New Rudder Tale

We talked about our selection process to have a new rudder built here. This post will continue with what happened after shipping off the rudder stock. Competetion Composites Inc (CCI) computer generated a pattern for the rudder based on the German Frers design drawings, machine cut the foam core, and attached it to our rudder stock.

Based on their experience, the rudder was rebuilt with unidirectional fiberglass reinforcement laid in the channel alongside the stainless post, extending down towards the tip of the rudder. This should help eliminate the "hard point" where the post ends and the rudder suddenly becomes more flexible, the area where the original fiberglass skin cracked.

The foam core was overlaid with fiberglass cloth and then sealed into plastic for vacuum infusion of the resin - basically a tube to a vacuum pump was put on one side, and a tube to the resin on the other, allowing very even clamping pressure all over the cloth, and a light, even coating of resin for the cloth.

Construction after the resin cures consists of smoothly fairing the rudder,

sanding and priming, and then CCI crated and shipped the rudder back to us. We waited until the hull was painted and the shaft cutless bearing was installed before opening the crate to inspect.

 

All looked well, so we removed the new lower bearing which was machined for us, and installed it into the rudder tube. The boatyard used their transporter to lift the boat, and the rudder was lifted into place. In 2008 we did this with a come-along, but the boatyard did it with six workers. I installed the ring and pin that the rudder hangs from, and then they chocked the boat back up, ready for more bottom paint!

Rough costs (US$): $5400 for the new rudder and bearing, $1500 in shipping, and $1200 for dropping the rudder, crates for the shaft outbound and rudder inbound, outbound and inbound brokerage in Grenada, Grenada ground transport.

Comparing the new rudder to the old: There is much more hydrodynamic fairing in the new foil, a flare to match the hull curve is apparent whereas this flare must have disappeared over the series of repairs I can only imagine the old rudder must have undergone. Alignment with the shaft appears better by several degress based on needing to reprogram the autopilot after carefully ensuring the rudder was aligned with the keel. We haven't noticed any difference in handling yet, but are looking forward to seeing how she responds once we get sailing.

 

Progress

It has been quite a while since we've blogged, so here's the scoop: After sanding out the rain damage and getting a finish coat of paint on the hull, this is what Troubadour looked like:

Next we got busy painting the Flag Blue boot stripe and priming the areas below the waterline where the bottom paint had worn through. We thought some more primer in spots wouldn't hurt, especially after grinding the rusty bottom of the keel, which was neglected until our "night in the slings" 12 hours before splash the last time we were in the yard in 2008. Hopefully by waiting the recommended amount of  time between coats (18 hours for the bottom paint!) the primer and paint will do a little better this time. We'll see!

While we were adding bottom paint, the solar panels arrived and were mounted on top of the new arch.

And after waiting for quite a while for a quiet day to apply the graphics, we finally got a quiet morning to both apply the cool new guitar graphic and reapply the name so Troubadour was no longer anonymous. The struggle to disconnect and pull the shaft (in order to replace the cutless bearing) was ultimately successful (yea!), so after the new bearing went in and the shaft was reinserted, the new rudder could be uncrated, hung and painted. Linda finished sewing the new enclosure top about the same time, and it was laced onto the frame.

We are in the process of reconnecting everything that was disconnected, restowing things that haven't been stowed for months, trying to find new homes for things that have been displaced during remodeling, and yes, disposing of things for which we haven't found a home, or have yet to find useful.

After completing the new settee cushions and enclosure top, we (Linda) still have front (dodger) and side enclosure panels to sew, two sets: one of Regalite vinyl windows and another of Phifertex mesh screens. We (Chris) keep tackling the project list while Linda sews. We (both) feel a big sense of relief having come this far and expect to be back in the water by the end of the month, if not sooner. Looking forward to floating again soon!

Little by little

"You've got soul!"  Greg from S/V Sonrisa said to us when he learned our intention to repaint Troubadour's 51-foot hull. On days when we've put in eight or nine physical hours and the last coat of primer is going on after sunset, those encouraging words really lift our spirits.



Upon our return to the yard,
Chris completes sanding down the boot stripe

I guess not many boat owners would take the time to prime and roll and tip their own hulls. It's easier to spray the hull, or to hire someone else to do the work. We've seen boats in the yard completed in a matter of days that way. We've got more time than money, so we opted to do this work ourselves. And work it is! Don't kid yourself if you want to take on this project.




