The Periwinkle and Stargazer Blog

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted up on here. Not to say things aren't happening, but both Terry and I have been VERY busy doing all kinds of things that aren't boat related which makes it tough to get updates out in any timely manner.

On Terry's boat there are all kinds of updates. I've been waiting to get some pictures from him to put a good story together but he's a busy guy. To put things in a nutshell though, the boat has had it's mast removed and been moved inside the shed at the marina to be worked on over the winter. The hull has been heavily fortified with a ridiculous amount of fiberglass that despite what may be though, physics does take over and it should float. The inside has been very nicely cleaned up and reinforced all around to accommodate the new engine that will be going in.

The fuel tank has been manufactured and now fitted with the brackets built and installed.

Cushions have finally come back from the seamstress/cushion maker, so those can go in when it's all done.

No work on the galley or head yet, Terry is still hard at work refiberglassing the inside of the hull and fixing holes in the deck etc.

The boat was painted, trim done and topside got a fresh coat of white. From here hopefully the inside will be finished up before next sailing season.

My boat hasn't received any upgrades because it hasn't needed any! ha! I did get a few trips in the boat which I'm keen to tell about on here. Got video and pics but just no time to do anything due to family needs and work overload. Life is incredibly busy and good, I'm very much looking forward to this winter for some good snowboarding and sledding, and of course next sailing season. The next thing I want to do on my boat is the port side ceiling pieces and a new shelf to go on it. Needs to match the starboard side of course and I have all the materials here.. I may work on it over the winter myself, just need to warm the boat up.

Once the spring warms up I'll be painting the hull. That's a total pain as it all needs to be done. Gotta sand down to the hull and do it from scratch. If I can make enough money this winter then I may pay a company to do it.. we'll see.

Anyways, that's the quick update for now, I'll try to post more soon as I hassle Terry for pics the next time I'm over there. Until then though I'm sure I'll be busy with work and with a certain little girl's first birthday! ha! I can't believe it.... time flies.

This entry was posted on November 15, 2011 at 1:19 AM and has received 65 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

A quick note before getting into the updates. There is a mobile version of this blog for those on phones or tablets. Loads quicker and all that. Anyways, up until now I actually hadn't properly set it up and it was showing some default values that come with the software. I've finally got around to fixing that, so the mobile version should be up to snuff now.

On with a couple of pics that Terry sent over. He's made good progress on the aft end of the boat with pretty much the whole engine bed area done now:

With that, there is also the cockpit that needed to be nicely cleaned up after all the holes got filled in:

Terry likes to make his boats bullet proof, check out the Periwinkle I (the catboat) for proof of that with one and a half inches of marine plywood all around plus fiberglass..

Either way, this is great progress and it's just a matter of time before he gets the tank in, engine mounts and then the engine. Need a bit of plumbing in there too for intake and out for cooling and the scuppers need somewhere to drain out to too. Getting there.

This entry was posted on August 12, 2011 at 12:03 AM and has received 162 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I've finally got some updates for the Periwinkle II here. Terry has been extremely busy on the boat and it's hard to tell from a quick glance, but quite a few items have now been completed and it's not long now until the new engine can finally go in. According to Terry though, it looks like he won't be going sailing this year, just too many things to finish up.

First up is the obligatory shot of Terry hard at work:

That's after a night of fiberglass grinding all over the place. The boat was a mess, here are a few pics to show that..

An immense amount of fiberglass dust but it's all cleaned up and the aft end of the boat is looking pretty sharp. A lot of work was done back there to smooth things out and get rid of shoddy workmanship back there from either previous owners or original builders. Terry is very meticulous and doesn't like to see anything out of place or under his standards. In other words, the boat should be completely rebuilt by the time he's finished with it!

Moving on to another item he needed to get on with, there's a problem with the current wiring in place. The electrical lines that come in happen to cross to the starboard side from port for no real apparent reason other than to supply electricity to one light. From there, the electrical then goes back across to the port side to supply juice to the rest of the boat. Strange setup for sure and the wire is just in the way:

Of course, Terry can't leave a rat's nest like this hanging around:

So that all got removed and the holes that you can see here:

have been filled in and the whole area is now ready for a good coating of fiberglass. That's nicely cleaned up compared to what it used to look like:

Last but not least in this particular update is the new supports for the new fuel tank. The current (now removed) tank was a small tank in the lazarette. It leaked too I think.. anyways, completely inadequate and Terry is going to have a custom one made up to accommodate his heavy usage of the motor that he's going to put in once he finally gets this boat on the water and ready to go. Just for fun I'm sure he'll zip around at full throttle just because he can!

Anyways, the supports are custom made fiberglass pieces, here is one in a test fit:

It's just a matter of time now before he gets all that fiberglassing done back there, a coat of paint, tank supports, engine supports, plumbing and ... I think that's about it and then he can get the engine in. Not long now!

This entry was posted on August 8, 2011 at 10:30 PM and has received 116 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I'm completely unsure of exactly how many parts this is.. all projects have been rolled into one, engine, galley, head.. Either way, here is Terry's latest!

