The Captain, Author at S/V Akupara

July 30, 2016

Catch up time

It has been pointed out to me that I have been a bit negligent in updating the blog so I thought I had better write something.

So not sure where I left off but here goes…we have completed all of the interior wooden bits and pieces

We have sanded and stained the ladder as well as wrapped it in old tshirts to protect it. It is also glued and screwed with new screws of course.

We have started on work on the aft head.

We have found a place for the wine glasses, always important

We have found a use for the teak book rack that always seems to be in the way. It turns out it will hold 4 bottles of wine perfectly. I will need to make a bungee cord restrainer so the bottles do not come crashing out but now the wine will be within reach for dinner. Okay, some of the wine. Of course all of these little things need to be removed when we paint and then permanently installed. The wine rack (formerly book rack) will be through bolted. I don’t want my precious to come crashing down with the first little wave we hit.

We have finished all of the trim in the galley. Of course it will all come off for the new countertops but it is done. As well, the cutting board, fridge cover is sanded ready for food safe stain.

We have completed a multitude of little jobs and we have hired Prodigy Marine to fix the bad repair on the bottom of the keel. We have also requested a quote for painting the decks from them which we want to do while it is still warm in BC so that the paint cures properly. Of course this means sanding the decks in the heat as well but hey, we should have completed that back when it was cold out. We will sand the headliner very shortly so we can paint the ceiling inside. Once the headliner is painted, we can put up the last few pieces of trim and once the decks are painted, we can re-install all of the ports. I have also started purchasing wire for the big re-wire job and have installed all of the AC outlets.

So apologies for being behind on the blog, but lots of work has been happening and although it is small things, in the end they amount to big things.

July 13, 2016

The starboard settee

Akupara originally did not have a starboard settee in the main salon and the previous owner added one. We have been going back and forth on this topic for almost 18 months. Do we reinstall it, or do we try to find 2 chairs that will work. Personally I think we need it. It is extra seating for 3 people, it is extra storage for odds and ends or survival suits or sails etc but because it was added afterwards, it totally removes access to the drawers and cupboards behind. Thankfully the PO did not cut and modify the cabinet behind so we still have a choice. I think for now we will leave it and use it. Until we find some nice chairs. But then again, it is another good sea berth as well.

Decisions decisions decisions ?

July 10, 2016

WTF and other words for being ripped off

Charger and inverter — Charger and Inverter

When we purchased Akupara we knew that most if not all of her systems were suspect to say the least and we went ahead with the intent of replacing everything that needed to be replaced. However, if something could be saved and was perfectly fine, we would re-use it of course.

This brings me to the electrical. All of the wiring was 40 years old and although it was in good shape it does not meet current code so we removed it all. The battery charger and the inverter are not that old, however we knew that the charger did not work and I saw immediately that the inverter had never been installed correctly.

I went on the net and did a search in regards to fixing the charger. Turns out that according to everything I read the company that made them will not fix them and you have to buy a new one.

Disclaimer: I did not personally contact the company to verify this.

Great. Well a little more digging and I found an article about this very charger and how frustrated someone else was that it could not be serviced there is a nice warning right on the case advising you of just that.

Bullshit. That’s all I have to say besides WTF.

Open the damn case and change the blown fuses before you throw yours away and spend another boatload of money.

Now I am fully well aware that this may not fix it. And I am fully well aware that there is an underlying problem if your charger blows fuses but just ask yourself this. Is it worth 15 min of your time and $2 worth of fuses to try or is it better to throw it completely away? I will take another 15 minutes to clean up the bit of corrosion that is around the fuse holders before I wire it in.

WTF?

Companies like this should be ashamed.

I should file this under the Why page on this site.

So, I could have possibly wasted 15 minutes of my time and $2 worth of fuses but to be honest, I have had the fuses for years anyway so really it is only my time that I spent.

July 10, 2016

What is missing from this picture?

If you said a pile of wood to be sanded you are correct!!!

Thats right. It’s all done. Okay I have 8 more pieces of trim to bring down today but they are all small.

Holy crap. 18 months just to clean the garbage out, remove all of the wood, sand all of the wood, reinstall all of the wood and gut the electrical! This is how long it takes when you have jobs, family, school and no garage at home. To say that we are thrilled to be complete this part would be an understatement. Don’t get me wrong, we still have some more work with wood like finishing the pantry and adding shelves in the closets etc but no sanding of old wood. Thank heavens.

