Frigging in the Rigging

The boat was originally rigged with Navtec rod rigging and even though it lasts longer than wire and is lighter and stronger than comparable wire (diameter), it was time to replace the almost 40 year old rig.  In a perfect world I would have replaced all of it with new rod rigging, but there are 4 problems with that:

• Very expensive
• Rod rigging needs specialized presses to 'head' the rod to length (more expense)
• Specialized fittings on the mast and deck that aren't easy to find (and expensive)
• Navtec is out of business so sourcing everything would be difficult (and expensive)

Fortunately for me, when I bought the boat the previous owner left me a big spool of 7mm compact strand wire, a box of all required Stalok fittings, and newly designed tangs to replace the old Navtec rod rigging fittings on the mast.  

All the parts are there, but some assembly required!

Of course, having all the parts doesn't mean that the rig is complete, the existing rod rigging needed to be carefully measured before I made the first cut on the new wire.  Ultimately, each fully built new shroud needed to be the same length as the old shrouds, so I know the final answer, but in order to get there, a bunch of measurements needed to be done.  

I put a bolt on the outside of my shop where I could hang one end of each piece of rod rigging and tension the other end with a come-along attached to the hitch of my car.  Once I tensioned up each shroud, I measured the length with the turnbuckles at their midpoint to get the total length of each one (center pin to center pin).  

I created a spreadsheet and entered the total lengths and then measured all the pin to pin lengths of the rod turnbuckle assemblies and subtracted that from the total length to get the rod length.  In theory, this should be the same as the wire length, but because the new shrouds have different fittings that connect to both the mast and chainplates, these had to be measured and subtracted from the total length as well.

The fittings in question that need to be added to the spreadsheet and subtracted are:

• Stalok Eye: 1-1/4"
• Stalok Turnbuckle: 10-5/8"
• Deck Island (completed May '24): 1/4"
• Correction Factor (Identified by previous owner on some shrouds): 1/2"
• Tangs (Engineered and beautifully machined by previous owner, see schematic below): 3.5"

So all told, this added up to quite a bit more than the original chainplates so the final wire length was several inches shorter than the original rod rigging.  The forestay will have to wait because I'm not sure if I'm going to replace the rod on the forestay yet because it may require me getting a new roller furler if I can't snake the new wire through the foil.  The backstay I'm going to save because I don't really know the length it should be.  The boat used to have a backstay adjuster which cut a few feet out of the total length, but I don't know the exact measurement.  The manual has a number 48' 7-3/4" but I don't know if that can be trusted.  I may wait until the mast is stepped to cut the tail for that one.

Final wire length calculations

With the spreadsheet completed with lots of measuring and re-measuring I measured out the first wire to cut and marked it with tape.  Armed with a brand new 32tpi hacksaw blade, I centered the wire in a piece of wood with a v-cut to hold it steady and made the first cut.  The hacksaw blade works great as long as the wire is held steady and is probably faster than a power tool (and makes less heat that could work harden the wire).

A quick cleanup with a metal file to get rid of any burrs and it was time to assemble the first Stalok fitting. I've used mechanical fittings in the past Stalok and Hayn HiMod and while slightly different, they use the same principal and are really nice to work with.  In a nutshell, these fittings split the wire with a wedge and then form the outer strands of wire around the wedge using compression from the screwing the 2 parts of the fitting together.  The mechanical connection is reportedly stronger than the wire itself.

The process is simple: take apart the fitting, remove the wedge and slide the socket over the wire (in the correct direction... ask me how I know).  Then using a sharp screwdriver or chisel, unwind the outer wires and expose the core.  The wire (especially compact strand wire) is pretty resistant to unwinding so expect to poke your fingers a few times with a sharp chisel before getting the hang of it.  Once you do though, it's kind of amazing stuff.  Because the wire has 'memory', it retains its shape even when unraveled.

Once the core is exposed, slide the wedge over the core and allow 1/8" of the core to poke out the top.  Then just twist the wires that have been unwound and the will collapse back over the core.  The one tricky part is that you need to lay the wires back down over the core so none of the wires fall into the tiny slit in the side of the wedge otherwise it won't be able to compress.  

