And we're back....

One of the pleasures of living aboard is the proximity to the great outdoors, which are greater now that air and land traffic are truncated.

Well, it's been some time since my last post. And yet it's been an eventful month here on the good ship Alchemy, now tied to the seawall at National Yacht Club.  We moved back aboard her on April 30th, having left our winter digs, amid the pandemic stop and start. Our club gave us and two other liveaboard boats permission a good 12 days before any members were allowed on the grounds to tie up and, for lack of much else on offer, bob in place. Even though May was a somewhat unseasonably cool month, appropriate bedding allowed a modicum of comfort and we've done a lot of boat jobs whilst waiting for an improvement in conditions that might allow us to get to the East Coast this season.

 

This is now full of dishes and other galley gear. It's been a valuable addition.

So far, there's been a slight loosening of the "go nowhere, do nothing" restrictions to retard viral spread. Our club, after a lot of debate, is skedded to launch those who wish to be launched (and a minority do not), in mid-June, and various Lake Ontario marinas may be open by then, although the policies on "visitors" are as yet unclear; the Murray Canal opens tomorrow, however, on June 1.

Alchemy at her temporary dock; the power's off on the main finger at the moment, so we are on the wall with a glorious 1.5 bars of wifi!

Our first two weeks here were, unsurprisingly, quiet, with only two other boats, both occupied by single men, and the spectral forms of the club manager and yard man making the odd appearance. But there have been repairs and upgrades done (at a proper distance) most days we've been here, and our son has been completing on online computer science course. Most of the time, or so he says.

Pick a slip, any slip.

 Several jobs have been completed; one was the installation of a chain stopper on the foredeck.

Ah, yes, steel boat skippers just love putting holes in the deck. Not.

 Because of the comparative heights of deck, windlass and anchor roller, I had to fabricate HDPE "risers" for the chain stopper, as well as calculate the most accommodating angle of offset from windlass to roller. The idea is that the stopper keeps the "yank" of the anchor off the windlass gypsy and instead transfers those loads to the deck. So this has to be well-mounted, to say the least. While we have a similar chain hook, and the usual bridle gear, this inline stopper seems to us to be a tidy solution.

Tightening the mounting bolts.

 The job went smoothly.

Missing here is the lever and plate used to trap chain links in the groove just visible. Chain can come up, but can't be lowered or payed out without lifting the plate.

 As did the interior work.

Backing plates and plenty of sealant, as was the case for the windlass, finish the job. No leaks detected since installation

 Getting all that chain out of the well and down the hawsepipe was an improvement.

Doing what it's supposed to.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Alchemy decided that the more tender herbs needed a warmer spot in order to thrive. We didn't really see frost in May, however. Well, just a bit.

OK, snow.

The weather was generally a bit discouraging, which probably reconciled a few sailor to a multi-week delay in getting launched.

Yes, snow. In May.

The harbour is behind that squall.

Meanwhile, fabricator extraordinaire Andrew Barlow made me a beautiful SS wind generator mast and matching base. Well, beautiful to me, anyway. I had to modify it to take a 3/4" hole for the wind generators leads to exit the pole. And that meant cutting a hole on a curved piece of stainless steel.

Start with a pilot hole. Actually, start with clamps. The more, the merrier...

Cutting stainless is a bit of a trial at the best of times. It takes slow drill bit speeds, and plenty of lubrication in the form of cutting oil or water to avoid the dreaded "work hardening".  But I must be improving.

The geared-down shop drill press helped here.

As did plenty of oil. No smoking allowed.

Done. I cleaned up the edges until reasonably smooth and we are ready to pole.

Living in semi-isolation in a mostly closed yacht club means no waiting for the showers, but it also means encounters with various fauna. This is either a Peking duck escapee or some sort of partial albinism...friendly little fellow, either way.

I will call you "Quackers".

