Plymouth Progress 9 - Treat 'em mean and keep 'em keen!

Current Location: Us, Stroud. Mehalah Queen Anne's Battery Marina, on the hard.

PSA April 2019: <0.1 or undetectable, yippee!

It's a joint blog this time. Gilly started it, I finished it.

Firstly, thanks to all our helpers. We tried to choose jobs that would be satisfying for everyone who made the trip down to Plymouth. And what a difference you've made. Thank you. Thank you. The yard workers are amazed that when one pair leaves another arrives. How many friends have you got?

Anyway having got the coppercoat on the outside of the hull we next needed to make sure that the fittings (seacocks) that allow water in or out of the boat through the hull were working correctly. They all looked pretty manky so John and our wonderful marine engineer, Mike, set to to take them all to pieces and grease and put them back together again. Here is a photo of one of the refurbished ones. They are made by Groco and turned out to be extremely well put together. We had feared that they and their through hulls would need replacing but they came apart relatively easily and after cleaning and greasing they are good for another 30 years. [Technical interlude...the seacocks are unusual comprising a hard rubber cylinder with a hole through them that can be rotated so that the incoming water can pass through it. Once rotated the 'tap' at the end is retightened, the rubber cylinder expands and the unit is sealed. Very neat and fully functioning after 35 years].

Refurbished bronze seacock showing the small compression tap on the left.

After four days of sanding and scrubbing by me and Harry Canal, and not a little cursing, they were all back together and looking great.  Peace of mind value considerably increased. You do NOT want these chaps failing in the middle of nowhere.

Meanwhile there were a few small repairs to be made to the rudder. Mike our trusty marine engineer taught John how to mend plastic boats involving strips of fibreglass matt and bulking balls.  This was a pretty advanced lesson for a beginner. Mike says John learns quickly!

Ensuring the fibreglass strips have no air trapped before application.

Patching the rudder where someone had previously grounded.

Now back to the coppercoat. You might have thought it was over....not a chance. We needed to sand the whole lot down to expose the grains of copper so that the barnacles, seaweed etc would take one look at the hull and decide to go elsewhere. Another long and hard job, but helped greatly by our canal friend Harry. He and I spent a whole day rubbing the hull to make it sparkle with copper, and we both crawled home afterwards! One side completed.

Harry burnishing the hull to expose the copper hidden within the epoxy.

Another hard job well done.

Meanwhile John is chasing a pipe from one of the pumps, checking connections as he goes. He finds an old hosepipe connector holding the last two bits of pipe together. This needs to come out and be replaced. How to get to the joint? Get into the man sized locker and work from there! Good job he isn't much bigger. It's a tight fit and there is always the possibility that he might just get stuck! Later Mike our marine engineer suggested he could live in there when we cross the Atlantic and just pop out to sort any problems.

Another day, another half of the boat to sand, but this time I'm on my own as our lifeboat chum that had offered to help has child minding duties. Grrr!

Suitably burnished. Just a few bits remaining.

Back at base. View over the Tamar. Thanks Dick and Mary.

Time to call in re-enforcements to complete the last of the burnishing. Ali and Mike offer to help us for a couple of hours so Ali is put to sanding.....

Ali at work on the last bit before the props are moved.

...whilst Mike spends the afternoon pushing and pulling new waterpipes through impossibly small spaces, John is at the other end also pulling and pushing. Hot unpleasant work. Lots of curses coming out of the hatch!

On your 'ed John.

But they succeed in the end!

'n' hours later!

With the seacocks sorted we moved on to the hoses. Nightmare. How we hadn't sunk I'll never know. Pipes that snapped, clips that were corroded, odd sized hoses clamped together. Horrendous. John decided to replace it all.

Very dodgy seawater manifold.

Back working under the boat I swap tales of boat yards we have known with Welsh Ewan from Newport, who works in the yard as a boat mover. I was so tired the night before that he brought me some biscuits to keep me going. What a nice man!

Back to work there Gilly. No time for fun.

It was about this time that engineer Mike spent a morning grovelling in the anchor locker wiring in the new windlass.

Another awkward job.

Horrible high amperage cable to the windlass. Yet another job fixed.

You'll have seen there is just a bit more to do than we had expected to get Mehalahh ready for her adventures. Mostly we've sorted out all the problems as they arose. However the condensation of the winter and we suspect some hidden leaking deck fittings have left her wet and stained in one or two places. This is a great shame as without much expense there's little we can do. Here's a bad example.

Long term damp above the cooker. That's a shame.

And then it's Easter with friends Mary and Ernie, who we were at Uni with some 45 years ago! They travelled down from Manchester specially to help. First the new windvane paddles were spray painted.

A bit windy. The paddles are yellow, and so is the ground.

The boat yard gave everyone working on their boats an Easter egg on Easter Sunday. Mary decided she looked like a penguin in one of our over large boiler suits! The 'egg between the feet' completed the impression.

Meanwhile Ernie, an electronics genius, and 3D printer builder(!) made a dead light work after taking half the boat to pieces in the process. As usual this job launched another, and another. Soon the deck was caulked where the liferaft cradle lived and the light was fixed. Just a shame the light itself is so shit! We'll replace with an LED one later but at least we have good wires and connections to the location now.

After years of graphene development work at Manchester University Ernie finally finds his niche.

It wasn't all work though. We all went for an Easter Sunday walk to Jennycliff, overlooking the sound at Plymouth. All the bluebells were out and the views were just stupendous.

John at ease in the bluebells.

Plymouth Sound. Let's get sailing.

The end of a great day with wonderful friends. We must see each other again before another twenty years go by.

Goodbye Mary and Ernie. Hello Dave and Vera.

By now all the seawater hoses have been replaced and the heads (toilets) converted from fresh water (what a waste) to sea water. Time to move onto the bilges and their pumps. These pumps are what pumps out any water that gets into the boat wot shouldn't. Basically they stop us sinking.

So whilst Vera made labels for the new spaghetti of hoses completed.....

Vera making labels. Different colours for different water types.

...Dave started work identifying and fixing the bilge pumps and their own set of hoses. One day working out what went where and one day fixing those that did not work (most of them). This means a LOT of time with head in blige. Not fun, but not a word of complaint. In fact as with all our helpers he wouldn't leave until the job was done.

Where does this one go?

Ah yes, it's that white one but where's the other end? Probably green by then I expect.

Fixing a pump as it gets dark outside.

With four of us working we had time for a tour of Dave's old haunts. He lived just across the Tamar in Cornwall until he was thirteen before moving to Singapore. His life was one of freedom. This is the now upgraded hut that his dad built right on the beach and where he spent his holidays fishing, exploring and swimming. The picture is actually taken whilst standing on the beach at Whitsands Bay.

Dave's hut.

On Dave's beach.

Just before they left we sorted out the problem with bilge pump number three - a stuck valve in the anti-siphon loop. They work great now.

Offending original bronze anti-siphon device. Let's free that valve.

At the same time Vera and I were fighting with the saloon cushion covers. [You know we are getting to the end of the jobs when I move on to soft furnishings!].

And there it is. Back to the boat again from Ebley this afternoon for launch next Tuesday. Will those seacocks be up to the job?

Soon we hope to be reporting on sailing rather than technical matters. Many of you are sailors but many are not so apologies for all the technical stuff over the past few months. You do tell us though that you enjoy the pictures so plenty of them this time.

To read previous posts see www.yachtmehalah.blogspot.com