Listening to WXPN 88.5's '885 best and 88 worst songs ever' countdown

24-25 October 2014

I delayed all work to prepare for this radio event, of which the 'worst songs' part was simply hysterical.  'XPN's program director Dan Reed deserves much credit, firstly for being an excellent DJ, providing information, context, and witty banter (as well as interviews with artistes and persona guests), and secondly for actually enduring all seven hours of the worst songs ever.

One thing I had to do was to move the speakers out to the cockpit to continue work on the hull.  On our Raider 33 Antigone we had cockpit speakers which my brother Steve made for his old Fiat, which had come with none.  They were nifty little white-overlay-plywood boxes with aluminum grilles and Sparkomatic 6x9s in them.  I came up with the idea (which I don't remember if we actually did) of mounting a Herreshoff-style cleat on the top of each one, to serve as a handle and a place to wrap the cord.  We just took these out and stood them on the cockpit seats whenever we wanted them.

For Diana I'm doing the same thing, likely with these nice little speakers which come from a 1980s Sony component portable stereo (which is currently in the boat).  I have already run the speaker cables back to the lazarrette but have yet to decide if I want to install connection points in the side of the little Dorade box or just to leave them below.  I hate how I screwed this little box to its mounting cleats; I should have used the cleat-on-cleat method that CY's Ziggy uses all the time as it hides the fasteners (provided there is interior access).  I will most probably plug these holes and add the cleats inside to do it that way... after the cover goes on and I remove the box for varnishing inside.

The Sea Dog low-profile vents are meant for the Dorade boxes on the cabintop.  The ones back here should be the taller traditional kind but as yet I have only ordered the low ones from Defender.

The one shown installed (and not totally pushed-in) is the one that vents through the Dorade box  and through a hose to the foot of the quarter berth.  It works great.  The other one leads directly through a hose to the bilge, where I have yet to fit a bilge blower for the gasoline vapors.  It is plugged here because, as Diana is not now swinging to weather on a mooring, I can't keep the cowl trimmed as an exhaust vent.

The patched hole in the cockpit was where I installed the Whale manual bilge pump, one of the first things I did when I got this boat as the cabin windows leaked like a sieve.  I decided to relocate it to the inside of the coaming, both because it's easier to operate while steering and because it'll free up access through this cockpit-seat locker.

WXPN is at xpn.org

The 'XPN radio event was really a lot of fun and I helped clog up Twitter with many comments.  As a result of the event's effect on listeners, '@885countdown' was the number-4 most-Tweeted event in the US on 24 October, easily number-1 in the Philadelphia region, and the station's own website crashed due to too much traffic.  Truly an event for the ages!

BTW: the number-one favorite song, as it had been at the last countdown in 2004, was Springsteen's 'Thunder Road'.  The worst one, on this, the first-ever worst-songs countdown, was Starship's 'We Built This City' (I am not making this up!).  And here I had thought 'Billy, Don't Be A Hero' was a shoo-in.

- JC2

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Replacement cockpit drains - Take Two

18-19 July 2014

I don't think I mentioned this before, so....

The small brass fittings I installed about two seasons ago (here) were really too small.  After making a big deal out of putting them in, I decided to replace them with the very idea I have been advising other H25 owners to do for many years.

The original H25 drains were RC Marelon through-hulls straight out the back wall of the cockpit-- necessitating that water either climb up the 5/8" threshold to flow out or else stay in the cockpit pan.  I installed the little brass drains in the sole itself, fitted them with 90-degree elbows and though them good enough.  After consulting with my friend Roland (SV Moonshine) about his solo Atlantic crossing, I decided too big can never be big enough.

The fix I have been long suggesting for this entails the fitting of a rigid fiberglass tube straight out the very bottom corner of the cockpit pan through the transom.  In what has to be the most productive two two-hour work sessions I have ever had on this boat (even in the face of predicted rain), I drilled the holes, bedded these into place, removed the old ones and filled and faired the old holes.  I did one one day and one the next, after a full day of work each time.  It impressed even myself!

