Grab handles and toast rack...

In order to fit the Treadmaster we have to remove all the deck fittings, especially the grab handles and toast racks. So this morning before work I went down to the boat to start that. Before I arrived Tim had been there removing more anti-fouling. If all goes to plan he will remove the last of it on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings.

So... to remove the grab handles and toast racks on the foredeck you have to remove all the ceiling panels. That is an art in itself. In the for'ard heads you could not get at the nuts because there is a medicine cabinet there. So that had to come off. I don't think I had ever felt such a heavy and sturdy medicine cabinet anywhere.

Some of the nuts were difficult to shift but eventually all came off. In taking off the ceiling panels I saw that where the front vent comes through the deck from the dorade the previous owner had not sealed the deck panels so the balsa wood sandwich was exposed. That's another task for later - seal the balsa to stop damp penetration.

Having removed all the bolts I then set to to remove the grab handles and toast rack. Toast rack? These are the upright stainless steel rails around the masts that look like toast racks but are there to lean against when you adjust the sails. The toast racks were well and truly fixed solidly. I couldn't even move them 1 millimetre! The grab handles I chipped out the glue/Treadmaster under each bolt with a screw driver and then used it to lever them up. All except one. I exerted myself on that, twisted my back slightly and bent the extremely strong screw driver!

After work in the evening I came back with Tim. With his strength he moved the grab handle and with a heavy piece of wood dislodged and removed the toast racks. Well we know one thing now - when they are fixed in place they are good and solid to grab or lean against!

When is a 13A socket not a 13A socket?

I'm sitting here at the end of the day wondering where it all went... I know that I worked all day, but what did I achieve?

We had seen there were a flew blemishes in the below water line epoxy surface. So I spent some time grinding them out down a couple of millimetres ready for re-filling with new epoxy. There are not many and they are very small. They are not like the bubbles you get from osmosis, more like little chips in the surface that just need to be repaired. I have a small rounded grind stone on my battery operated drill and use that.

I went to put the battery on charge [its getting old and doesn't hold much charge these days] only to find that I had left the 220 volt system in the middle of a task. I wanted to connect up the two 13A sockets above the navigation table [only one was connected] and when I opened it up to connect the second one I had found that one was corroded and the wires could not be undone. So I bought two new sockets to replace them both and make them match.

When I removed the sockets to replace them I found that the previous owner had used non-standard 13A sockets and the new ones wouldn't fit. Ahhh... suddenly things elsewhere made sense. There were two sockets [one in the saloon, one in the for'ard cabin] that were not fixed firmly into the wall. The reason was they were the non-standard sockets and the backing plates were standard. So... I removed the non-standard sockets and fitted my new standard size ones, took the two non-standard sockets and used those in the non-standard backing plate above the nav table! A five minute task had become a one hour task. We find this a lot on the boat.

I spend some time sanding by hand the top and back of the rudder - places that the orbital sander cannot reach. I used some of the old sanding disks which I folded over on the blade of a paint scraper and painstakingly removed all the anti-fouling [and a few barnacles] from the gaps.

Final job was to trim the Sikaflex around the speed log hole. It looked very neat.

This weekend felt like we had moved forward a lot.

New windlass, fitting sea cocks, engine work and more

I went Comar Marine on the way to the boat as I wanted Sikaflex for sealing the new sea cock later in the day. I got distracted looking around. They had a very nice set of davits, which we will need sometime in the future for the tender. I also looked at the electrical panels and some of the other chandlery. I renovated the 12 volt distribution panel this year, but it will at some stage [maybe two years time] need some more serious work on it. Anyway, they only had one tube of Sikaflex, which had expired in September, so they gave it to me.

Back at King Malu, Tim was still grinding away at the ant-fouling. He reckons its building up his arms. I'm sure it is. My right arm is still not right and I get twinges every so often in my shoulder, so I'm very thankful Tim is so strong at this.

I started cleaning up the sea cock to go back into the stern cabin. I wanted it as clean as possible for the Sikaflex to stick to, and was also using light grinding compound on the inner part to make it seal with the Blakes grease.

Ken arrived and started work looking at the engine... a few minutes later Costas arrived with the new windlass.

