Since You Have Hauled it Out, You Might As Well ...........

[LittleWingCA]

This first haul out has been a very good learning experience. The reason for the haul out was a very bad looking raw water thru hull and ball valve that obviously needed to go. So out of the water came LittleWing, and she has been on the Hard for almost 1.5 weeks now. After further inspection, 2 other thru hulls and seacocks needed to be replaced as well, with the remaining just needing lubrication and a little maintenance. Since the boat is 28 years old, and the thru hulls and seacocks original, the replacement parts don't match the same bolt hole pattern, so some fiberglass fill work is needed to do the job right.

Since she is out of the water, might as well replace the non functioning depth transducer and knot meter. Of course the new transducers are not the same size as the originals, but luckily, this just means slightly larger holes.

Might as well inspect the cutlass bearing, prop, shaft, and rudder also. Waiting word on their health status. They looked pretty good.

Since it has been 6 years since the last bottom paint job, might as well do that also. The Boartyard Project Manager was surprised how clean her bottom was when hauled, and how well the paint held up. I guess having a diver come by every month to wipe her down below the water line is well worth the cost.

If you are going to do the bottom paint, might as well compound, wax and buff the rest of the hull to make it look nice.

So I guess we will stop at that for now. Hopefully we will get back in the water for under $7,000 for parts, labor, haul out fee, tax, environmental impact fee, etc.

Anyone else with similar stories of when to say "Enough"?

[JohnRPollard]

Little Wing,

Welcome to boat ownership! Good thing you didn't go ahead with that teak quote, eh?

Say, I'd be interested to hear other opinions on those thru-hulls. To my eye, there is something going on there other than merely age. Did your yard guy express any surprise at their appearance?

[LittleWingCA]

He didn't say anything about the appearance, but when the seacocks were removed for inspection and disassembled for cleaning (most were frozen open or closed), he mentioned that the gasket / o-rings in 2 of them were shot and replacement parts were no longer available for them. He said that since they were replacing the seacocks anyway, the boatyard recommended replacing the thru hull also to make the whole installation better / higher quality, more reliable job. The 2 being replaced were no where near as bad as the raw water valve, just frozen from lack of cycling.

[jbondy]

Might the ball valve in question have been of non-marine grade? The one in the pic looks like just a ball valve screwed onto a thruhull, not a proper seacock.

[LittleWingCA]

The picture is of a ball valve on a thru hull. Not sure if it is Marine Grade or not. This was the reason for the haul out initially. The other 2 that are being replaced were proper seacocks, but I don't have pictures to post of them.

[jjablonowski]

Did your litany include looking at the stuffing box around the prop shaft?

[LittleWingCA]

The inspection of the prop, shaft, cutlass bearing and rudder, rudder post, and base plate did not clearly call out the stuffing box. Is that normally part of the cutlass bearing inspection? Maybe my nomenclature is off. They are inspecting the bearing and hull penetration of the prop shaft for wear / play. Should I have them look at the Stuffing box as well if it is not part of the normal shaft inspection? I imagine if the cutlass bearing is found to be in need of replacement, the stuffing box would have to be opened up / redone as well when the bearing is replaced? Maybe these are independant?

[KeelHaulin]

You might want to take your prop in to have the pitch checked. What type of seacocks are they? I would be surprised if there is not a way to service them; but maybe I am wrong. Halekai might know; you could send him a PM asking about it.

What is an EI fee for? Sanding the hull? Have not heard of that type of fee for boat haulout; maybe it's not here in Nor-Cal (yet). 7k for that work is a lot; but that's a BOAT for ya. I'd suggest using Poli-Glow instead of waxing; might be more cost effective in the long run (on 28 YO gelcoat). I'm switching to it after doing a dockside polish/wax; that was 4 days of work I don't want to repeat every year.

Stuffing box R/R is not included in inspection of the cutless bearing. If they pull the shaft it would be a good idea to re-pack with Teflon packing (semi-dripless) or put a PYI dripless shaft seal in.

[Sapperwhite]

replace the stuffing "just because". it's cheap and easy to do out of water. that goes for the stuffing in the prop stuffing box, and the stuffing for the rudder tube. easy on land, just wait to splash before tightening. there are a few good threads on that if you've never done it.

If you've seen my yahoo album, you'd have seen a few pics of my rudder delam repair. I'll dig them up and post them here later tonight.

[LittleWingCA]

Sapperwhite:

I saw your yahoo album on the rudder delam repair, which prompted me to add that to the inspection list just in case. Would hate to have mine come apart while sailing. The recent hydraulic ram failure was unnerving enough.

I would like to know where you got the bowsprit blank for your bowsprit replacement. Mine has similiar linear cracks in the paint, which could be due to flex, or delamination starting. The Boatyard wanted too much to do the teardown / repaint so I might do that myself in the slip. If when I get it torndown, I need to replace it, I would like an idea of where to get a blank or one turned.

KeelHaulin:

The Prop pitch was tuned two owners ago to match the Yanmar 2QM15 engine. It looked very clean with no dings when the boat came out. Is that something that needs to be checked and adjusted over time?

The Environmental Impact fee is a San Diego Bay thing when sanding down painted hulls. The Navy in town has to encapsulate the ships in a white tyvac type material when they strip and paint their hulls to capture all the dust.