Once you have them all lined up nice and even, slide the socket up as far as it will go over the wedge and screw the terminal fitting (contains the wire former) onto the socket.  When it's cranked down tight, unscrew it again and inspect the wires to make sure they wrapped around the wedge.  Put it back together with a tiny bit of locktite and the fitting is done.  Rinse and repeat for each shroud.  Unfortunately, I won't know if my measurements are correct until I actually step the mast next spring, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  Visual instructions along with videos are here: Stalok Fittings.

Wire cut to length and socket slid on.  Note the correct direction.

Outer strands unwound from core

Wedge slid onto core with 1/8" of the core protruding

Outer strands re-wound around wedge and core. Note the even distribution of strands at top

Socket slid back up against re-wound strands and wedge, effectively locking strands in place

Inspection of strands after compressing terminal fitting with former

Final product

Rolling Along

One of the big problems with boat refits when you are doing everything yourself is the fact that most jobs require very specific parts that need to be ordered in advance and can take time to arrive.  Additionally, most of these jobs often require very a different set of skills and will often need a fair amount of research if I haven't done the job before.  This research often requires me to totally disassemble a piece of equipment so that I fully understand it before moving forward. As a result, I often have 2-4 jobs underway simultaneously and my brain and workspaces can get pretty messy.  

Such is the case with the roller furling unit.  Specifically a Profurl P-40 that was likely original equipment on the boat.  When the boat was purchased by the previous owner, the sea trail survey indicated that the furling equipment was in good condition and fully functional, but that was over 10 years ago and the furler has been sitting in a yard ever since.  I really didn't want to shell out $3k+ for a new furling unit so I set out to assess its condition after sitting so long.  

I knew that this particular furler has been out of production since the late 80s but everything I've read indicated that they were solid units with a long service life and could be repaired. It wasn't until I stumbled upon a youtube video (here) of someone restoring an old Profurl (not the same model as mine) that I thought that I might be able to actually re-use it.  The youtube channel is Living For Sail and the person producing the videos is an engineer with a bigger project than mine and has a lot of great videos.  

Profurl is now owned by a different company than when the unit I have was produced so they have zero information (or parts), but the Living for Sail video gave me hope that I would be able to replace the seals and bearings in my unit with off the shelf industrial parts.  This is one of those cases where the research requires a complete tear down of the equipment to fully assess what and how it needs to be done.

The biggest problem I could see with it was that the furling drum (injection molded nylon?) was not in great shape and had a lot of UV degradation from sitting in the sun so long.  As luck would have it, I happened upon a craigslist ad for an old profurl furling unit.  The owner had purchased it off ebay thinking it was a different model (LC42) to use for parts on his unit, but looking at the photos I could see that it was exactly the same as mine.  I contacted the seller and after he sent me a few more photos I was sure that it was a P-40 and the furling drum appeared to be in much better shape than mine.  I bought it for $110USD shipped.  

 

Upside down core

Now that I had a decent furling drum I dove deeper into the unit and set about to remove the bearing(s).  I didn't know it when I started, but the Living for Sail video was a much larger unit than mine and had multiple bearings and dreaded circlips but the process was the same.  I pulled off the furling drum to reveal the core of the unit which is 2 machined aluminum cylinders.  The smaller diameter cylinder attaches to the foil (and sail) and rides on the bearing of the outer cylinder that is attached to the deck.  This provides the rotating surface for the sail to furl.

To get at the bearing and see what's happening inside, I needed to remove an oil seal on the bottom of the unit.  This proved to be very tricky.  You can't just pry it out because the seal is an interference fit and while I originally thought it was rubber, it turned out to be rubber coated steel.  So, following the Living for Sail video, I drilled into it with some construction screws and tried to remove it with some vice grips: No dice.  Next, I pulled out the trusty 2lb slide hammer and was able to finally get it out after drilling more construction screws in at various points in the seal. 

