The Little Things

They say that a boat is a "hole in the water in which you pour money."

I knew this old adage probably had a lot of truth to it when I bought my boat. As someone that has a genuine fear of spending money, it's taken some effort to come to terms with how true that saying can be. 

Kinda true... but worth it!

Since I bought my boat 4 months ago, I've been on a mission to fix it up to "my standards." However, the tricky part has been that "my standards" keep changing! I've found myself wanting to change things I originally found no issue with, and vise versa. And unfortunately, just about all of these "fixes" inevitably cost money. 

As some fixes have proven to be rather costly (like a new genoa!), I've found it particularly satisfying to be able to solve problem for little to no money.

Example: my dock lines.

The lines that came with the boat were pretty worn out, so I knew I wanted to replace them right away. The first "fix" was to use some of the old line I had replaced in my running rigging (i.e. old sheets and halyards). However, after chatting with some people, I realised that the rope used for running rigging doesn't stretch well, and therefore isn't great for dock lines.

So, a month after cutting "new" lines, I went out and bought some brand new (and blue!) ones. Not a huge purchase, but some $$$ none the less. Problem "fixed"... for a 2nd time.

Blue dock lines!

However, after only a few weeks, I noticed that some of my new lines were already showing some wear at spots where they were chafing against the boat. One of them actually wore down so much that you could see the core of the line... in only a few weeks. Not good.

The result of chafing

So, "fix" number three came in the form of chafe guards made out of plastic hose... purchased at Rona for $0.67 a foot. 

The guards protect the lines where they rub on the rail of the boat. They're a pretty tight fit around the line, so they should stay in place. And being clear plastic, they aren't too bad on the eyes either.

So for about $3.60, I've significantly extended the life of my dock lines. Not bad. If only I can find a few more cheap fixes like that!

The learning continues...

Drilling holes in my boat!

I'm what you could call a classic "over-thinker". For just about my entire life, I've pretty much always been one to spend a good while pondering over the possible outcomes of an action (often to excruciating lengths) rather than just diving in. Financial purchases are a big one (i.e. taking 5 years to talk myself into buying this boat!), and sometimes unfamiliar projects can be as well.

Not to say that this is necessarily a bad thing. I'd like to believe that my "over-thinking" translates into "over-preparedness" in the end! However, most of the time when I finally just jump into whatever I've been stressing over, it's not nearly as bad as my mind made it out to be.

Yesterday's project was a perfect example. 

When I bought my boat, a number of the blocks were looking a little old. A number of them were showing signs of wearing out, and I wasn't too sure how long they would last before they'd have to be replaced. Here's an example of what I mean.

A "tired" turning block

This is a turning block for one of my genoa sheets. Essentially the sheet (or rope you use to control the sail) comes back from the sail at the front of the boat and "turns" 180 degress through this block to go to the winch. It helps to give your mechanical advantage when your pulling in the sheet, or powering up the sail.

As you can see in the picture, this block has seen many a long day. The pulley wheel was worn to bits and the wooden spacer that lifts the block off the deck was all but decomposed. Not ideal. 

In fact, after a solid day of sailing in 18 knot winds a few weeks back, the pulley wheel was actually even more shredded than it is in that picture. Long story short, it needed to be replaced.

So how do you replace a turning block? Well, it's 3 "easy" steps. 

Step #1 - Find a Replacement

Seems simple enough, right? Well not entirely. 

My first challenge was to figure out what you even call the type of block I was looking for! As this blog has already demonstrated, there are approximately 1,295,385 different technical terms related to sailboats, so it took a bit of creative Googling to find what I was looking for. 

Turns out, it's called a "cheek block". The more you know!

Googling also told me that Merriman Brothers, the est. 1898, Boston-based marine hardware company that made my old block, had closed its factory in 1995. So a direct replacement wasn't going to happen. Closest thing I could find was this Barton block. 

The replacement

Step #2 - Make a new wooden spacer

I live in an apartment in Vancouver, so needless to say, I don't have a wood shop. Thankfully though, my friend Rhys does. Last week he was kind enough to cut me some pieces of wood he had lying around. Bit of measuring and drill work on Saturday morning and I had the makings of some deck spacers (and thankfully no holes in my galley table!)

