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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