San Juan’s Part 1–Everett to Friday Harbor

After repairing the dingy oarlock, installing the grill, a life sling and the rest of about $500 worth of expenses at West Marine on Saturday, I went back home and collected the second load of trip gear and the family.  It was blowing just less than stink – no idea where that term came from, but I hear it a lot – so I was concerned about getting Sojourn and her tender out of the slip with the prop shaft and dinghy painter in tact.  This was my first experience a loading a 120 pound dinghy on the foredeck, but with he aid of the main halyard I managed without too many scratches. 
We loaded up, backed out of the slip and headed for Langley.  Our goal was to keep each passage to four or five hours. Langley is two and La Conner is about 6 from Everett.  Langley was lovely as always, though it was chilly.  It was very low tide the next morning and I always have to marvel when I see beached sailboats.  There is a wonderful and in some ways very authentic French restaurant called the Prima Bistro, which caters to some of our dietary needs and culinary desires with gluten free calamari among other things. The wonder has worn off for our kids, so in the future I think we will save the modest expense for just Carrie and I who fully enjoy it.  Jack still claims that the have the best fries in all of the seven seas.
On day two we motored directly into a 12-15 knot head wind most of the way to La Conner and were rewarded with very pleasant sunshine and a light breeze.  After watching a 38 foot sailboat with what looked like a newly minted skipper at the helm attempt to dock and nearly destroy his vessel going with the current last year, I was more the wiser and managed a very soft landing at about 1800 RPM going into the current. Here we had the first opportunity to use the dink.
Per our usual we hit the road, or water as it were, at around 11.  We’ve since concluded that my getting up much earlier and motoring or sailing for a few hours while visions of sugar plums or transformers  still dance in little heads would be much smarter.  This was also a short trip so we arrived in Anacortes in the early afternoon.  Apparently a severe leak had sprung in the heavens.  Sojourn isn’t exactly what you would call water tight on the decks, and I pumped about 2 gallons of water from the bilge the next morning. I had gone to the trouble to install a PSS shaft seal this spring and eagerly looked forward to a dry bilge this summer.  It seems my wait isn’t over.   We very much liked Anacortes with its modern wide docks, easy shopping, and spacious parks.  While Carrie shopped and took a break from parenting, I lead a march to the lookout, a mile or two around the harbor.  We actually made it about half way up the hill which was about 90 percent of the journey before the girls gave up. Maggie will declare “I’m tired” and plop herself wherever she happens to be standing.”
The leak had either nearly been mended or the heavens were running out of water, with patches of blue sky in the direction of our destination, so we cast off.  After about 15 minutes, the leak started pouring anew.  I had removed Sojourn’s tattered dodger believing that I would not need it in the summer time – a regretful decision. Just before committing to crossing Rosario Straight, I was carefully watching other boats and the chop through binoculars. Visibility wasn’t great and not having experienced the straight before, and not wanting to risk terrifying the passengers, I headed to the “Ship Harbor” as noted on the chart on the northwest corner of Fidalgo Island.  After about an hour at anchor, the heavens dried up again and we continued our journey.  The winds were fresh and crisp, filling in behind the low pressure system that had just moved through, but being on the bow, I would have been beating into 3-4 foot waves for a couple of hours, so we motored.  As the day proceeded the clouds receded and the sun shined brilliantly through pristine blue skies. I got about 15 minutes of sailing as we headed north around Lopez, but the wind has an uncanny ability to blow right up the passages between the islands so no matter the heading, it is always into the wind.  Tacking in a narrow channel with the family in cruising mode is a challenge so I just motored.
As we arrived in Friday Harbor, 100 foot steel square rigger named the Hawaiian Chieftain was docking.  At any distance it couldn’t look more like a classic pirate ship.  Annie declared it was Captain Jones!  We had previously been regaled with stories of the famous Captain Jones by a father of grown children who sailed through the San Juan’s finding treasure left by Jones and his first mate Scully. We managed to get a tour the next day.  The crew were friendly and the captain very enthusiastic.  She is quite peculiar having been designed and built as a beachable, steel hulled square rigger with hybrid polymer and hemp shrouds, wooden dead blocks and convincing cannons lashed to the deck.
The water is clear enough to see nearly 20 feet down to a completely alien ecology.  Everything is covered in large leafy kelp with a plethora of critters and creatures swimming about.  Translucent shrimp were abundant and a favorite local attraction among the junior sailors, my three being no exception. At night, you can shine a flashlight on them and pluck them out of the water by their antenna.  On the second night we got a slip at H-49, which is very near the north west corner of the marina and one of the best seats in the house for the fireworks show.  Just before the show, we were treated to a giant full moon rising over the mountains to the east.  Annie declared it the ‘super moon.’

