Random Bits I Missed

I admit I've been a bit scatter-brained lately.  Seems like I skipped over just a bit of the hardtop story. I also have a few other random bits to share.

First, we did get the back edge of the hardtop mounted to the arch in a more permanent sense.  After moving the hardtop, I drilled two holes for the 3/8 inch bolts that secure the two outer edges and temporarily attached the hardtop to the arch to keep it from flying away.  A combination of jack stands and a line run from the main halyard held it in position.

The next day I marked the location for the wire chase holes, and then we unbolted and moved the top about a foot forward so I had access for the hole saw.  We cut the holes in the arch and cleaned up the edges with some sandpaper.  I then applied a strip of white rubber weather stripping to the upper front edge of the arch to act as a seal between the arch and the top.  The strip could span gaps from 1/8 to 3/8 of an inch and should provide a weather seal between the two.  I will eventually caulk the seam as well, but this should work fine as a seal for now and as a backer for the caulk later.

Mounting bolt at the edge of the top.

We then moved the top back into position.  I cut some gaskets from a sheet of 1/16 inch nitrile rubber to cushion the mount points and allow for the minor irregularities in the surfaces.  We then re-bolted the top corners to the arch using the gaskets as well as the previous hardware.

Making gaskets.

Next I needed to add the additional bolts that will hold up the top.  These bolts will serve a dual purpose as they are also the bolts that hold the blocks for the davit system.  Unfortunately, the mounting flange on the back of the top didn't line up with the arch as well as I would have liked, so I had to devise some spacers to fill the gap.  Using the gasket material and some fender washers, I was able to secure the blocks and the top.

The davit bolts with spacers.

I was also able to find a welder who could create the supports for the front of the top.  He has come out and taken measurements and has one of the supports made thus far.  His work quality seems quite good, but he doesn't seem to do polish work. (I think he described his work as more "utility grade" but he seems to do a very good job).  That is OK with us though, as I think I would prefer a more "brushed" look to the supports anyway...should reduce glare.  With any luck, we should have the supports later this week.

I don't think a caption is really needed here.

That should get us to my last post where I discovered the issue with the D-ring.

In other news, I've now added two new pages to the blog.  The first is a list of places I've found where you can get marine grade parts at better than average prices (previously mentioned at the end of another post the other day).  I'm thinking of adding a services section to that list.  Right now the service section would be a pretty short list, but I may have at least a couple entries.

I've also added a projects page.  As some friends have noted, Blogger isn't the best at searching, and having a page with project overviews and links to the relevant posts seemed like a good idea.  Right now it has the hardtop project listed as well as my posts on LED lighting and the salon window rebed.

If you would like to see anything else on either of these two pages, drop me a line or post a comment and I'll see what I can do.

And one last relatively unrelated bit:  A couple days ago The Boat Galley blog did a post on some food grade, reusable dessicant packs they were reviewing.  In the post it spoke about the ability to dry them using a microwave.  Since those packs use silica gel as the desiccant, I did a little searching and found that, yes, you can use a microwave to dry silica gel.  I found instructions where you microwave the stuff for a couple minutes, check to see if it is dry, and do additional 1 minute cycles until it is dry. I tried it with one of the desiccant jars I made a while back and it works.  So, I no longer have to try drying the stuff in the oven, but can use the microwave when we are plugged into shore power or have the generator running. All in all a much better option than those DampRid buckets that are used once and thrown away.

Well, enough rambling for today.  Too much work left to do and we are pushing to get out of here as soon as we can.

Bad Boat Day

Some people have bad hair days.  When you are living on a boat you can have bad boat days (after all, we generally don't worry much about our hair).  Today was one of those days.  I guess I should have expected it having just had a nice positive with the move and partial installation of the hardtop...you know, yin and yang.

It all started when I got up this morning.  I usually make coffee before my wife gets up.  I grind some beans and put them in my AeroPress.  Then I proceeded to knock the AeroPress over, and the freshly ground coffee landed on the galley floor.  I'm a little grumpy before my first cup-o-joe, so this mess didn't help. I drag out the little shop vac and dispense with the coffee on the floor and grind some more. Fortunately there are no other mishaps, and I drink my coffee while checking the weather on the computer.

