2016 Winter Campaign

Winter is Coming

The end of the sailing season is often the beginning of the major maintenance season.  The boat must be prepped for the New England winter.  I was pleased to learn that winterizing the outboard engine is not terribly complicated.  I read the manual a couple of times and took notes, then watched some  DIY YouTube videos, and reviewed the procedure over the phone with Ric.  He had coached me through it in person last year, but this time I was flying solo.  Taking advantage of the mild temperatures in late November, I flushed the engine with fresh water for a good ten minutes, pulled the spark plugs (looked good), and sprayed in some fogging oil.  I removed the propellor and gave the shaft a thick new coat of 2-4-C grease, and changed the motor oil in the lower unit.  This last job proved the most challenging, and required trips to several different stores to acquire a specific grade of marine outboard engine oil, an extra large screwdriver, a siphon pump with tubing, and some cat litter.  Getting the old oil out was easy; let's just leave it at that....

Experts Agree: Lube your shaft liberally......

There is some work that needs to be done on the mast and the rig.  I wanted to take the mast down off the boat, so I bought a couple of sawhorses at Sears to use as a mast cradle.  This will allow easy access to the mast, shrouds and stays, jib furler, spreader bars, halyards, and internal wiring.

Originally, I designed this elaborate rack based on PVC pipes and joints.

But then I said 'screw it,' and just bought a couple of plastic saw horses

Finally, it was time to build the frame for a winter tarp.  Perhaps one day I will concede defeat and have the boat shrink wrapped.  But for now I try to economize by using plastic tarp as a winter cover.  Last year, the PVC pipe frame that I rigged held together (mostly) throughout the winter, but only just barely.  This time I incorporated parts of a wooden frame donated to me by my neighbor, Captain Kirk, when he cleaned out his basement.

Piao wearing her "hoodie"

Using wood elements for the center beam, I screwed the beam into several supporting wooden pillars.  I added a couple of 2.0-inch PVC pipes as support posts in the cockpit, accessorized with curved joint attachments at the top, and then lashed on some 1.5-inch PVC pipe to create the A-frame.  I used some three-strand line to lash the beam to the stanchion bases for added support.  I hope it will help to keep the frame in place.

To minimize waste, I also reused some of the less robust 1.0-inch PVC pipe from last year's frame.  I set them up as secondary braces, which I tried to reinforce by joining at the foot.  My design plan here anticipates that weight on the tarp cover will push this foot bar against the stanchion base and the toe rail, where it will stop firmly and (somewhat) snugly.  You think?

Only time will tell whether I engineered -- and constructed -- a decent tarp frame.  Piao sits in a more exposed position in this new spot, and will take a Nor'easter broad on the starboard beam.  Let's hope my tarp and frame hold.

Off-Season Projects

There are a number of improvements I would like to make to Piao during this off-season.  I have been very fortunate to connect with Ed, of Buzzards Bay Yacht Services, who has taken an interest in my interest in the boat.  I met Ed through my buddy Ric, the PO, who had highly recommended him as a standup guy and a outstanding rigger.  He is a sailor himself, and a circumnavigator; he moors his boat in Sippican harbor.  Ed had worked Piao when Ric had owned her under a different name, and Ed had done a small job for me in my first season, involving adjustments to the jib furler.  I bumped into him a couple of times at the Fairhaven West Marine in Fairhaven over the last year, and he recognized me.  I always asked if he might be available in the Fall to help me out with a few things, and he graciously affirmed.  Now he has become my unofficial Boatswain.

Ed checking over Piao

Ed came by the house and took a look at the boat, inside and out, while we chatted.  He asked me about the Tibetan prayer flags, hanging on the back porch.  They come from a fifteenth-century Tibetan Buddhist temple above Ringha valley in the northwest highlands of China's Yunnan province.    Turns out Ed is also a climber, rock and ice, and has summited several high peaks, and has plans to climb in the Himalaya.

Banyan Tree Ringha

Where I took the Admiral on our honeymoon

Ruf Notes:

Ringha valley is a rather special place, and still home to several traditional Tibetan farming families.  Legend has it that when a monk, out three years on pilgrimage accompanied by his goat, came through the area, the goat refused to go any further.  The monk recognized a sacred place and built a temple, which became one of the five most important Tibetan Buddhist temples in Yunnan.  It was visited by "Great Fifth" Dalai Lama, the powerful seventeenth-century religious and temporal authority credited with unifying Tibet after centuries of civil strife -- the guy who undertook construction of the Potala Palace in Lhasa.

