Part 2 - Columbia 29 refit, in the Rocky Mountains

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by 406Columbia

Exactly, keeping the anchor off the deck frees up so much more room. Anyway as we come up with some thoughts I will post here for some input.

need one big enough for my 45 # CQR I already plan on hanging my fortress on the pulpit

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by newhaul

need one big enough for my 45 # CQR I already plan on hanging my fortress on the pulpit

45lb?..... lightweight!

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Don C L

45lb?..... lightweight!

got it for 50 bucks couldn't pass up the deal

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by newhaul

got it for 50 bucks couldn't pass up the deal

I'll give ya $55 NOT to use it!
but it'll probably hold you
I guess

[406Columbia]

Originally Posted by newhaul

need one big enough for my 45 # CQR I already plan on hanging my fortress on the pulpit

Good gracious, that is an anchor! I'm sure that will hold you.



Well got the engine well hatch in yesterday. Its a Tempres and I have to say the quality seems pretty good. Finally laminated together the three pieces of .5'' marine ply together for the C-Head podium/platform. Once its all set I will clean it up with the belt sander then paint.



QUESTION, what do you guys suggest for a VHF antenna? I plan to buy a GX2200 radio. But looking at prepping the mast I now need to order cable, an antenna, cable for the tricolor, cable for the spreader lights, and run those along with whatever cable hopefully came with our wind pack. Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions on quality cable for a good price and antenna suggestions we would love to hear.



We're not going to mount the IRIDIUM GO antenna on the mast or the wind generator. Plan to mount those two items on our solar arch, whatever that ends up being. Well thanks for the help everyone.



A couple photos are of pulpit ideas also, I thought it looked pretty decent.

[406Columbia]

Originally Posted by newhaul

got it for 50 bucks couldn't pass up the deal

hard to pass up at fifty bucks.

[Don C L]

Don't forget when you run the cables in the mast to provide some cushioning so the cables won't slap the the inside of the mast when rocking at anchor. Some folks run a thin wall pvc in there and run the cables inside. I wrapped mine with some foam pipe insulation every couple feet. And add at least a foot or so of extra cable length in there in case you need to lift the mast and do something at the base later.

[406Columbia]

Well today was a pretty minimal. Trimmed about a half inch off of the toilet seat and the lid. It fits wonderfully behind the head door now. Also completed the little platform for the C-Head.



Got a couple hours of sanding done, almost complete. Not much else to report, but did locate an antenna that came with cable. We got a Shakespeare 5215-c-x squatty body vhf antenna. Defender had a pretty decent price and they have great customer service so I used them.
https://www.defender.com/product.jsp?id=70642

Speaking of good customer service, C-Head has great service. Had a question for them today and was very impressed with them yet again. The spots where we cut off the edge will need to be sealed. We plan to use epoxy as they do at C-Head. C-Head adds some graphite to make it black which I think looks very nice. The wife however said no to that so I will end up using the epoxy barrier coat paint since its what we already have and its white. Or maybe clear epoxy and some white spray paint, anyway it will be white and coated somehow.



Hoping to get a long day of work in tomorrow. Glassing in the remaining three salon lights and filling in a few low spots on the deck are on the agenda. If it's warm enough I may try to glass in the foot area of the quarter births that goes into the engine well.



Sunday I am hoping to pull the mast down and drill and tap for all our mast steps. Put the spreaders in, mount the lights, etc. We shall see, maybe I'm dreaming.

[406Columbia]

Originally Posted by Don C L

Don't forget when you run the cables in the mast to provide some cushioning so the cables won't slap the the inside of the mast when rocking at anchor. Some folks run a thin wall pvc in there and run the cables inside. I wrapped mine with some foam pipe insulation every couple feet. And add at least a foot or so of extra cable length in there in case you need to lift the mast and do something at the base later.

Thanks Don,


I will get something to cushion the cables so we don't hear the cable slapping around within the mast. Foam pipe insulation sounds good to me and its not hard to find or expensive. Adding an extra foot or two sounds like great advice also and I will run with both of those ideas.



