Boat Jewelry

The stainless work for the new backstay chain plate is finally complete. The old chain plate was cracked along the edges and the support for the pushpit was very badly cracked. I had the chain plate fabricated over a month ago and have been waiting for the welders to get enough free time to come and finish off the pushpit.

Here's a picture of the chain plate and the vertical (slanted) tube is the new support. The pushpit itself is in pretty bad condition. We really need a entirely new stainless structure built, but that pricey project will have to wait for another day.

While the welders were working I noticed the cool bracelets they both had. I commented to Chipy about his and he pulled it off and gave it to me. They make then on their lunch break at the shop. These are real boat jewelry, because they are made of 304 stainless steel!

More work...

I've been slowly making progress on a few boat projects; re-varnishing the galley, re-painting the dinghy floorboards and re-varnishing the cabin sole. I didn't take any pictures of the dinghy floor boards because who really wants to see pictures of white paint, but here are a few pictures of the before and after of the galley and the sole (floor). The last big project is painting the exterior wood. This is just adding additional coats on the work I did last year so it shouldn't take long. I'm waiting for the weather to cool down before I start. That's scheduled for October 7th.

Done!

Well, the job has taken over two months but the foredeck is completely finished. I had to hold off posting until I finished off the final coat of paint on the bowsprit tip, which got done day before yesterday. Here are the before and after shots followed by a couple more 'afters.' 

Big days on the bowsprit project

There have been some pretty significant milestones in the bowsprit project. Here's the latest.

After the chain locker fiberglass job, I gave everything a good coat of epoxy paint. Here's the inside of the locker with the back-up rode and head parts re-installed. The wires are for the windlass, which will be re-installed after the new samson posts are in.

The foredeck has had all the teak decks removed so it needs the same non-skid preparation that the rest of the teak free deck has. This is the deck after applying 3 coats of epoxy primer and being wet sanded smooth. The rest of the deck was primed with a white epoxy primer that went on much smoother, so only one coat of primer was needed. However the new primer was brushed on pretty rough, and more primer was needed so I could wet sand it smooth.

This picture shows two things, first the completed paint on the foredeck including non-skid. The grey shape in the middle is a fiberglass spacer I made to raise the new samson post to the height of the old deck. I removed about a 1/2" of teak deck so in order to keep the bowsprit in the original location I need to make up for the old teak. The base of the new samson post is 1/4" so the spacer is another 1/4". The blue tape covers holes in the deck to keep rain water out.

Here's the 'Big News'. This is the new stainless sampson post which will receive and support the bowsprit. Thanks to Phil for bringing the 2x4 stainless pipe down! This will bolt to the deck with 3ea 1/2" bolts and 3ea 3/8" bolts. The 3/8" bolt are not visible in this picture, but are in front and are countersunk to the same level as the base plate. I was only able to get 3/8" countersunk bolts, otherwise I'd have used 1/2".

This is a pretty hard picture to understand, but it's the underside of the bow pulpit. I figured since I was doing stainless work I'd modify the roller openings so they would feed the rode better. The stainless shop misunderstood my instructions and only modified the right side roller opening so you can get a before and after idea. They are picking up the pulpit tomorrow to complete the modification.  I wish I'd taken a before picture of the entire pulpit. Part of the work the stainless shop did was to polish the entire pulpit and repair any broken welds. Linda will appreciate the difference, I'm sure. Like I said, I wish I would have taken a before picture!

Here's a picture to show the bow fiberglass repair. I was worried that if I painted the repair the paint would stand out against the old gel-coat and make the repair obvious, but I was able to get the new paint to blend with the old gel-coat pretty well. The only problem is that the new paint is shiny, so I have to dull it up so it will match.

Here's the latest paint coat (5 of 7) on the bowsprit. It's pretty smooth, and very white.

Painting has got to be the slowest process in the world. I get to the boat about 0700 and by 0900 I'm done and can't do any more painting until the next day. Multiply that by 7 coats and things can really slow down. As a result I've been keeping busy after painting by doing small projects. Here's a picture of our new GPS, which replaced a GPS we originally bought in 1995. The old GPS worked ok, that is it gave us our position, but it started to have problems with the on/off button and as a result would turn itself off or on at random moments. That can be pretty annoying, so we decided to replace it. After a lot of searching I was able to find a unit that fit in the same space.