Aside from the expected sparrows, terns, grackles, starlings, mallards, red-winged blackbirds and gulls, we've also have had visits from trumpeter swans, cottontail rabbits and one fearless mink, who runs past our boat every morning, usually with an improbably large fish in her face.

The little flange turns sideways and the hawsepipe is sealed.

Still on the topic of ground tackle and fabrications, it's customary offshore to bring the anchor belowdecks and to stow the chain low. This leaves a rather obvious hole in the deck, however, capable of letting in undesirable volumes of ocean. The solution is another Barlow-executed gasketed cap for the windlass's hawsepipe. The anchor end of the chain is attached to the wire lead and, if needed as land is approaching, the flange is turned sideways and the chain is hauled onto the deck for reshackling to the anchor. Neat, isn't it?

Us moved to the wall for that sweet 30 amp fix needed to run space heaters.

 A couple of recommissioning issues have surfaced. The March pump used to run water to the Marine Air heat pump/AC unit has blown a seal, which is leaking prodigiously. I have a spare, but it's a rather big effort to take apart the saloon stairs to access the relevant area, so I've been putting it off. While cycling about 10 days ago, I hit a curb cut badly and pulled a few muscles in my back going over the handlebars in a rather undignified, if strictly Newtonian, fashion. Every job on the boat seems to involve wrenching at arms' length, which, to be honest, isn't the sort of physio called for. But I am recovering even with daily doses of boat yoga.

A sign of better days was seen in the club parking lot.

A more serious issue (we rarely use the AC in either hot or cold modes) arose when the fridge ceased working. The compressor is new last year, and I didn't think it was the problem, so I redid the power leads and remounted the 20 amp circuit breaker (less boat yoga now). Then I checked the power leads going to the module. All good and the customary 13.2 VDC was found.

The dreaded module.

I thought that the thermostat might be involved, so I took the old one I saved from The Time of the Flood and hooked it up. Oh, ho, the fridge happily ran. So I pulled out the leads from the control module and found on the ground lead very little bare wire in the spade connector. I stripped it better, folded it over and crimped on a new spade connector. It's been running fine again for four days, and I deem "crisis averted".

It's the little black wire at the bottom. The outages were intermittent, and therefore frustrating, but we worked it out.

Meanwhile, the club is awaking from its slumber. Dinghy docks are back and the various workboats are launched. Even the old and cranky Blue Barge started immediately. I can't recall the last time that happened in spring, actually. May it be a portent of things to come.

Not sure about Junior Sailing activities this summer, though.

I will also note that this May has featured a tremendous amount of strong easterly winds...I believe we had a five-day stretch of 20 to 30 knot E last week. And some pretty vivid weather along with it.

But southerly this time.

 This has cramped our style regarding certain jobs, such as The Great Reflooring. Yes, we are actually getting to more "make the boat prettier" jobs, as opposed to the "don't sink" and "be capable of sailing" jobs. This has consisted of removing old flooring, prepping the surfaces and remediating them as needed, dealing with found rust, grinding, "converting" and repainting with rustproofing. After that laying down ruinously expensive, if very nice, vinyl flooring held down with two-part epoxy seems the easy part.

The silver part is rustproof-painted; the grubby part is rust-converter painted. It's technical.

The saloon is fully done thanks to Mrs. Alchemy's steady hand and art. The pilothouse will be completed on Tuesday and the helm seat and pedestal restored by then. The boat's looking good. Let's go sailing!

Apply glue and Lonseal Teak and Holly as needed.

Lurch, launch and all before lunch

Amid frankly appalling (see wind-driven sleet in the tiny clip above) conditions and a case of skipper's jitters regarding the soundness of the standpipe thread sealing...

When access was straightforward, no problem...

...but with this much lead in front of it, a concern.

...thanks to the restoration of the house battery bank, seen above minus tie-downs and lids, we launched on April 27. Second boat in, in fact, in the East Yard, winter lodgings of the behemoths of the first row.

Always be cinch-belting!

