In this episode of Sailing A B Sea we hook into a heap of boat jobs now that the winter weather is slowly changing to spring here in Greece. Digging deeper i...

Closed Captions (CC):
What's next Captain? Well I believe

you've got a little side project going

on haven't ya? Yes a complete surprise as

it turns out

Oh how I love boat surprises!

Let me show you

A few people have asked why we are paying 150

euros a month to stay in the studio

apartment when we can actually stay

on board A B Sea in this yard when the reality is

because right now A B Sea looks like this

Well this generally is stored in here

and I've taken it out Bazzy because when

I was in here looking for something and I

noticed that some of these are wet, they've

got salt - somehow salt water is getting

in there - not a lot but some of them are

damp, damp enough that they need drying out.

This is the underneath of the switch for the

windlass. This is the down switch, it

could be coming in through there because

the silicon is well, is not very good so we might have to

remove the switch and re-silicon that and

if we're gonna do that we'll do the other one as well because again there's the silicon there

So it could be could be the silicon that just needs replacing at the two switches

There were a couple of

comments that were showing some concern

about Aannsha going up the mast while

we were on the hard and yeah it's

generally frowned upon that you go up

the mast on the hard but I am very very

confident in the stands here at the

boatyard. They are solidly built, I'll show you now

So this is the stand at the aft of the

boat and as you can see solidly built

good leg surface area and not designed

to move at all. Then we've got this other

jack stand here and another big one here.

We got these side props on either side and

just like that it is at the

back they've also got the same sort of

big chunky stands here at the front and

there as well. So we were quite confident

that Aannsha was gonna be safe, she was

only going halfway up the mast anyway

not all the way to the top so yeah it's

one of those can of worms subjects isn't it?

I was always at the understanding that

the anode should make direct contact

with the iron of the keel but this side

here looks as though it's got paint

underneath whereas the other side has

got a bit of paint and some exposure to

the iron keel, so let us know in the

comments whether it should be completely

free of paint or whether it should be

painted. I'll just give that a good clean up

so when we put the new anodes on

we make good contact

The prop shaft anode is held into place

by a pair of hex head nuts and bolts and

the first one I tried came off fairly

straightforward and fairly easily

however when I got to the second one the

nut and bolt had frozen together so that

was a question of spraying with wd-40

let it do its thing for a while and then

come back and jam a screwdriver around

the edge of the nut to stop it spinning

Oh and while I've got you, I just want to say to Nikos, thanks very much for lending is these tools it

is making life so much easier for us and

also just take a moment here to pause

and say hello and welcome aboard to our

latest patron Gunter. Thank you for

joining the club.

Fitting the new anode

to the prop shaft was a lot of fun too

because the bolts that come with them

are just slightly short and you've got

to really belt the anode into place and

just hope that you get some sort of

purchase at some point. It took a while and

it was quite frustrating but we got there in the end

Dear www.zinite.com please just make the

bolts a little bit longer it would make

life so much easier.

Just a tad

I mean when you look at this

side it looks fairly okay and you know I

probably could have left that on and got

a bit more use out of it however when

you look at this side you can see it

starts to corrode first where the

nut and bolt go through so

there's if I lift that on then

potentially you know that's just gonna

fall off and then I lose the whole anode

so best just to take it off and put a new one on

I was having a chat with Ant

from Ant & Cid Sailing about our battery

situation that happened last October

where we had to replace all three house

batteries and one of the things he

suggested was to get a battery de-sulfinator

especially if you've got brand new

batteries and put it on as soon as you can

It keeps the plates inside the batteries

from sulphating and gives them a

longer lifespan. So I installed this the

other day, it's fairly straightforward

you just attach the negative wire to

the end of your negative connections and

your positive wire to the end of your

positive connections and then it will

pulse throughout all three batteries and

basically it just vibrates the the

plates and shakes the sulfate off them

over time. The instructions said that it

would automatically detect whether as 12

24 or 48 volts which it did and then the

little red light comes on when it's

actually sending a pulse through the

batteries. You can also push this little

button and it tells you what your

voltage of your batteries are ... currently

at 14 volts which is very nice

My only concern with the unit is the little

beeping noise it makes when the red

light is flashing and in the silent

darkness at night time will it be an

annoying beep for whoever's sleeping in

this berth? I might have to put an on-off

switch here and switch it off at night

First job on the list today is to have a

look at the keel bolts and that of

course means that we've got to take the

saloon seating apart here - just put it next

to the galley and take everything out of there

and also take the floor of that or the sole

of that out as well so if we can get

access to the bolts

So here's our our keel bolt situation

there's a small one here, single one here

double there and four here by the lowest

point of the bilge and I'm going to

assume there's going to be another three

in a bunch there and then there'll be a

single one just by the mast. So the ones

that we want to inspect are gonna be

these here so I'll probably take the

glass from that one and the glass from

that one and see how they look and while

we're here of course we will give the

bilge a bluddy good clean

We've exposed the top of one of the

bolts that goes through the hull and

into the keel and just from looking at

the top of it it looks you know very

solid it doesn't look as though there's

any rust but with that being said the

nut section is further down in the

deeper part of the fibreglassing

and it's proving really difficult to cut

away the fibreglass and plus the fact I

really don't want to do any damage to

the nut and bolt so we're gonna say that it's

good and clear the bilges and put

everything back together. So that's good

news. And then I can just resin over the

top of that yeah alright, let's do some cleaning.

The bilge is looking a bit better.

In last week's

video we asked you about the water

coming out of our kicker at this point

when we drop the topping lift and some

of you suggested that maybe the kicker

or boom vang is actually on upside-down

Well I've had a look at it

and I don't think it can be turned

around and I'll tell you why. If we look

at the base of the kicker where this

steel cable is attached and follow this

all the way up it eventually comes to a

pulley here and that pulley comes back

down and the cable comes back down and

attaches to this block and of course

this is our kicker sheet so I don't think

that this can be turned around the other

way simply because this would then be in

the totally wrong configuration. Let us

know in the comments below what you think

With my curiosity about the keel

bolts now quite sated

it's time to dig deeper into this little

weeping part of the keel and find out

what's exactly going on there

Looks like a crack that's been badly

filled and allowed water to get in there

I'm gonna let that dry out a little bit more

and I'll take some more of the old

caulking away from the hull and keel

joint to get a better look at that

I've exposed a lot more of this and I'm

thinking that this is probably the lower

part of the bilge where the bilge pump

lives and this is where it meets the

keel on the outside so there is quite a

lot of water still coming out of here

so we're gonna leave that exposed and

let it drain out. It's not coming from

inside that's for sure because we did

the bilges yesterday and they are dry as.

So this has got in here from somewhere

else possibly up here so we'll certainly

fully dry that out before we seal it back up again

Once again many many thanks to our great

viewers and subscribers who offer us up

so many helpful tips and hints, it's

really making our boat work on A B Sea go a

lot smoother with a lot less casualties

along the way!

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