Yesterday brought more victories and a good dose of defeat. We finished putting the roller furler back together, and it seems to be working good. We got the Simrad radar working, that had been dead on the trip from Fiji to Hawaii. We rebedded a leaking engine room access hatch that is for allowing for easy removal of the engines, but was leaking salt water all over the top of them on the trip here. And we dug into the Steelhead crane that had a seemingly bad brake and was swinging around on the trip here and had to be lashed down. Upon taking it apart we figured out that it did not have a bad brake, at all, but that the post it is mounted on that comes down through the kitchen had broken loose at it's base. It has a flangers that is bolted to the floor at the base. It has holes for 8 x 3/8" bolts, but whoever installed it only used 4 bolts. 3 of them had been sheared off and it was spinning around the one off center bolt left with the cabinet holding it in place. The crane is an enormously heaven piece of equipment, and to replace the bolts, and add new ones we had to pull it up about 6" out of the deck. We used a combination of rigging off the boom, the mainsail halyard, and a car jack to jack it up, replace/add new bolts, and set it back down. It should be good now, but when I get home I will definitely fabricate a stainless support for the end of it to sit in when not in use to take the twisting strain off when in waves. After taking that thing apart I am super impressed with Steelhead cranes. What a beautiful piece of equipment.
The bad news was that as we were working on the crane, I discovered that the mast right next to it is not supported the way it needs to be for the compression forces it places on the deck, and is deforming the deck down. I am pretty discouraged about this one, and can't see any way to fix it short of a major interior remodel on the main and lower decks, and even then I am not sure as the floor area below it on the lower deck may be over the main fuel tank, which is integral to the hull, and would be very hard to get a compression strut through to take the compression to the keel. I will explore it more when I get the boat home, and probably get a naval architect involved, but it is pretty discouraging. Right now I am thinking I will probably just remove the top half of the mast at the spreaders, and just keep the lower section as a radar holder, crows nest, and backup lifting boom. The previous owner spent a fortune adding this rig, I would estimate well over $100K, and it is a shame he didn't have it engineered right. For the trip home I am going to loosen the rig, put a couple 4x4's fore to aft along the cabin floor, and the ceiling, to spread out the load on the floor and roof framing, then use a hydraulic house jack, to jack the deck back up where is is supposed to be, and install a couple 4x4"'s vertically between the sleepers on the floor and ceiling to carry the compressive load from the mast base and spread it out on the floor and ceiling. It will look dumb, and be a tripping hazard, but should get the boat safely home with no further damage till I can address the problems in a more permanent manner. We will keep the rig as loose as we dare, for the trip home and take it really easy with any sailing.
Plus, the lady broker was not included in the sale.