Today after painting I removed the stove and cleaned all the places you can't normally reach with the stove in place.

That's it for now. Soon I should be test fitting and installing the bowsprit. Then it will just be a matter of re-installing all the stuff I had to take off, like the windlass, bow pulpit, foot switches, holding tank pump out fitting and roller furling. The end (of this project) is in sight!

John

Project Update

So I've been doing a lot of itchy work on NAKIA. Here's a pics of the progress. (Like I used to say when I actually had a job, never confuse activity with progress).

One of the things that I've needed to fix is a big void in the fiberglass on the starboard side of the opening for the bowsprit. After grinding it out (a lot of grinding) I filled it in with fiberglass and epoxy. This is the result after the shape has been roughed back in with a 80 grit grinding disk. Next step is to fill/fair the shape back in.

This is the itchiest job I've done in a long time. The holes for the old samson posts need to be fiberglassed over. So I added plywood core sections and ground the deck fiberglass down to a 12:1 taper. That was a lot of fiberglass grinding! There are five other grinding spots, four for the holes in the deck from the old manual windlass (it was removed in 2002!), the fifth large hole on the upper right is from the chain passage from the manual windlass. These holes were never properly fixed because I didn't want to remove the teak decks to do it. Since the teak deck is gone now, it's a good time to do a good repair.

Here's the deck after the fiberglass has been layered in. Next I'll rough grind it flush to the deck and fill/fair flat.

The rains have started here in Mazatlan. So I've had to move indoors to continue making progress. This is a picture of the interior/underside of the foredeck. This was a lot of grinding too, but not as much as the outside. You can see the plywood core patches from where the samson posts used to be. The three 'bright' spots are the holes for electric windlass foot switches and the hole where the secondary rode goes through the deck.

Here we have the fiberglass, plywood and tubing for the interior support. There will be four layers of glass next to the underside of the hull, then 1/2" plywood, then a single layer of glass (all the glass is bi-axial mat). The green tubes on the right are pieces of PVC electrical conduit that I cut in half lengthwise. This will be used to create fiberglass half-pipes which will stiffen the deck.

This is my 'workstation', also known as the Nav-Table, post fiberglass work. I put plastic down on the floor and walls to protect against dripping epoxy. I wanted to set it up in the head but there wasn't room. Thank God I don't have to sleep on board! Rather than clean all this mess up I just left it for tomorrow when all the sticky stuff should be cured.

Here's a part of the finished result. This was the hardest glass job I've ever done. Keep in mind, you're looking at the underside of the deck, so all this glass had to be placed upside down! It was a lot harder then I thought it was going to be. After the first failure, I realized I had to cut down the pieces of fiberglass into smaller sections so I could keep them under control. I started out with 9 pieces of glass and ended up with 25! I found that I could hold the piece in place with my left hand (while it drooped down around my wrist and forearm) and then use a foam roller to push the edges and corners up onto the underside of the deck. Once one or two corners were stuck I could slide my hand out of the way and use the roller to stick the rest of the piece up.

That's it for now. Hopefully the rain will stop tomorrow and I can rough grind the outside.

John

Bowsprit Project Update

There's been quite a bit of progress the last couple days. Here are a few pictures to describe the work.

First I have a picture of the underside of the deck. The top of the picture is forward, the bottom is aft. If you think about it like you are laying on your back it might make sense.
Here we see the support structure for the sampson posts. There are two lateral beams glassed in forward and aft of the posts. A section of the fiberglass has been cut out to show the wood of the posts. The wood looks shiny because it's wet. This is one of the main problems with this design. Since the interior is entirely encased in fiberglass, any water that enters through the joint between the sampson post and the deck stays inside the fiberglass case.

The base of the sampson post has a lateral bolt that holds it to an interior spacer block (that's the middle part of the black section in the previous picture). This is a close-up of the end of the bolt showing how rusty it is. In addition to the lateral bolt, there are two fore and aft bolts that hold the sampson post to the lateral beams.

This is a close-up of one of the fore-and-aft bolts after the sampson post has been removed. It's probably stainless, but in the environment inside the fiberglass casing it rusted like mild steel.