From there, I went at them with sandpaper. I'd forgotten how satisfying it is to work with wood. When I started, the spacers just looked like two pieces of scrap wood (exactly what they were). But after 25 minutes of sanding, they were starting to show some promise.

Four or five coats of varnish later and they actually looked pretty awesome!

Step #3 - Bolt the block onto the boat

Well, once again, not quite as easy as it sounds. As it turns out, Barton decided to alter the bolt pattern of their block ever so slightly from what Merriman had gone with. Two out of four holes matched up fine, but not the others. So this meant I had to fill the old holes with epoxy and then drill new holes. 

Terrifying...

Filling the holes was pretty straight forward. Take some duct tape, add lots of marine epoxy and I'd made a proper mess, but filled the holes as well. 

Filling the old holes with epoxy

All weekend I stressed about drilling the new holes. I researched drill techniques, drill bits, etc. for most of the evening on Sunday. The idea of putting holes in my boat, regardless of how tiny they were, had me worried. 

Monday night, the epoxy was dry and it was time to do it. I was nervous... My buddy Nish came by to help. He also brought beer, which helped with the nerves. After sanding the excess epoxy smooth and consuming a few of the beers, I kicked my over-thinking to curb and drilled out the four holes without issue. Classic over-thinking...

Nish with some contortionist moves to bolt the new blocks into place

I added some butyl tape to the bolts before putting the blocks on and countersunk the bolt holes a bit. This helps to water-seal the holes. All the bolts actually lined up and the blocks plopped into place perfectly, much to my surprise!

Pretty varnish and some butyl tape

The finished product look pretty damn slick if you ask me! Nish and I enjoyed a success beer, and I couldn't stop admiring our work!

All done!

So it turns out drilling holes in your boat and mounting new deck hardware is actually pretty straight forward!

Take that brain.  

The learning continues...

More improvements and fixes

Since buying The Ripple in March, my list of "Boat Jobs" has been steadily growing, despite my best efforts complete some as I find new things (and yes, for those wondering, I DO have an elaborate Excel sheet keeping track of them all... This is me after all!)

So after finding myself in Vancouver over a long weekend (a somewhat rare occurrence for me), I decided to take advantage of the sunny weather on Sunday and tick a few key jobs off the list.

Awhile back, I bought myself 600 feet of 3/8th inch line and went about replacing just about all of the running rigging on board. One of the lines that I didn't replace though was the genoa furling brake line, which apparently has to be a 7/16th inch rope, according to the specs of my furler... 7/16th, aka 1/16th of inch larger than the my spool of brand new yacht braid. I emailed the company to see see if that 1/16th inch was all that important, and was told it was. Lovely.

My ratty old genoa line

Not replacing that exact line was particularly painful for me to deal with because it was pretty much in the worst shape of any of the old lines. Every time I'd go to my boat, it would stick out like a sore thumb to me. Pretty and shiny sheets... ugly and ratty genoa line. SO, in order to allow myself to sleep again at night (joking), I ordered another 60 feet of 7/16th yacht braid. 

Old vs. New

I've long felt that if you're going to fix something that's broken, you should try your best to make it better than it was before. So with that in mind, I decided to re-route my genoa line to the outside of the safety rail, so that it's not lying on deck where people could trip on it. 20 minutes of wrench work and I had all the blocks flipped around and ready to go. 

Feeding the new line through my furler

Lookin' good!

The final bit of the job is splicing the two ends of the line together to create an endless loop. As a total newbie to the world of splicing, I'm a bit intimidated by this job, regardless of how easy Youtube makes it seem. I'm planning to do a practice round with my extra 300 ft of 3/8th line before trying it for real.

I can sleep easier tonight knowing that ratty line is gone!

I also spent a bit of time hanging some metal hooks down below to hang a curtain by the head. Small boat means the head (aka toilet) is pretty, well, public. However, there was a heavy cloth curtain on board that seemed to be a cover for the hanging locker. A few drill holes later, and I've got a pretty effective "bathroom door", as well as a door to the v-berth. 

This week, I'm planning to replace two turning blocks for my genoa sheets that took a pretty good beating the last time out sailing. That should be a fun little job, as I have to fill some old bolt holes in the fiberglass with epoxy, and then re-drill for the new blocks. Once again, never done that before...

The old "to be replaced" turning block (also called a Cheek Block); note the pulley wheel is all worn out