With the seal out, I was able to see into the unit and find that there was only one bearing and 2 circlips.  Using a pair of 9" circlip pliers I removed the outer circlip, taking care not to score the aluminum walls of the cylinder that would make re-sealing the unit difficult.  If you ever do this, make sure you wear protective gear because the circlips are made of spring steel and they are scary.  They are under a ton of tension and if they slip out of the pliers they fly and are pretty sharp.  After the outer circlip, I did the same with the inner circlip that holds the inner cylinder in place.  Same deal, be careful.  

These things can be very mean!

With both the circlips out, I 3d printed a 'press' to knock the inner cylinder out from inside the inner bearing race.  This was fairly straightforward, I printed the press to be about 1mm less than the diameter of the inner cylinder and then supported the outer cylinder with a few blocks of wood and pounded out the inner cylinder with the press and a hammer.

With the inner cylinder removed, I turned over the outer cylinder and tapped out the bearing and the top oil seal with a block of wood.  Both came out with surprisingly little fuss.  

At this point I was able to confirm that the bearing and oil seal sizes were as follows:

1. Bearing - 50x80x10 (I ordered a sealed bearing)

2. Top Oil Seal - 50x76x12 double lip w/ spring

3. Bottom Oil Seal 50x80x13 double lip w/ spring

As far as I can tell, all the Profurl units of this vintage (80s-90s) are using the same bearing size and probably the same seals as well.  The good news is that these bearings and seals are easily found on Amazon or Grainger or McMaster and are used in tons of industrial applications so they generally hold up well.  I ordered everything through Amazon and 2 days later they were at my doorstep.  

I put the bearings in the freezer and then cleaned up the aluminum cylinders of old grease and dirt.  To be honest, I had hoped they would polish up a bit better, but once reassembled, it should be functional for many more years.  Once satisfied that they were at least clean (but not pretty), I turned over the larger of the 2 cylinders and greased up the small oil seal (will be the top of the furler just under the drum) and pressed it in.  It was another interference fit, but I warmed up the cylinder to 180 degrees F and with the grease it slid right in place with a little tapping with a block.

For the bearing, I 3d printed another press (diameter 79 mm to support the outer race or bearing surface).  Worried that I would melt the plastic coating on the oil seal already installed, I just relied on the shrinkage of the cold bearing and more grease.  With the bearing press and some gentle taps of a hammer it dropped in without any issues. Speaking of grease, I used Lubriplate 130AA lithium grease (for the MaxProp) for all the internals.     

While the bearing was still cold, I carefully re-installed the large circlip to keep the bearing in place and then using a 2" piece of pvc pipe to support the inner race of the bearing, I flipped the large cylinder back over and tapped the smaller cylinder through the center of the bearing.  With that seated, I installed the remaining circlip, packed the whole thing with grease and pressed the large oil seal into place.

Everything else was simple, just a matter of re-installing the drum, cage, and mounting plates to the bottom of the furler and it was whole again.  It was definitely a tricky job that required patience, but anyone who is a bit mechanically inclined should have no problem doing this.  The hardest part was the circlips, definitely get a good pair of 9" circlip pliers.

Hatches Revisited

Earlier this spring I replaced all the gaskets on all the opening ports and hatches before taking off the cover, but found that 2 overhead hatches (the large fore hatch and the small hatch in the head) still leaked once I took the cover off and allowed rain to hit the boat for the first time in many years.  The problem wasn't with the gaskets, it was either where the hatch mounted to the deck (in the head) or the acrylic in the forehatch.

Unfortunately, that meant pulling both the hatches on the boat. In reality, both hatches came off pretty easily but it wasn't a job I really wanted to do.  The leak in the small hatch was just the seal on the deck, so the hatch just needed to be re-bedded.  Normally, I use butyl tape for deck fittings under compression, but Atkins and Hoyle recommended BoatLife Caulking.  I really like butyl tape for anything that can be clamped down with force and in theory, these hatches should have been good candidates but the design of the hatch flanges on the was odd.  

