Sundowner Sails Again ~ Refit Rebels

One thing that has been irking me for a while on Sundowner is the dished down deck around the carriage bolts that hold the deck beams to the cabin top.  I didn’t know why they dished down, but they have corroded some that I can see due to rust stains.  Could they have been over tightened?  Could the deck core have rotted beneath them?  Or could it just be the intense strain that has been put on the boat during its long voyages. Sundowner is no spring chicken.  She has more miles under her keel than most boats.

Today I finally decided it was time to investigate a bit.  We pulled one of the bungs in the underside of the deck beam.  Surprisingly, the bolt looked perfect.  I took the nut off and found… No rot.  No water.  No leaks. Everything looked dry as a bone in there.  So maybe it is just the time and stress that has done it.

I decided discretion is the better part of valor and left well enough alone for now.   So what to do with a day when your project in mind gets derailed?  Well in our case it was time to rebed some more portlights.  The two in the V-berth were prime candidates because we know they leak.  Disassembly began soon after.

It was pretty ominous to see those white rings of old caulk around the heads of the bolts but no caulk underneath the trim ring.  And the nuts on the bolts were all loose.  We pulled the trim rings off and found that they hadn’t even been caulked underneath.  No wonder they were leaking!

The process of rebedding went much the same as the first port light we rebedded. Remove, sand, scrub, clean, etc.

But now a novelty. After much pondering about our first butyl portlight experience I decided that it would have been better to use a countersink around the holes.  So we broke out the drill and I countersunk not only the fiberglass but ALSO the bronze trim rings themselves.  Blasphemy I know.

And instead of putting a ring of butyl around the holes then inserting the trim ring I put the bolts into the trim ring first and inserted the entire assembly into place.

I’m pleased with the results.  It was a bit harder to tighten the rings down as the butyl kept the bolts from coming all the way out in the interior.  So I got one bolt through by tapping it with a hammer, got a nut on it and tightened until I could get the next on, and so forth.  After we tightened them we left them alone for a bit and came back a while later and repeated the process, giving the butyl plenty of time to compress and smoosh out where ever it might.

And finally as promised, we epoxied some holes.  This time the old holes that held the teak grates over the scuppers.  Dani and I have decided to just leave the teak grates off of the boat to increase drainage and give water washing down the side decks a better place to go instead of the cockpit.

After this epoxy is all setup we’ll come back, sand it out and put some topside paint over it.  Another day in the books.

Have I mentioned lately that the heat has returned to Louisiana?  It wasn’t that bad a scorcher but you can tell that it is coming.  Being in the direct sun is a challenge again.  But fear not faithful readers, we were not deterred.  Oh no, today we were going to replace the headstay.  Or at least I was going to try to replace it while Dani sands teak.  That may sound strange.  It is sort of strange.

You know.  There you are at the top of the mast working diligently, secure in the fact that someone below is looking out for you, but you look down and there she is again with the sandpaper scrubbing away at some piece of wood.  There you are eating dinner and you look behind you for the salt and turn around with it and your spouse is sanding teak.  I think I’ve seen her sanding teak while brushing her teeth.  I mean really, who “sneaks” teak work in between other jobs. Dani. That gals is crazy, ya’ll. Love her to death though.

Anyway… Today I climbed all the way to the top of the mast.   A place I’d never been before.  In preparation I bless Dani and her winching skills.

And eventually I did make it all the way to the top.

The top of the mast isn’t in that bad a shape.  I mean the paint is pealing and whatnot, but all that is up there are some tangs, a couple of lights, and a windex. The tangs look like they’re in okay shape and the mast sheaves all seem to turn freely, so I was relieved by what I found.  After a quick look around I took the headstay’s clevis pin out and hooked the staloc fitting to the jib halyard and lowered it down. Then it was time for a break.  Did I mention its hot again?

At some point our racing skipper Glenn drove by on a nice big Searay stinkboat.  They showed up right after I was getting off the mast and applauded.  I think I was so dazed from the heat I hardly remembered to wave.  So if you’re reading this, sorry Glenn, forgive me for not being able to cheer back.

With the old headstay down it was time to make a new one!  I’m sure you all remember this process from our previous posts.

The new stay came out really well.  I think I’ve done my best “staloc” yet on this one.  And finally it was time to put it back up.  So up I go again.

After I finished connecting it I climbed down and started to take apart the old turnbuckle to add new fittings.  Unfortunately for some reason the turnbuckle was cross threaded and I refuse to use it again.  So now I have to wait on another part to finish connecting the headstay.  Its always something huh?

Tomorrow is more fun with epoxy.  If the heat is good for anything, its good for making epoxy set up.

