Sundowner Sails Again ~ Refit Rebels

As usual on Tuesday after work I headed to the boat to continue progress while the weather is still cool enough to not look like a Changeling having a bad day while doing so. Progress is particularly important right now since we have planned to repaint the non-skid with Kiwi Grip this weekend!  I need to sand any rough epoxy and the area around any exposed wooden dowels used after the old teak deck removal to prepare them for Epoxy Primekote.

After the pain in the butt to mix 2 part epoxy primer dries we’ll try our hands at Kiwi Grip. We have been wanting to repaint the non-skid for some time now as it seems every time we go to the boat another dowel is fully exposed, streaking it’s wooden parts across the deck just asking trouble. We have GOT TO fix these or we risk rot in the plywood deck core.

Constantly watching the weather and seeing no rain for weeks we picked this weekend as our go date. The wooden dowels would have plenty of time to dry out and be ready for primer. Unfortunately the measly 30% chance of rain for today turned into 100%…all day. Boo.

Much calloused and toughened by my time served as a boat refitter this effected me for, oh, a moment or two. Generally nowadays when a wrench is throw into the mix I just say screw it, I’m doing it anyways. Really, what is the worst that could happen? This case isn’t that bad thankfully with the rain ending today it will leave 4 full days in the Louisiana sun for the wood to dry again, I hope. Probably on Sunday evening or Monday morning we’ll prime the deck the break out the Kiwi Grip.

A welcome distraction with a pretty sail came by Sundowner yesterday just as I was getting started.

He happened to be a blog follower named Ben who actually lives on his Catalina 30 in the same marina, is in his 3rd year of Dentistry school all while his awesome wife holds down the fort in Lafayette with their two kids. WOW. It’s incredible the people we are meeting lately who either live on boats already or are making that move. He found our blog online and recognized his picture in one of our electrical posts! I snapped him sailing by at sunset over a year ago:

I gave him a short tour while we talked about Sundowner and our second job as refitters. He told me he learned to sail over in Atchafalaya Basin country where fishermen rule and sailboats are rare, and decided instead of buying or renting a place in New Orleans while in school he’d buy a boat and a great little sunfish as a dinghy. We promised to meet again, perhaps for a sail one day before we leave, then he disappeared. The sun followed suit.

All the while we talked I imagined the other amazing people we’ll meet along the way. I CAN NOT WAIT to leave! 19 months is so close but at the same time so far away.

To bide our time and get back out on the water, lately we’ve joined Skipper Glenn aboard Quest for the usual Wednesday night racing.  I hope we’ll have half as good of weather tonight as we did last Wednesday:

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.