Starboard side prior to priming

Am I whining? No way. Just being real. Yeah we're "living the dream" but the dream doesn't come without trade-offs. Would I rather be at anchor in a secluded bay surrounded by crystal clear blue water, or sailing in a beautiful Caribbean breeze? You bet. I would also rather be enjoying some of the island activities that other cruisers enjoy. But, for now, we are working. And yes, we would rather be working on our boat, in a dusty, noisy boat yard, in the 86 degree heat with the sun beating on our backs, than sitting in a Kaizen meeting in our former jobs at GE Healthcare in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. Yes! Yes! Yes! 




Troubadour after two coats of primer

There are actually several projects going on simultaneously: priming and everything else.


The actual physical act of priming the whole boat starboard, port and stern takes about two hours. The preparation takes more time. Our complete priming begins with a close up examination of the hull for any nicks or pin holes or scratches that the previous coat of primer did not cover. I mark all these imperfections with blue tape.



How many coats of primer to cover this repair?
She looks like she could use some Clearasil®



Close up of "blemish" covered with glazing compound

Chris follows behind me with glazing compound and fills them. This takes about an hour. When the glazing has dried, Chris sands the whole boat with 240 grit sandpaper using a random orbital sander and feels for any imperfections with his hands. This will take 2 - 3 hours. Next comes washing the hull with a mix of laundry soap and TSP. Chris wipes with the rasta rag and I hose the boat down. Usually the next day, we prime. We begin the priming at 3 pm when the sun has moved to the port side of the boat, leaving the starboard side in the shade, and by the time the sun goes behind the hills, the port side is in the shade. I wipe down the boat with a solvent called 2333N to remove any soap or dust or sanding residue, this takes about an hour. While I am doing that, Chris prepares and mixes the primer and prepares the rollers/brushes. Chris rolls primer on the hull, while I prime around small taped off areas like vent covers and through-hulls (holes in the sides of the boat). And finally, we clean up, and most importantly, stop at the Dug Out for a few beers.


The following day, we inspect the priming job, using the bright sun as our guide. And after a review of the weather forecast, the whole process repeats. After two coats of primer, and seeing that some of the color of the fiberglass repair was noticeable through the primer, we opted to put on a third coat. After the third coat, we felt a fourth coat was necessary. Our fourth coat of primer goes on this week.



At least he is smiling!

In between the priming project, Chris is sanding, priming and painting our swim step; and working with Nick at Technick on the redesign of our davits/bimini/dodger frames. I have been taking measurements to make cushions for our new settee area. We have not tried to fit our rudder yet, as we want to paint the bottom prior to installation and the area around the rudder gets a lot of fouling. In addition, the propeller shaft needs to be pulled so that the cutlass bearing can be replaced. We plan to install the rudder after that project, as well.

With all of this work going on our social life is lacking. So tonight we are looking forward to happy hour with Scott from S/V Asante and George from S/V Earthling at Port Louis. Friday we will be going to our first Christmas Party of the season at D Island Roots Dug Out Bar. Cheers!

Fairwinds

Yard Work

Boat yard life has many ups and downs ...



"Yard work" takes on a whole new meaning in the cruising lifestyle.

- up the ladder, down the ladder, up the scaffold down the scaffold, lift up the plank, move down the plank, haul up the tools, and haul down the tools. Do I need to go on? I haven't begun to count how many times a day this series repeats itself, beginning with down the hill from the apartment and then back up the hill at the end of the day. (Our neighbor, a local woman, says she watches the folks who make that daily trek get more and more fit as time goes on. I doubt she is referring to us because we usually stop for a beer on the way home.)

October in Grenada isn't all that different from the fall season in the states. People are doing yard work, chopping their lawns with machetes or weed whackers. It's rare to see an actual lawn mower. But for cruisers like us, yard work takes on a whole different meaning. Sanding, priming and painting have taken the place of raking leaves and planting bulbs, albeit equally gratifying tasks in the end. And that is what we keep in mind during the long hot days in the sun here at 12 degrees north – a shiny new hull.

As Chris predicted in our last blog post (Rudder Rebuild) we won’t get everything accomplished prior to our visit to the states (Oct. 15 – Dec. 1). It’s not so much that the deck is too hot to walk on, and it’s not that we are lollygagging and staring at our “to do” list. It’s that painting our hull is a “first time” project for us and we are learning the “figurative” ups and downs as we go. 

We only had enough scaffold to work on one side of the boat at a time.