When you look at the hatches from above it appears that the flanges are nice and flat and wide.  Perfect for sealing with butyl tape.  Unfortunately, the underside is a different story.  When I pulled them up, they were sealed with some sort of butyl tape, but it was a bit on the runny side and was yellowish in color.  I spent some time cleaning that up and once most of it was removed, I found that the underside of the flange had been modified.  The original hatches had a 'cove' running along the flange, but a someone had filled the cove with some sort of pink Bondo to make the flange flat.  I suppose it could have been done when the boat was built, but when I spoke with Atkins and Hoyle, the person told me that they new of no manufacturers who had ever done something like this and recommended against using butyl tape.  

Bondo???

In any event, the Bondo was very cracked with some stuck to the deck and some still in the flange coves.  The only thing I could do was to clean up the coves. It was slow going for sure, but I had a set of cheap wood carving tools with similar profiles to the cove and finally got both of them cleaned up. 

The smaller hatch didn't need new acrylic so I used Atkins and Hyle recommendation to run a bead of Boat Life Life Seal along the outer edge of the flange.  I opted to run a bead along both the outside and inside edges of the flange for a little extra security (maybe false sense of security).  Boat Life was nice to work with and only took about 15 minutes from start to finish to get it re-installed.

The big hatch was a much bigger job because I had to replace the acrylic as well as rebedding it.  Once I had the flange cleaned up on the underside of the hatch, I set to work pulling the old acrylic.  I took a razor blade and cut along the perimeter between the acrylic and the frame and cut away the silicon adhesive.  It didn't take too long before I was able to remove the acrylic, but removing all the residual silicon took a lot of effort and several hours of scraping.  I tried GooGone Silicon remover, but that didn't really do much other than make a mess.  It pretty much sucked, but I did it over several sessions on my back deck with a few beers to make it more palatable. 

Next, I set the hatch aside and moved onto the acrylic.  The big hatch has 2 latches that can be opened from the outside or inside, so these latches penetrate the acrylic through a spring loaded rotary seal.  To remove them, you first have to remove a set screw on each of the aluminum top knobs to remove them.  This took a bit of PB Blaster and patience because I was told by Atkins and Hoyle that if you ruin those, the assemblies are about $150 a piece.  The stainless steel screw and the aluminum knobs do not play well, but I eventually freed them up.  One other note is that the latches are also stainless steel and connect into the center of the aluminum knob.  These are isolated by a teflon tube.  One of the tubes was destroyed when removing the assembly, so I printed another 'isolation' tube from PLA on my 3d printer. 

I ordered a new piece of 1/2" smoked cast acrylic (25.25"x25.25") with 2" radius on all 4 sides from Tap Plastics and 2-1" rotary shaft seals from McMaster Carr here. I also ordered a 10oz tube of GE SCS1200 adhesive silicon sealant (same as what Atkins and Hoyle use, but purchased for half the price on Amazon).  The total cost for new parts was ~$275 USD.

Once all the parts came in, I got right to work because I was working on borrowed time with the half-assed hatch cover I taped in place when I removed the hatch.  Using the old acrylic hatch as a template, I carefully marked out the location of the holes where the latch assemblies would penetrate the hatch.  I drilled a pilot hole first and then used a 1/2" forstner bit to drill the underside of the hatch (1/4" through the acrylic).  Then I turned it over and used a 1" Forstner bit to drill out where the rotary shaft seal would mount.  Based on the condition of the old hatch, I decided to epoxy in the rotary shaft seals because I know that the next time this hatch leaks I will probably replace it with a new Lewmar (or something like it).  

I decided it would be best to re-bed the both the hatch itself and the acrylic lense on the boat so it would not need to be moved and one of us could clean up the underside if needed, so my wife and I took everything over to the boat and got started.  First, we flipped the hatch frame over and put a bead of Boat Life on the inner and outer flange on the underside.  Then we carefully laid it onto the deck so that the screw holes lined up with the holes on the hatch frame.  

Once that was in place, I put a small blob of Boat Life into each screw hole and then screwed it all down.  We spent a few minutes cleaning up the squeeze out with our fingers (and soapy water) before turning to the acrylic lense.  

