Lackey Sailing | lively heels phase 3

Monday

The new covers for the pilothouse skylight and anchor windlass were complete, and the canvas contractor finished up their installation.

0600 Weather Observation: 35°, partly cloudy. Forecast for the day: Mostly sunny and windy, 50°

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Friday

With the project at an end, and great weather that had continued for several weeks–and looked to continue more or less going forward–it was time to move Lively Heels back outdoors, where her owner could take care of his annual commissioning tasks before the boat was picked up here in a couple more weeks.

Total time billed on this job today: 1.5 hours

0600 Weather Observation: 35°, mostly cloudy. Forecast for the day: Sunny and windy, 56°

Thursday

With the extra materials I needed, I finished up work on the laptop desk for the pilothouse. With a short 3/8″ screw, I secured the rubber clamp beneath the table, and with a 1-1/4″ (70mm) M6 knurled screw to replace the original screw, the clamp became easy enough to install and remove without tools. This concept worked, but left the desk at a slight forward angle.

To allow the desk to sit more level, and be better supported by the console at the forward edge, I milled a strip of cherry 1″ wide on the short end, with a bottom angled to match that of the console. I secured this to the front edge of the desk with screws. This helped, but to further enhance it, I added some flexible rubber beneath the wooden support, which not only raised the desk just a bit, but cushioned and stabilized the desk against the console. With the cushioned wheel clamp in place, one could turn the wheel just slightly till the action essentially forced the desk more firmly into position, creating a pretty decent platform that was easy to install and remove, and satisfied the core job description.

My main complaint was that the wheel clamp was a bit harder to install than I would have liked, since the longest knurled hand fastener I could find was only just long enough to allow the clamp to spread open without removing the screw completely. A different type of hand screw might be available that could give the extra length desired.

If nothing else, this sort of Beta version, using the existing desk, could serve as a way to refine the concept going forward. While the owner and I discussed building from scratch, ultimately he decided that it was worth using the existing, modified table to see whether any refinements were necessary.

With work wrapped up, and a transport date only a few weeks hence, I unloaded my tools, lighting, and the like from the boat and cleaned things up before making other final preparations to move her outdoors in the immediate future, so the owner could finish his pre-launch chores.

Total time billed on this job today: 1.5 hours

0600 Weather Observation: 30°, snow shower. Forecast for the day: Snow and rain showers, then cloudy, windy, 42°

Monday

Looking to wrap up some loose ends and small jobs, I spent what ended up being the full morning working on a few tasks.

The owner had in the past used a stock laptop lap desk propped in the pilothouse between the dash and the helm, and sought a better, more stable solution as a sometime table for computer work. With the little stock desk on hand, I thought the first way to accomplish the goal might be to use the existing table and find a way to secure it to the helm, so after some searching I found a padded round clamp, designed for hanging pipes, that fit the helm and could be bolted to the underside of the table.

When I ordered the parts initially, I’d also ordered a couple different screws to use to secure the clamp, wanting to replace the stock screw with something easy to use by hand. The ones I ordered didn’t work as I’d hoped, and in any event I found that the clamping screw was a metric thread (the thorough specs hadn’t indicated thread size for this screw), so now I could order something that I hoped would work now that I’d experienced the reality. The metal on the clamp itself was not stainless steel–not available that I could find–but for this use I didn’t think it would pose a problem, and would be cheap and simple to replace in the future should it be required.

The clamp looked like it would work, and to secure it to the underside of the desk I drilled and countersunk a hole for a short 3/8″ flathead machine screw, which unfortunately I didn’t have on hand, so final installation and testing of the new clamp would have to wait till that arrived. I thought the concept seemed proven, and with perhaps a bit of additional bracing at the forward end, where the deck rested on the dash, this simple and quick solution might do the job. More on this in the near future.

Meanwhile, back at the forward deck box I prepared and installed, at some and unexpected length, a strip of neoprene rubber off the back side of the lid, draping over the hinge and opening to provide more protection against nuisance water. I had a couple false starts before I eventually landed on a method that worked for installing the rubber. I also added extra gasket material to the back side of the box rim, which, in addition to the gasket on the lid itself, helped the hinge side of the box compress the gasket better: I’d found that this side wasn’t compressing as much as I’d hoped because of the design of the hinge.

