it starts getting silly – you’ve got the inflatable dinghy, the Skimmar, and currently three Optis. Those last really shouldn’t count to the total though since one is being donated shortly to GBSA and the other two are for the kids. So is the Skimmar, I can’t fit in that thing. In my mind that’s like counting the kids bicycles as cars. And the inflatable is really just part of the big boat, right?

Unfortunately my wife counts boats differently than me.

I point to her partner who literally DOES have a fleet of boats for his own purposes, but to no avail. He doesn’t get a cool hat to wear either.

Posted in Dinghy, Jr. Sailing, kids, Skimmar | 1 Comment

The More Things Change

On Feb 5th, 2009 Published By B.J.

From the Master Project List, 2008 Version…the update. To be followed with an updated “2009 Version”.

  • Add sprit for cruising asymmetrical; on order from Hallberg-Rassy
  • Re-caulk teak deck; as much as I can do vs. a little as I can get away with
  • Replace damaged 24V Alternator
  • Paint the bottom, replace the zincs
  • Replace the valves in the heads Got the forward one done anyway
  • New Bimini
  • New Cushions
  • Figure out why I the SSB barely works. It’s probably me, not the radio.
  • Add a small electric bilge pump hard wired to 12V house
  • Fix the oven control knob
  • Fix the oil change and 2nd emergency bilge/fire pumps
  • Repair/Replace the manual bilge pump
  • Get the Freedom 25 charger fixed Sort of fixed it…
  • Get the life raft re-certified Or totaled, cut up and thrown out.
  • Add a couple of solar panels Six on last year, two left
  • Move the propane tanks back to the propane locker, add a solenoid
  • Add a salt water washdown to the anchor locker
  • Install Cabin Fans (6 24v fans) Got a couple of them in
  • Add a UV cover to the 105% jib
  • Recondition/restore the gelcoat shine an ongoing battle, really
  • Clean all the rest of the crud out of the lockers, lazarettes, under floor compartments that I still haven’t gotten around to doing
  • Replace the heads…maybe just the aft toilet.

So some progress was made, but it’s never enough. Of course there are many NEW things to do. That list is forthcoming.

Two steps forward, one step back.

Posted in maintenance, projects, Sysiphus | 2 Comments

Psst…Hey Buddy, Wanna Buy an Outboard?

On Feb 4th, 2009 Published By B.J.

It goes without saying that I’ve got a Tohatsu 9.8 HP 4 stroke for sale.

Runs great.

As soon as a I rebuild the carburetor anyway.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
Posted in carburetor, for sale, outboard | Comments Off on Psst…Hey Buddy, Wanna Buy an Outboard?