Bahia tempo. Get used to it.

 English  5 Responses »
Feb 022012
 

Actually I am having a problem with this. Being Swedish and used to efficiency. Here everything takes 100 years by my standards. Over a week ago we got an OK from the Bahia Marina management that we could do the work at a spot on their service dock. I tried to actually go there starting Monday, but bad communication had it so that the spot was still occupied even this morning (Wednesday!) when we got here. After they confirmed yesterday that it should be free :-D !

So, half a day more lost before we could actually move in and start to set up equipment. But now we’re so close! The material is on deck, the boat is in position, the power cables routed and everything! I think we can actually get started today…

By the way, as you can probably see, it is hot. Very hot. Even those who are native are complaining!!


Interior dismount depression.

 English  4 Responses »
Jan 262012
 

Now about half of the interior is completely dismounted and the boat is a complete mess. It took longer than I thought to do due to the massive heat. I simply had to go out and cool down pretty often. And now I am in a bit of a depression because I keep thinking about how this time really should have been spent fixing all the small details of the boat that I want to perfect, not tearing down stuff to make structural repairs. But that’s life…

Yesterday we went hunting for materials. Three different major aluminium outlets. The last one did have good 25mm L-profiles, which is what I want to use as stiffeners on the tanks. They had no idea what alloy it was, though. So we took a small test piece, did a bit of welding on it in Roberto (The welders) shop. And now I am testing it in concentrated salt water to make sure it is OK, and not some 3000 series aluminium that will corrode instantly…


Bad hair day in Journeyman land

 English  1 Response »
Jul 082010
 

Today has been full of bad news. Leak testing of the deck showed that ALL of the hatches were leaking. In the same spot. Not in the mounting, but through the hatch itself, due to a manufacturing error at the supplier. The leak in the ballast tank pumps that I wrote about yesterday was not fixed. In fact, it was not possible to fix because I had done a bad gluing job. The we started to look at putting the rudders in, and I discovered that the inside of the rudder bearings had been damaged in the sandblasting.

This looked really bad to start with, but Olari did a nice job with wet-sanding it, so the bearing surfaces were saved. When we tried to put the bearings in, however, it didn’t go in. Bad welding deformation. How this will be fixed remains to be seen.

The pump gluing problem was caused by me using only a standard industrial polyurethane glue. We took everything apart and brought out the more professional stuff, and this time the bond was a lot better, so now I feel confident that problem was solved too. Now let’s try to fix those hatches…


The Worlds Lowest Sauna?

 English  1 Response »
Apr 302010
 

Today the keelbox will be done. So I guess next week we can finally put it in. Soooo many other jobs are waiting for this to get done…

The guy welding the inner side of the bottom plate has what I would think is the worlds lowest ceiling for a sauna. About 280mm. You can see in the picture that the bottom plate is really thick. This means that it needs to be preheated before welding, so the entire box that the welder is now lying inside is quite hot…


Lord of the ring

 English  Comments Off on Lord of the ring
Apr 272010
 

In this case, the One Ring to Rule Them All is the deck ring. It sits around the mast in the deck, and all halyards, reef lines etc are attached to it. We have one of the best deck ring manufacturers in Sweden: Seldén. So I ordered their largest deck ring a while ago.

Our nice carbon mast does not have any runners, this is an important part in making handling under sail simple. However, as a consequence it is quite wide. So it turns out that the largest available ring is too small for the Journeyman. So we have two alternatives: Build a completely new custom solution, or make the ring larger. We decided to try making the ring larger. This is more difficult than it sounds, because the aluminum in the ring is a casting alloy, quite different from the welding alloys we use. So welding is complicated, and the final result can potentially crack due to different thermal expansion between the two different types of aluminum.

So again: Keep your fingers crossed!

(Oh and in other news, the keel box looks quite promising now, I’ll be back with more news on that in a day or two).

[UPDATE!] The operation was quite successful. Not sure if it was due to your crossed fingers or the skilled fingers of Reimo our welding lord…


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