60 ft on the Chesapeake - It Begins !

[Richard5]

It peeves me when people talk of cheap when they mean inexpensive. Most craftsmen I have talked with understand the distinction. It's never ending when you buy cheap whereas inexpensive can present a very good deal.

Since I have begun a recent search for a sailing cat I have been dismayed with what I am seeing. Are $500K boats now throwaways too? Egads.

Being handy allows one to realize a huge savings in refurbing a sound hull. Plus the sense of accompishment is enormous. Hands down I will go with refubing everytime.

[CnC40sailor]

Really, I concur with the consensus that you should stick with your boat. If you sold it, those hours of hard work, thousands of dollars spent, would most certainly have gone to waste. In addition, the pride gained would be sold with the boat; it was something you couldn't do. To me, that would be the ultimate loss, realizing you were defeated. Right now, that boat is a token of who you are. You won't realize it untill its gone.
I know it must be hard, but completing the boat will gain you the satisfaction buying another never could.

[DSDman]

Richard 5,
Sorry I completely agree with your sentiment and I misspoke when I said cheap. My only excuse is that I was mostly through a bottle of wine. My boat was not built cheap. It was relatively inexpensive when I bought it but that was only because of the economy and circumstance. As I matter of reference I crawled all through the 52 ft Shannon at the Annapolis boat show and while that was a very nice 1.8 million dollar sail boat it still does not have the sheer amount of material that went into this boat.

[Richard5]

DSD, Avast yer chin music matey! I knew that you knew what I knew when I knew what you knew. HIC!

[stillbuilding]

I reckon you will be happier if you do s few of the more pressing jobs and then sail off to a new place where you can do some more AND enjoy a new adventure with new sights and people. This is presumably why you got a boat. You will avoid some of those frustrated emotions if moving. Any reason not to polish the s/s in Belize and fix the motor in Panama! Cheers

[DSDman]

What a great day on the boat. I spent a few hours and a couple of beers with a muti tester and the electrical panel and well guess what, I think I solved my stray current issue and I also rewired the 110 breakers and installed all new GF plugs. No more current back through the water strainers. Finished up tidying up the refrigerator install and finally worked out the issue with the chart















plotter so now I know where I'm at and where not to go....sorta. Also re rigged the main boom and some of the mizzen. Seems like everywhere I look I find another nine things to work on. But I have a whole day tomorrow to knock out a few more things.

[Mike Vogdes]

You are doing a wonderful job on a beautiful boat, hats off to you. Many don't realize what a refit is like on a boat of this size in both time and cost. Getting intimate with all the systems during the refit only makes you that much more confident it your purchase. I vote for wet storage over the winter as well, provided all the underwater gear is good. It sucks humping stuff up and down ladders, I suppose thats an age thing though..

[DSDman]

For those few who are actually plugged into a dock, if you dont have a dehumidifier get one. The difference that thing makes is amazing. Monday, since I was able to solve my stray current issue, I was also able to power the 220 AC units and a 110 dehumidifier. I think it's the first time I was able to actually work on/in the boat and not sweat my a$$ off! It was great. That thing pulled the humidity from 80% down to 55 in about two hours and I dumped the 30 pint bucket twice. It may be the best 120 bucks I've spent yet.

[DeepFrz]

You are making fabulous progress.

Were you able to determine what your grounding problem was, exactly? It might help others with that issue.

[DSDman]

Ok, so here it goes. Like I had thought in an earlier post I suspected that it had something to do with the fact that the boat was built in the US and then taken to the Med as a charter and had all 220 outlets installed. The problem was that I was getting 98 volts back through the sea strainer. Due to the condition of the grounding points on all the thru hulls I suspected this had been happening for some time. I did have a couple of electricians come out and from their visits I learned that the current circut breakers in the panel were original and 110. So the fault was either a component that had gone bad and was grounding out or a wire had shorted out and was grounding out or like I has suspected it was intentionally wired that way. SO I started with the easiest to try and isolate. I plugged in the shore power and turned on one of the circut breakers. No current through the sea strainer and was reading 110 from the plug outlets. Turned on the other 110 circut breaker and instantly got the current back through the strainer and now was getting 220 from the outlets. So it had to be coming from that breaker. So I sat down and figured out the shore power in lines with the breaker closed = no current on the sea strainer, so no fault on that side. Also went through and figured out what was powered with the good breaker. I then turned on the bad breaker and started tracing what was powered and where it went on the back of the breaker panel. Like I thought, I finally found two wires running from the hot side back over to the neutral bar on the 110 circut. So when that breaker was powered it would feed 110 back through the neutral lines to the outlets which all had 220 European style outlets. The issue there was that the neutral bar is also grounded to the ground on the engine block which then feeds into the prop shaft and out into the water. I simply unhooked those wires and replaced the outlets. Since the boat was originally wired 110 and still had the original breakers I didn't have to worry about overloading the wiring...NOW granted the wiring is old and has been improperly used so it will need replacing at some point but right now it all works and no breakers are popping and no wires burning and no one getting electrocuted so I'll take that for now. All the 110 stuff is 110-ing and all the 220 AC units are working no problems. My next goal is to get all the volt/amp/guages working so I know how much of what kind of power I'm using and I'm going to remove all the old and unused wiring still there but not hooked up. As far as eating the elephant goes I think I just got through the tail

[DSDman]

CIRCUIT, I really can spell...sometimes.

[DSDman]

Yeah! Actually went sailing today. Shaun j on the wild hare was a witness. Almost everything worked! Well, while I figured out the shore power 110/ 220 issue. not so lucky with the generator. it apperanly puts out 220 no matter what. going to have to work on that I suppose. Great time on the boat however, even the kids seemed to get in the spirit and were actually being willing crew.

[DSDman]

Me trying to explain how sails work, as if I had any real idea what I was doing! But finally got all three of them up!

One thing I learned is that big boats with high freeboard do not turn into the wind with inexperienced crew. it took me a few tries to figure that one out. Much easier turning down wind and then going the other way.

[shamrock]

Looks Great!

[VirtualVagabond]

DSDman,
I haven't read much of your thread yet, but I've enjoyed the bits I've skimmed through so far.

I saw that you were planning to have your boat in George Town. Is that where you are?
If so we're neighbours.
I'm working on my boat just the other side of the drawbridge.

Vic