Here is progress to date. The sampson posts and all the teak deck have been removed. The deck is solid, so from here I'll inject some penetrating epoxy and then fill in all the screw holes before sanding it clean and smooth. The holes for the old sampson post will be fiberglassed over and this stainless version will be fabricated.

One funny thing about this project, with all the anchor chain, anchors, rodes, bowsprit and pulpit removed, the waterline is up about 7 inches forward (click the image for better resolution...). I borrowed a bathroom scale to weigh some of the parts that have been removed. The sampson post and some of its supports weigh almost 40 lbs. The bowsprit, just the spar not including the pulpit, weighs 140 lbs!

Here's a little composition to show the other major problem with the existing setup. A lot of the fiberglass case is delaminating from the underside of the deck. I've done a little bit of prying to get the edge open, but it was very easy to insert the head of the pry bar under the fiberglass. All this loose glass will be removed and a new support structure will be added.

April-May update

We haven't posted in awhile, so I thought I'd bring everyone up to date.

In April (on the 11th) Linda returned to the US from Puerto Vallarta leaving John and Ziggy on the boat for the summer. John hung out with friends in La Cruz and even took a little side trip to Yelapa.

The Yelapa trip went well. Gerry, Tom and Joe from the sailboat Eagle came along. Gerry had just arrived from the States (Tom picked him up at the airport and brought him straight to NAKIA to depart for Yelapa). Gerry had spent a lot of time at Yelapa in the 70s, so he wanted to check out all his old hang-outs. Especially his favorite gym.

On May 1, NAKIA left Puerto Vallarta behind and sailed to Mazatlan. We anchored in the old harbor. I locked up the outboard securely and rowed back and forth because of some recent thefts. I also made a major transportation purchase, my first bicycle in over 8 years. Not bad for $60 USD!

On May 18th, NAKIA moved from the old harbor to Marina Mazatlan (no theft problems in the old harbor at all while John was there). On the 19th John and Ziggy moved from NAKIA to a house where we will both be sitting until September. Ziggy felt right at home.

Of course being off the boat means it makes a great workshop. The first project is to remove the bowsprit and rebuild the inboard support. Here's the before picture.

Here's a picture with the bowsprit and pulpit removed as well as all the deck hardware.

Next all the teak comes off and the sampson posts will be removed and replaced with stainless. One diversion was a kitten that showed up in the marina. She was so sweet that I decided to take her to the local shelter to get adopted instead of letting her join the other cats that call the marina home.

paint done!

It's been a couple long weeks of work but the teak is finally covered with four coats of varnish, one coat of paint primer and three coats of paint top coat. I'll be happy not to have to spend the next couple days on my knees (though I have at least one more day of knee killer to go just to remove the adhesive residue from the tape).

Projects

It's been a long time since our last post. NAKIA is still in Mazatlan, with John and Ziggy on board. Linda is still in Seattle getting colder by the day. Here is a brief video of the latest project. Don't get too excited, I'm going to paint over all this varnish.

Fuel tank clean!

Looks like the crud in the fuel tank was definitely exacerbating our engine problems. After a couple days work the tank is clean and ready to be put back together and filled.

I put some pictures on Picasa:

https://picasaweb.google.com/svnakia/FuelTankCleaning

Basically the job is this; 1) empty the tank 2) remove the tank cover (a piece of stainless about 1 foot by 1.5 feet) 3) drop a scrub brush with a long handle into the tank 4) wedge your body into the drawer opening situated above the tank cover hole 5) scrub 6) dump a bunch of paper towels into the tank and sop up all the crud 7) repeat 5 & 6 until clean.

Thanks to Brian, the worker from Marine Services Mazatlan! Without him I would have certainly gotten stuck in the drawer opening (I can fit, it's just getting in and out is a pretty tight squeeze).

John

First rains and more engine work

The first rains have come to Mazatlan. Nothing heavy yet, but we did have a pretty strong clap of thunder the other night. Ziggy is enjoying his Catio quite a bit, he can even stay outside when it's raining because his perch on the folded up dinghy is covered by a Sunbrella awning.