The old 'Sea Lion' windlass is no more. We had done all we could to revive it, but eventually gave up. It started a week ago... The mechanism was stuck solid so we needed to service it. The gypsy was also needing replacing. Taking off the gypsy took some days and broke in the process. This involved squirting WD40 into it, using an engine puller and a couple of spanners as wedges. Two days work.

Next was to get into the mechanism. We turned the windlass on its end and filled up the holes with WD40. Ken said, 'Every time you pass, use the hammer and tap around all the bolts'. I decided to only do this morning and afternoon as tapping aluminium with a heavy hammer at 10pm is a good way to make yourself unpopular with the neighbours! The aim of this was that the vibration of the hammering would help the WD40 penetrate down the shafts of the bolts. So for days I had hammered the windlass when I passed.

However getting in to the mechanism proved impossible. The bolts were totally embedded into the aluminium casting. Then we found that it would be impossible to get spares so anything needed would have to be machined specially. All this meant that even though a new windlass would be expensive, it would be cheaper than maintaining the old one. So yesterday the old windlass was declared dead.

So we bought a Quick Hector windlass from Damianu Marine. Costas is a great guy. Very helpful and knowledgeable. We spend some time working out how to mount the new windlass to optimize the its action on the chain. Basically we need it as high as possible so that the chain will go round nearly 90 degrees of the gypsy. Being smaller than the old windlass we will need to raise it about 8-10 cm. We're now looking for suitable wood to make a plinth for it to be mounted on.

The other thing Costas brought was the speed log which will need to be mounted in the hull. So we cut a pilot from the inside and then with his hole cutter, cut a mounting hole from the outside. We were shocked by the thickness of the hull. Nearly four centimetres: About nine layers of glass fibre. They don't make boats like that now!

We then decided that we should empty the fuel tank as we wanted to flush out all the old diesel before trying to start the engine. This looked like an easy task. We would remove an engine room sea cock, run a pipe down from the inlet to the lift pump for the generator and siphon the fuel into a drum for disposal. The first part was easy. Siphoning just didn't work. Eventually we used the old fresh water pump to pump it out. Not very much fuel in the tank.

Ken then decided to take of the injectors for servicing. He found the washers were all missing and the injectors very carboned up. We are slowing learning more about this Ford York engine as we go. One thing we found today was where the impeller fixes. Replacing impellers is something that happens relatively frequently and sadly is not all that easy on this engine as you have to remove the oil filter to do so. Oh well...

Final job of the day was to fix the new sea cock for the galley. We had borrowed a couple of hole cutters and these proved invaluable. We were making plastic washers - approx 10 cm diametre and 1 cm thick - from an old bread board of Tim's. Cutting them to size with the hole cutters made extremely neat washers. Then we cut through the hull. Higher up this time and the thickness only about 2.5 cm thick, still much greater than a modern production yacht. Aligning the holes for the bolts proved significantly more difficult than anticipated, but we won eventually and glued the outer brass ring and bolts in place with Sikaflex, leaving it to cure overnight before doing the inside in the morning.

All in all, good days work!

Inspection by the DMS Ships Inspector

One part of registration for yachts wishing to be Cyprus flagged is an inspection by the DMS Ships Inspector. Ours happened today. The inspector arrived at 9am and looked at the hull and boat in general and decided [in not many seconds] she was strong and seaworthy.

Then he checked checked out the measurements from the Camper and Nicholson manual. Found one was missing for him to calculate the tonnage... which was distance from the bottom of the bilges to the main desk height... so measured that.

Then explained about the signage needed [brass tonnage/registration plate and yacht name placement on the hull] and then left.

Painless. Next step is he sends his report in on Monday. Then they allocate a number, send us that and the tonnage. Then we make the brass plate and fix it to the boat [we will put it next to the Camper and Nicholson build plate]. We also get the signage for the hull... the DMS come and inspect that and we are registered.

How to dispose of out of date flares in Cyprus

We had found some outdated flares and Very Pistol flares on King Malu. When I say outdated, they expired in July 1992, so they were very out of date.

I went up to see Maroulla at the Marina office. She made a phone call and told me to take them to the central police station. So off I went to the police station, a beautiful colonial style building walking distance from the marina.

