Learned to eye splice double braid

As anyone knows who has wasted time reading any of this blog, I love to fix things and learn new skills. In order to replace our old wire main halyard I decided to learn how to eye splice double braid to put the eye in for the halyard shackle. I got a copy of the Brion Toss eye splice video from the local library (after asking them to buy it, which they fortunately did) and saw it was just a procedural problem. His method uses various tools, like a special fid, that I don't have, so I searched online for a more low tech approach. Sure enough, found one that doesn't require a fid or anything else not on every boat. http://www.swinginonastar.org/index_files/DoubleBraidEyeSplice.htm


Happy to say it worked great on my very first try. It took me about 90 minutes and lots of head scratching to make sure I didn't ruin it, but I didn't.

Doing this eye splice was one of the more pleasing things I have ever had to do for the boat. It is always fun working with rope, and these splice are really elegant things. Knowing that they preserve close to 100% of the strength of the rope, and are less prone to catching on things, makes it all the more satisfying.

After doing the main halyard, I had to eye splice the new traveler lines for where they attach to the end cars and this also worked great. Way, way better than tying knots in these traveler lines.

Brion Toss has a great recommendation for how to determine how much of the rope to bury in the splice. You take the diameter of the rope, say 3/8, convert it to 16ths, so 6/16ths, and then take half of the numerator and add it to itself, so 6 plus 3 gives 9, and that is how many inches of this diameter line you should bury. Way easier and more elegant than multiplying the diameter by 22 or other such methods.

I finished the splice by taking heavy thread and sewing through the neck a few times and wrapping the line around to seize it together.

New Harken traveler installed!

I've finalized the installation of the new Harken Big Boat traveler and boy is she a beauty. Far more beefy than the old Lewmar unit she replaced and with better pulley ratios. I've attached some photos of the installation for those of you considering doing the same. My experience with sailnet ended up being positive, though it took them about 2 weeks longer to get it to me than they had said. You have to cut the traveler beam yourself to the specifications of your deck, and this was easy to do with a good hacksaw blade. Just have to make sure the cut is perpendicular the length of the beam. I've included a shot of the new backing plate and nuts. This installation took two 4" 5/16 hex bolts. The pilothouse is strongly reinforced here and I filled the old bolt holes with thickened epoxy before drilling the new holes. It is solid fiberglass in this area. Beneath the backing plate I added some thickened epoxy to make for a flatter mounting surface.

Amy and I really like the look of the red control line as it contrasts easily from the mainsheet and plays off the red and black color theme of the Harken.

Another great trip to Jones Island State Park

Our favorite local destination is Jones Island State Park. A gem of an island located just north of Yellow Island and west of Orcas, it offers safe and easy anchorages, amazing hikes, nice second growth forest, big open fields for frisbee with the kids, and surprisingly few other people. It only takes an hour from our slip in Friday Harbor and so it is an easy half-day trip.

This time we took advantage of some rare sunshine and brought along a good friend for the ride. We sailed for a while but were going into the teeth of a max ebb current which reduced our SOG to about 1.5 knots in the slight and variable 10 knot winds. Alas, at least we got to raise the sails and use the new traveler. Wow, is it pretty to look at and works like a dream. I'm sure the first time we use it something more than 20 knots will surely show the benefits of the 4:1 ratio and smooth bearings.

We anchored in the south cove as the wind was from the north and after going to shore did a lot of sun lounging on the beach. The boys are always happy, as all kids would be, playing on the shore. We try as much as possible to afford them a Huckleberry Finn childhood.

The hike around the west side was especially beautiful and the boys and I took advantage of the extreme low tide to explore some smallish coves/caves in the north cove. Couldn't have had any more fun than playing tag and walking logs and just being boys.

Secondary fuel filter change and she's spotless!

I changed out my engine mounted secondary fuel filter today and brought it home to do a biopsy and see what was inside. It had 150 hours on it. I have a primary Racor 2 micron filter upstream, and so I thought not much should get through. Sure enough, that filter was spotless after 150 hours.

And, I have been running a high % biodiesel these past 150 hours and know that it has been cleaning out my old 70 gallon diesel tank. But none of that gunk made it past my Racor. I thought these pictures would be fun for some to see. The line on the filter element is from my hacksaw blade!

Final resolution of the temperature sender saga

On 3/15/08 I posted a story about my tribulations with getting both my temperature gauges to read properly. I am overwhelming happy to say that I have finally solved the problem and the answer was somewhat outside the box.

Where I left off in the previous post was that I was contacting Cook Engine in Portland, Oregon to return, yet again, the incorrect sender they sent and hope to have them send the proper one. Well, when I spoke with them the following Monday the lady told me that she would refund my money and then basically just wanted to get rid of me. No "let's solve this problem together" or "we'll get to the bottom of this". No, just go away please. I told her I had found one source online for the "proper" 1/4 sender and she said to just go with them. Being fed up with being sent the wrong stuff from Cook, I agreed, and ordered the sender online.

It came, I hooked it up to my multimeter and got it warm and guess what, it did not match the resistance needed for two stations!!!!!!!!!!! Just to be safe, I took it down to Aeolus and put it in and warmed her up and sure enough, it didn't work.