Ed seems to appreciate what the boat means to me, and asked if I intended to hold on to it for a while.  He made a few suggestions, and we agreed to a work-plan that began with him hauling away my mast back to his workshop.  He checked the CDI jib furler (which proved to be in good condition) and confirmed it was the appropriate rig for this boat.  The mast lights work fine; both steaming and anchor are new LEDs put in by the PO.  The terminal connection, that joins the wiring a base of the mast, has corroded away.

"Oh, so that's why the mast lights don't work."

Ed will install new wiring and run a longer VHF cable through the mast, then fix all that inside with sponge-pads to stop it from clanging on the aluminum mast when the boat rolls.  The new wire and cable will be led through watertight glands bedded in the cabin top and down inside to a new terminal block on the forward side of the port bulkhead, above the portable head.  Ed will also wire up the VHF base station that I mounted in the cabin, and install a small cabin fan that I bought last spring but never mounted.

To be Replaced: mast light wires and VHF antenna cable; this deck fixture will disappear

Ed will replace the boomvang bail that snapped this summer while I was over by Woods Hole, and he is ordering me a pair of additional cleats that will mount on the genoa track -- something a little larger and more robust than the cleats mounted on the cockpit coaming where the jib sheets live.  These will give me somewhere to tie off a preventer line or a spring line.  He will upgrade my old and overloaded four-fuse panel to a new six-fuse panel.  I have been giving some thought to installing a second battery.  At present, there are a number of power-consumption units sharing the one battery: the outboard motor, lights (cabin, running, steaming, anchor), the GPS chart plotter, radio, fan, 12-volt A/C outlet (usually charging phones and other devices), and soon there will be a bilge pump added to this.  Perhaps a second battery might be a good idea; I will consult further with Ed about this.

In the spring, Ed will install a transducer (depth-finder) that is compatible with my Garmin 441s chart plotter.  I asked Ms. Claus for this as a Christmas gift.  "You don't need that!" she scoffed.  "Just assume that outside the harbor the water is deeper!"  Rebuffed, I gave my adult offspring some not-so-subtle hints about what to get Dad for the holidays.  I confess to being a bit apprehensive of any thru-hull device: it makes me nervous to put a hole in the boat.  I know these things are supposed to stay in place, but I also know that sometimes they leak or even fall out.

Airmar P319 Plastic Thru-Hull Transducer
Merry Christmas to me?

On what I hope was an unrelated note, Ed advised me to put in a bilge pump.  Ric had told me the boat "didn't have a bilge," but actually it does.  Well, sort of....  Reviewing the O'Day 23 in an issue of Good Old Boat magazine (Jan/Feb 2004), Gregg Nestor called it "an almost nonexistent bilge," and went on to warn: "any significant amount of water that finds its way below will quickly rise above the cabin sole and slosh about the interior, soaking anything not protected by watertight containers" (p.8).  Taking a quick peek inside the storage compartments recessed in the cabin berths, Ed confirmed each has a tube that drains into the very small bilge beneath the cabin sole.  So far, when occasion warranted, I have emptied this using a hand pump.  But Ed urged me to put in a small electric pump.  "There are lots of reasons why you want to have that."

One bigger concern looming over the horizon is the cracking that spiders across the cabin top, especially around the foot of the mast.  Ed tells me that this is very common on boats of Piao's age, and much to be expected.  Still, I don't find that particularly reassuring.  Water is getting in there, even if only a little.  I noticed that these cracks are the last areas of the deck to dry in the morning's moist air, and I am worried that colder winter temps will freeze that moisture in those cracks and expand them, threatening water damage to the wood core inside the fiberglass.  That would be really bad.  So this is a near-term concern, and will be a necessary repair in the not-too-distant future.  In the spring, Ed will come by with a moisture meter and take some readings to assess the extent of any damage and begin to estimate costs of repair.

Spider cracks around the mast base (and around the stanchions)

Don't Injure Yourself

Meanwhile, I have a few DIY jobs to keep myself busy.  First of all, I have been thinking of adding a tiller extension.  I need to replace the audio device that provided very effective avian deterrent (but lasted only one season).  It was great to go the entire season without a single drop of bird shit on the boat -- such a difference from last year.  Some of my mooring neighbors did not appreciate the high-pitched sound the motion detector emitted, but they don't offer to clean up the fecal droppings the terns, gulls, and cormorants otherwise leave on my boat.  In addition, I want to install hooks in the small wet locker abaft the port settee, as well as in the dry locker on the starboard side between the V-berth and the main cabin.  I need more secure shelving in the cabin (where too much stuff still gets tossed around and ends up on the cabin sole when the boat heels sharply), and a secure stowage space for a second anchor (so IT won't get tossed about in a similar manner, with potentially graver consequences).

