Jim's blog

I went out to Dovekie last night to check the mooring lines and bilge water after the few days of stormy wind and rain we have had, and was pleasantly surprised.

There was almost no water in the forward area of the bilge and only a litre in the aft section. That is excellent given the weather we have had. There are still a couple of leaks around the hatches that I haven't got to yet but they will be taken care of by the glassing and painting I will do. The rot areas in the cockpit are basically watertight now.

The mooring lines were OK but I have to put plastic tube around one of the aft ones that is rubbing on the toe-rail. It was going through a fairlead but the angle of it with the wind we have been having (more westerly than usual) has resulted in some chafing. It now runs straight out over the toe-rail but still rubs a little.

Unfortunately I found that my house battery was a bit run down due to my leaving the main switch turned on at the weekend and the depth sounder running it down. There must be something else as I would have thought that the depth sounder by itself wouldn't run it own that fast. Anyway the new motor has a 114A charging capability so a brief run should top it up well. Hopefully that will be on Saturday when the forecast is very good for some time under sail. The 50+ knot winds of the last few days were not encouraging at all.

So I finally got around to cutting out the rot on the forward port corner of the cockpit. Like the corner on the other side the rot extended into the ply of the bulkhead. I removed the Formica lining on the inside and found several interesting things. There was a cut-out in the bulkhead for an instrument of some kind that had never been repaired. Just covered over with the teak panelling on the outside and by the formica on the inside. I could see straight out through the gaps between the panelling so water has been running down against the ply for a long time.

There was another hole about 3 inches in diameter that had been patched - probably a small compass from way back.

I also cut a small square out around where the corner of the seat top outside aligned with. I found that there was some rot inside the ply, but it wasn't too bad. I have soaked it in preservative and penetrating epoxy so hopefully that will, together with stopping the water getting in, keep it from getting any worse until some time in the future when someone will pull it all apart and rebuild it properly.

I have bought two pieces of kwila to make new handrails from. Its a quarter the price of teak and I'll see how it goes. I am making them really beefy compared with the old ones, and will bolt them through the cabin roof beams instead of just screwing them in. Cutting out the first two was easy with a good hole saw. I bought a new Bosch 60mm hole-saw and it cut through the 31mm thick kwila very cleanly, if somewhat slowly to stop my light-weight drill-press from stalling. Ran the router around the edges and they are very cool looking. I still need to figure out the right angle to suit the cabin roof and plane the bottom to suit, round off the ends, drill mounting holes and give a good all-over sand to smooth out the few rough parts.

I have also turned down the heads of some screws a size up and a little longer than the originals to refix the sail track to the mast. That seems to have worked well.

Looking at LED nav lights now, a bosun's chair to get up the mast to fix in place, and thinking about what else I need before venturing across Cook Strait.

Dovekie is not quite the original H28 design but pretty close apart from the raised coach roof and a few areas the have been glassed.

The issues I have with it are not with the riveted kauri hull and frames which (apart from a couple of broken frames) appear to be in good nick and pretty much water tight. What are problems is where the cockpit floor and seat were built from ply and some epoxy and glass, and where the compass was fitted through the plywood cockpit bulkhead.

I have rot in three of the four corners where a steel nail was driven down through the seat frames into plywood (2x2 nailed into 1/2 in ply - who would do that???) Water has got in around the nails, run down into the ply and spread sideways. In each case the rot is in only one horizontal ply. The vertical ones appear to be wet near the nail but solid still. The wood appears to be different in each ply but the glue seems to have prevented the rot going across between plies in most areas apart from close to the nail. One nail went through into an original deck beam which is the only structural part that I have found with rot.

The cockpit floor has been glassed but it hasn't been taken up the sides at all - just a filler coving which has now cracked away from the vertical sides and getting a little wet. I am in the process of fixing the rot and am cutting out the filler (thanks to my Bosch multitool) and will redo with a glass layer a few inches up each side.

The compass was fitted to the cockpit bulkhead and not sealed properly. The ply was quite wet and had been repaired before but the rot I found was due to the cockpit seat problem above.

Interestingly the side decks are planked and caulked and also appear sound in the areas I have stripped of paint so far. There is a lot to be said for the old methods.

Jeezzz - a bit of a rant - I needed to get that off my chest - its been frustrating dealing with a number of individual small problems that all could have been avoided, are all individually not difficult to repair but which add up to quite a bit of work.