By the way, the admiral has completed 90% of all of this sanding. I am sure that if you wanted to hire her to do your boat she would be interested for a low low rate of about $1000 per hour 😉

Today the plan is to complete the last 8 pieces, stain everything that we have left. Install as much of it as possible and maybe do a really good cleaning inside to start trying to get rid of all the dust.

July 8, 2016

And the decision is made.

Well we bit the bullet and committed to another 6 months on the hard. We simply are not ready yet and although every part of our being wants to get Akupara in the water where she belongs, and out of the hell hole she is currently sitting in, she just isn’t ready and we simply do not have enough time to get her complete. We set out on this journey with the intent of having her complete before we launched and we are going to stay on that path for another 6 months at least. Our current goal is June 2017. That will be a respectable 2.5 years on the hard for a major refit and renovation. Still a fairly decent timeline for only being able to work on her on the weekends. Keep your fingers crossed that we can hit this goal.

Another 12 months on the hard. Damn. Oh well, she will be even better by then, and we will be able to enjoy her that much more!!

July 5, 2016

Engine Rooms…

Over the last 20 years of looking at boats and researching different makes and models and looking at for sale ads, I have always been shocked by how a lot of people treat their engine rooms. Many times I have seen ads where the introduction says something like “Immaculate condition” and as you continue on to through the pictures there is a dark, greasy, oily, dingy, rusty old piece of machinery crammed into some inaccessible hole that is called the engine room. You wouldn’t send your worst enemy in there as they may never come back out.

One of the things that drew us to the Whitby 42, okay me anyway, was the fact that she has a proper engine room. You can’t stand up in it but there is enough room to move around and you have pretty decent access to the engine as compared to a lot of other sailboats.

Akupara’s engine room currently falls into this category!

It is not up to standards. It isn’t up to anyone’s standards let alone mine.

On Sunday I had to venture in to the pit in order to remove the battery charger and the inverter, funny thing, it says right on them not to install in a hot machinery space, but that is another post, and I got to thinking that this was totally unacceptable and how exactly was I going to be able to make it acceptable. At the same time, I had been cleaning up a little and putting away tools etc. I have now commandeered almost every drawer, cupboard, and cavity with tools. This is also unacceptable! Especially when the admiral finds out!

And then it happened. I came across a bit of inspiration. It is possible to have an impressive engine room! It can be done. And no, grease, oil, grunge or any other detritus needs to be a part of it.

Now this is how an engine room should look!

Well, now I have my goal and my vision! Look at this! Not only is it immaculate but all of the tools are in an organized tool chest, not to mention clean, exactly where you need them. The cabinet becomes a work bench and all of the machinery is enclosed with protective screens so it would be impossible to get your sleeve caught in something if you had to go in there in a rolling sea! This is fantastic!

Okay so to be honest, I have pretty big doubts that Akupara’s engine room will ever look like this, but hey, if you don’t try, it definitely will never happen. If anyone knows where a guy can get one of those tool cabinets, let me know!

July 3, 2016

Progress

Sometimes pictures speak louder than words. We have been making a little progress lately as you can see in the pictures below. We have one more bulkhead to sand (behind the ladder) and then we are down to a few remaining pieces of trim. Of course we still need to finish the galley, but there is no sanding of old wood there.

Next on the list, add several more coats of cetol, sand the cabin top, paint, and call the interior done.

And then move on to the hard stuff.

July 3, 2016

20th Anniversary

Well we celebrated our 20th Wedding Anniversary in June with a trip to Bucerias Mexico. At first it was only going to be the Admiral and I, but then as we were out for dinner about 2 weeks before our departure, talking about our lack of progress recently on Akupara, and the fact that we had been receiving reports of failed surprise inspections, a plan started to develop. See, it turns out that the inspectors had been attempting to make these inspections and each time, when we should have been working on Akupara, they discovered that we actually were not doing exactly that. As a matter of fact, each time they came down, we were not even there. It is one thing to fail an inspection while trying, but it is another to fail for lack of trying.

Our plan had the propensity of backfiring but it was worth the risk. If perhaps there was some remote possibility that they agreed to join us our trip, perhaps, just maybe, we could find a way to get them to forget about our lack of effort and maybe we would get a passing grade on the next inspection!

So with a text message and an ulterior motive, the invite was sent, and within minutes, the acceptance came through!

