July 24th, 2003
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We spent six or seven months working very hard on Active Light at Riverside Drive Marina in Whangarei, New Zealand.. At this time we were almost three years into our retirement circumnavigation attempt and had put over 13,600 nm on Active Light since her last haulout in Port Townsend, Washington in August, 2000. Because we invested so much into this refit, we wanted to post a record of the work on our little floating home. New Zealand must be one of the best places in the world to undertake a thorough overhaul of a cruising sailboat. As a whole, New Zealanders have a more avid interest in boating than people in the USA. Almost every Kiwi has a boat or knows something about sailing. There is a strong infrastructure of support for most yachting needs and are a great number of persons with specialized boating knowledge and skills who are willing to work and give good advice in the areas of shipwright woodworking, diesel repair, fiberglass technology, stainless steel fabrication, sailmaking, painting, etc. This combined with the fact that the US dollar has almost a 2:1 purchasing power here for both goods and services makes NZ an excellent place to haulout and refurbish a sailboat, however tired, torn, and battered after a long Pacific Ocean crossing. |
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Our first effort and concern was for the integrity of Active Light's hull. We have seen so many cases of severe osmotic blistering since we have been in the South Pacific. Our friend and resident fiberglass expert, Allen Dodd, says that any fiberglass yacht built in a northern climate and sailed into tropical waters stands a very good chance of developing osmotic blistering of its hull. Allen tested our hull with a moisture meter the day after we had been lifted out of the water and the meter read 10% to 12% moisture both above and below the waterline. He grunted and remarked, "Huh, that's a good hull!". Wishing to further preserve this good hull, Neil spent eight (8) hard days scraping the old bottom paint from the hull, taking it back to the original gel coat, including one long night spent in the local hospital flushing antifouling chips out of his eyes (he now wears goggles!). After fairing all the gouges with West System epoxy, we let her sit and dry through two months of New Zealand summer. Perhaps half of the boats we saw hauled in this yard had extensive osmotic blistering. Many of them opted for the NZ$40,000 job of hull peeling and rebuild with fiberglass cloth and vinylester resin. |
| We then concentrated on removing the old heavy bronze mushroom throughull fittings and leaky conical bronze seacocks, replacing them with reinforced nylon throughulls and offshore-approved plastic shutoff valves, as recommended by yard owner, Ray Roberts. The new throughulls were fitted flush to reduce underwater drag and were bedded in West System epoxy thickened with 404 high density filler. Pity the man who may decide to remove them one day. One redundant throughull on the forward port side was removed altogether, the hull ground away to a radius of about ten inches and relaminated with 27(!) layers of cloth and epoxy resin, inside and out. | |
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We then turned our attention to the huge gap between the trailing edge of the keel and the rudder. Here we added strong fiberglass tabbing that should both reduce water flow ebbing through there and greatly complicate our work when we need to change a shaft zinc(!). We also added fiberglass tabbing to the trailing edge of the rudder, reducing the blunt edge from a rounded thickness of one inch to a sharp square cutoff of about one eight inch. We had a lot of good advice from a fellow named Ed aboard the vessel Aka in Opua. We heard about Ed from friends all across the Pacific as being the best on advice about hull fairing. He reputedly redesigned a rudder for the trimaran Ninth Charm which gave them an additional three (3) knots of top-end speed, according to the owners. You may well ask how much improvement in performance does one get from fairing throughulls and rudder. My old sailing teacher and friend, Jim Moyer, told me back in 1959, that it is the sum total of all the little things one can do to reduce drag, windage and weight that add up to a big improvement in performance. More recently, New Zealand naval architect, Gary Underwood, told us that each throughull in the forward part of the hull (where the water flow is laminar) reduces your speed by 1% of your maximum hull speed. |
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We then applied five coats of International Interprotect
barrier coat to the
bottom and three coats to the topsides. The first two barrier coats were pure
white, the third was tinted baby blue as a guide coat to assure complete
coverage, followed by two more white coats. This was followed immediately by
two coats of hard, polishable International bottom antifouling. This
schedule then sat for three months before launching. Just prior to relaunching, two more coats of soft ablative bottom paint was applied (AwlCraft
