Hey! it's July!

Sooooo... it's been a long time since I have last updated this blog and a lot has happened since.

It's July! wasn't the boat going to be ready by June? not really...  April and May have been the wettest (rainy) months ever! so no way for the hull to dry.
Now we had a month of heat and things have gone better and we are ready to start the epoxy treatment on the hull.

While in the last 3 months I have spent a lot of time on minor preparation works th main works have been done these last 3 weeks:

-Mast is up
-engine is in
-hull is under treatment

I will now resume the works in the nexts posts

Repainting the deck

This was a long due work to be done. Might be just esthetics but it makes a lot of a difference to me.

It took a lot of time and sweat to sand away the old layers of paint. 

 

 

After the old paint was gone I have painted 2 layers of epoxy primer

 

 

...still drying

After 7 (winter) months out of the water the hull is still not ready for the epoxy treatment.

Humidity inside the fiberglass must be lower than 1% and at the moment there are some points at 3,4%. I hope May (and maybe June) will dry out that 3%.

Various little jobs

As I must wait for the hull to dry and the weather to get better in order to start the epoxy work I am going through all those little things that are to be done even though of secondary importance.

I am trying to help the drying with some plastic cover which I am not sure it will survive long to this season's strong winds but an attempt is worth trying as every morning the humidity keeps the hull wet up until noon when the sun's up and manages to keep it dry only for few hours.

 

I've been cleaning and greasing/oiling the winches...

 

 

Removing the old shaft bearing:

Playing around with electronics... now light and music are ON!

 

All lights are working on the mast. some of them are already LED the others will be replaced as soon as I know how much money (if any!) will be left;

 

There was a leak of rain water from the engine room lid... the sealing was "cooked" by the sun so I removed that and put a layer of epoxy resin before putting new UV resistant sealant:

 

 

 

Been doing a lot of research on the internet to buy new lines:

Working on the engine AD290 Arona

In these rainy days I have planned to do some maintenance to the engine.
Being a 45 years old engine and not knowing his previous owner/history I have doubts on what to do.
Shall I just use it as it is (it starts first go and sounds good) or shall I do some maintenance now that it is on land and easy accessible but risking to break some parts that are out of production?
I went for the second one and it was a good choice.

I am only planning to open the oil pan to check inside the engine and to open the flywheel to check for any signs of leak and also to take a look at the gearbox.

Although the engine oil looked fine once opened it oil pan I have realized the the internal pre-filter was almost 90% covered by sludge. this meaning that I would have had some serious problems not to far away form now if I didn't check.
This pre-filter didn't come off easily (as surprisingly all other bolts of the oil pan did) so I have decided to use a little basin filled with diesel so to let it work overnight and hopefully dissolve the sludge stuck on the inside of the filter.
Also the pan it self needs some welding as from the inside you can clearly see that there is a crack probably due to an incautious landing of the engine,

After welding the crack on the oil pan I have scraped away the old paint, sprayed 2 layers of anti rust primer and then varnished.

The oil pan needed a new gasket. As I did this before on another engine I've used a layer of cork. This time I will try to use only cork because I am afraid some sikaflex would spill inside the engine when tightening the pan to the engine.

 


Next step was to checkout the flywheel.
Once opened the front cover I have had a really bad impression of the status of the flywheel (all rusted) probably due to lack of attention from who did this job before... there was no seal on the cover/lid so seawater and generally salt could easily penetrate inside and do its work.
Luckily it looked much worst than it really was. I have cleaned the wheel with some wd40, then some diesel and manual sanding. looks perfect.
I have also checked the starter engine gear.  general cleaning and some grease.

 

Rudder and propeller

In order to do a better job on the hull I had to remove both the entire rudder and the propeller.

The propeller oring will also be changed and the rudder needs some maintenance (apparently is a common thing on these conyplex models).