Saturday, March 28, 2009

Replacement Vee Berth Board




The board in the vee berth started to come apart so J. W. Austin fabricated a new piece from 1/2" Star Board for me. It was $40 and they used the old piece as a template. I transfered the trim and forward stop to the new piece. And it fits well.


Friday, March 20, 2009

Installing a Capstan on Nordic Star





























I installed a bow mounted capstan to ease the anchor recovery. It is also very handy for raising the mainsail and being hoisted aloft. The capstan is a Lewmar C-3 purchased from PYacht. The kit including circuit breaker, capstan and waterproof foot switch is Lewmar part number 6960056. The data sheet for the capstan can be seen on Lewmar's website: http://en.lewmar.com/products/catalog/1-17.pdf


This model has an in-line gear box and is fairly compact. Using a supplied template a hole was cut in the deck aft of the stem fitting. I cleaned out the balsa core around the edge of the hole and filled it with fiberglass cloth and resin. The edge of the hole was finished off by applying structural epoxy filler. The deck has to be reinforced because the capstan attaches to the deck by clamping mounting pieces from below against the underside of the capstan. A shim also had to be fabricated from fiber glass and resin to provide a flat mounting surface for the capstan due to the J/30 deck crown. The forward edge of the capstan base is 17" aft of the stem fitting. Excuse my teak toe rail, it is scheduled for extinction. The aft edge of the foot switch is 10" forward of the anchor locker.


Because of the length of the wire runs from the battery ( 25 feet ) I used 2 gauge wire routed along the port underside of the deck up into the bow locker. The deck switch was located on the starboard deck forward of the anchor well. In one of the shots you can see the capstan's #10 gauge pigtails that were connected to insulated posts nearby.







J/30 "Starboard" Hand Rails


I replaced the hand rails on Nordic Star a few years ago with ones made from starboard. J. W. Austin Industries, Melbourne, FL fabricated them using the old hand rails as templates. Then they were match drilled up through the cabin and the outer & inner hand rails were reassembled with new hardware. The only place that had long handrail screws locally was Daytona Bolt & Nut.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Cooling System Work











For the last 2 weeks I've been working on Nordic Star's engine cooling system. The pump impellors hadn't been changed for about 250 hours. Each pump impellor had cracks and was about to let go. The hoses were looking rough and the sea water pump was leaking. I replaced the seawater pump with a new one and will get the old one rebuilt for about $75 and keep it as a spare. The fresh water pump ( Yanmar sea water pump on non FWC setups ) just needed a new impellor. That pump is 27 years old and running smooth at 1319 total engine hours. A new one is $400 but can be rebuilt for under $100. There is also a replacement freshwater pump available that is about $200 but can only be used with freshwater/antifreeze. The Sendure end caps and gaskets were oozing so they were replaced by an aftermarket equivalent ( non-Sendure ).

The Sendure freshwater cooled 2GM was the only option to get FWC in 1982.

I used non-toxic antifreeze. The area under the engine bed is damp..the core under that area was dry when the gel coat was stripped.