Holy shit now we are in trouble. Obviously the extra glass of wine at dinner had clouded our judgement, and we had made the decision a bit hastily. We had not considered the fact that we would now have 7 straight days of intense questioning, with no avenue for escape. Damn, what did we do? What do we do? We’re screwed now.

Like all good sailors when confronted with a bad situation, we turned to the only form of solace we know. Rum. And therein we found the answer!

Of course, we just needed to ply them with alcohol for 7 straight days and we might be able to escape the interrogations!

And there it was. The stage was set. And the game was on.

We had a fantastic week with the inspectors. From what we remember anyway! There was lots of food, lots of drink, lots of laughing, lots of evading questions, lots of lame excuses, and lots of more drinking.

We knew we had been successful in our mission when the inspectors turned into advisers and actually started to offer advice and assistance as opposed to bad reports and shakings of the finger.

The 5 hour flight home was rather quiet. I had completely destroyed any hope for my liver ever making a successful recovery, but in the end, it was worth it. We had won. We had evaded the interrogations, and plied the inspectors with drink, and the next time there is a surprise inspection, we may just come through it with a passing grade. 😉

June 21, 2016

Quick Update

I have managed to dissemble and sand the main salon ladder as well as the icebox cutting board. The cutting board was coming completely unglued so I also re-glued the entire thing. It is partially sanded but I ran out of sandpaper 🙁

At Akupara I glued the corkboard down to the aft cabin dressing table and took a bunch of measurements for the vberth and aft cabin mattresses as well as for the new countertops. So progress is happening all be it very slow.

I will post a complete update this weekend and fill you in on the general goings on around here.

May 18, 2016

Are we there yet?

I have been wondering lately how much time we have spent on Akupara and I am a little disappointed in myself for losing track.

I know that the majority of the time that we are there I write a blog post but I also know that some of the posts cover a full weekend while others only account for a few hours.

So in true mathematical fashion, I checked the number of blog posts and there are 121. If I assume a value of 6 hours per post, which would be a good guess as to how long we are typically at Akupara, I end up with 726 hours and considering the admiral is with me 3/4 of the time I will multiply that by 1.75 to arrive at a total of 1270 hours.

Now, it I divide that by 40 for an average work week, I get 31 weeks. Is it possible that in total one man by himself would have spent 31 weeks on this restoration? I doubt it.

I think a more accurate number would be a lot less than that as this math does not factor in all of the lost time for setup and tear down, Getting your head back in the game and all the rest. I honestly think a grand total of 121 days would be pushing it. So approximately 24 weeks.

At $75 dollars an hour which is the typical shop rate, I think we have already saved about $72000 in labour costs by doing it ourselves as opposed to hiring out the work.

That makes me happy!! Now I have an extra $75k to play with?? Ya right….

May 15, 2016May 15, 2016

Good for the sole…

Sometimes you need to divide and conquer. Case in point. I went to Akupara, the Admiral did not. However, with the addition of the new sander, she was not completely off the hook as she may have thought. I spent a few hours sanding and staining the main salon sole and the admiral spent a couple of hours sanding itty bitty pieces at the house. All in all a good day.

It has been a long time, but I actually brought another piece home. The ladder needs some TLC so it will be worked on through the week and hopefully be ready for next weekend.

There is 1 more really big job to complete in the interior. Sanding all of the fiberglass liner enough to take new paint. That one is not going to be fun.

May 15, 2016

It is a sailboat afterall….

We purchased Akupara 16 months ago.
We emptied everything we could out of her belly.
We piled it high in our basement.
The sails were near the bottom.
Yesterday I finally got around to investigating them, now that they are almost accessible, and we pulled them out to take a good look.
There is a brand new set of storm sails from Lee Sails, a jib and a trysail which is nice.

There is an old main that is pretty tired and probably the original main from the boat,

an old headsail that is ok,

but still fairly tired, a mizzen sail which appears to be a mainsail off of some other boat, we will use it until we replace them.

This obviously is not original to the boat, but we will see how it works.

There was also a mystery sail that came from a bag labelled Pearson 39, lapper.

It was an early racing sail by the looks of it, not dacron and yet not full kevlar. It was beaten to hell, dirty, smelly and found a new home in the garbage. It was not worth trying to save it. I could imagine hoisting it only to have it rip apart in the first puff of wind. Easier to pitch it now.
We also bought another Dewalt Random Orbital Sander. The first one is still going strong but we have some serious deck work to get at soon, and 2 will make it a lot quicker than one. As well, the Admiral always tells tall tales about how she is going to bring the sander home and sand during the week so that the pieces are ready for the weekend. Cough, never happened so I beat her at her own game. Now there is a brand new one here ;-).