What?  Where did this 90% chance of rain in the morning come from?  Yesterday evening the forecast said nothing about rain.  I look out the window and sure enough, it's the one time the meteorologists got it right. Guess I won't be installing the window in the top today.  The forecast also showed that winds up to 15 mph were likely.  Now that the top is bolted on in the back, it probably won't just blow away; however, the front end is only resting on jack stands sitting in my cockpit.  After all the work we have put in on the thing, I figure the prudent thing to do would be to lash it down to the deck so it is held onto the stands just in case some stronger gusts make an appearance between now and when the front supports are complete.

I find some line and determine the D rings on the deck are a perfect place to tie it down as the line would be right across the front quarter of the top.  Then I remember that one of the D rings is a little loose.  Guess I had better fix that first. I wonder if I will need to make a backing plate for the D ring as I've found the backing plates on much of the hardware on this boat to be a little lacking. I open up the access panel to access the nuts on the back of the screws holding the D ring. Imagine my surprise when I find that not only was there no backing plate, there were no fender washers or nuts either. The screws were just dangling through the fiberglass like little sealant-coated metal stalactites. I look around and see no evidence of nuts or washers below them.  No metal, no rust, nothing. Apparently, the only thing holding this D ring in place was the failing sealant.  The only explanation I can come up with for the lack of retaining hardware is that I think the boat had been repaired in that area in the past.  I could see a worker going to install the D ring, getting the sealant down and then being distracted and forgetting to install the hardware.

Oh, and the sealant was failing.  Below the stalactites is a recess in the fiberglass.  This recess apparently has no where to drain and is full of water.  Hmm...wonder how long this has been leaking.  I go back up on deck and give the D ring a pull and out it pops with the bolts.  This is where I discover that the manufacturer didn't bother to seal the holes in the cored deck.  The result of this is that the balsa core (the deck is made of two layers of fiberglass with a core of end-grain balsa) is quite wet.  Actually, around the holes it passed wet a while ago and was more decaying now.

Cleaning up the D-ring mount.

I spend most of the rest of the day digging out wet and/or rotting balsa from three 10 mm holes using a bent piece of safety wire.  There is a trick for getting wet balsa core out of a hole where you can take an alan wrench or bent piece of safety wire, put it in a drill, and use that to dig out wet core from a hole.  But not in this case. The balsa core appears to be sealed into small-ish sections, with fiberglass dividing them and the D ring was mounted right over one of these dividers.  The wrench couldn't turn full circle without hitting the divider.  All I was left with was taking a bent piece of safety wire and tediously coaxing each little bit of balsa out of its hiding place. I did reach clean looking balsa about the time the sun was setting so now I need to let it air out and dry for a few days. Once dry, I'll do one last sweep to clean out any remaining loose bits and then fill the void with epoxy to make a permanent repair to the core and seal the core material so this won't happen again.

There was another little discovery while dealing with the D ring.  Remember that recess I mentioned that was holding water.  It sits at the top of the bulkhead that separates the hall and the shower.  While inspecting the bulkhead to make sure there weren't any other surprises, I found one.  The only saving grace is that it isn't too serious of a problem.  As I was "percussion testing" (a.k.a knocking on) the bulkhead wall in the shower, I hit one spot near the top and heard a slosh.  Not the click of solid fiberglass nor the dull thud of a delaminating fiberglass core, but the sound of water. The bulkhead wall appears to be fine, but water apparently made its way between the bulkhead wall and the plastic panel that lines the shower.  Looking across the surface of the panel, you could just barely see the slight bulge. Obviously the water needed to be let out.  The only solution I could think of, short of ripping down the whole panel, was to drill a small hole at the low spot of the bubble and let the water drain.

We have a fountain on our boat.

Not yet sure how to repair the panel or hole, but it does look like a nice place for a towel hook.

