done.......almost

[Alden68]

Well, after many weekends of work and significant knuckle damage my re-wiring project is complete! The old tub now has 315 amp hours in the house bank with a dedicated staring battery connected by an ACR. I redid almost everything from the cabling to the swithches and solenoids, the DC panel and even the wiring on the windlass. When I light it all off everything worked except one small problem. With the battery switch off the radio worked instead of the bilge pump. Oh well......an easy fix for tomorow!

I wanted to thank everyone for their advice and for all of the knowledge that I gleaned from the many threads on this site.

My hat is off to some really intelligent people out there!

Next month is portholes and fiberglass repair. Break out another thousand!!!!

[sailingdog]

Alden-

Glad to hear it went so well... Murphy's just setting you up and making you feel confident, but you knew that, right???

What kind of projects for the portholes and fiberglass do you have planned??

[Alden68]

You might remember the Nor'Easter we had around here early last June. Well my boat was tied to a dock in Oak Bluffs harbor and it took a beating. The harbormaster tried to haul her off the dock and onto a storm mooring but with wind speeds being recorded in the low 70's she didn't budge......just beat herself and a piling real bad. A porthole was stove in, a section of the teak rub rail was detroyed as well as the teak caprail and the fiberglass inbetween looks like a dog chewed on it (about a 2x2 area). So I jury rigged the porthole telling myself that I would fix it all in the off season...and here it is.

I was contemplating Marine-Tex for the glass work and I have no idea what to do with the teak short of cutting out the offending sections, building new and replacing which will be a much more involved project than it seems. I'd rather fix with some type of wood putty that is shapeable yet extremely rugged. Any thoughts?

[sailingdog]

Don't use Marine-Tex for the glass work. You really need to re-do the glass and add several layers of fiberglass to restore the strength of the damaged area. Use West, System Three, MAS or one of the other major epoxy brands, not MarineTex.

As for the wood... you can probably cut out the damaged sections and scarf in a replacement section. Takes a bit of woodworking skill, and access to a fairly well equipped wood working shop, but totally doable.

[Alden68]

....I'm going to run out of weekends....that fiberglass repair sounds much more involved than I was hoping for. Assuming that once the glass is in and faired I will have to gelcoat.

So I removed the offending porthole today and Murphy came knocking. The ports are screwed into the fiberglass hull from the inside through a teak trim piece which was covered by alot of paint. When the port was removed I found that the teak was completely rotten and the bolts were so corroded some were the size of #2 pencil lead! So I pulled the remaining ports and same thing......spongy, stringy teak and corroded bolts.

Quick questions: The portholes and bolts are chromed bronze. What is the best metal to use for the new bolts?

[sailingdog]

Silicon bronze is probably the best material for the bolts, since it will be fairly close to the bronze of the ports galvanically speaking.

Ouch.... you got some work ahead of you.

[Alden68]

How about the best metal for the new aluminum deck step? The old step was stainless with chromed bronze bolts.

[sailingdog]

Use stainless steel screws but coat them with TefGel or Lanocote as a galvanic isolation coating... helps prevent the two metals from reacting to each other. Also, a plastic washer, between the stainless screwheads and the aluminum isn't a bad idea. The plastic from plastic milk bottles, which is LDPE, works pretty well.

[Alden68]

Thanks.....great info!

[sailingdog]

Glad to help.