May 15, 2016May 15, 2016

The Gallery Is Back!!

All it took was 2.5 hours, 3 different plugins, and uploading all of the pictures 3 times.

Damn just like a boat project!!!!

It can be found under Random Photo Gallery. The old link is still there, should be gone soon.

May 8, 2016

From light to dark.

The admiral had sanded the “entertainment unit” several months ago but because of the cooler temperatures and the absence of ongoing work, we had not gotten around to applying the cetol. Yesterday we pulled the piece back out and gave it a light sanding just to touch up a few of the places that had been nicked and to open up the pours again.

Overall I think it went well and looks a hell of a lot better now.

I still need to add the teak backing in behind, but it is nice to have this much completed.

While the admiral was sanding this, I was rebuilding the shelves inside with all new plywood of course. Interesting that I cut the new pieces using the old ones as a template and they still did not fit properly. I seem to recall that when I first removed them, they had not fit all that well either.

It will be nice to some day be able to open up the bar and have it nicely stocked, pour ourselves a drink, go to the freezer and grab some ice, proceed into the cockpit and sit quietly watching the sun go down feeling the boat move gently underneath. Ahhhh, some day.

May 6, 2016May 6, 2016

Are you sitting down?

Those were the words I wish I would have heard before I opened the email quote from La Fabrica.

$9600 for the main salon cushions plus tax. Plus the mattresses.

Wow.

So after I picked my jaw up off the floor and started to really analyze it, it is scary to say but it isn’t all that far fetched. When we met with them last weekend we approached it from the sky is the limit approach with no regard to cost. The best foam, the best upholstery. If you went out and priced 2 custom sofa’s and a chair for your home, what would it come in at? I’ll bet pretty close if not more.

So, we are waiting for the rest of the quote for the mattresses and then we will start to decide how we are going to proceed. We have several options from backing off on quality to reducing the thickness to choosing a cheaper material to buying a sewing machine and doing it myself (yes I have done this before).

In any event, if we went with the full cost option I think we would still come in under our total expected cost for Akupara. I will need to take a close look on the weekend.

Or there is still the option of launching without the cushions in order to meet our new possible deadline but then the answer to the question are you sitting down would be a big no.

May 1, 2016May 1, 2016

1000 small steps

Is it a bad thing when the local marine chandlery gives you a brand new hat? I mean is it something they give to all of their customers or is it something that they only give to the customers who spend a lot of money? I was given a Wolff’s Marine hat yesterday, going to have to put some thought into that one…speaking of which, I updated the costs page recently.

We had a gentleman from http://www.lafabricamarine.com/ down to Akupara yesterday and we took all of the measurements for the vberth mattresses, the main salon cushions and the aft cabin mattresses and also the cockpit cushions since we they were already there. I had brought my laptop and we went through a bunch of pictures I have been saving of interiors we like and also of ones we do not like. It was an interesting process to go through with him. A lot of our decisions were based on the fact that their shop labour rate is $75 per hour. Materials are market price but as soon as you start getting really fancy, the labour costs rise beyond reason of course. So we will wait for the quote which should arrive mid week and make our decisions from there. They have a 3-6 week lead time which will allow us to finish the brightwork inside the main salon so that they can come in and do all of their patterning.

The admiral and one of the crew did a lot of painting inside cupboards and masking of doors as well as giving the foreward head a good cleaning in preparation of starting to put it all back together. I have a bit of glass work to do in order to fill 2 plumbing holes in the platform where the head sits, but I wanted to leave them in case I was able to reuse them. It does not look like it at this point. So they will be filled, faired, and painted.

I also ran into Rob from http://prodigymarine.ca/ and requested that he visit Akupara to provide me with 2 quotes. One to paint the decks and two for a mysterious crack on the bottom of the keel. In reading the previous owners blog, I knew that a repair would need to be made, I am not sure if they ran aground or what happened but the repair that they had paid for needs to be repaired again. I have seen some of Rob’s work and I am confident it will be completed properly this time.

Today I have to help a friend on his boat for a bit, and it is supposed to be a brilliant day, so I think I may just have the time to haul all of the sails out and take a really close look at them to see if they are useable or if they will make good sun shades this afternoon. I do know there is a brand new try sail and storm jib that appear to never have been used but beyond that I have never opened the bags. Should be interesting.