After arranging for scaffolding from the boat yard, the sanding down of the old paint began. This project moved along OK, except when we were one plank short to work continuously on one side and would have to stop and move a very heavy 2’ by 12’ x 12’ plank to the next set of scaffolds. Actually we were two planks short, but were told they couldn’t spare any more for us because the yard was getting busy with other jobs.  So we started with scaffolding on a portion of one side of the boat, which did get augmented to a full side with weekend scouting trips (when the yard workers were off) for more planks and scaffolds to haul over to our boat as other boats went back in the water. We’d like to keep a rhythm of going around the whole boat for each step in the process, but haven’t been able to keep up as well as if we had full scaffolding. The only boat with full scaffolding is the boat being painted by the yard workers, a job which starts around $10,000. Such is life.


A great upper body workout!

Once Chris finished filling the holes from the removed thru-hull fittings, and we received our paint and special de-waxing scrub, the washing, de-waxing, and sanding began, followed by filling gouges and scratches, more faring, more sanding. Days go by. 

Troubadour's "patch tests" to determine  if we needed to do

 more sanding before priming.

Since we knew many areas on the boat had touch-up paint, we had to test to see if the paint was compatible with the two part paint we were putting on -otherwise it would just peel and bubble under the new paint, and what a waste of time this project would have been. Don Casey, in his book This Old Boat, prescribed testing paint compatibility by leaving a solvent soaked rag on the old painted area for ten minutes. If the paint bubbled it would show that the old and new paints are incompatible, and the old paint would have to be totally removed instead of just sanded smooth.  None of the tests showed any problems, which started to worry Chris. Since Interlux, the manufacturer of the paint said that their Brightside paint was incompatible with the new Perfection paint; we did a test on an area known to be painted with Brightside. No bubbling. So we left the rag on longer – no bubbling. Finally, after an overnight test we saw some bubbling, so we re-tested other areas especially the boot stripe, leaving the rag taped to the hull overnight. In some places the paint bubbled and in others it didn’t, but we agreed that the boot stripe need to be sanded off completely to the water line. Better to be safe, than sorry.  

Results of a paint incompatibility test meant more sanding in our future.

We walk by this sign everyday on our way home ... is it trying to tell us something?

To build our confidence and not feel like we were slogging along going zero miles per hour, we washed and primed the transom (the curve of which is above the waterline/offending bootstripe). Of course we really wanted to remove the old aluminum vent covers and replace them with new ones because one is dented. It would not only look nicer, but would make the painting much easier (sort of like removing the outlet covers before painting a room). As it turns out, removing them involves a contortionist with six foot long arms to remove the screws from behind the steering quadrant after sliding in from inside the lazarette. It seems they were put on before the deck was joined to the hull during manufacturing. There is something to be said for sturdy old boats, and then there are some other things one could say – but I digress. We opted to paint them in place.

The stern has one coat of primer and the stern vent covers
didn't get replaced as we had hoped.
(Am I crooked or is the boat crooked on the jack stands?)

Speaking of vent covers, Chris was able to remove three of the four water tank vent thru-hulls and we ordered new ones (after noticing the same style in much newer boats near us in the yard). The fourth one is behind the bead board on the starboard side where the nav station and the electrical panel are located. We agreed that the external aesthetics aren’t that important if it means pulling apart the interior of the boat to replace a part. As it is, Troubadour’s interior looks like a Home Depot with tools, sandpaper, solvents and paints located in every conceivable open space.

Our days begin when Chris treks to the boat yard, leaving our apartment at Dougie's Hi Haven about two hours earlier than I do in the mornings to get started. I make lunch and tidy up the apartment, do laundry, sometimes even prepare dinner to heat in the microwave later. I meet him at the boat yard late morning. Around 4 pm we clean up and put away our "toys". If it's been an especially hot or challenging day we stop for a beer and visit with our favorite bar tender Rosa, at De Island Roots Dug out Bar for 3-4-10 Caribs (all day happy hour, 3 beers for EC$10, US$3.70). They have a bottle cap contest to win up to $500, but so far we have won a total of 3 free beers. Whoo!


It's on the way home!



Highs and lows continue. After sanding off the entire boot stripe, and just as we were preparing to prime the starboard side the forecast called for a low pressure system to hang over the area for a few days. Low pressure systems usually bring a lot of rain. Painting and raining don’t mix. So we leave Troubadour in the yard, and will prime and put her shiny new coat on when we get back!


Troubadour's sanded down boot stripe reveals her previous stripes.

We discovered Troubadour once had a cove strip (a strip just under the toe rail);
 sanding also revealed that before she was named Star Chaser,
she was called The Sea Otter's.

A high point to a day of yard work.