Keep any tips or tricks coming. We have some tef gel on standby for the mast steps, which I plan to mount with stainless hardware. Maybe I should just consider aluminum, not sure it will be strong enough any ideas? Also have a tub of anti-seize per someones recommendation here to coat the mast shoe/base.

[Don C L]

Shine a really bright flashlight in the mast and see if there are any bolts or screws pointing through. I ran a fish tape from the head and then pulled the cables through gently with the foam taped them on with a kind of a cone with that gorilla tape so that they would hopefully slide past any bolts and not get hung up. Thankfully it worked. You might have to rotate the mast a bit to get them past any bolts while pulling it through if that makes sense. I only have 3 wires in mine, 2 to the spreaders (one for spreader light and one for steaming light) and then the coax to the head for the antenna. I guess you have 2 to the head. I guess you could rune them simultaneously with two fish tapes, running those to the head first in the one large bundle or run the two bundles separately. That's what I did and mine came out fine.

[malbert73]

Getting close to the 2 year mark if I am remembering correctly! Keep it up and hopefully finished soon.
This thread will help show folks how to do it right, and possibly dissuade dreamers who think they can buy a boat twice as big and refit it in 6 months for under 8K [emoji3]

[406Columbia]

Originally Posted by Don C L

Shine a really bright flashlight in the mast and see if there are any bolts or screws pointing through. I ran a fish tape from the head and then pulled the cables through gently with the foam taped them on with a kind of a cone with that gorilla tape so that they would hopefully slide past any bolts and not get hung up. Thankfully it worked. You might have to rotate the mast a bit to get them past any bolts while pulling it through if that makes sense. I only have 3 wires in mine, 2 to the spreaders (one for spreader light and one for steaming light) and then the coax to the head for the antenna. I guess you have 2 to the head. I guess you could rune them simultaneously with two fish tapes, running those to the head first in the one large bundle or run the two bundles separately. That's what I did and mine came out fine.

Thanks Don,


We will do just that, appreciate the insight. I don't have a fish tape so will ask around to borrow one or just get a cheap one for this project. But your directions made sense to me.

[406Columbia]

Originally Posted by malbert73

Getting close to the 2 year mark if I am remembering correctly! Keep it up and hopefully finished soon.
This thread will help show folks how to do it right, and possibly dissuade dreamers who think they can buy a boat twice as big and refit it in 6 months for under 8K [emoji3]

Malbert73,

Yes I think it has been that long, we are trying to get it wrapped up soon. For us to do it right by our standards is taking a pretty long time. If we had been satisfied with marine ply backers blocks instead g-10 which is very hard to work with for example. Or trying to find someone to help us do the custom cabinets, etc. Anyway your 100% right, for those of us with kids and jobs it would be exceedingly difficult to do a bigger boat in 6 months and certainly not for $8,000 hahahaha.

You know we could have bought a bigger boat and been done with all this. However, we don't think we could have purchased a more beautiful boat and certainly not outfit it with our watermaker, mini generator, wind generator, solar, auto-tiller, etc.


other than more sanding yesterday we got the outboard support painted and put back together. Also epoxied and painted the raw edge of the toilet seat we cut to fit. Quite difficult to locate 3/8stainless hardware at five inches length around here with our west marine closed.

[406Columbia]

Hello,


Looking for ideas on outboard mounting brackets while we consider how we want to move forward. Either we will end up modifying our existing mount which pushes the outboard about an inch to far back OR.......we get stern mount outboard bracket and move the engine further aft and reclaim all the lazerette space for fuel storage.



Looking for input from everyone here, ideas, links, opinions, experience. Don, can you post up some more photos of yours? I know your system worked very smoothly, I will post a few photos of one we saw in the marina yesterday that looked robust.

[Don C L]

You can probably guess what I'll say. The rudder post is too close to allow tilting the engine up the way James Baldwin did with his Triton. Even if you moved it back and cut the transom notch it wouldn't gain much in weight location. And you need the space for fuel. And it's slow to drag the prop around and a hassle to lift the engine in and out. So for me the best solution is the one worked out by my previous owner as you know. I'll post the pictures in a minute.