Blog of S/V Salty Beach

 Another issue last season was when the boat nearly broke free of the mooring after the mooring pennant chafed against the bow chocks. The bow chocks were strangely not even stainless, but chrome-plated and had begun to get pitted and a bit rough. I realized this was the root of the issue. After further thought, I opted to get rid of both chocks and the center bow cleat to be replaced with two stainless steel cleats mounted on the gunwales near the bow where the chocks had been. I discovered a USCG-compliant all-round white navigation light that had 1/10th the power consumption of even the LED one I installed last year, so I upgraded that. I replaced the red/green bow navigation light with a lower power one too. Last season it was a challenge to keep my little outboard in the water without having everyone near the stern, so I decided to lower the motor mount as well. Being a rectangular mount, I simply moved the upper bolts to the lower holes in the transom, filled the upper hole...

 Besides the keel binding due to rust, I discovered a few other issues last season. Perhaps the most concerning was the leaking keel pivot bolt that could have sunk the boat! I believe there were a couple factors that contributed to this. First, the friction between the cast-iron keel and the stainless-steel pivot bolt was immense, despite having slathered the bolt in Lanocote before launching. This caused the bolt to rotate in the keel trunk periodically when raising or lowering the keel, thereby breaking the adhesion of the Life-Seal I added inside the cabin between the sides of the keel trunk and the bolt/washer combo. Second, I used flat neoprene sealing washers with flat fender washers. I was unable to find stainless-steel cone washers at the time. This likely resulted in the neoprene washers being squeezed outward from the bolt under compression, leading to leaks. To remedy this, I first added the previously described bronze pivot bushing, reducing friction, still using Lanoc...

 It has been much too long since I posted, but I have been busy. First off, my fiancee and I got married over the winter! While that occupied much of my time, I did start on the keel work some weeks back also. I used a furniture dolly and rolling car jack to drag the keel over near my basement for easier access to my tools and compressor. Then came the hard part, grinding and chipping the rust off. I had gotten an estimate of $700 for sandblasting, and that was if I dropped it off and picked it up, but it was just not in the budget. I opted to try my angle grinder with various wheels: metal grinding disc, flap wheel, stripping disc. All worked to varying degrees, but I realized some of the rust was in layers, so I tried a hammer and cold-chisel. It worked well! Then I remembered I had a compressor and pneumatic chisel. Even better! Still, it took at least six hours of exhausting, messy work to get the keel down to solid cast iron. I finished off with a wire wheel on the angle grind...