U-bolt installation

September 2014

This was done two seasons ago and I don't think I ever posted pics.

At Cherubini we used to have heavy stainless-steel chainplates fabricated for the C44s. About five years ago a customer wanted these replaced and we sent out for a quote, getting a figure of about $125 for each one. There are ten rigging-attachment points on each side of a Cherubini 44.

In about 1980 Lee and I did some research, really just as an intellectual exercise, and discovered that common type-316 stainless-steel U-bolts, such as are used for transom tie-down points on trailerable boats, are both phenomenally strong and amazingly cheap. Therefore we concluded by revising the engineering specification for new C44 construction that we'd use Attwood 1/2" U-bolts for the main shrouds and 3/8" ones for the mizzens. These are rated at 16,000 and 12,000 lbs breaking load, respectively. So any four of them would serve as harness-attachment points to lift the whole boat. These were bolted through that massive solid-fiberglass flange, for which the C44 is famous (see Ferenc Mate's books) and reinforced with a 2" x 2" stainless-steel angle about six feet long. This has never, not once, ever failed in any C44 or C48, despite boats' having been subjected to incalcuable stresses due to storms and other conditions.

Meanwhile Hunter continued building boats with problematic through-deck chainplates bolted to plywood bulkheads that were treated with, if anything, polyester resin. Now how many of these boats' structures have failed?

I was resolved, from the start, to replace Diana's pokey little above-deck shroud-attachment angles with U-bolts.

Below is a pic from the cabintop comparing Diana's U-bolts (below) and the original factory 'chainplates' (above, on her sistership). The plate on Diana's deck is a G-10 bolster (riser) epoxied to the fiberglass to serve as a base plate for the stanchion base. The vintage Schaefer stanchion base will span the gap, having two bolts through the plate and two through the toerail (one of which replaces one of the existing toerail bolts). In this way water can travel past (under) it, rather than pooling on top of it and working its way (such as with the help of ice) into the boltholes. I am not too keen on having a stanchion located between chainplate-attachment points; but it's only for lifelines and we'll see how it turns out.

There is tape residue about Diana's toerail in this picture. Wherever there was aluminum corrosion, from under the SS plate, against the rail, I scraped away the softened material and coated it in black 5200. There's nothing else for it but to remove the entire toerail; and I'm not ready to go there (kind of like insisting on an unnecessary operation for a child who can very easily live comfortably with the malady's symptoms for many years yet). Note that these U-bolts are very close to the vertical face of the toerail. Attaching the shrouds will be problematic unless done by screwing the bottles onto the toggles already pinned to the U-bolts. But, again, we'll see. 

The first photo shows, from below, the starboard-side aluminum angle with the U-bolt bolted through it. All of these stainless-to-aluminum connections employ nylon flat washers and plenty of 5200. Note that the angle is turned with the vertical face inboard, not outboard against the hull. The locknuts are accessible from below and inside the aluminum angle. This piece of metal is about 1" wide and about 1-1/4" high. Keep in mind that its job is to enforce stiffness of the chainplate structure (against fatiguing flexing) as well as to serve as a backing plate (against tensile loads). Therefore the longer leg of the aluminum is vertical, not flat against the flange.

 

The big orange wire is my 115VAC system. When we had our Raider 33 (hull 5, about 1977) built, my dad paid a guy about $1200 to do the wiring (since he hated wiring) and the result was stiff, balky, marine-grade 12/3 triplex wire that was heavy and impossible to get to yield if it got in your way. My dad (typically curbing the compulsion to curse, to which anyone else would have given in) said, 'I'd been happier with an extension cord thrown through the window.' Recalling this, when it came time to wire Diana for 115VAC, I got a decent 14/3 extension cord from Lowe's and cut it into pieces for Diana's three sockets and battery charger. I mean, really-- it's only 15-amp service anyway. (In the yard, currently, I run everything-- except the heat gun and fan together-- on a similar wire. The power inlet is for 30 amps but the cord has a plug for 15-amp sockets on the dock.) 

The silver wire is the sending circuit for the depth finder. Note the 1974-vintage woven roving (trade name 'Fabmat') of the hull, even this high up. I'm embarrassed by this next pic because apparently I missed a spot when spraying in the adhesive for the hull liner.