Anyway, in the usual way a simple little job in concept, through the wonders of boat reality, turned into a longer-than-expected process. In and around this, the canvas contractor stopped by to do the next stage of fitting for the new canvas covers for the skylight and the windlass, so the final products would be ready soon.

To hold open the lid on the deck box, I’d considered a fancy gas strut, but this became expensive and complicated with a stainless steel strut and various end fittings required to make it work, so eventually the owner and I decided on a basic system to prop open the lid as needed: Something like the rods seen on some cars to hold open the hood. For this, I made up a version using stainless steel rod and a stainless steel universal joint. To secure this to the lid, I drilled out a recess with a 1/2″ bit and epoxied in a 1/4-28 nut to match the threads on the end of the ball fitting. I intentionally epoxied the nut to the threads as well since I didn’t want the stem to rotate during use–only the ball end as intended. To hold the rod in place when not in use, I installed a basic clamp further down the lid.

Later, once the epoxy had cured, I could showcase how the rod worked and stored.

A final loose end I’d been meaning to tie up for months was a little cover plate to hide the hole in the head bulkhead left after the removal of the controls for the now-defunct electric treatment system.

Total time billed on this job today: 4 hours

0600 Weather Observation: Clear, 30°. Forecast for the day: Sunny, 62°

Wednesday

Wrapping up some project loose ends, I started by filling the reservoir in the windlass with gear oil, now that the gasket sealant on the motor had had ample cure time. This complete, I tested the motor and raised the anchor back on deck.

I finished up the forward deck box installation with the lid, which I installed so the box opened from the port side. Once I aligned the lid where it needed to go and marked the ends of the hinge, installation was straightforward. I was thinking of adding some sort of rubber flap to the hinge side of the lid, which seemed more exposed and susceptible to leakage than I would have liked. Also under consideration were various simple means of securing the lid when raised, to be determined as of this writing.

To secure the lid, as with the after box, I installed simple hooks and bungee cords.

A final small task remained in the cabin: The owner requested some simple latches to hold the table-cum-berth filler in place in its lowered position, so that it couldn’t slide out unexpectedly. I installed stainless steel barrel bolts on the underside of the table, which latched to mortised holes in each adjacent support.

A few minor items remained on the list, none of which were time-critical, and with the major items complete I planned to move the boat outdoors in the next week or so to allow the owner time for final pre-launch preparations, engine commissioning, and so forth before the boat departed in early May.

Total time billed on this job today: 1.25 hours

0600 Weather Observation: Clear, 35°. Forecast for the day: Mostly sunny, 60°

Monday

Over the weekend, the owner delivered the reassembled windlass motor, now in the correct orientation. I was most anxious to reinstall this, since I’d been dreading it since I removed it in February, unsure whether or not the poor access to the mounting bolts would allow reassembly in place or not. So fresh into the new week, I decided to get right to it and see if I could knock it off the list.

During my previous installation attempt, when I discovered the motor had been reassembled upside down, I’d already made all the other related preparations, so now I could just begin with a dry fit, inserting the worm gear and aligning the gears inside the windlass as needed to allow the motor to slip in and line up with the bolt holes. I’d entertained the idea of getting the three bolts started with the flanges dry, before sealant/gasket material, but the fasteners were too short to allow enough room for access to install the sealant in this way. So, satisfied with the dry fit, I used my small ratchet and extension, along with the universal joint I’d used to remove the bolts before, to get the hardest bolt–the one on the starboard side–set up in its hole from ahead, ready to be installed. Then, I applied the gasket sealant, a silicone RTV specifically designed for gear oil and, with its thick consistency an obviously better choice than the Ideal directions had indicated before (which is what I used twice to rebed this motor before the windlass was installed 6 years earlier).

With the greatest of pleasure, I found that in the end I had no trouble installing the motor. It wasn’t fun, and I was on edge the whole time, trying to get the two lower, hidden fasteners started, but in the end it proved no issue and before long at all I had the motor securely squooshed in place.

I chose to leave the excess sealant as it was, seeing no reason to bother cleaning it up where it squeezed out, and was happy to see a consistent bead of squeezeout all around the motor, which hopefully bode well for a leak-free existence from here on out.

