Date: 10 August, 2000
Port of Call: Chaguaramas, Trinidad
Subject: A Typical Boatyard Project
Preparing Sovereign's bottom for painting
It is a truism
of boating that nothing on a boat is simple if it can be made complex.
This is especially true of "simple" repairs. We sometimes joke that
just to replace a single screw will cost $1000 because once the screw is
pulled out, something attached to the screw will need replacing, and when
you pull that thing out, what's behind it needs to be fixed too.
We spent lots of these in Trinidad
A typical example
of this was our repair of the head (or toilet for those with a limited
nautical vocabulary). I realize that talking about toilets is not something
that most folks do every day. For those of you who are squeamish
about such things, I apologize. But having been cruising for a while,
we find talking about toilets as natural as discussing the weather. It
only takes about three minutes for the conversation of a group of cruisers
to turn to toilets. So if you aren't currently cruising, this is
the kind of thing we talk about all day:
It all started when we wanted to replace just one little piece of hose. The flushing water inflow in the head had slowed down a lot lately, and we thought we would make use of our boatyard time and the proximity of toilets in the boatyard (only a few hundred yards away). When we removed the hose in question, we found that the hose was connected to a threaded pipe instead of a proper hose fitting. And of course, the threaded pipe was chipped.
While we were going to all this trouble, we thought we might as well re-build the toilet itself, because all the valves and seals and such were getting pretty old. We have re-built the toilet three or four times in the thirteen years we have owned Sovereign, and aside from being messy, it generally isn't too bad. But this time, the piston in the pump refused to move, so we had to remove the pump mechanism from its mounting base. OK, to do that the shower pan has to be removed. The first step is to disconnect the shower drain by laying over the bilge, reaching an impossibly long distance, and contorting into shapes the human body doesn't normally attain. We remove the head locker door, because the shower pan won't come out with the door in place. Then we remove the shower pan. But last time we did such a good job caulking the pan with silicone that we can't push it out by hand. We rig a block and tackle hanging from the hatch overhead and use some extra mechanical advantage to pull it out.
With the shower pan out, we see that both our wonderful caulking job and the shower drain have been leaking. Underneath is a rusty mass of steel. This means we must remove all the loose paint and rust and repaint with three coats of epoxy barrier paint to prevent further rust. Between coats of paint, we start rebuilding the toilet. It takes some serious beating and coercing to get everything apart. Unfortunately, one small part called a shaft key, which holds everything together, is damaged beyond further use. The head repair kit doesn't have one. The chandler doesn't have one. No one in Trinidad has one. So we make one. Two hours working on a 5/16" stainless steel bolt with a Dremel and a file yields an acceptable shaft key.
Home-made shaft key from a 5/16" bolt
We put all the
new parts into the toilet, mask the holes, clean everything up, and put
a couple of coats of paint on the pump body. We wait overnight for
drying. One of the sink drain parts has corroded, and no replacement
is available in Trinidad. There's no way to make this piece with
a 5/16" bolt and a Dremel. We finally find a similar part made of
plastic, cut some extra gaskets out of an old car tire inner tube, and
put it all back together.
Once all the preparations are done, putting everything back together went fairly quickly. It only took seven or eight days of work to "replace that hose". That left a few days of boatyard time to work on the refrigerator, but that's another story…
Launching at Peakes Boatyard
We finally re-launched
Sovereign on August 4. We spent the last several days checking out
the various repairs, buying provisions and fuel, and cleaning up.
We plan to leave for Venezuela tonight. By tomorrow we hope to be
back in the trade winds, where things should be much cooler and we can
start to enjoy ourselves again.
Smooth sailing,
Jim and Cathy