Plymouth Progress 6 - Solar Panels Installed

Current location: Boat, Plymouth; Us, Stroud

This is getting hard. Every other Sunday we pack up the flat in Ebley, carry everything down two flights of stairs, load it into the car and drive 130 miles. There we unload it into a trolley (sometimes two), transport it to Pontoon A and unpack it all into Mehalah. The following Sunday we reverse the process and take bedding and remaining food back to Ebley.

This week's stuff ready for loading into the car.

The first thing we did last week was to try our Hugh's little shelf behind the cooker. This looks like a simple fabrication. Far from it. It's made from a shelf that used to pull over the old cooker. Consequently it has a stainless steel underside to protect from heat. First problem..cut through it. Second problem...cut it down to size which is not easy as there are no right angles and we want to re-use the smart wooden lip. Hugh asked for advice from his neighbour, an expert woodworker. "Can't be done" he said. Undaunted Hugh spent 8 hours and 17 different tools to accomplish this impossible task. It fits. It's smart. Great work Hugh. We'll see you and Linda next week for another set of jobs!

That's it at the back with the speaker on it. And the oven still gimbals just in front fo it.

Next up. Replace four old over bed non LED lights with four smart new ones with LED bulbs. These are really caravan lights but as caravan equipment is generally half the price of boat equipment Gilly got a really good deal on these. Staining and varnishing them next week will be one of your jobs Linda.

During the previous week I ordered all the new solar equipment and they were waiting for us in Plymouth when we arrived. But I couldn't install the panels on the guard rails until the guardrails had been replaced with solid stainless 1" tubes. By a fantastic feat of planning Paul the stainless man arrived with the new rails on Monday. Another great piece of work. We took out the old wire and he bolted and tapped the new rails in place. Jobs a good 'un.

Guard Rails.

Stainless tubing ready for solar panels.

Whilst he was with us we gave Paul the sorry looking jib sheet return blocks. They need new intermediate plates and a general refurbishment. Not cheap but a lot less expensive than some new solution. And anyway this is what a Stevens 47 is supposed to have. They should be ready in a couple of weeks. Paul will do the stainless work and a retired friend of his will turn the new bearings. It really is amazing how little routine maintenance had been carried out by the previous owner even though Mehalah was used as a training boat. New engine, generator, sails, standing rigging, water tanks(!!!) and toilets but considerable neglect of the smaller things. Still, these are all things we need to check before we set off so it's just a bit more work than we expected.

Bits of a jib sheet return block.

Stuff is happening fast and furious now so we've resurrected the old white board we found under our bed. I guess this was used in the evening for theory training. However it has now become our 'must do' board. It sits there in the saloon taunting us every time we sit down for a rest.

Now, what's next?

Most of the work identified prviously by Allspare the riggers we have done ourselves but a few things we asked them to come back and do. We were slightly concerned when Sam seemed to have lost the boom but luckily he found it a couple of minutes later and added the requisite shims to stop it falling off one day. Another job we could have done if we had realised what had to be done.

What? No boom?

His main job though was to install a pair of steps high up on the mast so that if (when) I need to work up there I won't be dangling for hours cutting off my circulation so that my legs fall off. Natty little goodies they fold up and are rattle free when not in use.

The steps.

Up we go.

Easy peasy.

We squeezed in another job now that Mike our engineer had returned the now reinforced gear change bracket.

The new reinforced gear change bracket (unpainted).

The new reinforced gear change bracket (painted red). Well actually not painted red as I forgot to take the picture!

By now Chris and Audrey had arrived from Cumbria. That's a 6.5 hour drive or in this case a 10.5 hour drive as a pedestrian had been hit by a lorry on the motorway causing havoc. Still they seemed quite phlegmatic about it all so we gave them their jobs for the week. Chris' main reason for coming down was to measure up the shaft brake template before making the final disk but I wanted him to help with the solar panels too. He loved it! Thanks Chris. [I should add here that Chris, a former submariner, was the guy who first showed me that you can make do and mend when needs must. For long time readers of this blog you might remember that early in the days of Petronella he helped us limp back to port and then fix things when the bolts on the prop shaft universal joint flew off! He is still known as "Petronella's Chief Engineer"]. Audrey was to help Gill with replacing the seals (oink) on two of the larger hatches, scrub the canvas work to remove the Plymouth winter green mould and, as befits a Senior Open University Lecturer, compile a list of all the first aid and medical items aboard. Still leaving time to add a few geocaches to The Brown Teddies impressive list of more than 6,000!