This is Diana's port-side U-bolts angle, inside the linen cupboard in the head. Here is where I ran all the wiring-- the reds and yellows in this picture are all heading forward from the head for bow-rail bi-color light, (LED) floodlights in the forepeak, and one cabin light (an original one I rejuvenated) to be mounted on the bulkhead.

The white wire is for LED footlights along the bottoms of cabinetry and bunkfronts. That's three reds and a white. The black and heavier white one (VHF coax) are leading from the mast step towards the panel, aft.

The fourth red is for a secret: with the hull-mounted bow lights removed, Diana will be getting blue-LED 'eyes' in these openings, lending her personality-- but I'm not advertising that and it'll be something to be shown off at the commissioning party!

The Sweet Sister

The sistership, one of the trunk-cabin model I call 'series 2', beside Diana is destined to become as much a celebrity as Diana is (rather like Haylie Duff or Beth Ringwald). I have been calling her 'The Sweet Sister' as, though she is within two weeks of Diana's age, she has been terribly neglected and yet remains in better condition than Diana was when I acquired her and brought here. (For example, the deck and cabintop are all solid. She has not had the distress of having had POs screwing down hardware without proper preparation.)

The current owner has only recently acquiesced to my interest in gaining her title; and over the winter and spring I will be performing a basic restoration of her, topsides, interior, and rig, incorporating several Diana features but otherwise letting her remain stock, as a kind of comparison to my (highly-modified) boat. Of course the sister will be getting U-bolts, my mast step, a 115VAC system, stanchion-base bolsters and the same color scheme as Diana's.

Look for her at the planned Hunter Sail-In in Burlington NJ in early July-- she'll be up for sale (but only to a good home).


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Inner-forestay support

This pertains to the pole-lift/inner staysail idea I've had for a while.  The blog post is here: http://dianaofburlington.blogspot.com/2012/08/internal-pole-lift.html

In fitting an inner forestay, even if it's a detachable one, the foredeck needs to be reinforced.  Though I've filled all the rotten core adequately, the deck alone won't support something that amounts to a chainplate and may be called upon, in a catastrophe, to support the rig as the only surviving headstay.  So I decided upon a "horse", a structure going athwartships at this point.  Here is my original drawing (on the piece of plywood I would use for the crossmember/deck beam).

Below is shown the initial structure, two short little bulkheads in the forepeak, aligned with a couple of sticks.  The stick under the starboard-side shelf is propping up the shelf from its as-built position, as it was both angled downwards inboard and also too low.  The cleat on the forward bulkhead (what used to be the rode locker)  is aligning the two shelves more or less evenly; though the starboard-side one, once leveled, is too high by 1/4".  Such is the nature of budget-minded mass-produced yachts of the 1970s.

Of course these pieces narrowed the space considerably.  I had trouble wedging my out-of-shape self forward of this to disconnect the running-light wiring (along the port side) which kept getting in the way; so I decided to cut out the bulkheads a little.

I am always wary of amorphous shapes like this (such as on the back of the Hyundai Sante Fe SUV, which is downright hideous) so I just used a 4" sanding block to scribe a line parallel to the hull and deck all round.  This picture shows the cutout with the crossmember in place.  The bulkheads are 3/8" and the crossmember is 1/2".  I use mainly good-quality cabinet-grade plywood, well-saturated in epoxy and sealed in epoxy paint (these will be done in Easypoxy).  The void to port is for the wiring, which here I have tucked back out of the way.

 

Pretty cool how the bow-locker door hinges open and fits into the curve of this new bulkhead; huh?  (Should I say I planned it this way?)

(And, yes; this is where the microwave goes.  I've written on this before.)

On most budget-minded production boats, the V-berth shelf is meant mainly to stiffen the hull above the bunktop, as this tends to be the longest and highest section of otherwise-unsupported fiberglass hull on most boats.  It's not there to be useful; and most of the time the fiddles on the shelf are so miniscule as to be only for show.  Determined to have a proper forepeak, I made these high enough (6" inside) to contain plenty of gnarly gear that will accummulate here, like fenders, mooring lines, a mooring pennant, spare tackle, and probably even a couple of sailbags (Diana's main and jib already share a bag that would fit in here as it is).  The fiddles are made of 1/4" plywood, just decent cabinet-grade lauan that I had got to finish some Barbie dollhouses for my kids.  I cut them down forward of the new bulkheads to allow the little door (the only cabinet door with hinges in the whole boat) to open fully.

