Spring projects are well underway! I got the spreaders painted over the winter but it’s been cold enough that I really didn’t get a start on anything else before the last couple of weeks. But now, we’re leaping ahead!
I would recap our 2024 summer with its own post if there was enough to tell, but I think we can sum it up a handful of bullet points:
I had both of these photos in my archive, and I thought it was fun to put them side-by-side as a comparison. On the left, my 1989 Sabre 42 keel/centerboard. On the right, our current 38 MKII with the deep keel.
We launched earlier this week, and since then we’ve been cleaning up the winter construction dust, filling water, testing systems and …. today delivering our brand new cushions!
We have launched Blue Moon! But not before we got some minor speed work done! We had some spots on the keel where the fairing compound and lost its bond with the lead, so we had those ground down and re faired. Then we invested in a little bit of speed work indulgence: we hung her in the slings over a weekend and had the bottom of the keel faired!
With the moldy vinyl hull covering replaced and the aft cabin re assembled, the time came to turn my attention to some of the issues we have faced with the Sabre’s plumbing.
First, the faucets in both the aft head and the forward cabin looked crappy. Time to yank them and replace with some Home Depot replacements.
Long time readers of this blog may remember that I sometimes have a habit of over investing in vanity projects that turn out to be a huge amount of work.
Oops, I did it again.
Having owned both our Hylas 54 and two 1980s Sabre now, we have taken note of the extremely high level of fit and finish in the interior of semi-custom boats like the Hylas. Every locker in Rover’s cabin is fully finished with interior panels and shelves, where the lockers in the Sabre are simply lined with vinyl and lack any shelving. The Sabres are incredibly well built in general, but the factory did save on labor in certain contexts like this one. Since I was replacing the vinyl in the port side forward locker anyway, I decided to line it with a floor and side panels and to add a shelf finished with a beautiful walnut veneer we inherited with the Hylas. This post will make it sound like a simple enough endeavor, but it represented a massive amount of work that gave me a whole new appreciation for how many labor hours are in a Hylas!
Another leak broke out on Blue Moon this past fall, once again caused by sloppy and inattentive work done by Hinckley Yacht Services up in Southwest Harbor, Maine. Under Blue Moon‘s prior ownership, all of the portholes and hatches on the boat were replaced a few years ago. Despite the recency of these installations, so far one porthole frame and the small deck hatch above the nav station have sprung leaks around the frame, in both cases due to inadequate preparation of the mating surfaces between the deck and the hardware. Operating on the assumption that the same (poor) process was followed for all of the deck hatches and portholes, I fully expect to have to re do all of the work Hinckley charged the prior owners many, many thousands of dollars to complete just a handful of years ago (we have the receipts!). The prior owners are wonderful people and had no reason to distrust Hinckley’s methods, particularly given the rates Hinckley charge. For the benefit of other Sabre owners, let’s walk through the right way to re bed portholes and hatches on a fiberglass boat and see where Hinckley cut corners and has thereby generated a ton of unnecessary work for us.
Experience has shown me that at this stage in my winter projects I have to be careful not to open too many workstreams without making significant progress on any of them. This risk is particularly large when it comes to demolition, which is usually easier and more fun than putting things back together! Yesterday I re bed the mount for our outboard motor crane, which I suspect may be the source of our aft cabin leak, and I also re bed the chainplate I tried (and failed) to re seal last weekend. As it turns out, I don’t have enough working room to re bed it properly with butyl tape, so I have reverted to 3M 4000 caulk. The next time I have the rig out I will re-bed all of them with butyl tape but I don’t have enough access to do it right with the rig in. Today I started tearing out the wood panel behind the port settee so I can begin ripping out the vinyl backing behind it. A driving rain has already begun to fall that is expected to last through tomorrow. Have I succeeded in fixing both the aft cabin and port chainplate leak? Watch this space to find out!
Removing the decorative slatting in the aft cabin last weekend and tearing out the moldy vinyl lining the hull under the cushion allowed me to check today for any leaks remaining in this area of the boat. There was a driving rain this morning and I found a nice little puddle in the berth where the sleeper’s feet would like. Fixing boats is like detective work, and I traced a trail of water to some source above the storage cabinets. Those cabinets are also lined with vinyl, so I started pulling it out and quickly found more mold had gathered under that vinyl over the years. Out it goes!
Continue reading The Battle Is Joined In The War On Mold!
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