The broken screw turned out not to be the problem with the engine. So now I've changed to 'shotgun' mode to fix the problem. I've replaced all the fuel lines from the tank to the engine. Re-bedded all pipe connections and rebuilt the check valve that keeps the fuel from back-flowing into the tank when a filter is opened. I also replaced both filters and cleaned the filter housings. That was all yesterday and today's engine start went pretty well. The only 'smoking gun' I could find was some gunk in the check valve that was keeping it from working. Could low fuel level in the tank, coupled with the stuck check valve allow air to be sucked into the fuel line from some questionable connection? I sure hope so! I may have to clean the fuel tank to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Tomorrow I'm moving to a different slip, hopefully the engine will start right up and I won't run out of fuel getting from one slip to the other.

John

Smoking Gun?

It's been quite awhile since we've posted to the blog. Allow me to catch everyone up:

We made it to the marina in Mazatlan. Stayed our first month in the Singlar (don't say Cingular!) marina for the month of May. We tore the boat down for the summer, all sails and running rigging are removed and the dinghy is put away. I built a 'Catio' for Ziggy so he can hang out outside at night. Linda flew to Bothell, WA to stay with MJ for the summer. I started working on two main boat projects; 1) rebuilding the top of the hatch turtle and 2) rebuilding the engine.

Whoa! Rebuilding the engine!? Is that really necessary? We came to Mazatlan to answer that very question. There being a Yanmar trained mechanic available through Total Yacht Works, we figured this would be a good place to handle the work.

'Lil Thumper', our Yanmar 3QM30, has got 5100 hours and is over 30 years old. It has two problems; 1) fuel is getting into the lubricating oil and 2) it can be very hard to start. It's not far fetched that it would need at least a set of piston rings. But after spending 15 minutes bent over the running engine, Javier pronounced its compression good ("there's no blow-by, you don't need rings"). Huh. So much for the big rebuild. But what about the hard starting, Javi, not to mention the fuel-in-the-oil (FITO) problem? "We'll change the simple things first; start with the lift pump to fix the FITO and then move on from there." I should say at this time that I consider myself to be a good amateur mechanic, and have already replaced the lift pump (about two years ago when the oil problem first started). But if Javi says to replace the lift pump again, that's what we'll do! I got the spare out and he put it in.

The thing to do now was to run the engine and see if the oil level changes and see if the starting problem comes back. I waited a week before starting the first time as the starting problem seemed to get worse the longer the engine sat. After a week it started hesitantly, but well. After 3 hours the oil level hadn't changed (when fuel leaks into the oil, the level on the dip-stick raises). So maybe the FITO problem is fixed.

On the second day, the start didn't go well at all. It took maybe 20 seconds to get going, the whole time doing the ka-chunk-ka-chunk-ka-chunk thing. I resolved to bleed the fuel system at various points before starting it the next time to see if I get bubbles anywhere (a sign of air in the fuel system which would cause the ka-chunk starting).

On the third day bleeding at the injection pump showed a few bubbles. Humm, maybe the problem is there. It started and ran well, oil level steady. Fourth day, the same. A few bubbles, good start, steady oil.

My theory at this point was that there was air being drawn back into the injection pump when the engine is off. The tank is low and there's no doubt a bit of negative pressure on the fuel system cause by the diesel trying to siphon back into the tank. The question was: where's the air leak?

Today, Sunday, is the fifth day and I resolved this morning to give myself the day off. Oh but maybe I can just bleed the injection pump to see if I get bubbles. Open the engine compartment, unscrew the bleed screw, pump the lift pump, a couple tiny bubbles, tighten the bleed screw, break the head of the bleed screw off! I'm sure even the least mechanically inclined will realize that last step shouldn't be there. It seems the bleed screw may have been in the process of shearing off for some time, making it very hard to get a good seal on the injection pump. All the screwing and unscrewing finally did it in. (Javier also had to crank that screw to bleed the system after replacing the lift pump.)

As I said, it's Sunday, so there's nothing to do about it today. But tomorrow I get to ride the buses looking for 1) an appropriately sized screw and 2) a machine shop to drill a hole in it (the bleed screw has a tiny hole to let air out when it's unscrewed).

John
{GMST}23|16.120|N|106|27.35|W|Marina Mazatlan|Maz{GEND}

Provisioning

This week has been a blur of shopping, stowing groceries, and finishing projects. The haul out itself was one of our easier ones since the only big job was getting new bottom paint on the boat. When we were working stiffs (and vacation time was precious) we used to bang that chore out over a four day weekend, but with eight days in the yard we could take it easy. The big news is not only did we paint over the old blue boot stripe, but we also raised the waterline - again. Hopefully this will cut down on the number of times we have to scrub green slime off the white hull. While we were on the hard John also painted the newly modified propane locker in our cockpit. Now it fits the new tanks we ordered after the ones we purchased in Panama City rusted.

