Mast installation

Along with no ice on the boat roof, and a break in the weather, I decided to install the mast. Unlike most things boat building, this particular phase of the project actually went fairly smooth and took about as long as I figured. Getting all the parts and gear loaded on the truck took as much time as the actual installation.

I dont know what the  mast weighs, but Id have to guess around 150 lbs. Getting it up on top of the boat was a simple matter of leaning it against the boat above the swim platform and with me on top, and with my helper lifting from the bottom, we quickly had it on the roof. The layout work for the pins and bushings was spot on, so it was a simple  matter of first installing the upper pins and bushings, heavily tack welding the bushings ( with the pins in place ), standing the mast up, then heavily tack welding the lower bushings in place. Once everything was tacked in place and I verified the pins were not in a bind, it was final welded with a stick machine.

If push comes to shove, a stout person probably could step the mast by himself.  Once the mast is standing, its just a matter of getting the fore and aft thing just right so the bottom locking pin can be pushed home. I should probably turn a pin with a heavy chamfer on it so its self aligning and can easily be driven home while one person both holds the mast up and drives the pin home. For the sake of safety, its a two person job, but like I said, if push comes to shove, one person probably could handle it.
 
Having never really been on a boat with a mast before, once we had it welded and standing in place, it seemed ginourmous. I know 20 isnt squat when talking about sailboats and  mast, but standing on my roof while looking up at the mast, it seemed to be way up there. With the mast standing unstayed, and me pushing on it, there was a little flex in the framing. The turnbuckles I used were capable of taking up 6". Pulling the cables as tight as we could by  hand, then swagging the thimbles to the turnbuckle eyes left what appeared to be a decent sag in the cable. Once we had the three stay cables rigged, I was impressed by how little it took to tighten them up. I should  have probably measured, but I dont think we took up more than 1 1/2" before the cables were as tight as I thought they needed to be. Id like to hear from one who knows about how tight these cables need to be, but to me they feel pretty comfy. The two shroud cables are about five degrees off of 90 degrees to the mast, so the fore stay cable pulls against the shroud cables. Shrouds are athwart-ship while stays are fore and aft. With the cables tensioned, the mast now felt rock solid.

Having spent the last three weeks fabricating in the shop and dry fitting everything together, getting the boom in place and rigging the electric winches took practically no time at all. Using a spare battery from the shop to temporarily electrify the winches, we were finally making things go up and down. We played around for a short time and hoisted the 200 lbs generator to the roof and back down. The winches are remote controlled, and have different frequencies, so thats going to make things easier.

Because of the winch location the boom cannot be raised plumb to the mast. The  boom goes to within maybe 5 degrees of being plumb to the mast, and thats plenty high enough. When the boom is about as high as it can go, when moving it to starboard, it will hit the boom winch. This is really not a big deal as the boom will probably never be this high while lifting a load, but its something to be aware of.

To  wrap up this project, I need to build a dedicated battery box and decide how Im going to charge the battery. All the solenoids, and fuses for the winches will go in the battery box. Ill probably build the box big enough to hold some tools slings for lifting.  Im leaning towards a dedicated winch battery vs pulling heavy wires from the main distribution panel.

A wire chase is already framed from the wheel house to the mast step, so getting wires to that point will be easy. I have a 6x6 splice box already on the mast step, and this will be my transition from interior to exterior. Ill make water tight connections in the splice box and bring cord out of the splice box using cord grips. I dont think Ill be able to do this with the radar cord, so a custom split cord grip will have to be used.

The heavy work is finished on this project and Im pretty  happy with how its turned out. Im going to finalize fabricating the wiring harnesss for the winches and getting a battery box built so I can use the hoist for the hand rail build. most of the hand rail will be fabricated and welded in the shop so Ill use the boom to hoist the three sections along with holding them in place while I weld the rail to the roof. It will also be nice being able to hoist the welder to the roof. Heck I might even bring the big MIG welder down to do this job now that I can get it along with the large tank up top.

Im liking this project.

Cheers

   

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Window installation

The windows for the boat came  from Motion Windows, and after over year in the barn they are finally installed. Theres a link to Motion on this page to the right.

All the windows in the salon are of the same size; tinted, and sliders. The wheel house has two fixed windows, and two top hinged windows on the forward wall. Also in the wheel house, there are two sliders and a fixed to starboard, and one slider, the passage door, and a fixed window to port. The windows on the front of the wheel house are un-tinted, 1/2" tempered. The only tinted windows in the wheel house are the two small fixed  units aft.