Fairwinds

Rudder Rebuild



We’ve been in the boatyard for a few weeks, which is about what it takes in island time to get anything done “jus now”. It took us about a week to muddle through the options for rebuilding the rudder, which were shaping up to look like:

1. Have the rudder rebuilt locally
2. Ship the rudder to a knowledgeable company who would rebuild the rudder on our old stock, using the broken rudder as a pattern
3. Have a new rudder built from the original plans

The quote from the boatyard for a local rebuild was disappointing, nearly twice as much as option two. After much emailing, Skype, and marked up digital photos, we wound up with a hybrid of two and three. One of the potential vendors, Competition Composites in Ottawa, Canada, got the original plans from German Frers Engineering (German is the designer of Troubadour, Beneteau was the builder) and gave us the option of using our original rudder post or building a new one. After a few shipping quotes, it looked like we could save a considerable amount of money instead of having a new stainless shaft built.



Prying apart the foam and fiberglass to extract the rudder post.
The boatyard set us up under a huge catamaran so we could get some shade.

Scraping the waterlogged foam from the post extension

So, with pry bars and scrapers we extracted the stainless shaft from the rudder. As it is designed to stay put, it wasn’t easy. The long shaft is welded to a plate about 2 feet square, which keeps the shaft from twisting inside the rudder. Oh, and being a solid stainless shaft welded to a four square foot stainless plate, it weighs about two hundred and fifty pounds. After extraction, to prevent damage to the bearing surfaces, we decided to have it crated which added another forty pounds to the package. Three of us got it into the back of a truck and off to Amerijet air cargo, who helpfully posts on their tracking page that it is “in transit”.





Rudder shaft in the crate



Ready to ship

In the meantime, our paint has worked its way to Grenada. By going through Sherri at Wholesale Yacht Parts and having the paint shipped here from Miami, we saved a bunch of money over the local prices for hull paint, bottom paint, and their associated thinners. In preparation for painting the hull, I decided to remove two thru-hull fittings that weren’t being used, and a third that I decided was a bad idea – to wit:

One of our bilge pumps had a large diameter hose designed to pump water overboard near the waterline. This is good, as large diameter hose has low resistance, and an outlet near the waterline means it doesn’t have to pump it uphill very far, so it makes for an efficient pump. When you live on a boat, you sleep better when you know you have a bilge pump that can pump out lots of water if necessary. You also know, or learn very quickly, that everything has a trade off. Monohull sailboats, when sailing, heel. In our case, when on a starboard tack and heeling to port, it puts the bilge pump exit underwater. That makes the exit an entrance, and water coming into the boat is bad. Since the installers weren’t insane, and did put a check valve into the line, not much water comes in, but I feel that a good portion of the water I find in the bilge after a sail is due to water backflooding from the exit hose, past the check valve, through the bilge pump, and into the bilge. I decided that eliminating water coming into the boat is preferable to a future, possible, hopefully-never-needed efficiency.

The good news is that what was probably the original thru-hull fitting is still located on the transom (back end of the boat), which doesn’t submerge when the boat heels. I can re-route the bilge pump hose there, and won’t need a check valve, which will recoup some efficiency. In the meantime, I have ground a crater into the fiberglass around each of the holes left by the fittings I removed, and am in the process of adding layer after layer of fiberglass cloth to fill the craters. This has been filling(!) my boatyard days, which have been quite short to date.

Removing our name graphic to work on a thru-hull fitting
 

While I wait for the epoxy on the fiberglass cloth to set, my motivation wanes as the sun gets high in the sky and the deck becomes too hot to walk on. Afternoons in the apartment on the top of the hill with a cool breeze are much preferable to working in the boatyard. I don’t think we’ll get all our work accomplished in the time available if I continue to work this way, but it’s nice while it lasts!

For an update to our rudder story, see this post: New Rudder Tale 

 

Fairwinds

Troubadour "on the rocks"

Looks can be deceiving: Troubadour is hard aground on the reef between Hartman Bay and Hog Island, Grenada.
(Rescue photos courtesy of Lilly and Tom, S/V Tiger Lilly.)

We plan to enter any anchorage by early afternoon, but this day we left Port Louis Marina an hour and a half later than planned while waiting for assistance to depart, and had to wait for our turn to fuel at Grenada Yacht Club. We were familiar with the deep channel having been on the hook at Hog Island in June. This time we chose to anchor in Hartman Bay requiring us to turn west directly into the 4 pm setting sun. Admittedly, a poor decision.

Troubadour was on the reef in seconds; Scull and crossbones marks the spot - obviously not 5 fathoms there. Harrowing reminder on chartplotter reliance.