Flush with relief, I finished up the reinstallation for now by reconnecting the two power cables. Then, I drilled out and epoxy-filled the four old fastener holes in the deck that had originally secured the fiberglass windlass cover. The owner had found that these were unnecessary, that the cover was a tight fit and stayed in place on its own, plus we had contracted a new canvas cover over the whole thing (to be fitted soon), so these holes were now obsolete.

I chose to leave the newly-installed motor alone for a couple days to let the sealant have plenty of cure time before I filled the reservoir and tested the windlass by hauling the drydocked anchor back on deck.

Total time billed on this job today: 1.25 hours

0600 Weather Observation: Overcast and fog, 45°. Forecast for the day: Eventual clearing and windy, 56°

Friday

Over the past several days, I’d worked to build up base coats, then the final satin coat, of varnish on the new wood box, finishing up in time to allow the box to fully cure for a few days.

My main focus for the day was to wrap up the woodstove installation. With the stove in place, and the deck trim ring installed, it was a theoretically simple matter to cut the stove pipe to length and install it along with the deck fitting. Because of how the sections needed to fit together, it wasn’t just a matter of marking the pipe at deck level and cutting it off; for the parts on hand to work together as needed, I had to remove excess length from the bottom of one of the pipe sections.

To begin, I set up the two 24″ lengths of pipe together with the deck fitting, allowing the assembly to protrude above the deck. I measured the distance from the underside of the deck fitting flange to the trim ring below (14.5″) which, with all the pieces in this configuration, was how much I needed to cut off.

With a grinder and cutoff wheel, I cut the pipe at the mark: All was fine, though this wasn’t fun stuff to cut. Because even before cutting I’d had a vexing difficulty getting the two pieces of pipe to fit together during my dry fits in the boat (though I’d managed), I’d left the two sections fitted together while I cut them, specifically to avoid the difficulties in getting them to fit back together later. For reasons that are now lost in a miasma of events and apparent suppressed memories born of severe trauma and blinding anger, at some point after cutting the pipe and while cleaning up the cuts, the two sections came apart, or I took them apart for some reason; whatever the case, what was once a connected length of pipe was now two again. It really shouldn’t have mattered.

And for some reason I found it absolutely impossible to reassemble them.

It made no sense then, and it made no sense later, but I spent far too much time fighting the pipe sections and trying to reassemble them in a usable length once more. I couldn’t reassemble them in their original configuration, and I couldn’t reassemble them with the cut section atop the full section. I tried everything. One issue was that the double-walled pipe was spot-welded together at one end, to hold the inner and outer sections together. Assembled correctly, this didn’t matter because of how the joints interacted–but now it mattered, though I still didn’t understand why since these sections had been connected before. Where the inner and outer sections were connected in this way, obviously the pipes couldn’t slide together.

In the event, in fighting the sections I’m sure that I made whatever problem existed worse by further distorting the pipes in the effort to connect them (the inner and outer sections had minimal clearance between). I didn’t want to, or intend to (at least at first haha)–but it happened. Eventually, it was clear that the cut section–the piece I needed to use–was a lost cause. I didn’t have extra sections–they don’t give this stuff away at Cubic Mini–so what made me the angriest wasn’t needing another section, but that I couldn’t finish up the installation as intended. I may have sealed my fate when somehow the section of pipe I’d been fighting with ended up beneath the head of my hammer several times. Weird.

After a break to emergency-order replacement pipes, which felt like something positive even though it threw my schedule awry, I returned to assess what I had left and see if there was any other way to use the longer length of the original pipe–but supposedly the wrong end–to make this work. And to my amazement I found a way forward. It turned out that the deck fitting, which I’d originally planned to connect using a special adapter (seen in the photos above), which allowed the deck fitting to work with the upper, crimped end of a stovepipe section, actually fit well in the cut end of the pipe, slipping between the inner and outer walls of the stovepipe like it was its job. (I seem to be a little short on photos during this miserable hour or so of the day, so I don’t have a photo showing that.)

Thinking back, now I remembered from some of the info online that I’d looked at a few months before had mentioned this too, so I felt good proceeding in this way–and it meant that I could finish up the installation too, and avoid the wait and expense of the replacement pipes. So with the sections installed together in their new way, and after determining how far into the pipe the deck fitting would slip, I eventually determined the final length and cut the pipe a bit shorter as needed now–being sure to tape the pipe sections securely together, just in case. (In the new configuration I had no problem connecting the pipes as it happened.)