 

Above is to go a mahogany plank, about 4" wide and 1/2" thick, to serve as a backing plate for the deck winch (which serves the anchor rode), the mooring cleat, and the inner-forestay attachment fitting, as well as the aesthetic purpose of representing the centerline.  Originally I made this for the full length of the space; but I will cut it and fit two pieces to the fore and aft of this crossmember.  It occurs to me to have some really nice bright white LED floodlights under the deck, forward of this, to illumine the whole compartment.

Along the deck, against the hull, kind of like a facia meant to hide the toerail bolts, I will fit a wooden cleat between the new bulkheads and the (new) chain-locker bulkheads, on which can be mounted hooks and straps on which to hang line and sailbags and other stuff.

These pics were taken a few days ago.  As of today (Saturday, 24 May) I have applied a fillet of 5200 along the hull and, using WEST epoxy, 'glassed the bulkheads and crossmember into place.  When this is kicked-off I'll be painting this with semi-gloss Easypoxy.The original faux-teak forward bulkhead will be left as original; though when I replace the door I'll be replacing the tired old brass-plated-steel offset hinges with some in SS or chrome.  My daughter Rachel hand-painted ship's wheels and anchors onto some wooden knobs for my mother's kitchen cabinets recently; there is one left over and I may use it on this door.

Stay tuned for the pics of after I install the rode-locker bulkheads and trim up here.  I've mocked it up a few times and it's going to look really cool.

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It's been a long, cold, lonely winter.

The winter of 2013-2014 has been harsh to New Jersey. Most people of a certain generation are hard-pressed to recall more nasty weather. It hasn't been the frequency of snow, nor the intensity, but something like a combination of the two. We had two major power outages in the region and the township plowed exactly once in six major snowfalls. Plus I was commuting 52 miles each way to work at a marina on the Shore and lost plenty of time and income due to weather. Nearly nothing got done on Diana between early December and about five weeks ago.


Here are some updates, in no particular order.

Foredeck hatch

I finally got the foredeck hatch done (or done enough) and set it on the boat the other day, just before one of the rainfalls we've been having on and off all week.

The poor contraption has been kicking about for about three years. Here it is getting a coat of varnish after I plugged the screw holes in the two sticks on top. (They are aligned over the two ribs which stiffen the frame and the Plexiglas.) I had to take the mahogany down to about 80 grit in some places. Right now it has about three coats of Captain's Varnish on top and about five or six on the sides (on the frame).

 

Here it is (below) after I set it onto the hatch base. The construction of this is exactly as we do on the Cherubini 44-- it is essentially two boxes, a frame and a coaming, made separately. When you have fit the frame box to the deck, you slice off the top portion (in this case 2-1/4") with the table saw, rolling the thing over the blade to cut the four sides. This ensures you have a mated base and hatch. Once the base is installed on the deck, you install the coaming inside it. I set the front of the coaming back about 1/16", using some lauan doorskin plywood, to allow the bottom inside edge of the hatch to clear the coaming as it hinges open. I also slightly tapered the outside faces of the coaming, above the base, to provide clearance. Actually there is a bit more clearance than is necessary or desirable; but it's not bad.

 

As viewed in profile, the hatch base is probably too high. During my usual intellectual communing with my dad, I apologized to him for it. He would have had it a whole inch lower to the deck.

At 24 x 26 inches, this opening is sort of a forward "command center" from which one can lower or raise the anchor, navigate and deploy or stuff headsails. The dimensions also allow for the hatch cover to be unpinned from its hinges and lowered through the opening to stow it below-- a consideration I considered paramount and one which led me to increase the former molded coaming's opening (in essence I sliced out the whole molded coaming entirely).

Today I got to enjoy this in a light drizzle, which was actually pleasant. The translucent white Plexiglas allows majestic light below and even when only partially open allows adequate ventilation.