Thanks to Ralph and Glenda we've made numerous trips to Costco which has been a huge money saver. It always hurts the wallet to buy six months to a year's worth of provisions but we think it will pay off in the long run. Except for last minute fresh things we made our last $300 visit today and are already kicking ourselves for not buying more cans of dry roasted peanuts. And after spending $200 at the vet on five cases of prescription canned food and a 10 lb bag of prescription kibble we find we still need another bag of kibble to get us through one year. I still can't wrap my head around the idea of needing a prescription to buy cat food.

I spent one day scrubbing misc. black marks and marks from the Travlift off the hull and the next day we gave the whole boat a good scrubbing. John finished replacing the rigging (shrouds and bobstays) and cut down our new plastic chairs to fit in the cockpit. Stowing all the provisions is a time consuming process as we make it a rule to label the tops of cans with a Sharpie and remove all paper labels in the hope that this will cut down on places for critters to hide. We try to eliminate as much packaging as possible to give our garbage to a first world country rather than burning it ourselves farther down the line. And we do a lot of vacuum sealing/bagging to keep the critters out and to repackage bulk items into smaller units. We're stowing heavy items on the port side of the boat in anticipation of spending most of the passage on port tack, and we now have a noticeable list.

John is now working on our taxes, we have some more non-Costco shopping to do, and a few projects to finish up, and we're looking for a good weather window. Oh, but first we have to get our fuel injection pump back from Honolulu, so we'll try to wrap everything up in anticipation of that.

Linda

Ya wins some, Ya loses some

We've had a couple failures recently that one may not consider critical pieces of equipment, until they're gone.

First the tape player on the stereo gave out. Now this surely has got to be insignificant, right? You're probably wondering how we even noticed the tape player stopped working. I mean, who plays cassette tapes anymore? Well, we use the tape player as a method for hooking the iPod to the stereo. There's a special 'tape' that has a wire coming out of it that plugs into the iPod. The stereo thinks it's playing a tape but in reality the music is coming from the iPod. Now you may come to understand the seriousness of the situation. Without the iPod we're forced to listen to music from our CD collection. Not only that, our morning routine is not complete without listening to 'Fresh Air' and/or 'Talk of the Nation' via podcast.

The second failure was the saloon clock. One day it stopped, which usually means the battery needs to be changed in the cheap plastic movement (it actually says 'zero jewels' inside). But on applying a new AA battery the thing still refused to run. So I put a piece of tape over the face to remind us that it's not really 3:52 and tried to figure out how we were going to get a new clock.

After a while I figured I should give fixing these things a try. After all, I couldn't break the clock any more than it was already broken and as for the tape player I thought I could limit any new damage done to the non-functional tape player. So I got my tool box out (I have one especially for electrical work labeled 'Elect.' surprisingly enough) and set to work. It took a good hour to dismantle the tape player, where I found that the drive belt had jumped it's pulley because a rubber roller was jammed. I applied a little dry lubricant to the roller, re-routed the belt, and put everything back together. A quick test showed that it could actually work again so I re-installed it and sure enough we can once again hear Terry Gross in the AM. 'I'm the man'! I said to myself. Now time to work on time.

I took the cheap plastic movement out of the clock and dismantled it. This was a little harder. Inside is a small printed circuit (PC) board with a few components. Somewhere in there I figured there must be a bad connection. I probed and prodded, and found nothing. Finally decided I had to remove the PC board from the rest of the movement. Boing! out popped the board and Snap! went the two wires that drive the little motor that turns the clock. Having worked on things I don't totally understand for most of my life (I used to take all kinds of things apart when I was a kid just to put them back together; some of them even worked afterword) the 'boing-snap' is the most dreaded result of the disassembly process. 'OK, no problem,' I say to myself, 'I'm the man'. I'll just have to re-solder these two wires, don't worry that they're about the size and strength of a the hair from the head of a one week old infant, I am the man. As I prepared for the soldering process I noticed that the end of one of the wires was green, an indication of corrosion. This must have been the problem all along. Then, just as I'm set to apply the soldering iron, Boing-Snap, the PC board popped out again and this time the wires broke off at a point where they can never be re-soldered. So much for the clock, at least now it's 12:00 instead of 3:52.

