In this blog post I’m going to cover some of the repairs and upgrades we have completed on Wendy Woo over the past few years. One of the realities of owning a boat, and especially an old wooden boat, is that things break, leak, degrade or just stop working. Preventative maintenance is essential in trying to mitigate the effect of random failures. Mechanical maintenance and servicing can be relatively straightforward if you have an aptitude for such things. Those of you who know me will be aware that I am an engineer by background and have ‘messed around’ with cars for decades, as well as being a handyman when it comes to DIY. Therefore I do all of the mechanical and electrical systems maintenance myself. Not only does this help greatly in keeping costs manageable, it also means that we are pretty much self-reliant when out and about. I firmly believe that understanding your boat and its systems is essential for this reason.
The structure of the boat is another matter. The nature of a wooden boat means that there are many joints and seams that offer potential pathways for water to get in. Below the waterline is sound and we generally have a dry bilge (although see my earlier post about fresh water leaks). However, since we moved on board Wendy Woo we have continually tried to identify the source of a leak into one of the lockers in the saloon. Rainwater would find its way in through the wheelhouse and track down into the locker, but finding the entry point has proved particularly challenging. Sometimes we could be sitting in a downpour and nothing would come in and at other times in drizzle the water would drip in. I tried using a hose pipe to simulate rainfall working my way upwards but nothing obvious would reveal itself. In the end we decided to dig into the most likely point of entry, that being the junction between the wheelhouse windscreen and the saloon roof.
It quickly became apparent that water had been getting in there for some time. The wood was rotten in parts and I ended up stripping back a reasonably large section of the roof before finding sound material. I replaced some of the planking and re-sheathed the area and all seemed good for a while, but then the leak reappeared.
This time I dug out along the side of the wheelhouse and removed the side window (breaking it in the process!) and replacing more rotten wood. This seems to have solved the problem, but for how long, who knows? We have also done a similar repair on the other side and that appears to be fixed now. We have both agreed to not use the ‘L-word’ for fear of jinxing the repairs we have done.
Another area of concern we have had is the age and condition of the underwater skin fittings. These are holes below the waterline with hoses attached that allow water either in (for engine cooling and toilet flushing) or out (for sink drains, toilet drains, etc). They are made from either plastic or metal of varying qualities and are vital to the seaworthiness of any vessel.
In our case the skin fittings appeared to be made from a mixture of bronze and chrome plated brass and, although they looked ok at initial glance, they were of an unknown age. This is the type of thing that can lodge itself into your mind when out at sea and cause no end of anxiety as a failure can lead to very rapid flooding of your boat. We decided that we would change all the skin fittings for good quality silicon bronze ones at our next lift out, and at the same time replace all the valves and hoses too.
Not a cheap exercise to say the least but, like with the keel bolts we replaced a few years ago, we now have the peace of mind that all is good below the waterline.
One of the topics I discussed in an earlier post was our desire to be more self-sufficient whilst at anchor. We’re not there yet but we have made steps towards that goal. Having the confidence that your batteries are being charged is a constant worry for anchor dwellers. We already had a 100w solar panel on the wheelhouse roof but this was nowhere near enough capacity. Furthermore, because it was a rigid panel sitting proud of the roof surface it would often catch the mainsail reefing lines whilst underway which had the risk of causing damage. Flexible solar panels have a much lower profile and improvements in technology have made them much more efficient. We therefore decided to replace the existing panel with two 175w flexible panels and coupled them to a smart solar charge controller from Victron Energy.
This has given us far greater charge capacity……in theory. However, due to partial shading from the main boom we are not harvesting as much solar energy as we would like. We want to fit more panels but space is at a premium so this is a work in progress project. We would also like to invest in a wind generator but funds don’t allow for this at the moment, as is the case for switching to lithium (LiFePo4) batteries. We will get there eventually.
We bought a Samsung tablet and installed Navionics software onto it. We can place this in front of the helm whilst underway but the tablet has the added advantage of being used for other purposes when not navigating. This has proved to be a highly cost effective solution. We now have real-time situational awareness which has proved invaluable on the occasions when we have been in reduced visibility. We still use the Standard Horizon chart plotter as a back-up and we also have paper charts for our cruising areas, so we know where we are at all times.
The final upgrade I want to cover is AIS. Automatic Identification System is a worldwide system for boats to ‘see’ other boats and, depending on the system installed, ‘tell’ other boats where you are. Again, WW had an AIS system fitted but it was a basic receiver with a very small screen and also not visible from the helm. Being a receiver only this system is only capable of seeing other boats which is fine, but we also wanted to make sure that we could be seen by other vessels. In addition, I was aware that it was possible to overlay AIS target information onto digital charts. Much research once again ensued and having read many reviews I decided on an Emtrak Class B+ AIS Transponder.
This was straightforward to install and works very well. We now have the confidence that we are continually transmitting our location as well as seeing everyone else. It has the added advantage of working alongside our Navionics system so we can see other vessels overlaid onto the digital charts. Of course it can only display a vessel if that vessel is transmitting so it doesn’t remove the need to keep a good lookout at all times, but again it is a real help if visibility is reduced. As a sideline our location is also visible to friends and family ashore who can see us on such websites as marinetraffic.com.
There have been many other repairs over the past few years such as wiring alterations, hinge replacements and no end of sanding, painting and varnishing, but the above paragraphs outline the more significant tasks we have carried out. I hope that they have given you an idea of what it’s like to own and live on an old wooden boat. In my next blog I will talk about our ‘big journey’ but until then, thanks for reading and please feel free to comment below.
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