As Bob and I are working on getting Med Viking ready for the big race, we have good days and bad days…

Bad days: changing one of the two heads looked like an easy project a few months ago.In reality this project took a very long time. First the holding tank was leaking so I ordered a new tank from Beneteau. When the new tank arrived, I had moved on to another project so the tanks sat uninstalled for a while. Just as I was ready to install the new tank, I discovered that the other head also needed a new tank so I “borrowed” the new tank. At that point we had at least one head fully functional. I ordered a new tank from Ronco Plastics in Tustin (highly recommended). The new tank is more practical than the Beneteau original because it has all the pick up at the top:

Tank from Ronco Plastics

After the tanks was installed I discovered that the motor that runs the electric toilet had been damaged when it got soaked into water. So I ordered a new motor… A few days later I was able to test the whole setup only to realize that the macerator pump was not working well enough to empty the tank. So yet another trip to West Marine to get a new macerator pump…

Good days: after I removed the diesel generator, I needed to find a good way to charge the house bank. One of the members of the Beneteau 411 group on Facebook offered a never-used 100 Amp alternator at a pretty nice discount. I bought it from him. The good news is that we were able to install the alternator pretty quickly. The 100 amps alternator is coupled to a smart charger (MC-614 from Balmar) so we should have plenty of juice to run all the electronic gadgets we are bringing with us!

The 100 amps alternator

When the cat’s away, Bob is sanding! It is wonderful to know that progress is made even when the skipper is at home!

More sanding!

Thank you Bob for working so hard and to Dianna for allowing Bob to flirt with Med Viking so often.

After the inspection, it was time again to work on the boat. This was another very busy weekend. The highlight of the weekend was to frame the emergency rudder to tun a regular rudder into a cassette type system. The rudder will need to slide into the cassette:

The cassette

The rudder can be seen here as the cassette is constructed:

The rudder

A lot of epoxy was used:

A fresh batch of epoxy

The frame is taking shape:

Almost done

A few good stainless screws and we are almost ready to go:

Closing the frame

Ready to test the rudder blade before glassing over the wood:

Does it fit?

Perfect fit!

We did a lot of other things such as:

1) Installing a new holding tank
2) Adding our sail number to the 135% jib:

Our sail number

3) Testing the new AIS Class B transponder
4) Cutting a piece of foam to create a new bunk in the salon
5) Routing the TV antenna coaxial from the mast: while the TV antenna is not a race requirement it must be noted that the admiral (spouse of the skipper/owner for those who don’t sail) is very supportive of the race effort. The TV antenna is a small reward for her support.
7) Changing the main sail halyard

The mast finally went up last Thursday.I had to rush to take the boat from Yacht Haven to the Marina Shipyard in Los Alamitos bay. The rigger and his crew wanted to be in a “clean environment” to take the jib furler apart and change the forestay. Once everything was ready it took 2.5 hours for the crane operator to be ready since they were still moving boats in and out of the water.

In a way the wait was good for something since the rigger realized, 2 hours into the wait, that one section of the furler had been installed backward! You could not make up these stories! Anyway, everything was dismantled on the spot and the section correctly installed.

Finally the crane operator came and the mast was stepped on the boat.

Here comes the mast!

After that I “sailed” (really motored) back to the marina just in time to go to LAX to pick-up the sister-in-law + husband and their 2 children.

The new rigging is really shiny but it still needs to be tuned we should happen this week.

The picture below shows the top of the mast with the new navigation/anchor LED light, the new VHF antenna (with RG213 coaxial all the way to the radio and without any connector), the new socket for the wind instrument and the new rod for the wind indicator (aka windex).

The top of the mast

As expected and predicted by the followers to our blog, the pumps that got submerged during the flooding got damaged. The bilge pumps failed immediately: it tripped the circuit breaker the first week after the incident.

New bilge pump

The new bilge pump (which is really a sump pump) seems to be a little more sturdy than the old one. I still don’t have a high water alarm but this is definitely something that I will add before leaving.

The fresh water pump appeared to be more resilient but it started to sound a bit strange so I decided to do a preventive maintenance to anticipate the imminent failure!

New freshwater pump

The new freshwater pump has a variable speed motor. This means that we were able to remove the accumulator tank. The accumulator tanks provide “for smooth, steady water flow”. Bob was the first one to notice that the accumulator tank was actually full of rust and quite “smelly”. I was happy to get rid of it!

Both pumps, no accumulator tank!

Bob was obviously present to help so the upgrade went very smoothly: only one additional trip to the hardware store per pump!