Electrical panel

I have since added the rest of the trim to this; this is a pic from a few days ago. Today I concentrated on wiring the guts of this panel. As you can see the electrical space is located along the hull shelf above the quarter berth, using the original faux-teak-plywood shelf and just adding a front and top.

 

 The small panel to the left (aft) is the 115VAC panel.  Below the double breaker is the slot for the battery-charger's breaker.

The two main 12VDC panels are for the lights and other circuits.  There is also the bilge-pump switch, voltmeter, fuel-level gauge and a 12VDC outlet.  The voltmeter reports the status of the three batteries (a two-battery house bank and one starting battery) by way of three push-button momentary switches.  There is a switch to turn on or off the fuel gauge as well (switch is not in this pic; it was installed today).

The two rotary switches forward of the double panels are selectors; one is on the running-lights circuit to choose between the masthead tricolor and the pulpit-mounted lights and the other one is on the cabin-lights circuit to choose between the white and red lamps.  In this way no one can activate a white light below when the boat is being navigated at night.  The two rotary switches are aligned with their respective master switches in the panel to their left, as though pointing towards their home circuits when they are in the "normal" positions.

Bookcase

I installed this a while ago but never got a decent pic of it. (This isn't really a decent pic either.) The bookcase is an alcove built into the head (aft end) of the starboard-side settee, under the galley counter. It is scaled for paperbacks of 6 x 9 inches and accommodates things like the Eldridge's, novels and certain tools manuals. There is a blue LED lamp inside, activated by a switch above the galley. The little plywood end (to the left in this pic) opens to a compartment outboard of the books where I can "hide" (stash) CDs and DVDs that are not immediately needed or already loaded into the computer or iPod.

 

Head compartment

Almost all the trim in the head has been installed. As built, the Hunter 25 did not come with a basin in the head; there was just an open bin above the footwell of the berth on each side. Diana's PO took out the floor of the starboard-side one and added a hanging bar so that coats on hangers draped into the footwell of the bunk. I restored a floor here and made two "duffel-bag lockers" for guests' gear. This pic shows the top of those lockers (without their access panels installed) and the trim.

 

To port I installed a proper basin for foot-pump pressure water.  The portion of the countertop aft of it lifts up to the old bin's original floor, providing a space about 4" deep for "lady products" (for my daughters) and other stuff that isn't needed every day.

The old-style black-based Whale faucet is mounted in a 7/8"-ID stainless-steel flat washer serving as a trim ring.  The other washer lying on the countertop was meant for the bottom but I haven't been able to get my (arthritic) fingers up into the access hole underneath to install it.  The aluminum tube of the faucet is a little tatty and I may opt to replace it later; so this is a job that will remain "temporary" "for now".

The lockers outboard of the sink are for towels (aft) and toiletries (forward). Right now they hold everything I took out of the galley lockers in order to finish those now.

In this picture I still owed the fiddle of the lift-up some varnish; but as of this writing it's been done.

The black conduit tubing will get tidied up. But due to the crossmember (on which the junction box for the spar wiring is mounted), the wire loom can't drop straight along the bulkhead; so it is led about an inch away along the cabin side and through a hole in the top of the locker. I did not make a fiddle here; the trim is just a common corner bead. It's too narrow a space to put anything on it anyway.

My mother, the accomplished seamstress, is making the curtains for these windows. They will span the full width of the space so that, when closed, they will be proper drapery that regularizes the oblong shape of the deadlights. The same will go for the main saloon as well.

I still have not connected the fresh-water lines to this sink. The holdup is solving the water-filter question. It's looking like I will install two undersink cannister types, one here and one in the galley. RVers tend to use a "pre-tank" filter, hooked up to the garden hose as they fill the tanks; but this requires that the water in the tanks is presumed good. Most of the bad-tasting water I've encountered has gone bad in the tanks. I'd rather apply the charcoal and coconut-shell filtration at the tap(s), so I'm looking into Purete and Whirlpool compact filters. The one I've got in mind for the head sink is meant for icemakers and its connections are for 1/4" tubing. I may be able to do without the small-ID "quick connectors" and adapt it to 3/8" supply hose for the head sink. The galley can get a 3/8" one adapted to 1/2" supply hose.

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