Cover art by MidJourney. For those interested the prompt was based off a screen grab from the video. drawn in a Ukiyo-e style a salt and pepper short haired well muscled, handsome mature white male with sun and sea tanned laughter lines around his sky blue eyes. He is installing a new under-counter fridge in his sailing catamaran’ galley. Outside it is a storm tossed sea with the late afternoon sun shining on the white sand beach. –aspect 7:4 –v 5 –s 750
This weeks video I install two Engel fridge/freezer units into our new galley onboard our 55 foot Wharram sailing catamaran. Has been many, many years since we have had reliable refrigeration onboard.
Previously we relied on buying very large blocks of ice and storing them in two cool boxes on deck, but as we started cruising more remote places, finding ice sellers became more and more problematic, both with the availability and the distance from where we were anchored or tied up.
So with the new galley upgrade it was finally time to install some decent refrigeration, cold drinks and ice-creams.
I chose Engel as it was the only choice available in Japan that was both affordable and could fit the limited space available.
Plus Engel have a great reputation on reliability and low power consumption. A winning combination for me.
Today I answer viewer’s question as to the Costs of Cruising in Japan. And a question on the dyneema rigging creep issue.
Regards cost of cruising in Japan, this is my own personal take on the costs, based on actually living, cruising and doing work on other peoples sailboats here in Japan. Like the majority of cruisers coming in to Japan, I don’t have the advantage of being fluent in speaking or reading Japanese.
The Dyneema creep issue is fairly complex, and involves temperature and working loads etc. What I have answered is just the basic common sense part of the question. I could go on in great lengths and detail about heat treament in fibre versus braided versus type of dyneema, end usage and the type of boat you have, actual rope size versus practical sizes, costs etc etc Would be like talking about anchors and anchoring. In short nothing but divisive, a bit of windup and pointless. .
Would be like talking about anchors and anchoring. In short nothing but divisive, a bit of windup and pointless.
So kept it very simple, with three points to keep in mind. 1/ Use the correct Dyneema 2/ The diamater of your Dyneema 3/ How good/tight your splice is
But most importantly is I had the help and advice from Peter Greig a professional Synthetic Rigger.
With an approaching Typhoon and the memory of last years typhoon and the wrecked catamaran still fresh, I am starting to feel a bit overwhelmed.
So much to do to prepare Tiare, and with very little time before the typhoon arrives. And I need to tighten my very loose dyneema rigging before the typhoon hits.
I FAILED! 6 DAYS IN A COMMERCIAL YARD TO REDO TIARE’S ANTIFOUL!
The old adage Never enough time to do it right. But always enough to do it again. Damn.
Every now and then you got to admit to a mistake, stop crying and deal with it.
And this is what this story is about. How to blow 1200 dollars, or as I like see it How to keep fit and help support a local business.
All this started a couple of years ago when I began a big above and below waterline overhaul on Tiare, removing thru hulls, replacing the remaining metal thru hulls with composite, manually scraping both hulls to remove 15 years of anti-foul, repairing the dings and scratches, sanding it all smooth, twice. Repainting the topsides and then multiple coats of epoxy barrier coat below the water line.
Now early on I had researched the paint system I needed. It was to be all one company and all products working together.
A few months after launch I started noticing that bits of the epoxy undercoat were showing through the anti-foul.
And to top it all off, this year was the worst year for barnacle growth the local fishermen had seen. Ever. Historical levels of barnacle!!
A butt clench, wallet shrinking moment as I realised what I had done, and that I needed to haul out, and not my usual thrifty “between the tides” type of haul-out, but a proper haul out, where you actually pay someone money,
Once out of the water, I scrape off the barnacles, water-blast the hulls, then hand scrape all while the cement the barnacles use to “concrete” themselves on with, I had some help with this, (Thanks Nagi and Tom) Then hand scrape off all the newold anti-foul, then repair all the little scratches that the scraping had created, then sand it all again, water blast again, then apply a coat of the recommended vinyl barrier paint, wait a day, then apply the newnew anti-foul.
After checking with the paint company they also recommended, along with the anti-foul I originally planned to use, to also apply a vinyl barrier coat before antifouling, You know, just to be 100% sure that everything sticks. Actually I think they were just trying to make it idiot proof.
And this is where the problem lay, I had used different paint companies for the epoxy barrier paint and for the anti-foul. Originally it was going to be one company and all their chemistries work together, no worries, but by the time i got around to buying the anti-foul I had forgotten this rather crucial bit information. Ouch.
So here we are, Tiare is about to come into the local fishing boatyard, its a bit windy but thats ok as I have Tom in the tender to push Tiare around.
The costs start when the lines get thrown
There it is, six days and 1200 Dollars
What I came away with?
Well a thinner waistline and a lighter wallet for sure, but I now have the proper paint system applied, and the knowledge that I also have an extra protective vinyl barrier coat on Tiare. Which is a good thing.
Has been a while since I last uploaded a video.
In this video we
1/ Travel to Sado Island in Niigata to an open day for a Miyadaiku trade school
2/ Enjoy a local Shrine festival
3/ Hang the rudders back on Tiare
Video gets me close to current times.