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.

Frankensail

While I think the whole family agrees that overall, we wouldn’t trade  our cruises for anything (except perhaps Port Ludlow in near freezing March) the first few hours are always an adjustment period. There is apparently a mandatory transition from land to sea that involves lots of squealing and taunting and complaining about this that and the other thing with threats from me of making them separate or, heaven forbid, come up in the cabin with me.  After a couple of hours, it calms down and they start playing nicely until precisely an hour before arrival when the “are we there yet”’s start.  Arrival represents the end of the transition and the beginning of the adventure.

On our way to Langley, I was single handing with the kids down below and mom was to meet us by car the next morning.  We were in the thick of the transition.  While the Around Whidbey racers were giving up due to lack of wind on the West side, we were in 20 knot winds according to a couple of anemometer equipped sailors we met in Langley.  Annie was squealing because of Maggie.  Jack was telling on Annie and Maggie was squealing just because she could. I was struggling to get the sails up in the stiff breeze and the tiller wasn’t having the easiest of times keeping us into the wind.  I had set the tiller pilot, raised the main, and went to raise the jib, but couldn’t find the halyard. After a couple of seconds of a ‘this does not compute’ moment, I looked up to find it streaming from the masthead, apparently tangled in the top of the mainsail track. I managed to furl the main, retrieve the halyard, and re-tie the missing stop knot.  (I’m fairly fastidious about stop knots, and there was clear evidence of a previous one in the stiff old line, so me-thinks that helpful little fingers were at work.)  I hoisted the main, and then the jib.  The wind was heavy, so I used the winch handle.  I killed the motor and set for a close haul. 

Immediately , something wasn’t right with the main. I looked up and found the wire jib halyard wrapped taught around leech, caught on a baton.  There was about a 10 inch tear.  While I paused for a few seconds to think about the best course of action the tear started to grow.  By the time I got the halyard free of the winch, the tear was half way to the luff. I don’t recall the sequence of the next 10 minutes, just the loosely attached highlights.  I had fully furled the jib and we probably lost steerage, causing the boat to fall off, which healed the boat and put a lot of pressure on the main. The tear went all the way to the luff under the pressure. 

I had many thoughts. – despair at the prospect of having to buy a new main.  - should I cancel the trip?  - joy at the prospect of a new main.  I decided to continue the trip.  Our destination was directly up wind and without the mainsail, I wasn’t able to point very well.  Our VMG was only about two knots and we had eight to go, so I furled the jib for the third time and motored.  I took the sail pieces to a newly minted sail maker in the club named Tony.  The good news was that he could fix it. The bad news was that he could fix it.    A week later, h returned ‘Frankensail’ and cruised to Poulsbo.  Can you spot Frankensail’s stitches?

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.

Cursing at Dodgers

Fortunately, I have a job and have been too busy to play with sailboats this winter.  I have neighbors who aren’t so lucky.  Unfortunately, however, I have a job and have been to busy to play with sailboats, thus the 4 months since my last post.

I’ve been slowly working on the dodger. I made a form and laminated two pieces of 3mm marine plywood, glassed them and painted it with Interlux Pre-Kote in preparation for
Brightside.  I found that the ends had too tight of a bend radius, so I put 1.5mm deep cuts with my Skilsaw every half inch for 12 inches on each end, which worked well. By happy coincidence, my work bench was almost the ideal size for strapping the plywood to the form with motorcycle straps.  In the process I made two serious mistakes.