I definitely need to fix the half-assed way I (mis)rigged the outhaul on the mainsail.  Fortunately, I found on the Interwebs a diagram from the manufacturer that details the parts needed to rig the outhaul and that illustrates how it should look.

Above: Correct Way to Rig the Outhaul

Below: Greg's Way to Rig the Outhaul

I had rigged the outhaul in this matter to make room for a reefing system.  The outhaul leads from the clew, through the two blocks, and then runs forward to a cleat on boom.  I also need to fix the reefing system that I installed.  It, too, is a little half-assed.  A reefing line (red and white) runs from a dead-eye on the boom, through the reef cringle, back around the block on the boom, and then forward to another cleat on the boom.  Forward, at the mast, a second line leads from a similar dead-eye on the mast, through the reef cringle, down to a block at the base of the mast, then out to the halyard fairlead on the forward starboard cabin top, and back to the clutch at the cockpit.  

New outhaul (red, white, blue) and new reefing line (red & white)

Three problems with this: 1) it still requires me to go forward a bit to reef the mainsail, 2) it does not pull the mainsail down in snug and tight manner, and 3) the forward reefing line is pinched a bit by the handrail as it passes around the fairlead.  This last problem derives from the fact that the reefing line must be 3/8" in order for it to be secured by the clutch, but this diameter is too wide to run smoothly between the outside of the fairlead and the inside of the handrail.  So, my plan is to sand down, ever so carefully, the inside of the handrail just enough to permit the reefing line to run smoothly.  The only alternative I envision is to move and rebed the fairlead, and I don't think I will be doing that anytime soon.  Last spring, I bought a single-line reefing system kit from Barton, but was too lazy to install it properly.  This winter I will try again more earnestly.  It will require drilling some holes in the boom and mast, something I shied away from in the past.

The lifelines also may need replacing: they are as old as the boat, and the plastic covering is cracked and yellowed in many places, showing signs of rust.  But that could get expensive, so first I would like to try to clean them up and refurbish them.  The January 2016 issue of SAIL magazine describes a DIY project to strip away the plastic coating and soak the metal lines coiled in Ospho rust treatment (see Mark & Diana Doyle, "New Life for Old Lifelines: How to take years of wear off your lifelines," Sail, 47[1]: 54).  I will give this a try.

Don't think I should trust my life to these lifelines

I desperately want to get new block for the boomvang.  Ed asked why, so I held up the block to show him.  "Oh," he said.  I do not like jam-stop in the existing one.  It is a real pain-in-the-ass to use.  He agreed.

I do not like this, Sam I Am....

I also want to install a couple of blocks that will allow me to rig a preventer, and run the line back to the cockpit.  I had read that it was unwise to shackle such blocks to the base of the lifeline stanchions, since the load could be heavy enough to rip these right out of the deck.  There are some real horror stories on sailboat website user forums.  But Ed believes that the load on my mainsail is likely to be small enough for the stanchions to hold, provided they were well bedded.  That brings me to the stanchions.  When spring comes, I plan to rebed all four lifeline stanchions and replace the two fixed blocks for the jib sheets, all of which show signs of water penetration.

Bases for stanchions need rebedding....

Fixed blocks for jib sheets need replacing and rebedding

Looking down the road, I have a couple of more ambitious rehab projects that include replacing the plywood hatch covers for the storage bins recessed in the berths, and even replacing the bulkheads -- the port-side in particular is starting to show black discoloration (mold?) from water damage where it meets the cabin sole.  I am also nursing plans, still in their infancy, to redo the galley area.  For now I will be satisfied just to fix manual sink pump and the sink drain, restoring them to working condition. I picked up a used dodger and bimini for $30 at a local church sale last summer, and would like to see if I can get them mounted.  I dream of pimping out Piao into a pocket cruiser with a small but functional galley, head, and berth that could serve as a cramped but comfortable home for a single-handed sailing.  Then I'll head up to Maine one summer, or down the ICW.  I have a standing invitation to fry oysters in Savannah.  The Admiral said she will go anywhere with me, as long as she can meet me there via other modes of transportation.  "Who wants to spend all that time just simply getting to some place?" she asked.  Well, I do......

My newest t-shirt