The desk sergeant looked across at the flares and told me that they didn't deal with them, it was the Fire Brigade. He made a phone call and then wrote down the number for me. I asked him if he could call the Fire Brigade for me as I was sure they would not understand. 'I'm not your secretary' was the curt reply. As a true Englishman I apologized profusely.

So I went outside the police station and phoned the Fire Brigade on my mobile. I was correct they didn't understand me and connected me first to one person and then to another and another and finally to the Fire Chief.

'I have some out of date flares that need to be disposed of...'

'Explosion? Where is the explosion?'

'No, no explosion, distress flares from my boat...'

'You have a fire on your boat. Do you want me to send a Fire Engine?'

'No, no, please don't. These are rescue flares that are out of date and need to be destroyed.'

'Where are you?'

'I'm at the marina entrance...'

'OK, I will be with you in five minutes.'

True to his word the Fire Chief arrived in his bright red pickup with blue and red lights flashing within 5 minutes at the marina. He took one look at the flares and said, 'No, we don't deal with those, the police deal with them.' I explained that I had come from the police and that they were the people who had given me his number. He rolled his eyes as if to make a comment about inter-service rivalry and said, 'Come with me, we'll sort it out.'

He picked up his walkie-talkie and spoke to the fire station, explaining that the Englishman's boat was not sinking and didn't need pumping out. There was no need to send a fire engine! He explained the radio call to me since I didn't speak Greek. Then, off we walked, he in full fire chief uniform and me carrying a large bag of very out of date flares to the police station. As we walked he asked me what we called them in English.

'Flares', I replied.

'Flars', he said.

'No, flairs.' I said trying to emphasise the air not the ar.

'Ah, flars' he corrected himself.

With a twinkle in his eye he said that the Fire Brigade only put out fires, it was the Police who started them, so the flares were definitely their responsibility.

We arrived at the police station and the same desk sergeant was sitting there. I placed the bulging bag of flares back on the desk. This time the dialogue was directly between the Fire Chief and desk sergeant and was in Greek. The Fire Chief removed one of the flares and showed the desk sergeant the date. July 1992. The desk sergeant was outranked, but still maintained that they didn't deal with expired flares.

So, with me in tow, the Fire Chief went to see the Police Chief. We all shook hands. Now I had loads of fancy stars on epaulettes trying to sort out the problem of the expired flares. The Fire Chief removed one of the flares and showed the head of police the date. July 1992.

The Police Chief sent us to the head of the Criminal Investigation Department [CID]. The Fire Chief and he were also old friends and so we all shook hands. At last we were at the right place. The CID are the people who [somehow] dispose of old flares. Everyone [except the desk sergeant] had been helpful and the Fire Chief explained, 'We like to help foreigners, we do our best for all foreigners.' Thank you, yes.

They looked at the flares and asked about the dates. I explained that they had been on the yacht we had just bought a month ago that had been on the hard for eight years but the expiry date on the flares was July 1992. The eyes of the CID men nearly boggled out of their head. 17 years out of date flares is not a common sight! They handled them gingerly.

The head of CID delegated the task to one of his detectives who immediately asked to see my passport. I went off to the marina to collect it. When I returned the desk sergeant merely nodded my passing and I went to the detective concerned. He had completed a full page report about the flares, itemizing each and every flare, every smoke flare, every rocket and every Very pistol flare. Now he needed my passport number, my driving license number, my address and my phone number. Did he want the name of the boat too? Oh yes, of course and the name of the boat. They had learned administration in Cyprus at the hands of the British.

I left, thankful the for Fire Chief who had guided me around the intricacies of the police department.

Wiring almost complete...

I arrived at the boat about 9am, having hoped to be there a little before. Tim had removed more of the antifouling and it was looking great. He wanted some more sanding disks so we all went out - me, Tim and Jacob, as I wanted some extra wire.

At the shop that sells sanding disks we asked about diesel generators, as we are not sure of the health of the one on the boat. But, they only sell petrol ones. No way do we want petrol on board!

On the way back we popped into see Costas at Raymarine and Captain Alan at Seacrest Marine. We may need a new capstan so talked to Alan about that.