First, doing math in my head under the influence of wine, I mis-calculated the ratio for the epoxy.  I filled the pot to the 3 oz mark with part B then to the 12 oz mark with part A.  12:3 is 4:1 right? Would you believe I’m a licensed professional engineer?

It was from Tap Plastics and was a 4:1 ratio, and apparently doesn’t cure well at 3:1.  I’ve since learned that 1:1 or 1:2 ratio epoxy is more forgiving.  After laminating the two sheets, I just kept using the same amounts.  When I finished glassing the top.  It just didn’t feel right – it was hard, but sticky.  When I got to the bottom, it was worse.  I actually used a torch to heat and remove the uncured epoxy and glass and re-glassed it.  The re-glass job was gratifyingly hard and not sticky. 

Second, I misunderstood the use of Pre-Kote and effectively was trying to use it as a fairing compound. It would gum up the sand paper. Perhaps it just needs time to harden, I thought..  Being busy, a month went by and it was still like day old latex paint.  I could scratch it off with my fingernail. 

At this point, I’m of two minds.  One is to use the 7/8 dodger frame I got as dumpster salvage and go traditional canvas and the other is start over.  The little bit of stripping I did suggests that starting over would be the lesser amount of work if I wanted to stick with the hard dodger.

Dreaming of Dodgers

Not the Dodgers, I’m probably more of a Mariners fan, but dodgers, the fiberglass or canvas enclosure installed on a sailboat to help you “dodge” wind, rain and waves.  Sojourn’s dodger is in pretty sad shape.  It has a flimsy aluminum frame and vinyl windows which were opaque long before joining our family.

I got a quote to have some new windows and zippers put in it, but it came to $400.  I just felt that was too much to put in to a faded old piece of canvas with and inadequate frame.  So, I decided to fix it myself. I managed to get one of the three windows replaced before destroying my wife’s sewing machine. 

Now I needed a sewing machine and a dodger.  I went to the only sewing machine store within my radius of traffic tolerance, generally Mukilteo, Everett and Lynnwood.  They took one look at my dead machine and said “yeah, plastic frame.  We only recommend those to people who want to dip their toe in the proverbial sewing water.”  She pointed me to the machine that “all boat owners buy,” a Pfaff Select 3.0. At $600, I was going to be the exception.  I had read the blogs and Don Casey’s book, which all said that you could do all of the canvas work you wanted with a $150 classic all metal sewing machine, but with no experience, I couldn’t bring my self to buy one on Ebay without touching it. 

I talked her into showing me a very simple $200 metal frame sewing machine. I brought in some canvas to test it.  After playing with that for a while, she had me sew a piece of silky delicate material to the end of my folded piece of canvas with the Pfaff.  I could feel $600 evaporating from my wallet as the walking foot climbed from the delicate silk to several layers of canvas without a hick up.

One of the other problems with Sojourn’s dodger is that it is at exactly the wrong height. Standing on the cockpit floor, I have to duck or stand on my tippy toes to see forward.  I’ve read that it is favorable to be able to look over the dodger.  I can’t go up and still fold the dodger because it will interfere with the traveler.  Going down would mean bonking my head even more frequently.  Sojourn has a tiller, so when I’m sailing, I’m sitting on the combing anyway, so I started looking at concepts that left the dodger up all of the time, only removing the panels when I would otherwise want it down.  This got me to thinking about a hard dodger.

With a couple of notable exceptions, most of the DIY hard dodgers I’ve seen are hideous. They are out of proportion and not matching the style of the rest of the boat. Many could easily be bested in workmanship by your average high school shop class.  There are also a couple of professionally manufactured fiberglass ones that are out of my price range, but look great, Wavestopper being one of them.

I found one photo of one hard dodger in particular, in a gleaming red and white color scheme much as Sojourn’s.  I played around with several variants, all of them too complicated with compound curves.  I’m sure they would be beautiful, but it would require a fiberglass mold and more work than I’m willing to invest.