This is when no amount of Fuck, or Shit or Goddamn or any other colorful angry language begins to express the amount of frustration or despair one momentarily feels...

Being a persistent SOB though, I said, "OK, screw it, Teleflex makes a 3/8 dual station sender and I have two new Teleflex temperature gauges that are rated to work with their sender and so by god I'm going to go that route".

While down in Seattle I got the 3/8 NPT (very important it is NPT!) tap and the appropriate 37/64 drill bit and when I got home I drilled and tapped the old 1/4 hole for the new 3/8 sender I got from Fisheries Supply in Seattle. There is just enough clearance in the housing to safely accommodate the larger sender.

I took it down to Aeolus today, started her up, and unbelievable, both gauges came up to operating temperature. I'm so relieved it is indescribable.

Replacing masthead sheaves

Since Aeolus is out of sailing shape until the new traveler is installed, I decided to go ahead and replace my masthead sheaves as I have long known they were grooved from the wire/rope halyards. I figured while up there again I would photograph everything for reference later. The masthead sheaves on my Gulf 32 are 2 3/4 OD, 3/8 pin, and 31/64 wide. Turns out these are hard to find. I found something close to them at www.rigrite.com but really dislike having stuff shipped across the country if I can buy it locally. Plus, they weren't exact matches.

I asked on the Brion Toss rigging forum called Spartalk and was reminded of a guy here in Washington who specializes in making custom sheaves. Looks like he does really nice work and he is getting them out to me on a one day turn around. His business is called Zephyr Works.

If I hadn't already replaced my halyards somewhat recently, I might switch to just rope halyards, but I'll leave that for a few years down the road. For now, Zephyr works is making my new sheaves with a wire/rope groove, which will work fine for plain rope if I switch to that in the future. The new sheaves are delrin with nice bronze sleaves for the cotter pin surface.


Update 4/3/08. My new sheaves did in fact come the very next day and I am thrilled. They are solid and much better than my old ones. The bronze sleave fits the clevis pin much better with sufficient but no extra slack. I installed them, yet another mast climbing, and when I installed the halyards they ran even smoother than before.

I now highly recommend Zephyrwerks for quick, quality and affordable work!

A storm, new reefing system and goodbye reefing hook

Have been establishing a slab reefing system for the new mainsail and have really enjoyed the design and creation of it all. In the process, I discovered that the reefing hook was not only hard to use, but dangerous because the forces on it were very lateral, and this wanted to bend the hook toward the stern. Bad combination, since that hook is the only bolt holding the boom into the gooseneck. If it snapped, you're screwed. In the photo, the small lines you see are my lazy jack lines just being messy on the now gone hook.

After posing a question on spartalk (such an amazing resource! Much of the reason I do this blog is out of gratitude to all the people more experienced than me who have shared their wisdom in places like sailnet and spartalk in hopes this blog may help others seeking answers), the Brion Toss site, I learned that reefing hooks are generally disfavored by riggers and that there are easier and better ways to deal with the tack.

I pulled out the reefing hook and replaced it with a standard hex head stainless bolt liberally covered in lanocote due to the aluminum surfaces it touches.

My new reefing system is pretty basic. I did a ton of research online and in books before settling on a pretty common system. Bill Seifert in his great book gave the advice to arrange a small block on the clew to prevent line chafe and provide mechanical advantage. He said, and I am sure it is true, that a line run through a cringle at the leech will chafe through in just a few hours of flogging in high winds. I used beautiful Lewmar 60mm synchro blocks attached to the cringle with a halyard shackle for strength and fit and ease of removal in a pinch. Will get pictures soon.

On the boom the first reef is led from an eye to the leech block down to the back of the boom around the sheave and forward out the front and back to a cleat. Very strong, and easy to use.

The second reef is taken from an eye up to the second reef cringle block and back down to a cheek block placed so the forces are pulling back on the sail to get good foot tension and then forward to a cleat on the boom. Also simple, strong and all on the starboard side.

The tack has pendants permanently hung and just long enough to be reached. When brought down, they secure to the cleat below the main halyard winch. The angles work well and the timing of release halyard from cleat, attach reefing tack line, adjust halyard with winch, and then cover reefing line with halyard, all works out well.

A note on my boom is that it is made out of heavy gauge aluminum and when I threaded the holes, there are about 3 threads worth of purchase. That should be enough for these largely lateral forces. All screws inserted with blue loctite for corrosion resistance and holding.

Now the storm story: While finishing the installation of the new boom hardware, I have the full sail up at the dock, making measurements and drilling and tapping holes for the hardware. Out of nowhere, a windstorm comes up and in no time we are getting 40 knot gusts. Maybe higher. Smith Island weather station nearby had 56 knot gusts. It was a fun test of my new reefing system!!! I finished installing everything with great difficulty, and then reefed her down right there at the dock, without the ability to spill wind from the sail because I couldn't let the boom out too far without hitting a neighboring boat. She reefed beautifully, with only hand strength, and in pretty nasty conditions. The wind blew so strong it was lifting my 200 pounds off the deck a little bit. I love that stuff.