Preparing Viva for Season 2 at Cabrales Boatyard
After a nice summer break on land, we are back in Puerto Penasco to come prepare for season 2. This summer saw us leave on a road trip from Portland, to Vancouver BC, Calgary, Wisconsin, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City - all to go visit family and friends which we hadn't seen in a few years. It was a lot of miles but a great trip overall.
Viva Shrink-wrapped
We found Viva waiting for us in the Cabrales boatyard full of dust, dirt and fully shrink wrapped. Cabrales boatyard is a good place for boaters to exercise their DIY skills and get stuff done on their boat while on the hard, and that's exactly what we intended on doing for the roughly one month we expected to stay on the hard before splashing late in October.
I arrived Puerto Penasco 21 September, Marie joined me on 30 September. So from 21 Sep to 20 Oct we completed a long list of projects which spans our three categories of projects - #1 Safety/Seaworthiness/Reliability, #2 Comfort, #3 Make pretty.
We completed several projects - fixing the forward head toilet where the macerator pump seals had busted over the summer likely from the blistering heat. Decided I would remove the 8 feet 1" diameter sanitation tube to clean it. My boat neighbor, an extremely experienced boater/contractor told me "Pierre, you took it out, don't put it back, get a new one". Very happy I followed his advice as this tube was still smelly on this outside after a full clean-up. I learned that the smell permeates this type of tubing and they need to be changed every 4-6 years.
I also executed the long due project of upgrading my house bank battery cables set-up from 2 to 2/0 AWG and installing individual battery switches. My lithium house bank installed in August 22 (with help from Richard Sandefur), has 900 AMP-Hr (at 24V) and was a major improvement to Viva a year ago. Upgrading the cables represented the final completion of that battery upgrade project.
Installed in August 22, this is the Lithium LiFePo4 battery bank, 3 individual 300 Amp-hr batteries connected in parallel made to fit this battery compartment.
This picture is after the cable upgrade and switches installed and fixed to the compartment wall.
Back in April 22, while on the hard for a standing rigging upgrade at Rocky point marina (Scappoose), I had a B&G forward-looking sonar transducer installed, but due to a revolving list of other higher priority projects, had never routed the cable from the transducer in the bilge of the bow to my Multifunction Display (MFD) back in the cockpit. Routing that cable ended-up being a day+ long project trying to find the right path and pushing/pulling through narrow channels, I ended-up requiring a 10 feet extension which Marie brought with her from Portland.
Daily Grind — So for a full month, 7 days a week, we got up in our small (modest) air-conditioned studio, had breakfast and made it to the yard around 8AM to work until 6PM in 90-100 Deg heat, then went on a daily sunset walk before going back to the studio to shower and have dinner. Every night we reviewed our project spreadsheet and happily checked-off items, the whole routine repeated itself every day. Along the way we made friends with boaters in the Cabrales boatyard community, either boaters next to Viva or asking/answering questions on the boatyard cruisers WhatsApp group, which was an invaluable resource for cruisers to collaborate and help out each other.
Marie's focus on the project list was on categories #2 (Comfort) and #3 (Make Pretty) :
Full interior carpet upgrade
Using big roll of carpet we shlepped down from Portland in our van. This involved measuring, cutting, binding, glueing…
Upgraded windows covering
from the old 20+ year old Amel rundown curtains to a set of nice CloZure blinds.
Complete re-organization and inventory of the interior of the boat
Coordinated re-upholstery of all of our rundown saloon cushions.
Bottom Job
We topped-off this month-long boat project marathon with the dreaded task of sanding and painting the bottom of our 53 foot ketch. Our bottom paint was in mediocre shape, it had cracked in several spots due to a poorly planned paint job last time we hauled out and paint compatibility issues. So this time I was going to do a better job on the preparation. To make a long story short, I learned to sand really well and also learned about the importance of wearing a proper mask and goggles, nothing bad happened but I did suffer the first day while not wearing a good mask and only wearing my normal glasses... This dust is so bad. On the painting side, another trick I learned from my friend Mike is the importance of applying a first layer as a "hot coat" to help with paint adhesion when dealing with different types/brands of paint. That hot coat involved diluting 1/2 Gallon of paint with a quart of special paint thinner.
Other significant projects we executed:
Galvanization of chain and anchor - had to coordinate bringing it to Mexicali (5 hours away) at the galvanization shop and back 3 weeks later.
Propeller with SpeedProp
makes for a beautiful and growth resistant prop but if you do this job, don't underestimate reading the instructions and following the clock!
Victron Cerbo GX
This device makes monitoring the entire boat electrical system a breeze and can now monitor data from the cloud when away from the boat.
PredictWind Datahub
All boat instruments data feeds into Datahub, which connects to Starlink then feeds it to our real-time tracking page.
This allows family and friends to track us realtime along our journey. Also allows us to monitor wind speed when we’re away from Viva.
See Viva tracking page —> https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/SV-Viva/
Impellers
both engine and generator impellers were changed, the heat had definitely affected them over the summer.
This picture is the engine impeller.
Maintenance already done in May:
C-Drive service, Bow thruster service, Furler gearbox service.
We splashed at 0600 (high tide!) on Friday 20 Oct.
Then made it to a slip nearby to spend the next 4 days preparing, provisioning and cleaning for the dash out. On Friday night, as one of the nearby party boats was getting ready to leave, its bowsprit hit one of our shrouds, the event left us in consternation. We couldn't see damage from below as it happened high up the shroud near the first spreader. Next morning, I went up the mast and observed 2 small black scuffs on 2 strands, there were no nicks, no deformation, no divots. I discussed the situation and pictures with rigging experts and concluded that I was fine and was super lucky that it did not do any real damage. We were breathing easier....
We left Puerto Penasco on Tuesday 24 Oct at 1415
and enjoyed an uneventful 18-hour passage to Refugio on the north side of Isla Angel Guardia. I am sitting here on Wednesday AM, it's peaceful, quiet, full of wildlife, we're alone, this whole month was worth the wait.... so many lessons learned and skills acquired....until next haul out!
