20220602 Port side of boat
A few days later finds the boat mostly bottom painted. The keel remains unpainted because additional work is going to be required to remove the old, uncured filler a previous boatyard used to repair prior damage. The stuff is elastic so it can’t be ground out. We’ll see what the vendor does this coming week.
The cockpit and scupper drain hoses are replaced. I thought this was very important to get done because the hoses were original from the boat’s manufacture 40 years ago and they were deteriorating. When it rains, the water runs off the surface to a low point where it enters a drain and is piped through a flexible hose to an outlet near the water line. However, if the hose breaks, some or all of that water will be discharged inside the boat. That would be bad.
Supply chain issues are affecting the work. The vendor wasn’t sure if they could get the drain hoses in time for this project but did find a large roll of the stuff. At least one of the scupper drain fittings is cracked and if we can’t find a new replacement, we may have to resort to squishing some epoxy into it as a make-do temporary fix.
The fuel line from the deck fitting to the tank appears to be original to the boat. This hose is stiff, brittle, and cracking. To avoid getting diesel into the interior of the boat — and then possibly being pumped overboard through the bilge pump and hose — we are having this hose replaced.
The fuel level gauge on the control panel also doesn’t work. I think it is probably a faulty sending unit (float valve inside the tank) so I’ve ordered a new one. I can make this repair when the part arrives. It is taking quite a while to get here!
Work has started on removing the waste system Y-valve, macerator, and hose. The Y-valve is from a different era when boaters were allowed to discharge waste overboard. It lets you select whether to discharge overboard or to the pump-out fitting on the deck. While there are still places in Canada you can discharge to the sea, we aren’t going to be spending very much time there. It’s illegal to discharge the contents of your holding tank into Puget Sound.
The Y-valve is an old design that is no longer available. To replace it with a new valve would require some modifications to make it fit and function properly.
The hoses are — like the scupper hoses — 40 years old and deteriorating. The macerator (a device that chews the waste from the holding tank into little pieces) doesn’t work.
Based on these factors, I chose to have the Y-valve and macerator removed and the waste hoses replaced. To accomplish these things, we pumped out the holding tank before the boat was hauled out.
When the vendor inspected the system, he found that the existing fittings on the plastic holding tank are failing. He said:
This bottom fitting on your holding tank is moving. I’m sure it will leak or has been leaking. You can tell these fittings have been messed with because someone smeared a bunch of sauce around all the fittings. We need to pull the tank and install a new fitting.
So the waste system is proving to be a bit of a larger job than we anticipated. The strange paint bubbling on the keel was surprise #1. The uncured stuff in the keel was surprise #2 and the failing fittings on the holding tank are surprise #3. Hopefully, the old saw that bad things come in threes holds true!
If the entire tank is pulled it will give us a chance to make sure there are no other issues like cracking. We could replace the tank, if necessary, with a new one available through the International Nonsuch Association. By the time we purchased it, had it shipped, and installed it, we’d be looking at nearly the price of a new composting toilet.
We’ve talked many times about a composting toilet. I mentioned that at the end of this post: https://svnarwhal.us/2022/and-a-new-toilet-is-installed/. If we find out the tank has to be replaced, I am leaning toward taking the plunge into the world of composting marine heads!
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I picked up some Z Cleaner and magic erasers from West Marine today to get some of the old dock and fender marks off the white part of the hull. Got the port side cleaned up before it started to rain more heavily so the starboard side will have to wait.
I also picked up a couple of Harken-brand blocks for the topping lift assembly. The blocks I really want are on order from Garhauer but they are delayed. I can always use high-quality spare blocks so using the Harken blocks, for now, is not a waste.