Next video will be up to real-time
Part of the delay is that I have been trying to find a direction and purpose to the videos, other than as a personal diary.
So this episode I swap over from Go Sea Camping to Sea Japan, although the adventures of SV Tiare will continue.
I really hope to show Japan as the absolutely fantastic cruising destination it is.
But more on the direction of this channel over the next few episodes.
Hope to have Tiare up and sailing towards the end of August,
Next episode will cover the exhausting, yet somewhat successful, drama of getting Tiare back into the water., along with problems and solution to my aft mast issues.
Music from Artlist.io
Artists:
1: Spring in Barcelona by Ian Post
2: Burdens by Derek Gust
3: Vietnam Theme by Hanjo Gabler
4: Burnin down the house by Saint-anyway
5 Brown Eyed Girl, written by Van Morrison and performed by Sam, Tom, Taiga and Micheal live at Okappa cafe
Well, I have finally done it. I’ve gone and painted my topsides.
And prepped my hull for a new generation of anti-foul.
This is a major milestone for me. Tiare has needed a hull repaint for a number of years, slowly becoming a little more drab with each small knock the tender makes on the side, and with the passing of time wearing thin the top-paint.
Now that she is on the hard, and I have access to some high quality and affordable paints, along with the time to spend on doing the preparation work. It feels good to take my time to do it right.
This was my first repaint and a steep learning curve, I definitely acquired some new skills. Paint scraping is an art, sanding and painting is a trade.
Doing it right means I take all the old anti-fouling off, scrape and sand back to the hull’s base coat, and then apply several layers of super smooth epoxy coating before a final coat of a modern super slippery, long lasting anti-foul.
I have not yet decided on the final anti-fouling system, there are a few options available but I will make that decision closer to when I re-slip Tiare.
Took longer then I had anticipated, as my hands seized up daily after four to five hours due to Carpal tunnel syndrome.
If you’re my age, and a tradie, you’ll know what I mean. If you’re reading this and you’re young, look after your hands!! Waking up every night at 2am, with your arms and hands on fire gets tiring real quick.
So although one hull side would take around 18 – 20 hours total to scrape clean, it would actually take around 5 days. And there are four sides!
Fortunately, we have an onsen/spa (hot baths) close by, a soak after a day of scraping felt really good and made the CTS manageable.
I didn’t do a roll and tip, as that really only works well with paints that are thinned out. Thinning out a paint reduces its gloss and you need to put more coats on to make up the thickness.
What I did was a coach or carriage style as it allowed me to put on just four thick un-thinned coats of top paint.
I wasn’t going for a mirror finish, as that takes considerably more effort in sanding and preparation, I think my hands would have failed if I had tried, and then there is the stress over the final application of the top coats.
What I wanted was multiple coats of solid un-thinned top paint of at least 3 coats (I ended up with four coats).
I am very happy with the results.
Marine Paints from CMP
For the epoxy primers and the top-sides finish coat, I have used CMP (Chugoku Marine Paints) here from Japan.
One of the deciding factors on using CMP was that they make their paint AND catalysers here in Japan.
When I order the paint it usually takes a week or so as they make it to order, it arrives very fresh 🙂 All 4kgs or 18kgs of it.
It is also inexpensive, e.g. 4kg of white is 6000¥ ~ 60 USD for a quality two-part urethane, with the top end Fluorex Finish at twice the price at around 12,000¥ ~ 110USD.
18Kg of epoxy primer, Bannoh 1500, was 12,000¥ ~ 110USD. 18 kg did four coats below the water line.
The summer heat is ongoing and slows progress down. Fortunately, I am working under the boat and in the shade but still, the humidity and heat takes the energy out of you.
Replacing our metal thru hulls and valves with Trudesign Composites. http://www.trudesign.nz/marine.
Learn how to remove extremely well stuck thru hulls and drill holes for replacement thru hulls, along with a quick look at some thru hulls that had been eaten from the inside out.
Now Tiare is out of the water, I take down our Sillette Sonic Drives to replace the anodes, bellows, shaft seals and clean and fill the corrosion pitting on the lower legs, then give acid washing a go before acid etching and a repaint.
Last winter I discovered that the SB side leg had water getting into the shaft so hoping it was just the shaft seals that needed replacing.
The PS leg pins were getting sloppy in their brackets, the answer was to fit some steel sleeves into them. Along with adding some high wear aluminum epoxy, to replace what the corrosion had eaten away around the pins.
And finally, time to grind off the 5 year old bitumen I had put on in Malaysia, and give the legs a good clean and fill up the bad pitting. Replacing grungy black/brown with a nice bright white.
Well it has been a few months since the last video.
Quite a few things have happened. Winter has gone, Spring has been and gone and we are now into the rainy season.
Sam our eldest son is now in living in Japan, Tom has gone up to Hokkaido for six months as an IT intern. And Tiare our 55 foot Wharram sailing catamaran was hauled (dragged) out and ready for a 12 month maintenance and makeover.
There is a very long list of jobs.
Would have liked to take more video of Tiare as she was hauled out but totally forgot about the video until she was out. Shame.
explore – relax – recharge
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