We are back with lots of updates on what the heck we have been doing since the end of our first cruise back in October. Spoiler alert: WE HAVE BEEN BUSY!
Highlights from our adventures with portlights and hatches
Video from of our water tank projects
Stepping back in time to last October, we had just finished our first big cruise with Maya through the Inside Passage of British Columbia. We had an amazing trip and came home with a massive to-do list for the boat. With winter approaching, we quickly got to work.
Happy Halloween!
Maverick and Disco
The first major task we needed to tackle was our portlights and deck hatches.... literally all of them leaked. We have 7 portlights and 2 hatches in total, all of which are original to our 40 year old boat. After discovering that our portlights are $800 EACH, we decided that purchasing new ones was not an option, we decided to rebuild them.
One portlight- you can see water was leaking through the gasket material
After pulling the faceplate off you can see how much water intrusion there was
Sizing up the project, we thought the portlights and hatches could be done in a week.... well I'll tell you we are a little wiser now because that job took TWO MONTHS! Two months of scraping, taping, sealing, and all the other crap that went into them..... nine times over.
The job was painstaking and slow, but served as a great learning opportunity. We can proudly say that our boat does not leak at all anymore! Which is a good thing because the PNW winter proved to be a cold wet one!
The job was painstaking and slow, but served as a great learning opportunity. We can proudly say that our boat does not leak at all anymore! Which is a good thing because the PNW winter proved to be a cold wet one!
Cleaning up the surface for new butyl tape (a sealant)
A closer view
Jenny scraping an old portlight- each one needed to be spotless for new sealant
So much prep went into each and every portlight
Portlight glass ready to be rebedded- this was the scariest part of each portlight.... no mistakes allowed!
So by the time the hatches and portlights were rebuilt Jenny found a contract Pharmacist job down south of Seattle. Unfortunately, the location of the job was too far to commute to from the boat so Jenny's sister was kind enough to let her live at her house in Seattle during the week, making the commute bearable. The job came at the right time as the winter here in the PNW is dark and wet... Jenny worked hard getting our cruising kitty fund back in order, not to mention all of the boat parts that Maya needed.
So while Jenny was working, I was up at the boat lounging around and sipping Pina Colodas.... actually not quite. Instead of lounging around, I enrolled in a Marine Technician program at a local community college where I became a full time student learning about diesel engines, boat electrical systems, marine drive train systems, among other things! School provided an amazing opportunity to get hands on experience with engines - deep diving inside them and learning an incredible amount.
As if the school program wasn't cool enough, on campus, there's a huge workshop with a bunch of very knowledgeable people to draw from. If I had any questions about something on Maya, I could bounce ideas off experts and use the vast array of tools the workshop had to offer.
School! What an amazing place!
Those tools and experts came in very handy when we discovered our water tank was going bad! As part of getting the boat ready for our next trip, I opened up the water tank to inspect and clean it. Much to my chagrin, I found it corroded and in bad shape. What was going to be a simple inspection and cleaning turned into a much bigger project. The first step was to get the tank out of the boat. Removing that tank proved to be a challenge, but after a struggle it was free and we could see what was causing the issue.... corrosion.
Our main water tank during the initial inspection
Horrified at what we found!
You can see severe corrosion on the inside... the outside was even worse
The gaping hole left after removing the water tank. That greenish white on the bottom is a copper sheet
The tank is aluminum and was installed directly above a copper sheet used by another system. Unfortunately, when copper and aluminum are in contact (or even close to one another) corrosion occurs. Because of that corrosive interaction our main water tank was severely damaged at the base. I brought the tank into school and had the experts look at it where we came up with a plan to save it: chop off the bottom and reweld a new piece of aluminum to it. This removed the worst of the corrosion, while sparing us the cost of a new tank.
It turns out that a fellow student is a pro welder, so I gave him $100 and some beer and a few days later he returned our new spiffy tank... ready to be put back into use! To put into perspective, having a new tank made would probably have run us over $1500... I love school!
It turns out that a fellow student is a pro welder, so I gave him $100 and some beer and a few days later he returned our new spiffy tank... ready to be put back into use! To put into perspective, having a new tank made would probably have run us over $1500... I love school!
New spiff-a-fied tank!
Not only did we save a ton of money, we can cruise more safely and comfortably with the knowledge we have a clean water tank. While it felt great to have that tank back in, there was no time to rest, because we needed to focus on our other water tank (which we had never inspected either). When the time came, I nervously opened the tank and, thankfully, didn't find the corrosion that the other water tank had. What I did find was a somewhat dirty tank, which was in need of a thorough cleaning. Additionally, we decided to install a water tank gauge in order to see how much water the tank had.
Our front water tank sits under those boards- our mattress sits above that.... not easy to get access to!
What a mess.... working on cleaning this tank and installing a tank level gauge
Knowing how much water you have aboard is critical to safe cruising, as potable water is often not available for miles, as is the case in the Inside Passage. The problem with our front water tank is that it sits in the Vberth, under our blankets, mattress, and boards, which can't be easily taken off. The solution was to install an electrical tank gauge that we can monitor with a simple flick of a switch. This project proved to be super fun and satisfying as I got to use my knowledge and skills from school to use, taking care to run wires in an organized fashion with proper terminations and labeling. With the gauge in, we can simply flick a switch to know how much water we have, without tearing apart our bedroom.
New water tank gauge!
What the electrical connections look like. Done right the first time!
After hundred of hours of work, we are a leak-free boat, and clean water tanks that we can trust. We are much closer to confidently heading out on our next cruise.
As stated earlier, this is the start of blog season so we will be publishing blog posts more often.
Check back soon as I continue to detail the rest of our boat improvements and the start of the 2019 cruising season!
Thank for reading and we hope to see you soon!
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