Rot Repair

One of my last sails of the summer, I was returning from Holmes Harbor after a weekend with my son and a friend Walt.  The wind was pretty calm at the south end where we anchored, but hit about 20 knots at the north end going around the little island.  I was under full canvas and decided to ride it out as it was pretty clear that once I rounded the point, the wind would likely die down and I’d be on a quartering wind anyway. For some time, it has felt like Sojourn just won’t point on a port tack and the lee shrouds have been getting more and more slack.

I didn’t actually spot it until the next time I tried to take it out - the chain plate didn’t come all the way out, but perhaps nearly an inch. It could have been ugly.   Also the mast step failed (dissolved really), causing the compression post to penetrate the deck and actually go up inside the mast.  It’s about 80% repaired now, with new bulk heads and surgery complete on the cabin top.  I still have to fab a new mast step and do some maintenance on the mast while it is down.

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If You Think a Dirty Bottom Slows You Down

Just imagine what it does for your boat.  Someone who posts on Sailnet has that quote in their signature.  I can’t find it at the moment to give proper credit.

Sojourn had been getting slower and slower.  I smartly or stupidly, ignorantly, or well, ignorantly, bought Sojourn without hauling her to look at the bottom.  It had recently been painted, but that is all I really knew. Almost two years have gone by. Last summer, using GPS averaging, I clocked Sojourn at ludicrous speed - 6.4 knots at 3600 RPM.  At this blistering speed, the ordinarily high and dry exhaust port on the transom is completely submerged.

This year, I could only get about 5.5 knots, could not make 3600 RPM, and the exhaust port wouldn’t get anywhere near the water line.  So I decided that it was time to haul her.  I could have saved some money by waiting for Winter specials, but not knowing what the bottom looked like and knowing it wasn’t going very fast was bugging me. 

On the big day, I motored the quarter mile to the lift, and watched as Sojourn briefly left her familiar depths and traveled skyward as the travellift hoisted Sojourn onto the hard. My first impression was that the hull was much cleaner than I expected.  The only obvious growth at a distance was the volleyball of muscles attached to the bottom of the keel. The prop didn’t have a single barnacle.  As it moved to the pressure wash station and I got closer, my heart sank.  While mostly free of growth, her hull looked like surface of a Martian dry lake with lots of blisters.  Water was seeping out of the cracks between the drying tiles of paint.  The guy I had hired to do the job was making noise about a “peel” and how the boat might not be worth that much.

I sent this and several other photos to Ben who was very reassuring. He said his Mason looked the same way when he bought it.  He advised me to scrape it, fix the worst of the blisters, do a few more next year and go sail it.  So that is what I did.  It turned out that most of the blisters were in between the layers of paint and not in the gel coat, although the gel coat had is fair share.  I hired Lakota Marine Services in Everett to do the scraping and painting, not expecting to have time to do it myself.  They fixed 20 or 30 blisters, I fixed 20 or 30 more and I left 70 or 80 for future haulouts.  They re-painted it with two coats of BlueWater Copper Shield.

I took advantage of the time and buffed and waxed the top sides which made a remarkable difference. I used 3M rubbing compound and wax, each costing about $50, but worth it as my previous attempts made little improvement.  One other piece of advice that I followed and pass on is don’t even attempt this without a Makita variable speed rotary buffer or similar. The cheap orbital you get at the parts store might be ok for the final wax, but for buffing, you’d be better of doing it by hand.  It took me about 12 hours over two days to do the complete job including wax. In the process, I was continually struck by the notion of how small Sojourn is in the water and how big she is out of the water! Scaffolding would have been helpful.

At least as important as the buffing was cleaning that the buffer wouldn’t touch.  My hull was anything but white and I had tried several cleaning products that didn’t touch it. Davis FSR is almost magical.  Take a look at the before and after photos. The guy who did most of the work on my boat kept telling me to buy some and try it. I finally did.   I used about a pint of FSR, keeping it wet with my boat brush for about 30 minutes and then wiped it off.  Amazing!

On day 5, I slimed the prop with Lanocote as I did last year, splashed her and set off for Poulsbo.

Sojourn’s Ten Dollar Tiller

We cruised to Port Ludlow with Milltown a couple of weeks ago and came home in need of a new tiller. Making our way south, we motored into 20 knot winds and six foot waves for a couple of hours before turning west at Possession Point. We turned right, hoisted the sails, and after the bumpy ride it was a surprisingly nice sail to Hood Canal. Initially, I sailed by a reefed main alone, but it felt like she could handle some more, so I raised the 130. A little later, took the reef out of the main and  sailed under full canvas at 6 knots.  We timed the current well, so we were making 8.5 over ground.  

Arriving at Hood Canal about an hour before dusk in diminishing wind, I decided to drop the sails.  After doing so, I headed back to the cockpit and managed to trip on something, perhaps the line I had securing the dodger. As I look back, I’m amazed that the only mark on me or Sojourn was her broken tiller.

The next 30 minutes where an adventure as the water is shallow, the marker is at least 200 yards from where my new chart plotter say it is and the current was pushing me toward the rocks and the alleged marker at about two knots.  Someone later told me they installed a new marker recently.

Seeing that I was physically a few hundred yards from the marker, I decided to try to mend it, knowing I would have to drop the hook in a couple of minutes.  I found an old quick clamp, some utility cord and a nylon strap to get me the rest of the way to my destination.  Carrie and the kids had no idea any of this had happened.  Wow. Sojourn is filthy!

In Port Ludlow, I cut the splintered part of the tiller off with my Leatherman and Tony lashed it to the fitting.  Wow, I kind of like the feel of the shorter tiller. I’m not sure why the tiller was 5 feet long in the first place. Twelve inches makes for quite a bit more room in the cockpit.

Being the glutton for punishment that I am, I decided to build a tiller rather than buy one.  I don’t know what they cost, but my foggy memory says I saw one at Fisheries for about $150.  I’ve been engaged in some wood working projects anyway, so I bought a piece of ash with a knot in it for $10 at the half price wall at Midway Plywood. It was my first introduction to ash, which I picked on the rumor that boat oars are made of it.  It works and looks much like oak.  Like walnut and a few other woods, its saw dust has a pleasant odor. Given the knot, I couldn’t just glue two pieces together and cut it with a jig saw.  Also, I surmise that laminating adds a little strength as the grain is interrupted and thus any potential large cracks.

I traced the old tiller profile on some MDF, modified the curve a little and cut it with my jig saw to make a form.  I then cut and planed the ash into 1-3/4 x 1/4 strips. I wanted to use alternating light and dark wood like the old tiller, but there wasn’t any to be had on the half price wall and I didn’t want to spend more on materials than I could have spent on a finished tiller. I had some walnut on hand, but didn’t know if it was a good “wet” wood.  Teak is prohibitively expensive.  According to Midway, Sapele (pronounced SA-PEE-LEE) is the species of choice for boat builders these days.

I smeared Titebond III wood glue on a couple of strips and clamped them to form. It may have worked but, I just wasn’t comfortable with the wood glue, so I switched to epoxy.  I ran the cured tiller through the planer and then proceeded to carve the handle, which I botched badly.  My last ditch effort to save it made for a much better finished product as it turned out. I cut the botched handle off and made a jig to get it to spin up in my lathe.  I turned the end down and then essentially gun drilled it with a 3/4” forstner bit.   I turned another piece of ash into a handle with a 3/4” shaft.  I slathered epoxy in the hole, inserted and clamped the handle.  Voila!  I even managed to get the grain to match up pretty well.  The picture shows it with its second coat of Bristol Finish.