 

Here's the view from the cockpit.  The tubes are 1" inside, 1-1/4" outside diameter, pressed fiberglass, ordered from McMaster-Carr.  It was about $21 for one 60-inch piece, which, cut in half, fit perfectly for this application.  I deliberately made the cut on an angle, twisting each tube in its hole in order to fill the corner (shorter side inboard).  Bedded in 5200 and faired with WEST epoxy and Microlight, they look like they were molded there.

 

At the transom I allowed the excess length to just stick out and, when the epoxy had dried, cut them shorter with a hacksaw and used the orbital sander to smooth them over.  This picture doesn't show it so well, but the factory's installation wasn't symmetrical-- one old hole (filled as of this picture) will appear closer to the new tube than the other side.  I just eyeballed the site from above, applied a ruler and made them lead  out parallel to the centerline, straight aft from the corners of the cockpit pan.

The green tape covers the HIN.  I got some epoxy into it a while ago and decided to preclude any more messing it up.

The other two through-hulls are the Marelon ones I installed for the bilge pumps.

 

Looking under the cockpit the downward angle and parallel leads are seen clearly.  The duct tape is part of one of my 'mooyock' solutions for filling holes.  When the old through-hulls were taken out (with hammer and chisel), I taped over the holes in the inside and made up 'communion wafers' of fiberglass to stuff into the voids from the outside with epoxy.  Why try to fill a hole that's overhead or angled so that the epoxy will only dribble out?

This isn't a great view of it, but below the tubes is a little floor I installed aft of the low bulkhead in the foreground.  This low bulkhead, a little higher than the waterline, will contain water from any rudder-post leaks in the event of a rudder strike (which should be high on the list of any sailor's worst nightmares).  A small hole, here seen stained in epoxy, is fitted with a brass tube which will accommodate one of those little rubber transom-drain plugs.  It's not the most secure arrangement; but it's much better than having nothing at all in the event of this happening, for which Stephen Dashew says your best scenario is to crack the rudder blade.  Any other possibility involves catastrophic damage to the hull-- and, with your average production spade-rudder boat, probably the end of your voyage.

 

This pic, with the fuel tank in place, shows the upper end of the cockpit-drain tube.  With the little brass things in place, there had to be an elbow over the back edge of the tank that seriously complicated attaching fuel hoses and intruded on space for removing the tank.  Now this is practically structural-- no worries for stuff in the lazzarette weighting down the drain hoses till they fail or pop off.

(The dark spot on the tank is an old epoxy spill, not a leak or any damage.  This tank has been kicking about this boat for very long, getting dusty and spilled-upon, and only now (September) is is finally in its place for good.  Of course I've kept all the openings well taped-up!)

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Hunkered down

15 October 2014

Bill Robinson, editor of Yachting for many years, wrote a terrific book in about 1980 about cruising, using his own experiences including those of sailing the NJ Shore.  One sage observation he made was that the NJ Shore suffers one 'major weather event' every autumn, like between mid-September and early November.  Superstorm Sandy was our dose for 2012.  This week we were promised another, high winds and torrential rain.  Naturally I did not expect it to rise to any proportion of what Sandy was like; but being prudent I took some precautions, moved, stowed or weighted down everything loose about the yard, snugged up the covers and tightened the stands.

In this pic taken from the scaffolding around Jerry's C44 Second Alarm, Diana (with all her attendant gear)  is hunkered down for another dose of ugly, land-based weather.  But she survived Sandy just fine (despite some intense worrying on my part) and this mess, really just an extended squall, proved inconsequential.

The tarp on top is really just because the deck, cabin and cockpit are not yet painted and the holes for the sailing instruments in the back of the cabin are still covered only with plastic sheeting (and plastic bags) taped over them.