Now I could drill and tap the deck for the machine screws that would secure the deck fitting, and after final preparations I installed the deck fitting with its supplied heavy rubber gasket and sealant as well. In the cabin, I secured the inside trim ring (which by design also allows air to flow into the gap between the stovepipe and the deck cutout) to the overhead with screws. I’d made sure from the beginning, even before things went wrong, that I pre-secured this trim ring to the overhead with some tape so I wouldn’t forget it–there was no way to put it on once the stove pipe was in place.

It’s the way of the world with this stuff: It’s the simplest-seeming tasks that can send everything into turmoil, doubling the time required to do a simple job.

Now I could finish up the installation for real with the wood box and side heat shield. To begin, down on the bench I installed the heat shield on the side of the box with stainless screws and the supplied standoffs. To install the box, I predrilled holes for three screws (two through the top of the back panel, one through the bottom, accessible in the recess I’d built beneath the floor of the box for this purpose), then hung it on the bulkhead next to the woodstove. This gave the required minimum distance of 3″ between the stove and the combustible material.

To finish things off, I hung the rack for the cutest little dollhouse stove tools in the space between the box and the settee back, which the owner and I had previously determined and which fortunately worked basically perfectly. This left enough space for the locker to open more than enough for good access, and frankly the whole stove/woodbox juxtaposition and installation turned out even better than I’d hoped it would, looking quite at home there and as if it had always been there.

And I was able to cancel my emergency pipe order before it was processed, all the better to save $150.

Next on my agenda: The deck boxes, starting with the large forward box. I planned to install this to the deck with marine adhesive (5200), saving the deck penetrations and time consumption of removing the overhead in the cabin. To prepare, I aligned the box where I wanted it, and marked the ends with tape, and also marked with tape the positions of the three mounting “feet” from the side. Removing the box, and using my marks as a guide, I removed the paint from the deck in way of the three mounting surfaces and, after final preparations and cleanup, applied heavy beads of adhesive to each location and pressed the box into position, aligning it carefully with my end marks and by eye to ensure a symmetrical mounting on the deck. I left this to cure.

I chose to leave the lid off till after installation to make the box easier to handle. Towards that end, I got ready to install the hinge on the hatch itself. The piano hinge I’d sourced, which had extra space between the leaves when closed to allow room for a gasket, came without screw holes, so my first task was to lay out, drill, and counterbore the hinge for mounting screws. In drilling stainless, I’ve found that the key is to buy the appropriate drill bits in bulk first, to ensure ample sharp, new bits for the job. Every time I have amply prepared myself like this, a single bit easily makes all the cuts required, but if I try to use bits on hand, or if I have a single new one, the bit will break or they’ll be so dull that I spend 4 hours on a hole. I’m now flush with 11/64″ bits–a small price to pay for having a task I hate go so swimmingly.

With the hinge prepared, I installed it on the underside of the hatch, then installed the gasket around the perimeter of the lid. Once the box was secure on deck I’d install the lid and some hold-downs.

For the cockpit deck box, I installed gasket around the top of the box (I actually did this before the other deck box, and before it occurred to me that perhaps the gasket was better suited on the hatch than the rim of the box), then installed some little brackets to secure bungee cords, which were the owner’s suggestion of a simple, effective means of securing the lids on these boxes. I like dead-simple things that work too.

This done, I “installed” the box in the cockpit: This was just to sit of its own accord, assisted by the rubber pads I’d installed on the feet. This would work here because the cockpit was so small, and so protected, that under the known circumstances of how the boat was used there was really no scenario where the box wouldn’t stay in place like this.

To finish off the day, I removed the door to the head, which the owner said swelled up and stuck badly at the bottom during the summer and when the boat was in the water (it worked fine now), and cut more than 1/4″ off the bottom before reinstalling it (no pictures).

Total time billed on this job today: 6.5 hours

0600 Weather Observation: Clear, 35°. Forecast for the day: Sunny, 65°

Friday

In a short workday, I completed small jobs and next steps for several of the ongoing projects to help advance things through the weekend and bring these various loose ends closer to final readiness.