I pulled off all the paper from the acrylic and then we swapped out the boat life for the GE SCS1200 silicon adhesive/sealant.  I laid in a generous bead of the sealant onto the lense flange and then we lowered the acrylic lense into the frame and squished it down and centered it in the hatch frame.  Because the acrylic is about 3/8" smaller than the hatch opening, the next thing to do was to fill in the area between the hatch frame and the acrylic.  My understanding is that this is what really holds the acrylic in place (they do the same thing on buildings with big glass plates, there are no fasteners, just the adhesive).  Once completed, we cleaned up that bead and re-installed the hardware and called it a day.  

I'm happy to report that after several torrential rainstorms a few days later both hatches have not leaked a drop. So I guess we can call this job done, except I still have to clean up the old tape glue around the perimeter of the small hatch, but that shouldn't be too bad. The new acrylic looks really nice, if the other hatches were leaking I would have done the same to them, but for now I'll just add it to next years list because I want to get this boat launched next summer.

How do you Eat an Elephant

I haven't posted in a while, but I've been juggling a number of projects that are in various stages of completion and I prefer to report on the job once it's completed. With that said, I did officially finish a job that has been on going for months in little chunks because it is so terrible that I can only handle about an hour of it at a time. The elephant I'm talking about was the removal of many, many years of bottom paint so that I have a bare hull. I'm certain that the bottom has been stripped bare in the past because I found an epoxy barrier coat underneath the layers of anti fouling paint (I doubt they came that way from the factory), but I'd guess it's been at least 20 years and the amount of paint on the bottom was just staggering. 

When I began last fall, I already had 2 gallons of chemical paint stripper on hand from other projects (different manufacturers) so I thought I would start with the rudder and see which one worked the best. I quickly found out that these strippers work on 1-3 coats pretty well, but not so much when you have 15-20 coats. Both strippers basically made a big mess and still left me with most of the paint on the boat. The next method I tried was a sander with 40 grit paper. I already knew that this would be a disaster as well, but I'm not too bright and don't learn from past mistakes (Alberg 35). Even with a big dust collector attached and a full face respirator, it made a big red cloud of toxic dust that would have taken years off my life and polluted the property where I store the boat.

I spent hours googling in hopes of finding an easy solution and aside from hiring someone to do the job for me, I found that most ultimately resort to a scraper and hours and hours of backbreaking work.  I tried a few different types:

• Carbide Furniture Scraper - works for a few coats but was not up to the task I had. Also, it was awkward to use while crouching underneath the boat.
• Standard  Paint Scraper - the blade was too flexible and couldn't really dig through and under all the layers.
• 2" Mortising Chisel - too sharp on the corners and tended to gouge badly.  It did get all the layers of paint though.

I spent some quality time at Lowes and found that the Warner Pro 1-1/4" putty knife was just about right. It was somewhat sharpened and had a thick blade that didn't bend when trying to get through the paint, but the edges were rounded enough so it didn't gouge the underlying fiberglass.  

So with the method and tool chosen I got to work, sort of.  There is no way around the fact that this job is back breaking work and requires all of your shoulder, abdomen, arm, and back muscles for it to work effectively.  You are not just gently scraping along, you are forcefully jamming the blade under paint and popping it off in 1/4" chips.  I kept an 8x10' tarp underneath the area I was working on to capture the chips.  

First session's progress

Circling back to the title of the post: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.  This became my mantra.  The first few days I could only do about 30 minutes at a time before my muscles were spent, but by the end both my technique and muscles had improved so I could last about an hour at a time.  I generally would use my lunch hour doing about 50 minutes of work and 10 minutes of cleanup each session.  It was slow, miserable work but after 22 hour long sessions (bites) I had completed the majority of the work.  

Today I finally finished off the entire bottom and I am sooo glad it's done.  Well, sort of...  I applied some fairing compound along the keel seam and will have to sand that down along with a light sand over the rest of the hull, but in comparison, it's not so bad.  Once that's done, I'll apply a few more barrier coats before bottom paint next spring/early summer when I launch.  

It may not look pretty, but that's as bare a bottom as I can get.