First, an iPhone self portrait showing the non-functional knotmeter above the compass in the aft cabin bulkhead. It's gone now, and the hole is filled in, along with various other bolt holes on both sides of the companionway.

The light is shining into the open end of a seat back where I am about to take the piece of fiberglass on the bench and glass it into the floor of the storage space behind the seat. The original plywood stopped about an inch short of the hull, leaving a gap that small objects dropped through, and since it didn't connect the seat to the hull, it also didn't provide any strengthening to either the hull or seat. The top and aft end of the seat back were not properly connected either.

This shows the port side aft on the boat with fiberglassing tools and the holes in the forward end of the cockpit where the engine instrument panel and blower had been. These have now been filled in. Details below.

**Quick note by Graeme** - If you have ever seen the show "Breaking Bad" on AMC you'll quickly realize how much Terry looks like the character Walter White. It's uncanny here...

I have connected the seat back and seat to the hull, filling the gap, and am about to install a level floor in the storage compartment, which will more securely attach the seat to the hull.

The floor and upper connections to the hull are in place, along with a connecting fillet to the aft end bulkhead, but are not cleaned up yet.

The hole in the aft cabin bulkhead where the non-functioning knotmeter was removed prepared for fiberglass repair.

This is the space where I have to work to strengthen the aft bulkhead under the cockpit, and install supports for a diesel fuel tank. It's roughly the size of a coffin, and may become one if the fiberglass fumes become too strong while I am crammed into there. On this occasion, I was doing preparatory grinding on the aft bulkhead and hull to prepare for fiberglassing. It's actually much longer than it looks in the photo, which sort of telescopes the aft end forward.

While I'm under the cockpit grinding fiberglass, Marlise is getting the dinghy painted in it's new colours, which will match the new paint scheme on the boat.

The holes in the forward end of the cockpit where the old engine control panel and blower were have been ground to a taped edge and blocked off with wax paper and plywood to create a temporary backing to fiberglass against.

This stick is jamming a piece of plywood and wax paper against the aft bulkhead of the cabin where the old knotmeter hole is to create a temporary flat surface I can fiberglass against.

Here is how it looks from the cockpit side of the hole with the blocker in place and the hole ground down to a taper so the fiberglass will get a good bond without creating a bulge in the bulkhead. It will later be reinforced from the inside.

Meanwhile, back at the rudder shaft, I need to remove the old bolts holding the lower end of the shaft to the aft bulkhead so I can replace the corroded bolts and reinforce the bulkhead and rudder support. The bolts had unfortunately been crudely fiberglassed over, so I had to chisel the fiberglass away from them, and from various other areas where it had been poorly laid up and was not well bonded, saturated with resin, or had air bubbles around sharp bends that had not been radiused off to a gentle curve that the glass would bend around without forming a bubble. More on that later.

Back at the cockpit bulkhead, the holes have now been fiberglassed in and the area is ready for a couple of layers of mat and roving wrapped around the sides of the cockpit to restore it's strength.

A small hole where the sink drain pipe had been run aft and out through the side of the bunk support was also filled in.

The damaged bunk sides where some past owner had sawed them in half to remove a sewage holding tank were also repaired.

Back in the aft lazerette at the lower rudder shaft post support, I chiseled off a large air bubble that had formed when someone had tried to bend inadequately saturated fiberglass around a square corner; something that never works. The bubble had gradually filled over the years with dirt and debris including grease and needs to be removed and replaced with a solid well saturated glass layup around a properly radiused corner. This is typical of the things you find when working on older boats that have had many owners, some of whom were not what you might call craftsmen, or even competent. The fiberglass reinforcing that someone had added over the original rudder support was poorly saturated, full of air bubbles, and not well bonded (or even bonded at all in places ) to the hull and bulkhead. It was also covering the bolt heads, making it impossible to replace corroded bolts without chiseling it off the bolt heads. It all needs to come out and be restored properly.

The storage locker behind the seat back is now properly glassed to the seat back, seat, hull, top shelf, and aft bulkhead of the locker, sanded out and ready for painting.

The hole where the knotmeter had been is now glassed in from the outside and the inside has been prepared for glassing the reinforcing support in place.

And the reinforcing fiberglass is now in place on the inside, completing the repair of that particular hole except for fairing the new fibreglass in to the aft cabin bulkhead on the outside and restoring the vinyl cabin liner on the inside. This is how fiberglass work is supposed to look: clear, completely saturated, and with all excess resin and air bubbles rolled out.

And that's it for this set of updates. The fiberglassing of the knotmeter hole was completed around 4 AM, so time to head for home and do the laundry and have a good shower to get rid of some of the itchy fiberglass dust and particles. This is one job I'll be happy to see disappearing in the rear view mirror.

This entry was posted on July 9, 2011 at 10:22 PM and has received 179 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

This is a few days late just due to an immensely busy life at the moment...