I started with the cherry woodbox, which I lightly sanded then applied a second coat of gloss base varnish to continue the buildup.

In the head, before I forgot, I cut off the excess bolt length from the through bolts securing the woodstove and heat shield to the bulkhead.

Now that the paint I’d applied to the smoke pipe trim ring had had a few days to cure, I decided to install it and thus be ready for final chimney installation sooner than later. I planned to epoxy the trim ring to the deck, which would ensure a watertight interface and give the stainless steel vent cap a solid mounting base. To prepare the deck itself, I used a multitool to remove the nonskid paint and primers beneath, exposing the original gelcoat which would be a fine substrate for epoxy bonding. I stayed just within the masking tape perimeter with the sanding to avoid damaging the tape or the exposed deck.

After masking over the trim ring to protect the paint, I installed it in a bed of thick epoxy adhesive, applying an abundant quantity to ensure that I could press the trim ring tightly into the adhesive all around while keeping it level across the top. Afterwards, I cleaned up the excess epoxy and removed the masking tape, leaving behind clean surfaces.

Earlier, during the installation of the heat shielding in the cabin, I’d removed a strip of overhead trim at the bulkhead to make room for the vertical heat shield and a circular interior trim ring that would cover and ventilate the opening through the deck. To leave room for this trim ring, I’d marked and cut the wooden overhead trim to accommodate the shape of the trim ring, and now I reinstalled the modified trim. The stainless steel trim ring is only tacked in place with masking tape here for illustrative purposes; in the final install it was to be secured with screws overhead.

To round out the catch-up work for the day, I applied a second coat of paint to the inside of the new deck boxes and lids.

Total time billed on this job today: 1.75 hours

0600 Weather Observation: Mostly cloudy, 23°. Forecast for the day: Becoming sunny, 43°

Wednesday

Continuing work on the trim ring and related details, after lightly sanding the primer to prepare the trim ring for finish paint, I mocked up the trim ring with the stove deck fitting. After masking over the deck around the opening, I aligned the trim ring properly on deck then set up the through-deck fitting, which in this case is a Dickinson fitting since there was no appropriate marine-specific fitting available from the stove manufacturer itself. With the deck fitting positioned as I thought it should be from above, I went below to ensure that the attached length of pipe extended through the center of the cutout.

With the position confirmed, I scored the masking tape around the base of the fitting, and drilled pilot holes through the deck fitting and trim ring, and just into the top of the deck below. I used a #25 drill bit for the holes through the trim ring as I planned eventually to tap the holes for 10-24 threads. Removing the trim ring and excess masking tape, I used a 5/8″ Forstner bit to remove the top skin and core from each fastener location and filled with an epoxy mixture in the usual way.

With layout and other work related to the trim ring complete for now, I applied several coats of Alexseal snow white to the trim ring over the course of the morning, using a small sprayer.

When I’d last worked on the little wood box, which would also serve as a mounting location for the required side heat shield, I had all the plywood pieces cut to size and shape, along with the solid cherry front corner trims. Now, my first step was to cut 1/2″ off the top dimension of each of the four sides, and replace it with a 1/2″ square piece of solid cherry, which I glued in place and tacked with little brads. This hid the plywood end grain on the exposed top edges of the box.

The box needed a floor, and to allow room for eventual mounting screws through the back and into the bulkhead, as well as to keep the depth of the box convenient, I wanted the floor to be elevated somewhat from the base of the four sides, so I prepared cleats from leftover plywood, about 1-1/2″ wide, and glued and brad-ed [sic] them in place to support the floor on the front panel and two sides. I notched the floor panel to fit around the inside of the front trim, leaving it a bit long at the back side for later trimming once I determined the final details of the back, which I also inset a bit from the back edges of the sides so that the edges of the box would be sure to fit tightly against the bulkhead.

Before lunch, I glued up and clamped two subassemblies–the side panels and their respective front corner trims–which would ultimately make assembly of the whole box easier. I left the assemblies to cure for an hour or so.