Much has been said and praised in this blog about Butyl tape.  Its practically Dani’s pet.  But we’ve only begun to put it to the test it seems.  After much discussion and hemming and hawing over what to try to rebed the portlights with, we decided to give our old standby another go and see if it can live up to the job.  The alternatives of course would have been either a polysulfide caulk or something like 3M 4200.

Who can say why we decided to go with the butyl.  We’ve seen many articles on bedding portlights with butyl tape but none of the port lights were quite like these old style things that Sundowner sports.  Its a spigot that passes through the cabin top and then a ring fits around the spigot on the exterior.  The ring isn’t a perfectly tight fit.  So as you can see the main places that will need to seal are the joint between the spigot and the cabin top and also the bolt holes.   I guess we just got a wild hair and wanted to try it.

We started the usual way.  You know, taking nuts off of long corroded screws.  Hammering them out.  Using paint scrapers to remove so many years of built up old caulk, rust, and junk.  We then sanded the area, used a scrub pad, then dusted and finally I wiped all the surfaces down with some Acetone which ate right through that dinky little rubber glove I’m wearing.

This is what the parts looked like when they are cleaned up a bit.

I had Dani do all the hard work.  You know, like digging the old caulk out of the grooves of the old screws.

We then proceeded to mash a metric buttload (technical term) of butyl tape into the gap between the spigot and the cabin top.  This seemed to work well as the butyl adhered to both the metal and fiberglass so much so that even digging in it or pressing on it with a screw driver wouldn’t unseat it at all.  We also made little donuts around all the bolt holes.

I carefully put a line of butyl around the underside of the flat head bolts and then drove them back through.

And voila.  A portlight that looks almost exactly the same as it did when we started.

The real question though is… Will it leak?  Is the butyl compressed well enough by the trim ring to stay in place and not let water in?  Will the bolt heads keep proper seals against the metal?

Find out the answers to these mysteries and more… Next time on Sundowner Sails Again.

Finally it’s time for another money post! Yay! Or better worded, a post about spending, sacrificing, throwing and burning copious amounts of dollar bills during our efforts to refit this old boat. We are pretty much at the end of what we would consider Phase 3 and I’ve compiled our numbers for the updated Cost of a Cruising boat refit.

We haven’t been posting as much here lately mainly because we have been working a ton on the boat and at our day jobs. To be perfectly honest as well, we are getting kinda tired of refit posts. We aren’t done yet but boat work topics are on the down slope and tropical posts with funny little creatures, birds, turtles and lots of rum are on the up slope.

During Phase 3 we replaced most of the standing rigging including getting a new stainless steel bowsprit, chainplates, stainless wire, turnbuckles and have most of the running rigging. I have added about $2k to the overall rigging costs to cover what we have yet to do on the boomkin. Tate removed all of the anchor rode and chain and this spring we also removed the caprails and filled the leaky hull to deck joint with 5200. We’ve stopped many other leaks including recaulking the companionway hatch.

I painted the salon and head cabinets with bilgekote and finished painting all the blue formica with latex paint and polyurethane topcoat (photos to come of this work inside the boat). I also cleaned, brightened and oiled all of the teak in the main salon and made slipcovers for our cushions as well as beefed up the foam.

We have accomplished a TON! So here is the breakdown so far:

Including Sundowner’s purchase price of $30,000:

• End of Phase 1 $50,855  (engine, fuel tanks)
• End of Phase 2 $61,240  (electrical, head, dinghy)
• End of Phase 3 $71,985 (rigging, interior improvements)

Here is a more detailed breakdown by Category with items remaining to do below:

(Click here for detailed PDF)

You can find more information on the Cost Page.

We are right on track with our budget, which is very exciting!  Can you tell I like this stuff?  To stay on budget during our refit we have sometimes had to choose cheaper material alternatives and of course we do all the work ourselves.  Honestly I doubt we could find a sane person even willing to do these things for pay, and NOBODY wants an insane person working on your boat closed up with bilgekote fumes, nobody.

So what on earth is left?  Let’s see…exciting, fun, new AND useful items such as: Propane set up with new stove, new anchor chain, an engel fridge, solar panels, wind generator (may go without), liferaft and EPIRB, plumbing set up to install our new water tanks, chart set up, misc safety gear, a few new lights and the engine room wrap up.

If I can sell enough vacation time back to my company we may be able to afford a DC watermaker which will add about $6k to the cost. Who really needs vacation anyways?  Sacrifice now to go on the biggest vacation of a lifetime, with an easy water source, yeah sounds like a winner.

I CAN’T WAIT to get our old gal back out sailing again and be able to enjoy the new and cushy interior with safe and trustworthy rigging. It has been rough at times to keep up the momentum but we kept strong and now have a much better boat because of it. This feeling I have today makes it all worth it!