One cool thing about flush-decked and semi-flush-decked boats is that they present very little windage, even when hauled out, to aggressive weather.  Diana's 'blister-canopy' configuration is even better in such conditions than is the modest trunk cabin of her sistership (which is within 2 weeks of Diana's age).

The cabin windows and new foredeck hatch do not leak.

The new cockpit drains work really well-- if the boat were not slightly tilted to port, there'd be no water at all in the cockpit after a blow like this.

I leave the old running-light holes in the bow uncovered, for light and air; the amount of rainwater they let in, which runs straight down to the bilge, is insignificant.

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Cockpit drains

Hunter, in their infinite wisdom (read that: attempts to save money) devised a simple way to install cockpit drains in the back of the H25 cockpit.  I really cannot fault this too much because they spared the cockpit sole itself from the potential for damage; and indeed my 38-year-old balsa-cored cockpit floor is one of the soundest parts of the boat.  But by installing the through-hulls through the vertical after bulkhead of the cockpit they kept much of the water from running out.  You always had to sponge out the last 1/2" or so while people stood towards the rear of the boat to get it all to run down to the drains.

This was something I meant to remedy from the start.  I found some nylon drains by Starboard East (that's the brand name) having a flattened side, meant to go in a vertical bulkhead down low to the floor; but they are nylon and subject to UV-exposure damage and stems' cracking and this is not a place one wants to risk that.  After searching high and low I found what the plumbing guy called 'bar-sink drains', at 1 inch diameter (though I have 'bar-sink drains' in the head and galley sinks and they are 'standard' at 2 inches).  They are rugged, heavy brass, but not stainless-steel and will go green unless I paint them.

Here is the mess I started with.  In this photo the starboard drain has already been chopped out.  I left the port side one for later as the boat on its stands is sort of tilting to that side and rainwater will have to go somewhere.  I had once removed the old Marelon (nee RC Marine) through-hulls and rebedded them with 5200 to stop leaks when I first got the boat.  Now I just hacked them out with a chisel.

The flange itself, now separated from the stem, is standing next to the hole.

All the tools used are in the picture!

The next step was to fill the hole.  Here are shown the 'communion wafers' of fiberglass to be used for the fill.  I used about six of these for each hole. These are of 1708 biaxial, because it was what was available.  For a small job like this really any 'glass will do.  I would not use cloth alone; but if you had at least most of it done in plain mat it would be fine.




The smaller ones are for the other holes in the cockpit getting filled at the same time. (Yes; I used the one with the bite out of it.  It doesn't matter.)



My simple 'mooyock' system for this is to apply duct tape to the back or harder-to-get side (the outside of the hull, for example) and to fill from the front or upper side.  Why make life hard on yourself?


This photo shows the power of 5200-- the gash to the left of the hole itself is from the through-hull's parting from the 'glass and its 5200 taking some 'glass with it.

Here is a close-up of the port-side hole before filling.  Apparently I missed a little with the duct tape (doing it by feel with arm down port-side seat locker).

Here is the port-side hole filled.  This-- like all the rest of these holes about the cockpit-- will get sanded and faired with Microlight before Epoxy Primekote and paint.

There is nothing wrong with overfilling it, so long as it's with 'glass.  A patch like this is easy to sand flush and it's reassuring knowing you've got solid material completely filling the hole.

As ever proper preparation is key.  Scrub the back and front sides with sandpaper and clean thoroughly with acetone before mixing up your resin & hardener.


The holes in the bulkhead above were from something the PO or the factory had here.  I really don't remember.  The smaller one is the lower drain hole of the port-side seat locker's drain, which I eliminated when I made the replacement drain trough (which now only uses the upper hole).

In this photo the right side (to the left) is already done (more or less) and the left side is to be filled.  Some days passed between these stages, to allow for a weather window which would let the port one cure before rain might leak through the cover.

You can see how Hunter's money-saving scheme for these did not include ensuring that they were mounted symmetrically.