#5 ABC ablative black). About two years ago in Mexico, we had wrapped a long section of very strong 300 pound test nylon fishing line around our prop. When we hauled out in New Zealand we found the remains of that line, it was friction welded into a thick nylon washer that had forced the prop aft until the prop became loose on the shaft. We were very lucky that the shaft, key, and keyway were not damaged. That piece of nylon now hangs as an icon in our navigation station and reminder to pull in overboard lines prior to starting the engine. All this time, Nancy was stripping the three-year-old varnish from the
toerails and
bowsprit. She applied nine new coats
of varnish to the bowsprit, but we decided the rails would now fly their
unvarnished "tropical colors" - that is, they will go natural,
teak pink/gray. We feel it is too much work to keep them up under constant use and
tropical sun. |
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Then we started priming and fairing the topsides. This was not an entirely happy experience due to our choice of topsides paint. We applied three coats of Interprotect, as previously stated, then three coats of AwlCraft #3 primer. This primer is a great one, sands and fills brilliantly, and the hull was pretty easy to fair due to the fact that the old Sterling polyurethane coating was still in good shape. However, the good news ends there. Basically, we found you cannot brush coat AwlCraft Elite Polyurethane topcoat and get a smooth finish. It cannot be done! Our experience was duplicated by at least five other cruisers this season, all with a corduroy result. We won't go into the details, just if you ever consider brush painting your hull, . . . choose a different paint!!! We are not happy with our results and we really tried hard, having many long conversations with AwlCraft tech reps by telephone. Pick another paint. Note that AwlCraft has recently changed their name to Altec Marine Coatings. We think this is the same company that makes the well-known AwlGrip products. |
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Around March, we packed the car and went touring to South Island for a month. We have written about this excursion in our previous web letter. When we returned to the boatyard on April 1st, we directed our efforts to a multitude of on deck maintenance issues. We had left instructions with Terry at Northern Marine Machining for fabrication of a heavy grab-bar for the dodger, brackets for the two external propane tanks, and a new bowlight bracket up on the bow pulpit. This was all satisfactorily accomplished in our absence. We especially like the dodger grab-bar when climbing in and out of the cockpit. Not only does it look good, but it makes the dodger so strong that we could remove the internal one inch SS bracing tubing. This makes it more comfortable to snuggle up under the dodger without hitting your head on night-time offshore passages. Thanks, Terry! The new bowlight poised on the bow pulpit helps visibility at night under power both for us looking forward (less reflected light back to us) and the light is brighter and higher. Neil then replaced and rebedded the stern chainplate bolts while Nancy arranged for us to have new name letters bow and stern. We recaulked the outside seam between the topsides and the toerails, thereby sealing out many former leaks. We stripped the varnish off the rudder cheeks, coated it with four coats of International Epiglass Everdure, two coats of Awlcraft primer and two of topcoat epoxy. |
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One of the hardest jobs of any refit is the
repainting of the insides of the bulwarks. Nancy did this herself and she did an especially good job. After stripping all the old paint
off down to the bare wood, she applied two coats of penetrating and
preserving International Epiglass Everdure,
two coats of AwlCraft primer and two coats of epoxy topcoat. That
should hold it for years to come. We removed the old teak dorade boxes and
cowl vents, replacing them with new Weaver hatches. These open forward when
at anchor and allow much more airflow and light below. Since they are always
closed during passage, they do not leak like the old dorades. We relocated
the Garmin 128 GPS to outside under the dodger where we can see it
constantly underway and added cockpit speakers for the CD player/radio. We
set up a system for getting the spinnaker pole up more safely and easily. We moved the
cabin heater smokestack (Charley Noble) to a
centerline position, and yes, we lit that heater every night during the New
Zealand winter!. We added non-skid grit to the cabintop. All of those
actions made reefing at night in rough weather much safer and easier. One
month after Nancy fell and broke her arm in June, Neil began stripping and
revarnishing the main cabin interior finish. It looks much fresher. He also
began two months of weekly guitar lessons with New Zealand jazz guitarist,
Bob McNealy.
Most of the other jobs involved numerous minor rigging and deck alterations to make offshore sailing, reefing, sail setting easier and safer. We do want to comment, before closing, that we are very pleased with the performance of Active Light after the underwater modifications. They were really worth the big effort. She makes less noise underway, leaves a visibly less turbulent wake, drives more easily up to 6 and 7 knots in lighter airs, and she "feels more slippery" (Nancy's terminology) underway. Our next letter will tell you about our trip from New Zealand to Fiji, Vanuatu, and Brisbane, Australia. So long for now, |
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Nancy and Neil s/v Active Light Riverside Drive Marina Whangarei, New Zealand |
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