So, no work on the project at hand was done today.  Instead, it was spent preparing to repair other "discoveries".  Of course, I guess I can't complain too much.  If these problems weren't discovered, the issues might have become much worse, requiring much more extensive repairs. Such is life living on a boat.

Oh, and the welder I found did drop by to make a wood template for the supports so that was a tick in the positive column.  Guess I lied, a little work was done on the top after all.

Flight of the Hardtop

If you follow my Facebook page you got a sneak peek picture for this post. I was just too tired yesterday evening  to write this.

It has finally happened, the hardtop has made its way to the boat. The top has been ready for the move for a week.  When I went to let the yard manager know we were ready, his initial response was that they were very busy and probably could not do it until after Christmas.  This is the same guy that came to me a couple weeks earlier to tell me that they may have to move my work area because they needed the space for boats.  Fortunately when we went back the next day we were able to convince him to try to fit us in this week.  He said he would let us know when (we need a little heads up so we can take down the soft bimini and disassemble the work space tent). Since he said we could move into the slip we would use to place the hardtop at any time, we elected to move the boat over the weekend so we would be ready whenever they were (and also to make it a little bit harder for them to forget about us).

Monday it didn't seem like the yard was too busy, the staff was engaged in winterization tasks and some small projects.  One other boat owner in the yard was able to ask the lift operator to re-block his boat, and they did it within an hour or so of asking.  Since the yard manager wasn't here, I asked the guy that would likely be running the equipment for my move if (or maybe I said when) they could get my top moved to the boat. He asked if first thing in the morning would work. Naturally, I agreed.

And naturally, overnight the winds kicked up to 25 knots with gusts to 40 (enough to wake me up and send me out to check the dock lines at 2 A.M.). By the morning the wind died down a little, it seemed to be between 15 and 20 knots.  Those winds still didn't sound like a good thing to be playing in when trying to move a 12 foot wide fiberglass Frisbee.  So, we waited.  We cleaned up our work area in the yard a bit, took down the tent and took down the soft bimini.  Finally, around noon the winds died down into the 10 knot range and it seemed like a good time to try the move.

The plan was to use the large forklift (a forklift with really long forks that used to be used to launch small boats).  We would suspend the top by straps or lines underneath the forks.  This way we could walk the top out to the slip, lift it over the arch, and bring it into position on the boat. Once at the boat I would cut some 2x4's to length to make supports to hold the top in place while we attach the back and have the welder measure and construct the front supports.

The plan worked for the most part.  Once we got the top out to the boat, one of the yard staff suggested we use boat stands instead of the wood as this would allow me to easily adjust the position of the top before mounting it.  This turned out to be an excellent suggestion (thanks Kevin!). And thanks to the whole crew for the help getting the top moved and onto the boat.

Getting the top positioned and adjusted was a bit tricky.  The bolt locations and wire chase holes along the back edge don't leave a lot of room for error.  Neither does the clearance for winch handles at the sheet winches and clearance for the boom up front.  In hindsight, I probably should have made the mounting flange a bit larger, with the option to cut it down at the boat.  In any case, I was able to get it positioned where everything worked.

I don't know if it is the arch or the mounting flange on the hardtop (probably a little of both), but the mount points touch at the ends of the flange yet leaves about a 1/4 inch gap in the middle.  Fortunately I had planned to use a foam weatherstripping gasket to seal that back edge anyway, so it shouldn't be much of a problem. (I just need to run out and get some thicker foam...I only purchased 1/8 and 3/16 inch.)

After getting the top positioned as best I could, I drilled the holes for the two outer mount points.  Not an easy task given the angles.  I ended up using a close-quarter angle attachment on the drill and drilled from the back side through the access points in the bottom of the arch.  It made me a bit nervous, but I was able to get the holes positioned fairly well. I then used the 316 stainless steel hardware ( 3/8 bolts, 1.5 inch fender washers, lock washers, and nuts) I purchased at York Bolt^* to temporarily bolt the top to the arch.  This, along with the boat stands and a line that looped around the top and is suspended by my main halyard, was enough to keep it secure for the night.

