25/4/2023 0 Comments Cockpit CeilingThe cockpit roof is a timber frame covered in aluminium sheet. It's light, compared to the original GRP, but gets VERY hot in summer or icy in the winter. So it needs insulation. Expanded polystyrene is good and I have some saved from other projects, but it's tricky to glue. Water-based glues don't work well on two impervious surfaces and solvent glues dissolve polystyrene. Then I saw a YouTube video recommending Stixal a silicone adhesive. So today I tried it and it seems OK. Above is the roof closed before insulation work. Right is the roof upside down on top of the cabin roof while I stuck the polystyrene down. and below is the insulated roof re-fitted. The next step will be to line it. I'm going to stick calico on it, with PVA, then paint it with water based paint. White spirit and polystyrene are not a good mix. Update 29th April. Had the roof off again with help from #1 daughter and her #1 daughter so we could stick the calico on. Left to dry for an hour while we went for a brief trial run. Gear selection still dodgy but otherwise OK. Going to need to find another helper soon to flip the roof again for painting. maybe #2 daughter or #2 son-in-law.
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21/4/2023 0 Comments NDYT PosterThis year's long boat trip will be a bit different, instead of going solo I'm taking a friend, Gareth Allison along for the ride. we're both cancer patients and hope to raise some money for a local cancer charity, Above & Beyond Cancer Foundation. Here's a link to our 'GoFundMe' donation page and below is a poster you can download and print. Please share on any/all media you can. Thankyou.
18/4/2023 1 Comment Update on heating and engine mountsWith the heating/cooling system finished and full of water I could run the engine for a prolonged period for the first time in months. As noted yesterday the rad does get warm without the pump on but not very warm, with the pump on it gets hot. So that's OK.
Once I'd done checking leaks I replaced the engine covers and seat squabs and can report that the new engine mounts really work. Above about 12oorpm the engine feels smooth and all the sympathetic vibrations in the cockpit and cabin have disappeared. Unfortunately at tick-over it feels rough but I just need to adjust the tick-over speed a little. 16/4/2023 0 Comments Central Heating!Doing most of my boating in the summer I don't really need cabin heating, except that on long trips I do my own laundry day to day and only use marina launderette facilities occasionally to wash towels and my sleeping bag. Generally I drape socks and undies over a towel rail and hang shirts and jeans in the cockpit, but it's not elegant and they been known to fall off, or get dripped on in locks and tunnels. So I thought a radiator in the cabin with one of those clothes hangers on it would be ideal. And I just happened to have salvaged a rad from when we had our bathroom done up at home. Here you can see the black rubber hoses that take hot water from the engine to the calorifier (hot water tank) with Tee fittings to connect to Speedfit pipe for the radiator. The calorifier has worked well for a few years, it's at a similar level to the engine cooling water take-off points and the cooling water circulator drives it just fine. The radiator though is 6m of pipework away so thought I'd need an extra pump to get the hot water to go that far. Because the top of the rad is a lot higher than the engine I've also fitted a header tank in the cockpit so I can fill the rad to the top. I've fitted a simple 12V centrifugal pump to the radiator but I noticed the rad was starting to get warm even before I'd finished wiring the pump! That's annoying really because I had assumed just switching off the pump would turn off the heating but maybe I'll need to fit a valve too. More testing in a day or two. Photo shows the pump plumbed but not wired. It has ½"BSP threaded connections so screws straight into the rad and connects to normal pipe fittings. The blue hose is nothing to do with it, it's the cold water feed to the galley. 5/4/2023 0 Comments Sump PumpWhen we bought Seren we noticed an annoying high pitched rattle which I eventually traced to the loose bracket that held the engine oil sump pump onto the side of the gearbox. I tried tightening it, several times but it was a flimsy effort and never really secure. The a few years ago the vibration cracked the pipe connecting it to the sump and it's been capped off ever since. Last month I finally got around to re-instating it, with a new bracket and new pipework. So here it is. Today's triumph was re-assembling the gear selector / engine control which seems OK on static test tied to the landing stage. The real test comes when it's safe enough to venture out on the water and try some actual maneouvering. 2/4/2023 0 Comments Flood
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AuthorPhil, owner, captain, chief engineer, electrician, carpenter, cook and comms manager of Seren Archives
April 2024
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