Beware. Scrubber at work.

Meanwhile back at the solar panels. I had already drilled and fitted the Swedish supports for the panels. Now it was time to fit them onto the guard rails. We used this technique for Petronella and it seemed to work well. But P was steel and M is not and P had relatively small panels and M has 160  watt panels. I hoped everything would be strong enough to take their weight.

With the panels installed and the deck glands completed we were well on our way. The first panel took the better part of a day. So skilled were we by then that the second was a snip at just a few hours. And so to the internal wiring. Anyone who has ever done this type of thing will tell you that running cables inside a boat is always testing. This was no exception. For more than a day Chris and I twisted, squirmed, cursed and swore as we pushed and pulled cables where they did not want to go. Remove wardrobe headlining and sidelining. Push cable through, get it stuck. Repeat. Wonder if I bought enough cable. Get it into the middle of the boat. And then repeat on the other side. Then install the monitor, the controller and the junction box. Finally use endoscope, twine, 2mm rope and more cursing to pull the wires through to the aft heads. So now we have the cables run and all that is left is to join up the wires (once the extra 6mm cable arrives next week).

So it's now our last day. Gill has left to spend her Christmas present from me with Emma and Chris is concerned we're never going to get his shaft brake template tried out. Never fear. Back on our heads and we're upside down in the engine compartment. Yippee! It fits. And we think we can see where the calipers will go too.

And so it's back to Ebley again for a week of work on the canal restoration and to help brother Philip and his wife Jane move house.

Late news. The first water tank has been made and should be in Plymouth when we get back again on Sunday. Looks like a job for you Hugh!

Plymouth Progress 5 - A Great Week

Current Location: Boat, Plymouth. Us, Stroud

So, where do I start. A great week. Rain, a bit of snow, gorgeous blue skies, crisp icy pontoons and great friends.

It was blowing a gale as we arrived at Plymouth. The usual carting of stuff from the car to the boat and opening Mehalah up for business is getting more and more slick. The heating works (mostly) and we were soon toasty warm. The forecast though was not good. More wind and cold.

Before turning in I decided to attack the recalcitrant winch from below. Down with the ceiling only to be met by a mess of wires. Most led to old lights that did not work so I started sorting it all out with decent connectors and capping off the redundant wires. But best of all I removed the winch for work the next day.

The wiring mess and the base of the obstinate mainsheet winch

Contrary to the forecast we woke next day to a beautiful winter's day. Blue sky and not a breath of wind. Quick. Get those sails down. And down they came. The yankee (front sail) and staysail (next sail back) succombed quickly but then it was the main. There's a tricky gate at the bottom of the mast where the sail slides up. It stops the sail sliding back out again. It's plastic, costs £80 and is easily snapped. I was careful. I couldn't get it out despite the manual saying only 'remove the entire gate'. So we rang the sail makers and asked them to come and collect the sails. And while you are about it can you take the gate out too. They arrived just as we had removed battens and were starting on the reefing lines. They were odd too so they helped us with them as well. Next time we can do it. Here she is, naked...

Look. No sails on a gloomy midday in February.

By lunch time our great friends Hugh and Linda had arrived from  Reading. We gave then their jobs for the week. Hugh mostly woodworking tasks - freeing doors, completing the last bits on the cooker, replacing bits removed from when the riggers were with us and other sundry items. Linda was stainless cleaner and issue spotter, chain painter and storage advisor. Before she arrived we spent as much time hunting for stuff as we did working on things. Now it's all neatly arranged and labelled. Except for the things we can't find that is.

My job was to remove the first leaking tank.

The first leaking tank to be exposed....

....and the hole if left.

By now Hugh had set up an entire carpenter's shop on the pontoon and was cracking through the broken hinges, sticky doors and collapsed floors. Wherever we go now we say 'This is great, thank you Hugh'.

Hugh at work on one of many woodworking projects

A door that closes and a bilge opening that is well supported.

He was so pleased with himself by the time lunchtime arrived he took his trousers off!

The Down Side - Hugh recovering in his fetching Long Johns!

And so to work on the winch.

Winch servicing.