There's often a touch of ambiguity about our sling marks, as the movement of internal ballast over the winter can be significant.

So we requested, and grudgingly (because launch waits for no one) received "a minute hanging in the slings" to check the integrity of our multiple valvings, tapings and pastings. Luck and, I certainly hope by this stage, skill prevailed and we had no ingress at the many threads in play. That meant I could leave the engine cooling water valve open, fire up the iron jenny (already tested in the cradle as being good to go, the harness and battery connections fully restored) and proceed to our dockline-festooned slip.

Back where she belongs...until July.

As I was on towboat duty, and, inexcusably in my view, a lot of boats this year needed tows (the ones with dead engines/no engine get a pass, of course), I couldn't linger and admire our handiwork, or tapework: Mrs. Alchemy and myself resumed "helping out at Launch".

Shot from mid-morning, this gives an idea of the scale of the cranes employed at launch. Ours is not, in fact, the heaviest boat in the club, an alarming stat for a steel boat owner.

The wind, at times gusting past 25 knots (borderline for crane operations and enough to make Alchemy "shiver" in the slings a few centimetres off her cradle), gave us in the club workboat Storm King plenty to consider. I lost count past 20 tows, but it was near-continuous and increasingly cranky duty. Why can't people ensure their motors work (and have batteries and tillers) on the day? It's not a surprise if you can work a calendar!

Alas, my logo was rejected in favour of cheaper Mac-Tac

After my shift concluded, I got a picture of the effect of Alchemy's winter on the substrate...

No wonder I felt pitched a little for'ard.

This subsidence was, perhaps, aided and abetted by the rising levels of the lake, which led to a group decision to get the mast in as soon as possible.

Two weeks ago. Today, the bricks are partially awash. The lake is 1.6 metres above chart datum.

I had to sort all the wires, cables, strings, stays, shrouds, halyards, etc. and bolt on the spreaders. I'm getting about as fast at this as I think I can. Kudos to the club members who helped with my notoriously massive mast.

It's only confusing if you think about it.

Some chafe-type repairs were needed and the usual "keeper wire" sorting, but it went well and the masting, while heavy work, went without blood sacrifice.

Looks good even boomless, we think.

So, for a multitude of reasons, launch came and went to our satisfaction, even though we needed every minute in the run-up to it and many minutes since.

Postcard-grade, really.

The boom is on, and the new lazyjacks can be seen. More to come shortly as the Drive to be Live in July continues.

I rigged the lazyjacks by copying a picture I saw online. Ah, modern sailing theory!

As a postscript, our former boat Valiente is now sporting a new, stainless steel rudder. We are vicariously anticipating great things of it for the new owner!

Anode goes where? As she's on a mooring, not such a big deal...

Stand by your pipe

A magnet, some line and a boathook hauled this out of the lake after six months. Cleaned up nicely, no?

As the departure date approaches, and, as the last post suggested, the paying work has more or less ceased, boat work has taken on a near-daily rhythm. I say "near" because there are still calls on my time for peripheral concerns, like our out-of-town rental property.

My brother-in-law tacking down the flashing on the roof vent on the last day of March. It's been a fairly harsh spring.

The day before our new tenants were to move in, the next-door neighbours contacted us and said "I think the flashing coming off your roof and is maybe letting snow and rain in."

Talk about motivation.

Myself and my brother-in-law skedaddled eastward, drill sets and fasteners in hand. As it turns out, the flashing was actually aluminum soffit lengths under a wooden, full-length "cap" over a roof vent. Water couldn't actually get in, but we repaired it nonetheless as I wanted to make things right for the new tenants, who are now settling in.

They look heavy, and weigh more.

Meanwhile, back on the still-cradled boat (circa the start of April), I had to remove the six L-16 batteries in order to access the standpipe, which brings water from the outside of the hull to, respectively, the raw-water cooling side of the engine, the head, the air-conditioning/heat pump circuit, and, in the near-future, the watermaker we hope to install in Halifax.

