Removal of instruments and installations – In this video, we will tell you about how our cheapest boat cover made it through the winter. We will also show you how we prepared the hull for the installation of new wood. We will also remove all the instruments and prepare the holes left behind for patching.
Removal of instruments and installations
Discovering the tarp
There was not much snow that winter at the beginning of 2022. Ariki survived his first winter in his home yard.
It smelled like spring very early on. At that time, the first garden works also began. One of the first tasks is to trim the ivy and wild vine overgrown fence. Have you ever trimmed a fence from a boat? It is much easier from the deck than from the much lower yard.
Then the days got warmer. The landscape was clothed in green colors and everything blossomed. The right time to hang out with Ariki has begun. We covered Ariki with polyvinyl in the fall, seven months ago. Our cheapest boat cover made of UV-resistant polyvinyl survived the winter without damage. Even strong winds did not harm him at all. This means that even such an inexpensive boat protection solution is very effective.
We made a special video about the cheapest boat cover.
Despite all the effort with the simple construction, which is between the polyvinyl and the boat, some water collects in heavy rains. If you have a boat in your backyard, this is not a problem. You can pour the water down every time you pass by.
Removal of instruments and installations
Sweeping the deck
Under the polyvinyl, a lot of insects had accumulated over the course of seven months. There are a lot of dead flies and midges, a lot of wasps and many other things
Preparing the boat for the installation of new wood
In one of the previous videos we showed you how we removed rotten wood from the side of the boat.
At that time, we removed all the rotten and damaged wood. We did this with chisels. The wood on the boat that still remains is healthy. Nevertheless, we cannot install new wood on such a rough and uneven surface. For this, the boat must first be properly prepared.
This job is easiest to do with an angle grinder. We prefer to use the easiest and, of course, the cheapest. The surface on which we will stick the new molding must first be sanded. To be precise, the first step is to SAND off all the wood that is glued to the hull of the boat. The hull is made of plywood. This is very different in color from the wood that needs to be removed.
Although we sand wood, we do NOT use sanding discs for this material. It is even more practical to use the coarsest lamella sanding plate for stainless steel. This is simply because there are some stainless steel screws here and there in the boat.
If you use a sanding board for wood, it will be destroyed when you sand such a screw, and the screw will be almost untouched. Wood is sanded just as well with a coarse lamellar sanding plate for stainless steel. At the same time, the screws are also ground off. Plain and simple!
Removal of instruments and installations
A few years ago, we removed all the electrical installation from the hulls, which had a control panel with 13 fuses. At that time, we installed a new control panel with four fuses, of which only two are in use. The current electrical installation is also suitable for this. The bare minimum. Electricity supplies only the signal lights on the mast and a couple of sockets for charging the batteries.
Now it’s time to dismantle the instruments. We had as many as three. The first is an anemometer, the second is a combined instrument that shows the speed of the boat and the depth of the water under it, and the third is a monitor for the old Garmin GPS, which used to show only numbers, but now even that no more.
The wind speed meter worked the longest. A windflower at the top of the mast was connected to it. We changed as many as three. We broke the first one in 2005, when the mast shattered.
At that time we made a new mast and bought a new windflower. Already on the first voyage, we tangled it in the branches of a pine tree that was overhanging the sea and of course broke it. And we bought a third one. This one was with us for several years. We broke it during the overhaul, when the mast was on the ground. Someone stumbled into it. Then we didn’t buy any more!
Patching a hole in the hull
After removing the instruments, three holes remained. Since we will not buy new instruments, we will patch them. For this, however, the surface must first be prepared. This time, we will cut the appropriate sized pieces of plywood to fit the holes in the hull. We will glue them with epoxy. But we will tell you about it in the next video. In this, we will prepare the surface for gluing. This is done by sanding the surface with a coarse carpenter’s rasp to the surface on which the piece of plywood will be glued, which will close the hole.