April 30, 2016

21

21. That is the number of months we have not had a boat in the water. We miss the feel of the ocean, the gentle rocking that puts us to sleep at night. The moments of absolute calm and the moments of absolute terror. The fresh air, the sunrises and the sunsets. The closeness to nature. Being in tune with the tides. The list goes on and on.

April 29, 2016

I hate furniture shopping

Typically I hate furniture shopping. It always seems like a chore that requires too much energy to complete. Colours and patterns and materials and quality and size and shape and will it fit through the door and will the neighbours like it and on and on.

But. I have to say I am a little excited for tomorrow. In effect we are going furniture shopping. Or to be more precise, furniture shopping is coming to us. We have arranged for a local company to come down to Akupara tomorrow to take measurements, create patterns, discuss colours, material, style etc for all of the new interior cushions and mattresses.

Yes I know we still have a lot of other projects to complete but as the cushions and mattresses are custom made and will take a while to manufacture and we may have a change of the overall plan, we decided to get a start on it. And if they are ready before we are, they can be brought home and stored until they are needed where they will be safe and sound.

We also plan on breaking this up into several steps in order to spread out the cost as much as possible.

So yes typically I hate furniture shopping but this time it is for Akupara and boat stuff is always fun!!

April 24, 2016

The throne.

Our first sailboat had one of those potable plastic camping toilets.

All of our other sailboats had proper marine heads but they were all compact. It would be an understatement to say they are uncomfortable.

Yesterday I purchased 2 brand new heads that are full size. Ahhh the luxury.

I have set them in place temporarily just to see how they fit until the heads have been remodelled as well.

April 24, 2016April 24, 2016

Akupara moves, but not in a good way…

There is a certain type of person that is attracted to old boats. There is a certain type of person who is attracted to the idea of restoring old boats. There is a certain type of person who dreams of someday cutting the dock lines and sailing off into the sunset. When you take these three types of personalities and you combine them all together, you end up with one of a couple of different sub types of person. You have the doer’s, the dreamers, and the derelicts.

The doers are the ones who no matter what, find an old boat, fix as much as possible and then take off.

The dreamers are the ones who no matter what, find an old boat, continue fixing it for as long as they own the damn thing and never leave.

And finally you have the derelicts who no matter what, find an old boat, start fixing it, figure they can do everything on the cheap, lose interest, lose money, probably end up divorced, move onto their boat, eventually the boat begins to sink and they end up on the hard where they continue to hoard others cast offs. The decks continue to be accumulate detritus with new “treasures” appearing often, the hull grows a great colour of green, the rust settles in, the strawberry plants are in planters around the keel, and there are 101 different projects on the go that will never see completion.

I think every marina in the world must have all of these types of people.

The sad part is that in Akupara’s current marina/workyard, as in most I would suspect, this class distinction is completely evident in the order of the boats placement in the yard. The boats nearest the gate stand the highest likelihood of ever returning to the water, and the boats closest to the back fence, well let’s just say, if they do not burn down, get crushed by another derelict when it finally falls over, or the owner dies onboard one cold winter night, will probably never move again.

Akupara was moved by the yard and was placed at the very back of the work yard. We are not happy. As a matter of fact, we are very insulted. And, to add to that, we are now very worried about Akupara’s safety. In all seriousness, the back of the yard has quite a few undesirable characters to say the least.

Now I will admit that we have been unable to get down to Akupara recently as I have been extremely sick since coming back from Ontario and I will also admit that we have purposely not completed any work on Akupara’s exterior, but to move us back to where the derelicts live is a wee bit insulting. We thought we were making good progress for the most part.

There is one positive thing that has come out of this. And that is a renewed sense of focus to getting Akupara back in the water as soon as possible.

As Captain, I have cancelled all shore leave going forward. The entire crew will be on deck both Saturday’s and Sunday’s until we are able to launch. If you are suffering from a cutlass wound to your right arm, that is fine, I will reduce your workload, as your left arm will still function and there are a lot of one handed jobs that need to be completed.

We need to get serious again and we knew that before discovering that Akupara had been moved. This is just a big enough kick in the ass to drive the point home.

We are now re-evaluating our plans to determine if there is a quicker way back into the water and will probably have work to complete once we launch, but it is better than leaving her where she is as all of our hard work could be stolen, destroyed or otherwise ruined by the locals.