The ugly patched place to port is from where the PO had installed his bilge pump's Auto-Off-Manual switch-- right into the bulkhead, without sealant, and without cognizance of what happens when these electrical things get wet.  In this photo it's been filled with 'glass and begun to be faired with Microlight.

The big round hole to starboard is for the Whale manual bilge pump.

 
Here are the drains newly installed.

These nifty little fittings came with very good flanged nuts for the other side.  (I did not use the rubber gaskets.)  The surface-mount flanges are not too thick-- certainly much thinner than the flanges of normal nylon or Marelon through-hulls would be.  When I drilled out these holes I was relieved to find that they would miss all the balsa, which starts about an inch or two forward of the holes, and would go through solid 'glass.  It did occur to me that I might rout out the 'glass to set the flanges flush; but what tool would I use for that in this tight corner and how would I get them smooth and level enough?  I have lately decided I will mask these off and fill the space behind them and around to the outboard edges with Microlight, so as to keep water from pooling against the edges of the flanges.  Though I set these in with 5200 I did not get as much 'ooze-out' as I would have liked.  Most of it is between the stem and the hole I drilled for each one, where it should be.


My yardmate Roland made a very good point that these 1-inch drains are probably too small for offshore work.  I don't expect to do much sailing far offshore in this boat; and boats with cockpit drains of this size or worse have done successful passages.  But his point is well taken; and once I have fewer tasks in front of me I may look to replacing or adding to these with larger ones.  My choice of size for these was governed by only the existing transom fittings; but they could be changed too.

After discussing with him I did decide I will not install check-valves in these lines.  They are almost straight runs and are subject to pooping from heavy water directly aft, which would lead to not only water shooting into the cockpit but the water already in the cockpit not going out.  But the check-valves would further restrict water flow.  The H25 is pretty buoyant aft and would probably rise away from heavy swells; but who is to say what happens in such conditions?  People with experiences about cockpit flooding at sea are encouraged to comment!


I don't have a photo of the underside, but the Marelon elbows I meant for the bilge-pump outlets screwed onto these brass fittings perfectly (with plenty of Teflon thread-seal tape) and I was able to hook them up using the old hoses.  I did, however, wait for the 5200 to fully cure (about a week).  Shields no.148 hose can be a monster to fight on and off; and experience has shown it is strong enough to work loose the 5200 on recently-bedded fittings and through-hulls.  So-- proceed gently, with patience.

I reused one of my old hoses for this (just temporarily) but found the other was too short.  I hacked off a piece from the (as-yet) unused bilge-pump lines, not measuring very well as I was doing all this from lying inside the starboard-side locker, and got it almost too short again.  For now one clamp is sufficient; but these will all be done properly before the boat goes in.


The very dusty state of this cockpit is due to its being prepared for Epoxy Primekote and paint.  The nonskid of the sole did come off with scraping from a chisel; but it is adhered really well and since I don't need to bed down any more hardware to the sole I may only rough it up enough to take the Primekote and paint over it.  The same goes for the deck/cabintop.

* * *

The bridge deck

  One of the periennial drawbacks of the 1972-1978 series of the H25 is the lack of a mainsail sheet traveler.  Some clever people have fabricated one on brackets across the aft end of the cockpit.  This is not a bad idea and the sheetline leads are not too bad.  Putting one on the cabin roof, as many do with other boats, would place the mainsheet so far forward as to be utterly useless (except as a vang).  Moving the sheeting point forward on a boom is never good anyway-- mid-boom sheeting is a significant loss of mechanical advantage as well as a loss of sail trim.

  Those with mostly-original H25s will notice that the early H25’s boom is about a foot longer than it has to be.  The foot of the mainsail is designed to be at about 8’8”.  The boom which should be about 9 ft is more like 10' on some boats.  This was to extend the sheeting point, at the after end of the boom, far enough aft to connect to a single block at the back of the cockpit coaming.  This was the Cherubini-and-Seidelmann solution that enabled them to keep that lovely little egg-shaped cockpit surround.