The afternoon sun made the water look white and the red reef buoy "disappeared" from our view, even with polarized lenses. As we motored along, the chart plotter showed we were in 40 feet of water, we could see the reef to starboard, but not until we were on it did we realize our mistake.

Dinghies from nearby rushed to our aide.

Chris made a "Securite" call on VHF Channel 68 to any nearby vessels for assistance. When it was clear we weren't going to wiggle off with a few dinghies, I attempted to hail the Grenada Coast Guard. With no luck, another vessel reached me and offered to do a relay and a "Pan Pan" urgent call for assistance.

Familiar faces and new faces arrive and begin the process of kedging us off the reef.

We deployed our 80lb Manson anchor as the bow kedge, and our secondary 66lb Bruce anchor as the stern kedge, leading the aft line to the port jib winch. We also deployed two halyards for a pull to heel the boat. A diver, borrowing mask and snorkel, took a look at the situation below, stating that he felt we were wedged into a crevasse, possibly by the weight of our boat. 

Pulling on the halyards begins to heel Troubadour, while the kedges and dinghies help pull/push her to deeper water.

The only way off the reef is to heel Troubadour far onto her port side to tilt the keel above the reef. I opened all the fresh water faucets to begin to lighten our load by emptying our water tanks; three 6 gallon jerry jugs of water were secured to the end of the boom and it was eased to the port side to add even more weight for heeling.

In addition to helping hands, horsepower was critical.

The assistance of this power boat with big engines made all the difference in pulling our halyards to heel us over. Despite lots of effort, the first few attempts with dinghies resulted in them being blown downwind, where the pull didn't help.



Troubadour heels nearly to the toe rail and floats clear of the bottom.
(Notice the red buoy on the far right in this picture.)

  Once off the reef we were immediately back into 40 ft of water. Unfortunately, as we move into deeper water, damage to the rudder is evident. With on-deck help of Barb from La Luna and Stephen from Blue Pelican, we slowly entered Hartman Bay, maintaining steering control despite the damage, and anchored without incident.  Once moored, Chris and I snorkeled on the rudder and saw first hand the damage. While we lost one section of the rudder, we lashed the remainder to reinforce it. There was no damage to the keel. We stayed at anchor until we could arrange for a haul out day with calm weather at Spice Island Marine.

Troubadour awaits her turn on the "gurney" aka Travelift.

 We arranged for three extra dinghies, and extra hands on deck, for the short journey from Hartman Bay to Spice Island Marine. We made it under our own power at 3 kts in flat seas and less than 5 kts of wind. Maybe it was overkill to have so much help, but it was good to know we had capable people ready to help if the rudder fell off on the way. 

The starboard side of the rudder, showing the "chewing" damage one would expect after encountering bottom.
 

 

A chunk of the rudder cracked away as we emerged from the reef (and we thank whoever it was that brought it back for us). In car speak, the rudder is "totalled".

 Our rudder was trashed, but now it also appears that the rudder has had a number of repairs prior to us purchasing the boat, none of which were revealed by the purchase survey. Truthfully, once faired and painted, short of seller disclosure or an x-ray, I’m not sure it could have been discovered until being stressed. Basically, once the fiberglass skin cracked off, we could see lots of bondo/filler, "Great Stuff" type foam, what appears to be a missing section of shaft, and balsa core in the bottom half of the rudder. As several people have told us, perhaps it’s good it was stressed on the reef here, two miles from a boatyard, rather than in heavy seas in a storm far from land.

 

Good night Troubadour. Tomorrow's another day.

Chris and I are renting an apartment while we go through the process of repairs and research on rebuilding or buying a new rudder. Before our "visit" to the reef we were going to take care of planned maintenance and bottom painting in Trinidad in October & November at Peake Yacht Services.  But as cruisers know, all plans are in sand, and those were washed away.

Sailors say: there are those who have gone aground and those who are going to. We are grateful to all who showed up to help a stranger, and went off quietly into the sunset. Count on us to pay it forward.

A heartfelt thank you to the captains and crew of the following vessels who helped us off the reef and to the boat yard. Please let us know if we have missed anyone, it is not intentional.

Barracuda
Bella Blue
Blue Pelican
Celtic Rover
Cool Change
Elephant's Child
Impressionist
La Luna
Le Phar Blue
San Syl
Triumph
Unicorn
Yellow Shoes
Zero to Cruising

For other blog articles on our story, please check out
Zero to Cruising:
http://www.zerotocruising.com/reef-1-rudder-0/

 Elephants Child
http://sailingonelephantschild.blogspot.com/2012/08/reefs-and-junkies.html