I guess I should have said, 'I have been the man.'

John

To Hiva Oa and back to Tahuata

On Monday we watched the Taporo IX unload cargo and take on copra at Hapatoni, Tahuata, and then we pulled up anchor for the short sail to Vaitahu. There we put 38 gallons of water into our tank, and loaded another 25 in jugs. We did it by taking a long hose to the quay from the dinghy. John stayed in the dinghy with the filter end of the hose filling the jugs, and I manned the water faucet and tried to hold the dinghy off the rough concrete wall with a stern line. There was a little surge but we managed to get that chore done without incident and before it started raining in earnest.

The next morning John dropped me off on shore with a bucket load of laundry which we'd let soak in soapy water on the boat overnight. I put it in the first rinse cycle (a bucket of fresh water) and then went off to see what new food items the Taporo IX might have off-loaded. We hadn't gone into the first store you come to on our last visit and to my delight I found fresh baked baguettes on bakery racks inside the front door. We're discovering that the great thing about shopping in the Marquesas is that all the prices seem to be somewhat fixed. So no matter where you shop, baguettes are always 64 CFP. Of course I loaded up on those, along with some onions and potatoes, and went back to finish rinsing the laundry in between showers. I saw some beautiful rainbows as I hurried to get done before the next big shower arrived. Fortunately John saw the black cloud coming in down the valley and raced over in the dinghy to pick me up before it really started to pour.

We waited out that shower and then got underway for Hanamenu on the NW side of Hiva Oa, only about 14 nm away. The sail across the channel was nice and fast, and we managed to get out of the worst of the rain as soon as we left Tahuata. The wind died in the lee of the cape, so we already had the engine running when we rounded it and ran smack into a building headwind and chop. Well, this was unexpected! As unpleasant as it looked, we persevered through another hour of slow motoring (to avoid taking salt water splashes over the bow) to get to the anchorage where the wind and chop were blowing straight into the beach. We were shocked to find another cruising boat bow and stern anchored in very shallow water off to the north side of the bay. Why would anyone want to stay there in such awful weather conditions?! We anchored twice because the first time we ended up too close to some submerged rocks extending out from the side of the bay. We ate lunch, watched the wind build, and thought about spending a sleepless night there. John did some calculating and figured we still had enough time to make it back to Tahuata before sunset so we got the heck out of there. I guess it could be nice under better circumstances but I was not impressed with the dry Baja-like scenery, the murky water, or the brown/gray sand at the head of the bay. Yes, there is a coco plantation covering the little valley in between Grand Canyon like walls, but we wanted to get back to the blue water backed by green tropical cliffs that we'd grown accustomed to.

We sailed over to Ivaiva Nui anchorage on Tahuata, arriving just at sunset. This is a pretty little anchorage with a private home and neat farm above the sandy beach. It doesn't get much protection from the swell though, which has been higher than when we first arrived, so yesterday we sailed back to our favorite Tahuata anchorage at Hana Tefau. That afternoon we saw our first shark, a 3' black-tip, on our swim from the boat (anchored in 55') to a great snorkeling rock close to shore (where we saw yet another new to us kind of fish!). This morning the dolphins were back in the anchorage where they've been all day. I got a closer look at them and they have white tips on their noses and are speckled so now I think they must be spotted dolphins, although they do a lot of acrobatics similar to their cousins, the spinning dolphins. There seem to be lots of babies, so I wonder if this isn't a nursery of sorts for them.

Today we did chores. I defrosted the freezer and cleaned the fridge, and puttered with some additional cleaning, while John sewed himself a new pair of swim trunks. We should go into Hapatoni tomorrow for a walk I guess, but for now we're just enjoying the solitude and beautiful scenery of the anchorage. Here's wishing you all safe travels over the Labor Day weekend!

Linda and John

http://www.geocities.com/svnakia/map_app.htm?09,45.924,S,139,08.390,W,Hanamenu,

http://www.geocities.com/svnakia/map_app.htm?09,54.752,S,139,06.476,W,Ivaiva%20Nui,

http://www.geocities.com/svnakia/map_app.htm?09,57.699,S,139,07.139,W,Hana%20Tefau,

Repaired?