Anyways, Terry has made great progress and we're going to see a lot more out of him the very near future as he's busy working hard on getting the boat ready to go back in the water. Here are some pics and details of what he had to do recently (from Terry):

I needed to get the damaged area around the three holes in the aft bulkhead cut out more or less square and filled in with a piece of plywood that I can fiberglass against. The first thing I had to do was relocate the wire coming through one of the holes. This wire is supplying all the electrical power to the boat, so I had to disconnect and remove the old breaker box, relocate the wire, put a temporary plug on the end of it, and plug it back in to restore power so I had lights and could use the Sawzall and grinder.

Here I am cutting out the rectangular hole in the bulkhead from the cabin side below the cockpit floor. The rudder post tube is in the foreground with the grease nipple. Had to be careful not to cut that.

The working area appears roomy in the photo, but is actually about the size of a coffin. You can see the old damaged area in the cut out pieces. Very difficult to try and get it more or less rectangular in these conditions. There is a lot of stuff on the other side of the hole I have to avoid cutting into, and the fan on the Sawsall is throwing all the fiberglass dust in my face.

The replacement piece being cut to shape. This took many many trips between the boat and the bandsaw in the shop, up and down the ladder and crawling back under the cockpit each time to try it against the hole again until I had a good fit.

Looks like snow, but it's actually horrible itchy fiberglass dust from grinding the inner hull. Not fun. (from Graeme here, I know exactly what this stuff is like... it's really horrible and gets in everywhere and anything)

Sweeping up the worst of the dust. (from Graeme again, Terry is very brave and careful to do that, I would just get a strong shop vac in there to get it all out instead of sweeping)

The bottom swept out a bit revealing the smoothed over filled in through-hull holes ready for glassing on the inside. I only got about a quarter of the grinding done last night.

Dry fitting the new filler piece of plywood in place.

Epoxied in place. Lots of cleanup to do here when the epoxy sets. I needed to get this done tonight so it could be setting up while I am working in Richmond tomorrow (well, today, actually). Finished up about 5:30 AM; got home about 6. It's coming up on 7 now, and I have to get a few hours shut eye before heading for Steveston, so into the shower and off to bed.

More to report soon!

This entry was posted on June 23, 2011 at 10:14 AM and has received 116 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

To go with the engine replacement topic that we've got going, all of the work below needs to be done before the new engine can be put in at all. Lots of pics, amazing work from Terry. I'm not sure I'd have the courage to do so much.

From Terry: I have to divot into the glass around the through-hulls being filled in to create a space for the filler glass layup to go, then glass them in and fair them up on the outside. Next, I have to do a similar divot on the inside down to meet and bond to the outer layup, and then lay up some heavy mat and roving on the inside for some distance all around the patched area, especially the three holds near the keel and engine beds.

The first step to filling in the holes where the through-hulls and various bolts had been was to grind out saucer shaped divots around them down to a tapered edge at the inner edge of the holes so they could be filled with multiple layers of fiberglass cloth and mat without creating a bulge in the hull at that point. Here two through-hulls where a seacock and knot-meter impeller had been and a couple of bolt holes are being divoted out with a grinder to receive the new fiberglass patches.

Which gives this:

To have a solid surface to fiberglass up against, a temporary blocking patch is jammed in against the holes with a layer of wax paper against the hull so the glass patch won't stick to it, and then some blocking pressed against it.

Here three shores jam wax paper and blocks against the two cockpit drain through-hull holes and the holes which were located just ahead of the old engine bearers for the cooling water inlet and knotmeter impeller.

Close up of the blocking against the old cockpit drain through-hulls being filled in.

Laying up the many layers of glass to fill in the bolt holes where the boarding ladder had been bolted on to the transom.

Wetting out the freshly ground glass before starting to apply the first of about 15 layers of mat and cloth in the deeper holes where the hull is thicker. Old gallon plastic containers make good fiberglassing resin holders. I usually use a 3 inch short bristle roller; not a fluffy one that would tend to wrap the cloth around it and would not create sufficient pressure to get out the air bubbles.

A completed patch where an old unused exhaust port had exited below the counter just ahead of the transom. This is how a patch should look when done: translucent clear with no air bubbles.

The two old cockpit drain holes are filled in, with the larger holes near the keel visible at the bottom of the photo.

This multi-layer patch covers the three sets of holes ahead of the engine bearers with several full size layers over the smaller circle patches that brought the three holes up flush with the larger divot before feathering out into the hull. You can see the weft of the heavier roving as straight lines fore and aft. It takes a while for the resin to completely saturate the heavier roving and render it translucent.

With the outside patches in place and ready for fairing in with the grinder and hand sanding, the next job is to remove the blocking and shores from inside the boat and grind the glass down to get a good bond with the larger patches that will cover the holes on the inside. These patches will not be divoted into the hull, but will be laid up as patches over the existing hull glass for greater strength. The larger holes by the keel and the two holes where the cockpit drains were will be covered by the new engine bearers, so they will have additional reinforcing on the inside.

This entry was posted on June 17, 2011 at 9:42 PM and has received 103 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.