The pin in the middle of the next photo is the one Jenny and I could not pull out from the top. Once removed it only took a few gentle taps with a metal spike and out it came.

The base of the winch showing the recalcitrant pin starting to be pushed out.

Once the pin was out the often sticky clickers could be removed, cleaned, oiled and replaced.

The little clickers. They were, of course, perfectly fine but it's good to know.

And here it is. All dismantled, refurbished and ready to go back together again. Hopefully this important winch will serve us well now for several thousand miles.

The anatomy of a winch.

With three people working on jobs Gilly became everyone's goffer. She got to know the manager of Nuts and Bolts, Screwfix, Force 4. She provided sustenance to all and still managed to polish more stainless steel.

Meanwhile Linda was busy performing a winch-ectomy on the chain. Gilly had already painted marks on the chain every 10 metres so we will know how much chain we have out but we wanted to add a big red section at the end of the chain where it joins 24m of further rope. If you look carefully you can see my lovely rope to chain splice [I love splicing] as well as Linda's metre of entrails.

Linda with a tasty metre of anchor chain entrails!

The final job before Hugh and Linda took their leave of us was to try and free the leg of the Aries wind steering mechanism. You may remember I bought this on Preloved (similar to eBay). I managed to get £200 off because the leg was stuck. All efforts had so far failed to free it but I had watched a video by the manufacturer of these amazing bits of kit where he said. "Heat it up with a blow torch, tap the bit that's stuck with a hammer, heat it up with a blow torch, tap the bit that's stuck with a hammer, heat it up with a blow torch, tap the bit that's stuck with a hammer, and eventually it will unstick. And it did. Amazing!!

Working to free the self steering gear. Voted the most useful thing on the boat on our Atlantic crossing.

We slowed down a bit for the last few days but I managed to install a nice surround to Harry's aunt's microwave which hid the unsightly roughly cut hole.

The microwave. Finally complete with a nice white surround.

Next up, the brand new generator which was still seeping diesel around the injector. Mike Stone, our resident marine consultant helped me get it out and off it went to the injector tester for review. A few hours later he rang to say there was nothing wrong with it. Gill went to collect. She was amused to find herself in the middle of a very male oriented discussion about top caps, central disks and annealed copper washers. Safe to say, she held her own in the discussions.

Scary. My first attempt at removing a diesel injector.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of Mehalah has been the wetness in the boat. It's hard to say how much of this is due to condensation from all our breath and how much is actually 'leaky boat'. Gill spent a lot of time exposing bits of wall and ceiling and fitting some super Screwfix aluminium insulation wherever she could, particularly in the forward cabin and anchor locker. And what a difference it makes. We think we will continue this exercise  throughout the boat at least in the easily accessible parts. Then, once we set off we can see whether there are also leaks that need to be addressed. But most of those can wait.

Insulation from Screwfix. One thin layer = 25mm of polystyrene. No more damp beds.

We also started to chase the spaghetti of hoses. Gilly spent most of the last day working out which toilet was fed by which hose and what we might need to change to make them sea water fed rather than fresh water fed. This will help save our valuable fresh water when it is hard to come by.

The final job was to take a look at the the windlass that winds the anchor chain up. Not good. Whilst the above deck mechanism looks OK, the motor I fear may be knackered beyond repair. It works fine but it is VERY rusty. A spare is probably required which we can install if and when the current one finally rusts through. Meanwhile the boatie forums suggest protecting it with an upturned flowerpot!!

Windlass motor disconnected. Another nasty mess I fear.

And finally, finally Mike Stone popped round and we designed the structure to support the wind steering. That is being made.


Back in Stroud, we've taken the leaking tank to Tek Tanks - the best marine tank makers in our opinion. We need a new one, it's too poorly to repair. Ouch!

And I've specced up a design for the solar charging system. So that'll get ordered in the next few days. Hopefully I can start installation of that next time we are down.

Chris is up in Cumbria working on the Arduino driven shaft brake and Hugh has done a lovely job on a tricky shelf behind the cooker. And I, of course, have replaced the little leg from Hugh's Black and Decker Workmate that fell into the water. What a team!

It felt like a great leap forward last week. Many jobs were completed, many started and very, very few went backwards A rare week indeed! And she is starting to feel like our boat now that we understand how the majority of things work.

Next week Chris and Audrey will be our willing volunteers. Don't worry we'll find find some cracking jobs for you both!