Back to the boat and tried to get the second battery bank working. No chance. Got out the meter and checked - no connection from the battery to the switch. So where on earth was the wire routed? Up came the floorboards... found another 120amp cable... tested that... no connection... then another 120amp cable... tested that... no connection... eventually I had 7 extra 120 amp cables in my hand none of which connected to the battery or the battery switch. So I called Stefan.

With some words from Stef and my own further delving I did find out how it was connected. Lunch time. I was discouraged. It was going much slower than I expected.

Back to work after lunch and then things went much faster than expected. By the time it was dark we had connected the three ring main/freezer circuits to an extension box ready for the consumer unit in the morning. The battery charger was now working and automatically switching on when the shore power is connected and not when the inverter is. And... the inverter was working and providing power. The battery charger remote control was showing what was happening to the batteries [including the battery and chassis temperatures] and the remote for the inverter also working.

So... hopefully tomorrow morning I will connect the ring mains/freezer circuits, connect the three 12volt circuits still pending, connect the battery monitor system and put the panels back on the wall!

Batteries

The new batteries were in the battery compartment but not connected. I had looked all over the boat for cables to interconnect them, but found too few. There were a couple of old tired cables, two equally tired battery clips, plus two broken ones. So I bought brand new shiny ones from the car electrical store and asked about cables. Yes, they had cables, no they didn't make them up. So I thought about going to a car electrician and see if he had the tools to swage the terminals.

As I thought about this I thought back to the battery room at the BBC World Service many years ago and the thick copper strips joining the batteries. That is what I really needed for the two battery banks. But where from? I thought of Ken, my engineer friend, but that would need explaining to him and waiting for him to source the metal strip. What I needed was a copper strip approx three centimetres wide and three millimetres thick... oh well, have to think about that.

The other thing I had to do was to try and swap the 50 amp and 40 amp breakers for a single 80 amp breaker. The windlass takes a huge current and the previous owner had put two 40 amp breakers in parallel. I had not realised this when I had ordered the breakers. By preference I would like a single 80 amp breaker. So I went back to the electrical store and returned the old breakers. No, they didn't have 80 amp breakers, but what they did have was a dual pole 63 amp breaker. Ideal. I bought that. As I was turning to go I saw what I wanted: Copper lightening conductor - three centimetres wide by three millimetres thick copper strip. 'One metre, please'.

Now I have really smart looking battery banks and just need to attach terminals to the strips to allow the battery banks to be connected to the boat electrics.

Postscript: I was telling the story to a friend who is from the Shetland Isles today. He was the engineer for the airport there and engineer for a transmitter station in the Far East... I got to the point of 'What I really need is copper strip, approx three centrimetres wide and three millimetres thick...' when he interrupted with, 'What you need is lightening conductor strip'. You live and learn.

Solar cells, wiring and anti-fouling

This morning I took Neil, Paula and James to Limassol. They are returning to the UK by ship. On the way back I picked up three solar cells from David for King Malu. Two are flexible and one is on a frame. We will have to work out how to mount them.

When I got back to the boat I found Tim had completed removing all the anti-fouling. Or so he had thought... Alan, who runs a boat repair, boat sales, etc, etc company came by and told him that he really needed to remove it right back to the barrier coat. This was about the same as George the chandler had said... so... still more to do there. But looks like an easier job than removing the first thick coat. The hull and deck is really cleaning up nicely. Almost feels like by next weekend we will have turned the corner, from taking apart/stripping to putting back together.

When I arrived I did a bit more of the 12 volt wiring and put the batteries in the battery box. Couldn't wire them as there are not enough good battery terminals. Buy some more tomorrow.

Then went back for lunch with Sue. Just as I was about to leave Tim arrived and updated me on the conversation with Alan. After lunch I picked up Jacob and we went back to do some more wiring.

When we arrived Tim was washing down King Malu with the power washer. Today we had enough pressure that it worked properly... most of the time at least. The teak rubbing strip had loads of dirt come off it and the teak in the cockpit seems to come up better each time. But 'each time' the water runs so dirty you cannot believe how much stuff is in the wood!