  Part and parcel with the lack of a traveler is the lack of a bridge deck.  No one venturing offshore in any sized boat should have a hatch opening down into the cockpit pan.  Some people have said that keeping one or two hatch boards in is enough to keep most of the big stuff out; but remember that wooden boards float! --and in anything big enough to poop the whole cockpit you run the risk of one or more of the boards floating off and out of your life for ever.  Of course you could argue that in weather like that you’d have the whole hatch closed-up and when it’s nicer out you could have the whole thing open for air and convenience. But we singlehanders don’t like to leave any more than necessary in a state of needing attention as the weather escalates.

  The construction of a bridge deck on the H25 is an obvious solution to this two-pronged problem.  It provides a place to mount the traveler that is not too far forward of the end of the boom and effectively blocks the water’s access to the lower third or even 40 percent of the open hatchway’s space.  Its only drawback is having to step over it like one has to on just about every other seagoing yacht anyway.

  My first design for this involved a really cool folded-aluminum bracket that spanned the after end of the proposed bridge deck with legs down the sides of the cockpit pan to take the shear load of the traveler.  A gusset plate welded across the after side made it stiff and gave a place to mount the compass and engine-start switch.  I cut a plywood template and fitted it into the three-dimensional wedged space till I could screw it to the cockpit with sheet-metal screws and get good measurements.  (Look on the picture at the hole in the side of the cockpit pan, under the after edge of the deck-- this is where the mock-up's leg was screwed.)

  But no one would weld my bracket cheaply enough.  I wanted it for 60 bucks.  (‘It’s just a bent piece of metal!’)  The best quote I had was over $200.  That was out.

  Then I bought some aluminum angle from McMaster-Carr and started to fabricate a bracket by myself, mainly bolting it together.  The more pieces I put together (and paid for) the less I seemed to need each one.  Then my cousin Lee said, ‘Why don’t you just ‘glass it?’

  So I did.

  Mind that it was VERY hard to fit this thing.  The cockpit seats slope upwards as they go aft and the cockpit sides slope outwards as they go forward and inwards as they go down. By the time I’d got it screwed into the only place it could go and got one layer of ‘glass and epoxy on it, I found out one corner was too low.  So I built it up with more ‘glass and ground it fair again, and it’s thicker in one corner than elsewhere.  (I won’t tell you which corner.  You'll never be able to tell when it's done.)

  The piece of teak came from the old CBC shop which, in the process of being taken-over a long time ago, built big bulky trawler yachts about as cheaply as they could be made.  One of the ‘savings’ was from buying very bendy (and fragile) ready-made panels of teak decking. The 2-inch planks, about 5/16” thick (same as we made our teak decks on C44s) are already bonded together with Thiakol, the same stuff production teak decks used to use before we at CBC (and many others) discovered black 5200.  This piece was a scrap from the trash.  I cut it in its appropriate trapezoid and bent it over the very mild, but correct, crown from seat to seat.

  Once I was happy with the fit I figured out a very annoying but structurally-sound way to screw it in place from the bottom and test-installed it.  Owing to the thickness issues with the plywood substrata it wasn’t exactly flush all the way around.  I solved this by putting masking tape over the screw holes on the bottom, running a fat bead of 5200 round the perimeter, and then setting it down with clamps.  Relying on the 5200 ‘dam’ around the edges I drilled a few little holes in the top and flooded the uneven space between the teak and the plywood with WEST epoxy, the same as I do to repair damaged deck core inside ‘glass decks.  Then I torqued up the clamps and gave it a few days.

  The result is so strong that it probably doesn’t need the metal traveler support, but I’m putting it underneath anyway, just to spare my little artistic creation from literally flying off the handle in some nasty jibe some day.  This bridge deck allows for the mounting of the traveler about 9-1/2” aft of the cabin back, which is about 9-12 inches in from the back end of the sail.  That’s good enough for only one boom bail and fiddle blocks.  The Schaefer traveler setup has double blocks with cam cleats at each end, better than the clunky setup we had on our Raider 33, Antigone, with cam cleats mounted vertically above the traveler-control blocks so that it could only be adjusted from above, not from abaft.

