Dockland 5
Dawnbreaker
Lars Alfredson
Fri 18 Apr 2014 07:22
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I have now been more than 3 weeks on the hard at Dockland 5. It feels like it will be a while until I am ready for the water again. I work from 8 in the morning until it gets dark at about 18.30, and thats about it!  Hatea bridge at night from the boat. After cleaning off the bottom of the boat I noticed several points where it was dripping out water from the keel. Further investigation reveals severl corrosion holes in the keel coming from the inside going out! The keel is filled about halfway with lead as ballast. It seems that the combination lead, aluminium and salt water is not good. This can mean a major operation with building a new keel sometime in the future. I decided for now to patch it up. We are leaving a hole in the bottom for the water inside to drip out. It will be sealed later.   Holes.   Patched holes. Another big job has been to take the rig apart for maintenance and inspection. It is not easy to separate aluminium from carbon and stainless after 12 years untouched. A necessary job a few years overdue. The worst clevis pin, for port top shroud took 2 Porta Powers x 10 tons each plus a blow torch to shift. It took me about a week before all the parts were dissassemble all the parts of the rig.  Porta Power in action! I have decided to only tackle the worst areas of corrosion and bubbling paintwork on deck. A complete job would mean to strip the deck of every bit and shotblast the whole thing. That would take the rset of the year.   Paintjob of foredeck. Mast ready for assembly. For installation of the new Generator and repair of the AC unit we will sail the boat back up to Opua when she is back in the water. On the 27th Caroline arrives for 3 months. Hopefully we get some more interesting blogs when she takes over for a while. Have a great Easter! Lars |