A big milestone !

3rd November 2008

Once the engine is down through the companionway it is lowered into a purpose built cradle which sits over the engine bay. It is then winched forward to a position above the engine beds, and under an "A" frame with another chain block. It is then lifted off the cradle, the cradle is removed, and she is lowered onto the engine mounts. ....Yippeee !

This a big milestone that I have been looking forward to for months.

In through the companionway

3rd November 2008

You can see in one of the earlier posts "The state of decay" that the cockpit well had big holes rusted through it. So this was cut out, and not rebuilt, in anticipation of dropping the engine in through here. So between the cockpit well (that wasn't) and the companionway we had plenty of room, even for 9.2 litres of engine.

I need a crane for the engine

3rd November 2008

The engine and gearbox weigh just under 1 tonne, and this has to be moved from the garage, down into the hull via the companionway and then below the cabin sole.

The only place we can get a crane in is at the bow of the boat and therefore the horizontal distance is around 14 metres. So a fairly large machine is required.

Other cabins and bulkheads

July 2008

I frame up the rest of the cabin bulkheads, bunks, and galley wall in steel angle. The photo shows upper berth frame, there is a lower berth yet to be done. The bulkheads then have plywood glued and ramset. These will later be clad in rimu like the forward cabin.

Forward cabin fit out

June 2008

I have a few delays getting the engine marinised and ready for installation so I decide to do the forward cabin furniture. Partly because this is going to include a permanent work bench, and tool and spare parts storage. So that at sea or in port I have a place to repair stuff, and all my spare aprts and tools are in one place. In the mean time it also gives me a place to store tools and do some work in the boat, rather than have to go back to the garage to do anything. Hopefully this will save me some time.

In the photo you can see the work bench to port. This is made from kwila, an indonesian hardwood, so that it will take the knocks. To starboard is a single berth, although this will probably have sails and stuff stored on it most of the time. You can also see a very shiny pile of stainless steel stantions ready to be welded to the deck, sitting on the berth. The berth and bulkheads are now lined with rimu, a New Zealand native that has a beautiful range of colours from quite pale through to rich red. The rimu is glued and nailed to the plywood bulkheads.

Out of the bilges at last

April 2008

It's April before I have finished welding all the plates over the ballast and have a few coats of paint on everything. I also cut a lot of steel out of the tank areas and put in new supporting beds to support fuel and water tanks. The tanks were originally designed to be built in, but the guys who did the hull repairs pointed out that there were few issues with both the design and implementation that meant they weren't going to work well. I am well ready to get out of the bilges. Such a pleasure to do some work while standing upright.

So, I am now framing up the bulkheads that define the forward cabins, bunks, and the galley area. These are all welded in with a 40mm steel angle frame and then plywood is glued and ramset to these. The final finish is 10mm tongue & groove rimu over the plywood.

She's actually starting to take shape, rather than being this great cavernous open 52 foot steel can.

Ballast & my summer holiday

December 2007 - February 2008

By early December I had all the materials to install the ballast in the keel. This consisted of 4 x 200 litre (44 gallon) drums of punchings estimated to be 1.5 tonne each, plus 200 litres of resin. One of the first things I did was make a 300mm cube (300x300x300), fill it with steel, and pour resin into it. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, I needed to see how far the resin would pentrate through the punchings, so that I could be confident that I got good penetration when doing the actual work in the keel. Secondly, I wanted to be sure of the weight per cubic metre of this mixture.

What I discovered through tis experiment was that the supplier of the punchings had been very optimistic about the weight per drum. Instead of 1.5 tonne/drum, they only weighed around 1 tonne. I contacted the supplier, who by the way were fantastic to deal with, and another 2 drums would be on the way at no cost (I just paid the freight). The supplier was Metal Skills Ltd. in East Tamaki, Auckland. Not only did they supply the punchings at scrap value, they had no hesitation in supplying more when we discussed the fact that the estimated weight had been mis-calculated.

Anyway, I also worked on various theories of winches and shutes etc etc , to work out the easiest way to get 6 tonne of steel & resin from ground level, up via the deck, down the companionway, and into the keel. Nothing I came up with was really going to work well, and in the end I bought two Stainless Steel buckets and carried the stuff up the ramp & down into the keel a bucket at a time. Six Tonne at about 25kg per bucker = 240 trips ...what the hell, I had a few weeks off.

So, from what I had determined from the "penetration experiment" I would carry enough steel into each keel compartment to be around 150mm deep. I would then mix up a few litres of resin and pour it over the top. You also have to be careful not to mix too big a volume of resin at a time as pure resin in a big volume can generate about 200 degrees C as it cures. So you get your ratio right so that the amount of steel is acting as a heat sink for the resin.

The other factor was the fumes. I would spend a few hours putting the steel in, and then pour the resin. When doing the resin I was in a spray painters full face mask/respirator. Also, by this stage it was usually mid afternoon, peak summer, in an as yet uninsulated steel hull and the tempature was generally in excess of 35 degrees C. So resin was the last job for the day. Close her up, knock off, let the resin cure, have a beer (or two).

Once all the ballast was in, there was a steel plate cut to shape and fully welded over the top of each keel compartment. There are eight compartments at 900mm long each. In theory, between the resin, and the plate there should never be any air or water enter the ballast areas, and therefore never any risk of corrosion within the ballast.

Ships ballast and the chinese demand for scrap metal

When I bought Kaipuke she had no ballast. She is designed to carry 6.5 tonne in the keel.

I watched the price of lead go from $1,400/tonne to $3,200/tonne in the space of 12 months. At the current price it was going to cost over $20k just for lead ballast. The scrap metal dealers told me that this was because every available bit of scrap metal, of just about any kind was going to China, and constantly pushing the prices up.

