New electrical panel

Matt has been working diligently on this weekend after weekend after weekend... and managed to avoid getting shocked. (Not that there wasn't a spark or two to keep things lively.) We had a good laugh over all my countless boat journal entries in which the sentence "Matt worked on the electrical project" appears. Except for some minor aesthetic details though, we think we can count this project as done. (That is, until we add some new electricity requiring device on board...)

These are photos of the old panels. Matt combined the two into one continuous panel and brought it out parallel for easier access.

Here it is. Matt created the new panel so that it unscrews and hinges down to allow access to the somewhat chaotic looking electrical innards. The red switches are for the two battery banks, the center panel is for the items that run off DC, and the left panel controls the AC stuff (electrical outlets and battery charger).

I think we share a similar sense of humor with the previous owners. This little sign had been posted up with the old panel, and we always puzzled over it. What language was it? (Swedish maybe? But why not German?) What did it say? Where had it come from originally? When we removed it for the electrical project we found an English translation on the other side - 'Warning: do not shut battery circuit while engine is running." But we decided to put it back up the way the original owners had. It's just more fun that way.

Pinrail project complete

The pinrails are now on. It took a bit of cautious but assertive use of the rubber mallet to get them positioned onto the shrouds. So far they are a great help in organizing all the lines!

Little Dicki

This is our Dickinson kerosene heater, and over the past winter we became so addicted to her lively company that we gave her a nickname. Little Dicki is able to heat our cabin quite comfortably, and overhead where all the heat all rises I've recorded temperatures of 75 to 80 degrees F! It's more around 65 to 70 F where we hang out, but we'd like to get a fan installed to circulate all that hot air around better. It is a delight to curl up in the evening with a good book and watch the fire.

Winter interior projects included the replacement of Little Dicki's interior chimney (the old one was rusted), and the addition of a new Charley Noble on deck. (The old one was much taller and had been tripped over by us and strangled by the jib sheets far too often. The new one is very pretty so hopefully we won't abuse it so much.)

V berth insulation project

The installation of the new insulation in the v berth was finished a few weeks ago. Here I'm re-attaching the slats. The blue tape marks the sequence, and this is a trick I would never have thought up by myself.

Here is the finished project. The insulation is white, which gives it a different look than the original insulation. Our only other color choice was black and I thought that would be too dark.

The insulation is a closed cell Volara foam with an adhesive backing.

Before I adhered the new insulation, we replaced the whisker tangs; access to the tang bolts was made easy with the absence of insulation and wooden slats. (The bolts go through the hull and are accessed in the v berth.)

If you look closely at the photo you can see rust stains. That is from the old tang, which is why we wanted them replaced. These tangs secure the whisker stays which lead up and attach to the front of the bow sprit.

Here's one other finished project that has been on the list for months. These are the anchor rode locker doors, and the latches are new. Before, there was no means to keep the doors shut, and since the heavy anchor chain is stored behind these doors, we needed to be able to secure them.

Before I could install the latches though, I had to sand the doorway openings larger so the doors could actually close. The installation of the new samson posts (which are located between these doors (you can see the 2 bolts)) had caused some shifting in all the woodwork here, causing things to no longer fit as before.

A very large package arrives

I came home from work this evening to find a very large box taking up a fair amount of space in our very small living room.

It turned out to be our stainless steel stern pulpit which Matt ordered from Bud Taplin a few weeks ago. I was either not told of the order, or was and just wasn't listening (which is always a possiblity) but either way it made the arrival of the package a surprise, and surprises are often fun.
The mounting of the pulpit to Wecantu's stern will be a bit of a project, but I hope to post before and after photos in the near future.

Belay Pins from Thailand

One of Matt's projects to make pinrails for the boat. We decided to order up some belay pins rather than trying to make our own, and after a bit of internet research he finally found a place in Thailand that manufactures the size we needed.
They just arrived yesterday, and Matt can carry on with the project. He's made the pinrails, and now that the pins are here he can drill holes in the rails for the pins to go through. Oh, except that he discovered that the actual pins are ever so slightly bigger than the specs stated, so he needs an ever so slightly bigger bit for the drill press, which needs to be ordered, so we'll have to wait for that to arrive. Ah, boat projects.

The Mystery of the Pink Bilge Water

We had a few exciting things happen this weekend.

Our original plan was to head up to Lopez Island for a few days. But after a few hours of being under way we realized that Mother Nature wasn't really stacking the deck in our favor. Wind and waves were coming from a more Northerly direction rather than the forecasted NW, so we would either be motoring into the waves (uncomfortable), or tacking our way up to Lopez which adds up distance wise. (Wecantu's average speed can range from 2 to 6 knots depending on conditions and if we are sailing or motoring. The distance from Sequim Bay to our favorite Lopez anchorage is roughly 30 nm on a direct course.) Also, the currents would be against us later in the day. In the summer all of this isn't as much of an issue. However, daylight hours are limited this time of year and we didn't feel up to the challenge of anchoring in the dark. So our outing turned into a very good day sail. The winds picked up to a nice 20 to 24 knots, with waves around 2 to 4 feet.

We motored for a while, and in the video below you can see how Wecantu is bashing through the waves. We know it's bouncy when our ship bell rings. (You might hear it.) This is a clue to the mystery of the pink bilge water.

Once we put up sail, heeled over a bit and were at an angle to the waves the motion became smoother. Wecantu eats this stuff up and asks if she can please have some more.

During our outing we got approached by a U.S. Border patrol boat, which has never happened to us before. They were nice, asked a few questions, then went on their way. It was a bit disconcerting though, as both boats were bobbing around quite a bit, and we were trying to communicate, and the feeling was similar to getting pulled over by the police. Except you can't just pull over and stop - you have to continue to handle the boat and interact with them, which creates a lot of things to be aware of at once. With the Olympics in Vancouver B.C. in 2010 security is getting ramped up, so it is good to know that they are out there patrolling the waters.

We spent the rest of the weekend back at the marina. Matt was cleaning the outside of the boat, while I cleaned the inside. I opened up the floorboards to do a routine check of the bilge, and to my horror there were several inches of water there, and it was pink. I could think of four things that would be pink - kool aid, blood, coolant and diesel. Did someone spill kool aid? No. No dead bodies, so not blood. Oh, no, is the engine leaking coolant, or did the diesel tanks now have a leak? That would be a bad thing. And has it got into our water tanks? I called Matt down and we checked the engine - everything looked fine there. I thought and thought, then remembered that we had two containers of coolant stored under the nav station seat. Sure enough, I got them out and one had a drip at the bottom of it. We assumed that all the bucking around the previous day (see video above) tramautized the container a bit too much. Luckily none of the other containers of engine oil or coolant broke.

I used the handheld manual bilge pump and filled up several containers making a total of three gallons pumped. We had only lost maybe a gallon or so of coolant, so there was a bit of water in the blige it mixed with, which probably came from all the heavy rainfall we've had lately. Fortunately the water tanks were not contaminated. Later in the day we went into town and bought a tub to store all engine fluid containers in. So if anything else decides to leak, it'll be somewhat contained. Every time we go out on the boat, we learn something (or many things). Luckily all our lessons so far have been fairly gently taught, but well learned!