25 feet of 4" sail repair tape
One piece of sail cloth 10 ft long by 18 inches wide
One pint of contact cement
A little bit of sweat and some bug repellant.

We have a mainsail in one piece again. Now to see if it will hold air and not rip itself to shreds.

We took everything ashore this afternoon and as soon as the last tourists left the island (three boatloads came in about 1100) we started working on the sail. We set everything up on the big tiled floor below the park administration building and it looks like we did a strong, if not pretty, repair. We finished right at dark, and had to walk down to the dinghy carrying the _running_ generator and a work light so we could get back to NAKIA.

Wish us luck!

John and Linda

So much for the Galapagos...and the Marquesas...

(One of) the weak links in our plan to go to the Marquesas has always been Nakia's mainsail. It's 12 years old and I've never been very happy with it. It had started developing small rips when we reef, the lines that take in the sail catch it and cause it to rip, so I put a large patch on it to help protect against this.

Our feeling was that the trip to the Marquesas should be mostly down wind, and the main wouldn't have much pressure on it. Of course I completely ignored the fact that the trip to the Galapagos is entirely up-wind where the mainsail has a lot of pressure on it.

Well Friday night the weak link broke. I had just put in the second reef and was adjusting the trim of the sail when it blew out, causing a 6 ft vertical tear above the second reef and out to the back edge. There's no way to repair it on NAKIA, we're 400 miles from the Galapagos and only 150 miles from Bahia, so it's back to Bahia. It takes 2 months for delivery of a sail, so we'll be well past our time frame to get to the Marquesas. Looks like we're spending the wet season in Bahia again...

John

Update Saturday AM: Instead of returning directly to Bahia we've decided to head south along the Ecuadorian coast to "the poor man's Galapagos," Isla de la Plata. It comes highly recommended so we will enjoy some play time there. John can take a closer look at the sail, and we can plan a strategy for it's repair/replacement. We should make landfall some time Saturday evening, and we're having a pleasant sail reaching with staysail and reefed jib.

Linda

Crash!

The inevitable happened on Tuesday. We suffered a complete hard drive crash on our notebook computer. Windows was wiped out and the computer would not boot. I put in the recovery CD and it couldn't even read the file system on the hard drive.

I have a couple extra notebook sized hard drives laying around on NAKIA so I put one in, installed Windows from the recovery CD and began the long process of getting all the applications loaded again. Man what a process.

We have a back up from November so our data was just out of date, not completely lost. The one thing that was really bad was that our back up from Quicken was a week or two old, which meant all our tracked expenses for that time were lost. In an effort to recover that, I bought some recovery software online and put the crashed hard disk into an external USB case. The recovery software (Data Doctor Recovery) was expensive but worked as advertised and I was able to recover all our Quicken data and all the pictures we'd taken since the November backup. Whew!

The one saving grace in all this was that this year I decided to do my taxes online at TurboTax.com instead of downloading the software and doing them on the computer. As a result, I didn't loose any of my yet-to-be-filed tax data. Yeah!

Now, everyone repeat after me: "I resolve to backup my valuable data every month!"

John

Done with the deck, for now...

As many of you know we've been in Mazatlan for a while (almost three months now). We came here with the plan of having Rick on Cape Starr put non-skid fiberglass panels on our decks after I removed the teak. Rick gave us a quote that made us reevaluate our options (the quote was for $12000).

We decided to try doing the work ourselves. After all, there's nothing to a bad fiberglass job that a grinder can't fix.

So, I started in earnest around the 24th of January. The job included filling the voids left when the teak inserts were removed, fabricating a frame for the new hatch, fiberglassing over the foam core used as a filler, fairing the fiberglass, priming and painting the fiberglass, painting down non-skid and finally re-installing deck hardware.

What do you think, was it worth $12000?

We still have the side decks to do, but we're tired of sitting in the marina and much of the side deck work can be done at anchor (I removed all the teak while we were at anchor). So now that the deck is water tight again we're going to head out and have fun for the summer and work on the boat in a more leisurely pace.

John

"Before"

 

This is a composite picture that I put together from some pictures we took before trucking NAKIA to Seattle in 2004. The perspective is a little off, but you can at least get the idea of what the deck looked like before we started work.