Batteries

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Sail Vellamo

Vellamo came with 8 group 31 wet cell batteries. It hasn’t had a battery charger hooked up for 3 years… so naturally all the batteries are dead. I figured instead of writing off all of the batteries, I’d take a $100 gamble and buy a pulse charger that’s supposed to desulfate and resuscitate dead batteries. It’s an Optimate 6 by Tecmate.

I didn’t expect it would bring the batteries back with much capacity, if at all… but it actually works. 2 of the batteries are taking and keeping a decent charge (I estimate I’m getting about 80ah out of each now). 4 of the batteries are too far gone, and it’s working on the other two right now. 

It takes days for this charger to bring back a single battery, so in the mean time I need to have dc power. I turned on the battery charger, and the dc switches, and let the charger run things. The battery banks showed a good charging voltage, but as soon as I turn the charger off, they drop away. During this, I kept my eyes on the batteries, and one started to boil off. I pulled all the cables off it, and part of the case had actually melted. Very scary.  


I’m not sure if it’s the boat wiring that caused this, or and internal issue of the battery. Regardless, that battery is off the boat, and it moved my rewiring project further up. I decided to rewire all the big gauge stuff, because I don’t really know what was going on with it. 

The greatest tool I have bought for electrical work is a label maker! Wires seem obvious when you’re putting them in, but come back in 6 months, and you won’t remember what went where. Or if you need to figure something out in a hurry, or if you need to pay someone to work on things, you’ll be much better off having things labeled. I try to label every wire on both ends, if I have to bundle it somewhere, and everywhere it travels thru a locker or such.

 

Not everything is labeled yet.

  

I installed a Blusea ACR, a Victron 702 battery monitor and fuses on the battery posts. While obviously not completely necessary, these items give me the confidence in my main power system that I can relax and not worry about it. 
I have to give credit to Compass Marine for a lot of the guidance. That website is an incredible resource. 

There are a few things left to do, I’d like to run my alternator directly to the battery bank, along with the battery charger, but I’m happy now with where things are at. 

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Sealing the ports

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Sail Vellamo

A boat sitting neglected for so many years will leak. This boat has 11 ports and 8 hatches, along with the companion way. That’s awesome for getting air to move thru the boat, but it takes maintenance to keep water out. 

  
The ports Sabre put in are actually pretty cheap plastic. I’d have to admit that I’m not impressed with them. They’ve since changed manufacturers, and have much nicer stainless ones, but I can’t afford the $2,000 or so to change them all out to nicer stainless versions. So I pulled all the seals and cleaned them all up. Every single one leaked and was filthy. I had to soak them overnight to clean them. 

One port showed leaking from the frame, rather than just broken/bad seals… so I pulled it out to see what I could find. I opened a can of worms. I will admit my solution is temporary, but I will eventually pull every port out to rebed them all. 

  

 Here you can see the cabin and liner joint. I’m not sure if these voids are ok or not… but it seems like a great place for water to find a secret place to rot something out. I plan on filling these with epoxy eventually, to stop giving any water secret access to hidden places in the case of a leak.  

   

 This photo shows the condition of the deck prior to my purchase and cleaning. 

I don’t have any photos taken during the actual process of putting the ports back in, but I stuffed half a roll of butyl in there, around the frame, and on the exterior beauty frame to keep water out. I’ll do better when I rebed the whole lot of them.  

Posted in Deck, Interior, Repair/refit/upgrade | Leave a comment

Rebedding the standing rigging. 

Posted on May 20, 2015 by Sail Vellamo

The surveyor picked up several deck leaks, which I expected from the boat being left to rot for years. 

One area of special concern are the shrouds. I pulled all of the plates on each of the 6 areas they penetrate the deck, and rebed them all with butyl. Sabre did a really cool thing where they chamfered out the fiberglass at each penetration, and then used plates with a little reversed chamfer to allow for a good bead of sealant there. This lets the rigging move and flex a little while still keeping a bond and stay sealed.  

      
I feel so much better knowing there’s a really good seal around each shroud.  

Posted in Repair/refit/upgrade | 2 Comments

Heat exchanger

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Sail Vellamo

Vellamo has a 46hp Westerbeke engine that is raw water cooled. There’s a heat exchanger that basically acts like a radiator. The original one was in rough shape, so I pulled it out to clean it up. Looks like it hasn’t been done in a while.  

  Broken end cap. I bought 4 replacements… Good to have a couple spares.   It’s not supposed to be filled with that crap.   That is a piece of something I found jammed inside the heat exchanger… not supposed to be there.  The outlet was almost entirely clogged. 

I don’t have any pictures of it apparently, but there’s a zinc anode that was completely gone… thus allowing the rest of the metals to corrode. 

I also don’t have any pictures of it cleaned up… guess I need to be a better blogger. 

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It begins

Posted on May 7, 2015 by Sail Vellamo

After almost a year of “negotiation”, I finally closed on Vellamo. She’s a Sabre 42, and her hull number indicates she the last of her breed. Sabre changed models after this. 

I have renamed the boat to Vellamo, partially to remove the bad karma from its previous owner, partially because I didn’t care for her original name, but largely to pay homage to my Fin heritage. Vellamo is from Fin mythology, she’s the goddess of the water, the seas, and the wind. 

My search for a new-to-me boat did not include Sabres, nor anything as big as 42′. Mostly because I didn’t think I could afford it. As I live aboard, love to actually sail, and hope to explore the world via the sea, I had a specific set of parameters in my search. Not the least of which was wanting a 1/2 project boat. I say 1/2 project because I want enough of a project to “make her mine”, but not so much project that I don’t get to enjoy it along the way. 

I stumbled upon this boat and was immediately nervous. There’s no way a Sabre of this size was for sale for this little and could float. In truth, she hasn’t been put in the water yet, so no idea if she floats. She came equipped with almost everything you could imagine… great sail inventory, generator, dinghy, 2 marine AC’s, refer, radar, plotter, wind generator, etc.

Along with this amazing list came years of neglect. Everything leaks, everything is moldy, and everything needs rebuilt. Good thing I wanted a project boat. 

Now comes the work. I’m intimidated and excited at the same time with how much I need to do. There’s going to be a lot of learning, a lot of improvement, and likely a few mistakes. Obviously, this first part of the blog will be mostly working… but hopefully I can interject some sailing too. 

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