  The Schaefer 1-1/8" track has holes 4” on center.  If I center one hole, one on each side goes into the gap between the teak and the ‘glass.  I have to settle on two in the center, each 2” from the centerline.  That just means I have to be particular about where I cut the track.   It takes a 60” piece, which is ideal (part 42-75).

  Along the gaps beside the teak deck will be lines of black 5200 which will resemble the Thiakol.  Amazingly-- for clearly there was some divine intervention-- I got the slivers of the outer planks more or less even and the central plank on center.  How that happened I don’t know, so don't thank me.

  The waterstains are from a leak in the aging cover.  They will sand out and I am not concerned at this point.  Eventually this teak will go silver in the tropical sun-- which is what it's supposed to do.

   So now I may have the only original-series Hunter 25 with a teak deck (ha!).

   I had intended to put the compass on a ‘dashboard’ underneath this but my neck is bad enough from using a computer already and you never want to take your eyes too far from the way ahead to steer compass courses.  I have two compasses, one from this boat and one from a wreck, and I will mount one on each side in the back of the cabin.  The current hole on the port side won’t used as it is balanced with two holes for wind gauges to starboard; so the starboard compass will be mounted below them, rather low on the bulkhead, and the other one in the corresponding place to port.

  The wood behind the hole is the epoxied back of the teak plywood laminated to the inside of the cabin top.

  The photo shows the top of the patch I made over the old deep hatch opening.  Having planned this bridge deck from the start I left the teak plywood on the inside all the way up (it was once much higher than this) and so was able to lay up half a dozen layers of mat and cloth with WEST epoxy (much of which dribbled into the cockpit pan-- see the brownish staining-- and created an increased fillet along the forward edge).  It isn’t a perfectly-smooth layup because it doesn’t have to be; only the beer cooler and cockpit bucket ever have to see it under there (though it will get more or less faired just the same before Perfection).  Above the teak it matters because a mahogany block with a white-ash threshhold gets fitted to it; and after that I can establish and install the hatch-slider boards.

  Since this picture I have cut out the bottom and sides of this hole and dry-fitted the ash threshold and the mahogany under it.  At finished height it's only about 2-1/4" above the deck now.

  The black Plexiglass deadlight admits light to the quarter berth.  As of this photo it's only dry-fitted.

  The thing along the side that looks like teak Formica is the original cabin table which isn’t going to be reused because:

  1. it’s teak (or pretending to be);

  2. it does not fit to the bulkhead and new compression post as I would like it to;

  3. it weighs about 850 pounds.
  I just never seem to throw out any part until I am absolutely sure I won’t ever need it again. I saved the original weatherbeaten hatch boards too and just recently figured out how I can reuse them on this new opening.

  The can of Bio Blast came from a WM closeout.  I like it but it doesn’t work as well as StripEaze does.  I’d much rather be bio-friendly but there is such a thing as getting the job done; and this job desperately needs to be done.

  Down below can be seen the grab-post and the top of the bulkhead I added between the saloon berth and the quarter berth.  Above the quarter berth is the cabinet for the VHF and the wallets-and-sunglasses compartment (here stuffed with clean shop towels).

  There is another picture somewhere of the head compartment forward.

  As I have mentioned before, all the of the trim wood on this boat, beyond the ash threshold, the teak plywood of the cabin bulkhead, and this bit of real teak decking, is mahogany.  None of this teak will be finished with anything; but the ash will be saturated (as well as ash can ever be) with WEST epoxy and given about 19 coats of Captain’s Varnish for good measure. Much of the mahogany came from remodelling old C44s.  Also I consider it a much prettier wood; and of course whatever I got from old C44s is REAL Honduras, not what you get now, rosier and deeper and more beautiful.  And I am amused to think it’s almost as old as Diana is; so that’s fitting

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