All the windows are held in place using a clamp ring. The window has a flange on it that gets a bead of sealant applied, and lands on the outside of the boat. The clamp ring flanges against the interior trim, and is held in place with 15 or so screws that thread in to a groove in the window. The screws pull everything tight, and the sealant makes a water tight seal. The boat side of the window flange has six or 8 dados extruded in to it, so that a gasket is made by the sealant, which prevents metal on metal contact along with a water tight seal. The trim ring method is the best way in  my opinion to install windows like this as no drilling or damage to the hull sheathing happens. It is also an extremely fast install, and minor alignment is possible. The fast installation was due to me spending three days while the super structure was in the barn fitting the interior trim piece for each window and making sure all the openings were dead nut. I"m pretty sure I blogged about the interior trim fit up so if anyone cares, theres more detail in that blog post. Sika-Flex UV resistant marine sealant was used and recommended by the window manufacturer.

After the first window went in, we had to make a decision on how to deal with the squeeze out of the black sealant. I started to tool the joint, and attempt to wipe things clean, but I soon found things getting out of hand. The sealant was on my hands, and clothes along with getting on the powder coated window, and finding its way to the boat quite a distance away from the window. The stuff seemed to jump! So after getting that mess cleaned up, we decided it was going to be best to deal with the squeeze out once the material cured. I messed around with it a bit the other day and to my pleasant surprise, it does pull away from the paint ( with some effort ) at the paint/ window flange joint. A hard plastic tool or plastic scraper will be needed to coax the material off of the boat.

Im very happy with the quality of the windows, and how secure the installation feels. With the type of sealant we used and how much squeeze out were seeing, Im extremely confident we have a water tight seal. Some of the smaller windows with tight bends we found the groove that the trim ring screws in to had distorted a little bit. The manufacturer included a bag of the next size larger screw with my package which worked out most excellent in the larger groove, thus keeping everything nice and tight. This is the second boat Ive used Motion Windows on and I am for sure a happy customer.

Now that the window  install is complete,the next order of business is to finish painting the salon wall weld joint on the aft deck, then scuff, and paint the weld joint on the inside. The salon door and wheel house door will then

be installed.  Once this is complete, Ill bolt on some wood to the few frames that need it, then get the foam finished. Some fairing and priming on the outside weld along with the intake and exhaust louvers on the stack, and well be weather tight.

Cheers 

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Water tanks installation

I have eight water tanks for my potable water supply located under the forward sole of my boat. The first tank I built I measured for cubic footage, then filled it with water, and by using a shut off valve and a five gallon bucket I was able to measure the amount of water in the tank. My method of measuring cubic footage and measuring with the five gallon bucket gave me about the same volume of water within two gallons, so Ill stick with measuring for cubic footage vs filling each tank to get volume. I have 325 + gallons worth of water tanks.

After the boat is insulated and Im assembling components of supply, vent, and filling of the tanks, Ill post more regarding the system as a whole.

Im mounting the water tanks using a flange welded to the tank ends and a corresponding bracket welded to the hull of the boat. Where the bracket is deeper in the hull ( by the center line of the boat), I used studs welded to the hull bracket that the tank flange will drop over. On the less deep end of the tank ( outboard ends), I used nuts welded to the hull brackets that the tank flange will bolt to. I used 30 mill pvc pond liner I had laying around the shop to act as a gasket to go between each tank flange and hull bracket.

I had installed the tanks prior to final painting to make sure all the brackets would work and also that the tanks would finish out below the sole framing. I also needed to verify that the valves I was using on the supply end of the tanks would clear all the steel framing. I ended up having to adjust the access holes in the frames for the tank fill lines ( I guess I screwed up on the cut twice measure once thing). 4 3/8" clearance between the front of the tank and the center longitudinal frame of the boat is barely enough ( it fit) room to get a close nipple, valve, close nipple then a "T" for the tank supply. I dont think the Governator would be able to get his arm down in that space to operate this gate valve, but Im able to so Im happy with the final fit. Because I had installed the tanks prior to painting the tank install went fairly smooth. My 13 year old son helped me as the tanks are to large for one person to handle. The only real issue we had was that the amount of paint on the hull brackets caused me to use a tap or a die to clean up the threads on the respective hull bracket. The tanks are a tight fit between the frames so we used as much care as possible lowering each tank into its "bay" so we would not damage the paint. It would take a hard hit to get through all the coats of paint in the bilge area, but I still was very carefull.

I held off installing the tanks as long as possible to try to keep the trash generated from bolting the firing lumber to the frames from getting under the tanks.

Conall

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