With a bit of time on hand before naturally-occurring lunch break, I filled the engine cooling system with new antifreeze. When I reconfigured the engine-based heating system earlier in the project, I’d drained all the existing antifreeze and had had a note on hand to be sure to refill it, and now was the time. To help ensure the system filled as much as possible on the first go-round, I started by filling to capacity the engine heat exchanger, then followed by adding more antifreeze to the external, high-mounted coolant tank on the port side. In all, the system drank about 1-1/2 gallons of coolant, and the level didn’t change after an hour or two. When it was time to test-run the engine, it was likely that more coolant would be needed once the existing had circulated fully through the newly-simplified system, but that would be for later.

With the side assemblies cured enough to continue, now I could glue up the entire box, clamping it securely all around.

While the wood box glueup cured in the clamps, I got back to work on the deck boxes and their lids, masking off the exterior paint as needed around the top edges and then painting the insides of the boxes and lids with gray paint, the first of probably two coats required.

Back in the cabin, I finished up the woodstove installation proper with the two stainless steel side shields, a simple installation with two screws per side. I connected the two lengths of stovepipe and mocked it up through the overhead to check everything; of course I’d have to cut the top section to a specific length later to properly mate with the deck fitting.

The wood box by now had had sufficient cure time in the clamps, so now I could sand the whole piece as needed to prepare it for the finishing room, and apply a sealer coat of thinned varnish.

Total time billed on this job today: 6 hours

0600 Weather Observation: Mostly clear, 41°. Forecast for the day: Sunny, increasing clouds, 59°

Tuesday

To begin, I applied a second coat of nonskid paint to the deck box lids.

The forward deck box would be eventually secured to the deck, but in the deep, protected, small cockpit the owner wanted to try the cockpit box loose, so to help hold the box in place of its own accord, I added strips of rubber (leftover from the anchor pad) to the base of the box, which would cushion and add friction to the box when in place.

With the new woodstove and heat shield in place, my next step in the installation was to mark, and drill, the large hole through the overhead and deck for the smoke pipe. Covering the overhead with masking tape so I could mark at will, I eventually marked out the rough outline of the stovepipe on the overhead, through a combination of measurements and extending the length of the pipe upwards with a level. I found that the heat shield behind the pipe was a bit in the way for parts of this process, so I removed it for now. After double-checking my measurements and the outline I’d made, I was final satisfied enough to mark a center point.

With a drill and 1/4″ bit, I drilled straight through the overhead and deck above to mark the location on deck. Then, with a 5″ hole saw, I cut out the deck from above, leaving only the plywood overhead in place for now. As I’d found throughout during the original rebuild of this boat, the deck and core was in excellent condition in way of this cutout.

From inside the cabin, I scored and began the cut through the plywood overhead, then finished that cut from abovedeck as well. Then, I reamed out the exposed core around the new opening to prepare it for sealing with epoxy.

After cleanup and appropriate masking, I filled the new void round the edge of the 5″ hole with a thickened epoxy mixture, and removed all the tape once the epoxy was in place.

The deck camber on the coachroof wasn’t extreme, but it definitely existed, and this meant that for the smoke pipe to project properly and vertically I needed to build a wedge-shaped trim ring to correct the angle for the mounting flange. I dislike fussy bits of wooden trim for things like this–bits that require varnish and upkeep and become chronic time-wasters–so I chose to build the trim ring from solid fiberglass. While this would be less fun to shape, ultimately it would be a much better option for this installation. Fortunately, I had a piece of 1″ thick fiberglass on hand with just enough size for the new trim ring.

I started with a 5″ hole through the fiberglass, to match the deck opening, then used the rubber gasket supplied with the deck fitting as a guide to mark the outside perimeter of the circular ring, roughly 1″ greater in diameter than the base of the deck fitting. This was the maximum size I could fit on the raw material, and was more than ample in any event. Once I made the cut, I took the circular blank up to the deck and, holding it level from side to side, used a compass to scribe the shape of the deck all around.

I removed the excess material down to my line with a variety of sanding tools, a messy and unpleasant chore to be sure, and once I got it close to the line I returned to the deck for a test fit. The deck fitting was level, so now it was a matter of fine-tuning and flattening the bottom of the trim ring for a better fit.

After some additional work to flatten the bottom, as well as to finish-sand the piece to smooth its contours and round over the exposed corner for a finished appearance, the trim ring construction was complete.