I had a serious look at alternatives (cos I was too mean to pay for lead). After much research I arrived at the conclusion that I could ballast with steel punchings, set in polyester resin. I did a number of calculations, based on the weight per cubic metre of the ballast, the available volume of each of the keel compartments, and the required weight distribution fore and aft.

I found a supplier of the punching (I tell people that punching are the holes out of colanders) who was prepared to sell me the punchings at scrap value, which was about $200/tonne at the time. I found a supplier of resin with a 200 litre drum of polyester gell coat, near it's use-by date for $800. So my ballast cost $200 x 6 tonne = $1,200 plus $800 for resin = $2,000, or 1/10th the cost of lead ballast. ...Brilliant !!!

Getting her weathertight

As well as getting the glass into the main cabin area, I made temporary hatch covers for a number of the hatches. I made a permanent main companionway hatch with a stainless steel frame, running on nylon bushes in SS runners. The frame is then clad in teak.

I wanted to do as much as possible to elimate the need to have tarpaulins covering the boat, as it is always a pain having to remove them every time you want to do some work inside.

Glass in

June 2007

The glass in the main cabin was measured up and ordered while Kaipuke was at the sandblasting shed. The glass company was next door. The glass is cut, tempered (to what they call "armour-plate"), and a ceramic bead etch around the edge. When it is installed it is simply glued on.

Pretty amazing what you can do with glue these days.

Sandblast & paint

May 2007

Once again, have a look at the earlier posts for some good photos of Kaipuke going "overseas" for painting after the repairs. About 20 days and $20k later she returned home.

The major repairs

March/April 2007

Have a look at the earlier posts. There are a number of pictures that show the extent of the repairs that were done over a period of about 5 weeks.

During this period I became Kawakawa Engineerings biggest gas customer. Cutting out the old rusty steel is very hungry on gas. My monthly bill went from around $40 for gas bottle rental, to over $2000 for the month of March.

You gotta have the right toys

January 2007

Up until now I had an arc welder, and gas welding/cutting sets. Any cutting was done using either gas, or angle grinders. I purchased a machine that combined an inverter welder, TIG welder, and plasma cutter.

I've done a huge amount of work with the pasma cutter, removing a lot of the old decayed or unwanted steel. It saves a huge amount of time and money, on consumables. When using gas for cutting the major cost is in the oxygen and acetylene you use. With a plasma cutter, there is just the occasional electrode or ceramic cup. It is also very neat and clean, removing just 1mm of material from the cut. The heat is also so concentrated, at the cut, that you can use a wooden straight edge as a guide to make perfectly straight cuts.

The Original Gearbox

October 2006

This ZF320 gearbox was over-kill for what was really needed. It could easily handle 500HP, whereas it was mated to the 220HP Nissan. The other feature that I was after was a "Power Takeoff", so that I could run hydraulic systems. Nothing wrong with over-engineering when your off to sea, however it turned out to be too big to fit into the available space.

It was later replaced by an english, Newage PRM gearbox. This unit was much smaller, was still easily capable of handling the Nissan's Horsepower, and also has the "Power Takeoff" unit for the hydraulics.

Anyone want to buy a gearbox ???

The big beautiful engine

October 2006

The Nissan MD92 is a 9.2 litre diesel truck motor. It is very simple, naturally aspirated (no turbo) big mechanical diesel injector pump, nothing that your average mechanically minded yachtie couldn't sort out at sea or in a foreign port (hopefully). It develops 220HP at 2900rpm, but peak torque at just 1400rpm. It will swing a 24" prop, through a 2:1 ratio gearbox.

What's been happening

Since the boat arrived on 22nd January 2006, much of the rest of the year involved cutting out of badly rusted parts and descaling the hull as much as possible. Many unwanted bits were taken out as well including a vast array of heavy walled pipe that went into the bottom of the keel and off to flanges designed for pumps and valves. Whoever put these in originally obviously didn't understand that these area of the keel would hold ballast and any bilge pumping would be above this ballast.

A bit of a Chronological list follows of other work that has happened between Kaipuke's arrival and now.

30th September 2006 - Sold Cavalli, our Cavalier 32 yacht.

1st October 2006 - Purchased Nissan MD92 9.2 litre diesel engine & ZF320 gearbox.

November 2006 - Removed surplus equipment from engine e.g. Power Steering pump, and compressor for air brakes.

January 2007 - Purchased cobination welder/plasma cutter. Saved heaps of hours.

March/April 2007 - Major hull repairs completed. About 1/3 of the plate under the waterline was replaced.

May 2007 - KAipuke goes by truck to Bay Blasting and Engineering for sand blast and prime, then returns to Russell.

22nd June 2007 - Have decide to ballast with Steel Punchings and resin. Four drums of punchings arrive Metal Skills Ltd. in East Tamaki, Auckland.

June 2007 - The glass goes in to the Main cabin.

rest of 2007 - Mainly painting the interior with stripe coat and undercoats.

11th December 2007 - Gell coat polyester resin arrives for ballast.

December 2007/January 2008 - Install ballast.

January 2008 - Purchased PRM750 gearbox. The original ZF gearbox was so huge that it wasn't going to fit into the keel area.

31st January 2008 - Two more drums of punchings arrive as the original estimate of weight per drum was over stated.

May 2008 - Made "chimneys" for engine room air vents.

June 2008 - Framed up forward cabin bulkheads, and clad in plywood. These will be clad in rimu later.

July/August 2008 - Fit out forward cabin, including workbench and single bunk.

October 2008 - Engineering work to marinise the Nissan engine almost complete, including water cooled exhaust manifold.