Now I need to mark the locations of holes for the wire chases. Then I need to move the top so I can drill those holes, apply the seal to the arch, and cut some rubber padding spacers from a sheet of gasket rubber I purchased from Hampton Rubber^* before putting it all back together and adding the remaining arch mounting hardware (additional bolts, including the ones that hold the blocks for the davits).

Then I've got to hire a welder/fabricator to make the front supports while we install the sail viewing window. Almost there...finally.

*I'm working on a page of the companies I've found that provide marine quality materials at more reasonable prices.  It is a work in progress, but you can check it out here (or from the "Better Marine" tab at the top of the page).

To Skid or Not To Skid

On Monday I was able to go to a local boat supply store and pick up the extra gelcoat that I needed.  I don't know if I mentioned this already, but I'm actually using waxed gelcoat for this.  The reason...economics.  The gelcoat I started with, ClearCote, I purchased from the marina.  It didn't make sense to get waxed gelcoat since both were the same price.  Then someone pointed out that Kings Marine (a few minutes down the road) sells the same gelcoat for about $15 less, but they only stock the waxed version.

For the non-skid it doesn't really matter which one I use.  Normally, the purpose of the wax is that it makes its way to the surface to seal the surface from air and allow the gelcoat to fully cure. The technique for creating the non-skid texture requires that PVA be used to seal the surface because the non-skid breaks the wax film and could prevent a full cure.  But the waxed version can be used and, given the price difference, it was an easy decision.

Now the weather forecast on Monday was that rain could be in the area but was likely to miss the northern half of Hampton Roads.  Yeah, right.  It rained off and on most of the day.  I didn't want to risk water contamination on the top, so we held off.  Instead, we decided to run another test in creating the non-skid texture since we have found that the gelocat we are using is different from the one I did the test with and the temperatures now seem to have an impact on how the stuff acts. We were able to determine that at around 60 degrees we could add one heaping plastic spoon full of fumed silica (about 2 tablespoons or so) to 2 ounces of gelcoat to get a reasonable result.

Yesterday the weather improved.  It wasn't very warm (I think the high was around 55 degrees F.) but the sky was clear with little chance of rain.  Inside our work "tent" we can somewhat control the temperature with the heater, so we did the application.  We prepped three mixing cups with 16 ounces of gelcoat, adding the 8 heaping spoons of silica and mixing it in well.  We then confirmed the temperature was about the same as it was during our test and catalyzed the first cup of the white goo.

I applied the same thick layer of gelcoat that we did during the test using a 1/4 inch nap roller.  We then catalyzed the second cup and repeated the process.  Then we used the loop texture roller to roll over the first section we applied gelcoat on.  To create the texture, you take this roller and roll the gelcoat as starts to thicken up during the curing process.  The first section wasn't quite ready so it created more of an orange peel look.  We catalyzed the 3rd cup and applied it.

After getting the 3rd cup on the top, we went back again and ran the texture roller over the first section. It was thick enough to make a texture, but the texture wasn't the same as it was the day before.  I just don't get it, gelcoat seems to behave differently every day we use it even when we pay very close attention to the temperatures and amount of catalyst used.  While it was different, it was "good enough" and so we kept going.

It was a difficult process to complete the top.  My wife would mix up the gelcoat and help with the texture rolling, and I would apply the gelcoat and work the texture roller.  Getting the timing right is a trick.  If you wait too long to try creating the texture, the gelcoat cures and you can't impart any texture.  If you don't wait long enough, the gelcoat flows back together into an orange peel look. Getting the timing right and getting each section to look like the last is quite a tedious trick.

In the end, we had one section we re-coated and re-textured because we missed the timing window and the surface was far too smooth.  It doesn't look perfect, but...as I said before...good enough.  After getting all the gelcoat on and textured, we quickly went around and removed the tape from the edges (before the gelcoat permanently made the tape part of the top).  I then applied the PVA to our work and cranked the heater up to help everything cure.

Non-skid applied and coated with the green PVA to cure.