Water got into the sail locker in the process so we left it to dry and went round to look at different biminis on other boats in the marina. We are trying to find a way to get the maximum usable bimini on King Malu so we have the absolute maximum amount of shade. So many options, its going to be difficult. We will try out with plastic piping first to work out the best way.

Then I got back to the wiring. This time the 220volt wiring. I wired in the phase reverse switch, galvanic isolator and the Stirling Power switch to the consumer unit. Turned on and... loud screech from the unit. The power was the wrong way round incoming and it showed off the phase reverse switch absolutely perfectly. Very impressive.

Well, that was a good weekend's work.

Boat electrics

Got down to King Malu by about 8:30 and started working on the wiring. Tim was already grinding away at the port side removing anti-fouling. I fitted all the MCBs and then worked out how to split the buss bars so that we have three battery 'pools', two of which are on the breaker panel.

Let me explain the logic. You don't want to have your boat unable to start the engine so its pretty normal to have a single starter battery and then a 'domestic' supply for everything else. However... now that we are heading towards electronic navigation etc, there are two areas you want to protect: Starting the engine and the navigation instruments. So we decided to get three pools of batteries, one battery for starting the engine or generator, one or two batteries for navigation instruments and two or three batteries for domestic supply.

Soon after I started Ken turned up and so I stopped for a bit to help him. He is making a new manual winch handle for if the anchor winch motor fails. We found problems with the gypsy for the winch and the winch itself, so ended up removing the whole winch motor to work on it off the boat. I went back to wiring...

Then Michael turned up, he returns to the UK tomorrow so wanted to come to see the boat. I showed him round and he took some photos... the ones you see on this blog entry.

Then Costas, the Raymarine rep, turned up. We have placed the contract with him for Raymarine navigation equipment and he came round with the depth sounder which we need to fit before we put King Malu in the water. You need a 52mm flat downward looking space on the hull to fit the sensor. We don't have that. So option 1 is to slightly shave off the side of the sensor and option 2 is to use the existing sensor. Next week he will come back with test gear to check out the existing sensor. I went back to the wiring...

Showing Michael round I realise the boat is getting pretty untidy: It really needs a good clean and tidy up. Michael leaves. I get back to the wiring...

Ken then turned his ministrations to the engine. All the belts and all the hoses need replacing and he was particularly keen to work out how to replace the timing belt. He couldn't find any of the timing marks needed for checking the timing on a replacement belt. So I looked out the Ford manual, which was absolutely covered with oil [obviously a well used book] and between us we figured out how to do the timing for the engine and also how the secondary water cooling system worked. He then turned his ministrations to the final stuck sea cock. I went back to the wiring...

So now while wiring I have grinding noises coming through the hull from Tim and banging noises coming from the sail locker from Ken. And I'm thinking 'Do I need a 10amp or 6amp breaker in this or that position...' BANG, BANG, 'Yes, I can get that to work if I move the lighting supplies three breakers up and and the blowers three breakers down...' GRRRRRRIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNND.

Suddenly no more banging, no more grinding and a yell of 'YES' from the sail locker. The final sea cock has been freed and Tim has finished all the grinding off anti-fouling for the day. So out comes grinding paste and fine glass paper to polish the sea cock and to grease it with Blakes grease. And that's it for the day. I don't get back to the wiring, but tidy and clean up the boat as Ken and Tim head off for showers.

Tomorrow I will get back to the wiring!

Two steps forward, one step back…

In fitting the new digital control for the electrics I needed to wire the instruments into the 12V supply. Easy? No.

The negative buss-bar for the 12V supply was originally glued to the hull, just above the positive. In 33 years the glue has died out and the negative buss-bar dropped to behind the positive, making it inaccessible. Chatted with Tim: create new negative buss-bar below the positive and rewire the panel. The negative buss-bar was corroded, so seems like a good idea.

I buy a triangular shaped wood length and a quarter-circle wood length, cut them to length and glue the quarter-circle to the top so that it protects the buss-bar. Cut the buss-bar to length. screw one end, screw the middle, straighten out the bend to screw the other end and it snaps!