To be candid, looking at Wavestopper got me thinking about a single curve dodger and plywood.  I’m not sure why he builds them that way as it sounds like he uses a mold.  Perhaps his mold is made from plywood.

My plan is to laminate two pieces of 3 mil Okoume plywood into shape, glass the top and bottom and finish with either one or two part polyurethane. I intend to use 5200 to bond a bolt rope track to the edges to attach the canvas.  I’ve read that it can be used to permanently bond canvas to itself and generally permanently bond anything.

Here is the current concept.  I have the luxury of working with CAD in my daily job so drawing this up and was done in an evening.  The outer curves have a 12 inch bend radii.

Working with Bristol Finish

My wife read my post entitled A super model with shaved eyebrows and with a laugh, suggested that she liked a Hooker with Painted eyebrows better.  As Sojourn is something of a mistress, I guess I have to put up with some jealousy.  Either way, Sojourn's makeover is progressing.

I’ve started refinishing the bright work and selected Bristol Finish.

For those where I was a few months ago, there are basically 4 types of “varnish”.  The first is actually just oil.  Rebecca Wittman would tell you it isn’t an exterior finish and I agree with her.  The second is varnish.  It typically lasts a season, more or less depending on your UV exposure necessitating at least annual maintenance.  There are two formulations of this, interior and spar, the latter having UV resistance and generally a softer, more pliable finish.  It is easy to apply, easy to fix and easy to remove.  Some have suggested epoxy based finishes as a third, but I couldn’t find any evidence that its UV resistance was up to the challenge and it is more difficult to remove.  Finally, Urethane.  There are two categories, single part and two part catalyzing.  The first is often what you get when you buy varnish at the hardware store and aren’t paying attention. The two part is much like the two part urethane paints, but with very little pigment.

Why Bristol?  After spending almost a year reading blogs, reading Rebecca’s Bright work Companion and following Practical Sailor’s two year wood finish tests, I found a lot of conflicting information and even more conflicting options. In the end, Practical Sailor’s report that that it was the leader in their tests in New England, which should have a climate more representative of the northwest than Florida and the fact that the only derogatory comments I could find on the blogs came from 2005 and earlier and the prospect of going several years without re-doing made the decision for me.

And the results – when they say Amber, they mean it.  I think it is beautiful, but I was shocked at how amber it is.  Ben, who coincidentally refinished some of Triumph’s bright work the same week said it is the same color as the Cetol, but much shinier. In three sessions, I put 6 coats on.  Between the second and third coats I sanded lightly, otherwise all coats were within 24 hours of each other.  I probably only have 5 hours into the actual application, and most of that was waiting. I was able to coat the combings, the companionway frame and engine panel frame. 

I found that vertical surfaces were somewhat difficult and tend to run.  Horizontal surfaces tend to come out amazing.  Foam brushes make for more bubbles, but less runs.  In the end, I’ll likely put the last coat on with a bristle brush, but I might try rolling and tipping. 

My biggest complaint at this point is that it runs pretty easily and runs build on runs.  If you look at it an angle it is full of runs.  I seem to recall the instructions giving the practical method of doing exactly what I did and then sanding for a final top coat.  In my case it will likely be a maintenance coat next year as I tackle the hand and toe rails.  One other complaint is that it is so shiny, I can’t tell dry from wet.  I had paint section by section, placing my cup at the end of each section to help make sure I got it all.  I suppose that is a good thing.

I washed the teak with a scrub brush and oxalic acid, let it dry then sanded with 180 grit and my palm sander.  I didn’t get to the root of the grain, which had a small amount of weathered gray, but would have had to remove a lot of wood to do so.  I then wiped with acetone and used a bristle brush for the first 2 coats, foam for the 2nd two and a brush for the final two.  The brush is easier to control runs with, but much more prone to bubbles.

In the final, (well, almost done, protected for winter anyway) analysis, I’m quite happy with the result.  From 5 feet away, it is fantastic.  Sojourn went from a tired old woman to mistress with a new lease on life with a few brush strokes.