Note the relatively short threads on the nipples.

I discussed after haulout last fall with Andrew Barlow, pal and fabricator/welder extraordinaire, the possibility of replicating the original standpipe of Alchemy in favour of something a) in stainless steel and b) threaded in NPS to take Marelon or equivalent ball valves, as we did with the galley and head sink drains.

Creative carving was required in order to access the various sides of the standpipe. This is inside the galley cabinetry.

Andrew indicated he was up for the job, despite the tricksy time he had in the past getting the NPS threaded nipples cut on a lathe. Despite the fact that NPS, which needs pipe dope or Teflon tape (or both) to be sealed as it is not sealed via a tapering thread, is quite common, apparently you need to know some kind of handshake to have a set of NPS dies.

Four really expensive valves, one pipe. Behold the logic of "fewer holes in boat, happier skipper".

The two leading manufacturers of plastic-type (as opposed to metal) ball valves are U.S.-based Forespar and New Zealand-made TruDesign, the latter being the newer entry in this rather rarefied field of yacht plumbing. The rationale is that plastic valves neither corrode nor are subject to galvanic corrosion, evidence of which I found in the replaced drain nipples and in the old standpipe. Both had bronze ball valves on mild steel nipples.

The dry fitting is a good way to see if you're going to have problems. The Tru-Designs went on precisely.

I opted for TruDesign because last year's Marelon ball valves leaked slightly and spun on with some reluctance. We were able to get them to work, but the 3/4" I.D. ball valves I obtained from Defender Marine seemed to bind in the NPS threads. A phone call to Forespar confirmed that they used "only NPS", which was the whole reason I had to go that route in the first place. Nonetheless, I did not feel confident about such a mission-critical component (all the water-inlet nipples are well below the waterline, of course) making me anxious, so I got four TruDesign ball valves.

Occasionally, I plot my next moves on the foredeck when hauled out. Visionary requires visions.

 I now have spares. That's OK. With water tankage and a water maker to come, I'll use them.

Sparky!

Having cleared the space, cut the needed access, and assured sufficient power, I watched as Andrew wielded his grinder in the tight quarter. Apparently, yoga keeps him flexible.

Further inspection of the old standpipe suggested replacement to avoid failure was a "sooner rather than later" situation.

The hole left down in the hull was interesting because it's the smallest possible amount of wood I could remove to allow Andrew room sufficient to weld the new standpipe in place. Those black hoses are fuel lines from the forward and aft keel tanks. This whole area is usually beneath the batteries and (of late) companionway stairs.

The abyss.

 The sight of Andrew welding a structural "doubler" on the outside of the hull was...interesting.

Not seen: A fire extinguisher at the ready

Of note is the positive shut-off. When working on the batteries, I typically turn off the charger at the panel, the main switch and both the positive and negative disconnects.

That area, once completed, was painted by Mrs. Alchemy

 The welding went well, I thought. By "well", I mean "we didn't sink when launched".

It's warm work down there.

I had to cut a little notch for the lowest nipple (the engine raw-water inlet). No biggie: I have a useful Fein Multimaster knock-off I've brutalized for years. Still works and cost me $99! 

Note the depth of the threads. I wanted maximum contact.

The picture shows the nipple covered in Teflon tape. I also used pipe dope, aka "joint compound" or "pipe paste". I use it sparingly and it coats the threads both on the valve and the nipple. Absent the sort of gasket a garden hose possesses (probably the most common object the average person would encounter an NPS thread), the combo seems to do the trick.

I had to orient the handles in different directions and mountings to allow them to work in this proximity.

Spoiler alert: Not a drop. 

Smooth operation. When we haul in Halifax, I'll have it ground down smoother.

This was a big and backbreaking project, but I'm happy we did it. No amount of softwood bungs would do the trick if a pipe nipple crumbled at sea.