No problem, I have another length of buss-bar. Start again. Works fine this time. I'll just try it in place before sticking it with glue. It drops off the ledge I will glue it onto into a cavity below.

No problem, I'll reach down and get it. Big problem. The cavity is deep and inaccessible. So it looks like I shall have to cut an access hole to this cavity, fit an access door in order to retrieve the buss-bar and glue in place before rewiring the negative [and positive at the same time now] in order to get power for the new digital power control systems… or… maybe a bent metal coathanger as a fishing hook.

Batteries

Early this morning [for me] I went down to the boat and did some cleaning up and measuring lengths for extra wires. While I was there Tim phoned about the places on the deck that cleaning off the old Treadmaster the wire brush had gone through the gelcoat and was showing the resin of the fibreglass. We shall have to re-gelcoat those areas.

After lunch Tim and I went looking for batteries. I am installing a Sterling Power charging and power management system on King Malu and according to Sterling Power we don't need expensive Gel batteries but need a charging system that looks after sealed wet cells well. We shall have to see.

The cost of sealed batteries here varied from 100-150 euros each approx, so going for the cheaper ones and letting the charger sort it out will save approx 200 euros on the cost of the new batteries.

Well, actually we went looking first for face masks. The face masks and safety goggles we had been using for cleaning the antifouling off the hull were not effective enough and on Saturday Tim had dust in his eyes and they stung like anything. Sunday no better, so now find total seal goggles!

New electrics

I spent the weekend working on the electrics. That has been my main role. Tim and Mark and others have worked on removing the old Treadmaster and started cleaning off the anti-fouling.

Anyway... the electrics... if I tell you the original shore power connection had a 13amp plug to 13amp plug cable to plug King Malu into the electricity you will understand why I have been starting from scratch almost. I first of all fitted a new 16amp blue male connector in the sail locker so that the mains intake is safe. I then fitted a new consumer unit with an RCD in the cabin and removed all the old MCBs.

That was mainly last Wednesday... today... I started on the 12volt and integration system: We bought almost everything from Sterling Power who seem to produce some of the best small ship power control electronics we can find in the world.

We'll see how well they work in practice.

I fitted a 2700 watt inverter, a digital charger, 12volt monitoring system and an automatic 220volt changeover system [shore power, generator or inverter].

Sunday I spent most of my time cutting holes and fitting the new controllers into the panel and trying to make it all look neat and tidy.

The photo shows the panel before I started, with all the old analogue meters. A week or so and I will post what it looks like now.

Still not finished and I hope by the end of next weekend I will have done so and can move on to something else.

Hard work begins

Well, now the hard work has begun. Some mornings last week and over the weekend Tim came down to remove the old Treadmaster from the deck.

No, this wasn't the state of the deck when we took the boat over, this is with the old Treadmaster chiseled up and not yet swept up. One thing we found was that in the sun the old Treadmaster and glue melted into a horrible sticky mess if you didn't sweep up almost immediately.

I thought removing the old Treadmaster would be a nightmare, but was just very hard work.

Mark was helping and the first job was to chisel up all the old Treadmaster. It has done well, the surface is over 20 years old, but now has to be totally removed.

Not the kind of job to be done in the height of summer!

After the Treadmaster is romoved all the old glue will have to be removed so that the new Treadmaster can be stuck down with new epoxy.

Tim tried many techniques, but the most effective was a wire brush attached to an angle grinder.

Cleaning off the old glue has revealed a few places of minor crazing on the deck which we will have to investigate.

I have replaced the shore power for the boat. Originally it had a 13A plug to 13A cable to plug in the boat, but that is distinctly dangerous, so it now has a 16A blue splashproof connector.

Been working on sea cocks too. At least two of them were seized. With some gentle persuasion Tim managed to get both free. One will need the wedge between the seacock and the hull changed.

Checked out some of the motor problems. Last weekend Ken came down and gave a thumbs up to the motor[s] and now need to derust, clean and get working.

Last weekend David came over about the solar power for the boat, bringing the regulator and forgetting the solar cells... oh well... will collect from Limassol sometime.

This Saturday the Raymarine guy came over and quoted for new navonics for the boat.

Well, that sort of brings us up to date, and will try to update more regularly.