The texture didn't hide the imperfections in the surface as well as we had hoped, but the top should be perfectly functional, looks "good enough", and means we are done with the fiberglass and gelcoat phase of this process...I hope.

Now I need to convince the boatyard to help me get it to the boat in a timely fashion so we can temporarily brace it up, mount it to the arch, let the welder get accurate measurements for the front supports, and get the window installed.

We are getting closer to getting out of here...yay!

All White

Some days on this project, I just don't feel like I'm making any progress.  Then other days I do.  Today was one of the latter.  After spending way too much time applying gelcoat and then sanding it off, we got the rails "good enough".

Yesterday was spent preparing to apply the gelcoat to the body of the top. Using the sander with some 80 grit paper, I tapered the gelcoat "edges" to make a smooth transition from the handrail to the fiberglass surface of the top.  Then we applied a little more thickened resin to try and help fair (smooth) the surface of the top.  While that was curing (late in the evening with the heater running), we taped off that handrail that we just finished spending way too much time on.

This morning we awoke to temperatures just above freezing.  After being fortified with some coffee and getting the propane tank for the heater filled, we started the day trying to defrost and dry out the work tent.  About the time things were finally drying out I realized we were missing the spare roller cover for applying the gelcoat.  A run to the local Home Depot (I like their roller better than the one at Lowe's) and a quick stop for lunch (yes, it took that long to defrost and dry everything), we were finally ready to put some gelcoat down.

Using a hotplate and pot that my neighbor in the boatyard has, we warmed up the gelcoat to make it a bit easier to apply.  Just under a gallon of gelcoat later, the top is now completely white.

Masked off for the texture portion and first gelcoat application

Of course, this is only the first couple coats on the top side. We still need to add more gelcoat and create the texture.  Unfortunately, it is taking more gelcoat than we had planned and we aren't sure we have enough to finish the job.  So, we are debating our options right now.  We won't be able to get more of the same gelcoat we are currently using until Monday or Tuesday.  We could go to West Marine and pick up a gallon of gelcoat, but what they sell retails at about 3 times the price per gallon and has different characteristics in how it flows (the white does seem to be the same color though). We can alter they way we planned on applying the gelcoat to compensate if we want to.

Given the astronomical mark-ups that West Marine charges if you don't have a Port Supply account (Port Supply pricing can be less than half the normal retail price), I really prefer not to shop there unless it is an absolute emergency.  I just don't like rewarding price gouging behavior (if West wanted to be more competitive, I'd be more happy to shop there). Of course, getting this top done and getting out of here is getting to be an emergency of sorts and I would really like to have the top ready to go on the boat come Monday.

Guess we will see how we feel (and how the weather forecasts look) in the morning.

It's a Cold Morning

Frost on the dock and on the boat...but the sunrise is pretty...

32 degrees F means I'll probably get a late start this morning.

Top Cat

Work continues on the hardtop.  We patched the last two thin spots in the gelcoat, then found three more and patched them as well.  Apply gelcoat and then sand half of it off, feathering it into the surrounding finish...wash, rinse, repeat.  I keep trying to convince myself I love to sand, but it's not working.  As of this morning, I think we are done applying gelcoat...but then I said that to myself yesterday, so who knows what the light of day will bring.

But this post isn't about more sanding, instead it is about the cat.  Remember the cat that seems to have adopted us while we were in the boatyard?  Well, she continues to warm up to us despite the fact that the guy a couple boats down wants to adopt her.  I think we spend more time in the yard and have a bit more downtime (to pet the cat, of course) so she seems to hang around us most of the day. Hope she warms up to our friend soon; I think she will want a warmer home than my work space tent.

Yesterday she decided she wanted to help with the sanding...or maybe it was supervise.  Ok, she probably thought we were warmer places to sleep than the ground, but in any case...

I'm not in the way am I?

Don't mind me, I'll just sleep here
while you work.

I can't imagine why it is taking us so long to finish the top, can you?  I hope this cat understands that our dogs won't allow her on our boat (she has seen our dogs).