Maintenance Log for Syzygy

I designed a mast step based on ones that I glimpsed down in San Carlos on a random mast in the workyard.  I didn’t like the popular commercially available options: the folding steps are too much of a hassle, too complicated, and too much money, and the stirrup kind are too large and bulky (fouling lines) and also too expensive.  All three of us are climbers, so we wanted just a small “L” just large enough for secure purchase, with rounded corners to let lines easily pass by.

I asked a sailing machinist John Ryan for advice and help, and got a ton.  John Ryan graciously improved the design and fabricated them, far more perfectly than we ever expected (from choice of aluminum alloy, to the tumbling to remove all edges, to the clear anodize finish, and even the rivets, drill bit size, and pattern to follow for drilling the holes!), and jonny installed them.

Well they’re all in now and the end result is stellar–everything that we wanted.  It is fast and easy to climb to the top of the mast, fun even.

Over the past month Jonny has completely dismantled, cleaned, and regreased every one of our winches (6 of them).  We still need to figure out what to do about the finish on the drum; the chrome is half off and the resulting rough surface is eating up our halyards on the cabintop.

The old system: original jammer-style rope clutches, a mess of deck fairleads that no longer turned, lines crossed on the deck.

The jammer-style clutches are frustrating because they can’t be released under load, which means that to drop a halyard for example you have to wrap it around the winch put the handle in and crank an inch just to be able to release the clutch.

We tore out all the old deck fairleads and rope clutches and installed all new.  We drilled and cored all the holes at the same time (old and new) and filled them with epoxy plugs (by the book).  The new system is a dream–the boat is far easy and more pleasant to sail, largely because the friction is a fraction of what it was.  It was worth every penny of the ~$1500 we spent on clutches and fairleads.  I have to rank this as the most satisfying modification to our boat so far.

With 9/16″ samson xls.  The old stuff was ready to part, and friction filled.  Why 9/16″?  1/2″ is plenty strong enough; the deciding factor in sheets is the size that you want to pull by hand around the winches, for comfort and efficiency.  We like the heft of the 9/16″.

First time we went out sailing we broke it off when we practiced reefing.  Metal fatigue–failed at a bend.  We through-bolted two hooks to the gooseneck (one each side).  Eventually we may add a system for securing the luff from the cockpit (the leech reef lines are led to the cockpit now) but that is not high-priority.

The old docklines were 4 short lengths of unmanageable dry 3/4″ 3-strand nylon; our new lines are 6 40′ lengths of 5/8″ 3-strand nylon.  I bought 4 blue bumpers to supplement our deflated old ineffectual white ones.

There is way too much friction everywhere in our system.  We can’t do anything by hand, and even winching in the jib is a tedious process that requires multiple rests.  Replacing the lines will help a great deal.

We used 7/16″ Samson XLS for this application. We got a great deal on a spool of 500′, so many of our lines will be identical. I’m unconcerned.

My current ongoing battle is with the electrical system.  It consumes on average 40% of my time every workday.  And I discover new, terrible things about it every single day.

The original setup was two equal sized house banks of 250Ah each; each bank consisted of two 6V Rolls 250Ah batteries in series.  This setup is not the ideal system for a boat that is trying to both maximize the capacity of the house bank and maintain the safety of a reserve supply for starting the engine while simultaneously minimizing the size, weight, volume, and cost of the batteries.  Two equal-sized house banks is a common, simple, effective solution for this.  But it is not the best.  It is better to have a large house bank of high-capacity deep-cycle (thick plate) batteries, and a separate low-capacity high-cranking (thin plate) small starting battery.  This system, though better, is more complicated for two reasons: the charging system must be more advanced in order to treat the two wildly different batteries separately, and the amount and complexity of wiring is increased.

So we combined the two identical house banks into one large house bank, and bought a starting battery.   Jonny built a bombproof battery box for the starting battery next to the existing house bank.  We bought $200 worth of 2/0 cable to run new hot and ground lines to the engine (I put the new cable on the alternator and used the old cable for the starter).

We went out sailing before the starting battery was installed and almost screwed ourselves–turns out that half of our house bank is shot, can’t hold a charge, and only my precautionary measure of disconnecting the terminals from the battery studs allowed us to start the engine at the end of the day.  So now we have a starting battery and a 250Ah house bank.  This should be adequate while we are constantly plugged into shore power at the slip.  Eventually we will buy 4 new 6V Rolls, at a cost of $1200, to completely replace our house bank.

We’re discovering that many things installed through the deck are sans backing plates.  The dodger was just screwed in, which in my opinion is not solid enough for how much force that dodger experiences.  The staysail halyard block was backed with washers, which has rusted into powder because no sealant was used on deck.  The bow pulpit backing plates were aluminum, which had so reacted with the stainless bolts in the salty environment of the anchor locker that they had corroded clear in half.

We made custom 316 stainless plates for each application.  In each case we also cored out the deck, filled the cavity with thickened epoxy, and redrilled for the bolts.  In short, we did it the way we were supposed to in order to insure that water never permeates to rot out our cored deck.

I’m willing to guess we’ll have many more of these to do–probably every time we open up a new ceiling panel.  Much thanks to John Ryan for providing the stainless steel, making our bow pulpit plates for us, and giving us essential advice at every step of the way.

Every last one of them. We spent a fortune on hose (150 ft of Trident #148, 1.5″). Jon and Jonny did this work. The old hoses were cracked, leaking, sucking air, holding decade old bilge water in low spots–you name a form of shittiness and our hoses had it. Now it’s all fresh white high-quality hose that should last forever. The trident #148 is a smooth interior, heavy-duty white vinyl hose with a hard pvc helix for strengthening. It is marketed as a sanitation hose, but is recommended by Trident for bilge applications as well. We had a great deal on it through a friend so it made sense to go with it.

The new hose was 10 times as stiff as the old corrugated stuff, so it was a bear running it. It required expansion of several holes, and all three of us to work it through the tough spots simultaneously. It just barely worked, in fact. Slightly stiffer and we may have had to trade it in for some other type of hose. But now that it’s done I don’t regret it.