S3E1 The Refit

hey Rovers welcome to wave Rover season 3 where wave Rover will be leaving Baltimore Maryland the United States of America right here and heading to Baltimore Ireland or at least that's the landfall we'll be making as we cross the ocean now what are we going to do we've got a couple of weeks at the very least of work we have to do on wave overover and I'll get into that right away then it's going to be a couple of weeks heading down to Chesapeake Bay it's going to be a lot of fun then we'll hang out in the Norfolk area waiting for a weather window head out to the azors and then from the Azor we'll head out to Baltimore Ireland from there we'll work our way up to Dublin hope to be in Dublin sometime around September anyway we've got a fair bit of work to do time to crack on so just a little bit of General overview of what needs to be done uh the rudder of course needs to go back on and the reason it's off and you're going to see why a little bit later on is because I've changed the hinge system not of the rudder but of the trim tab that goes to the Mark III and what am I doing it's not really revolutionary in fact it's uh I'm I'm just following my own plans I tried something new it didn't work out for me I'll explain all that but the uh the plans that I currently sell the Mark III that's what I'll be using it works effectively so the second big thing we're going to tackle is yikes what's going on here the Keel doesn't look like this well this is a little Improvement we're making we're adding this great big lead shoe here to the bottom of the Keel and I'm going to get Andy to explain that we have to weld on some studs to bolt this on and of course there's one on each side apart from that the other big thing we have to do is provision because I want to make sure while I have good support here in Baltimore I want to load up with all the uh food that I need to get me across the Atlantic I I'd like to have I'd like to have enough to get me all the way to Ireland so that would mean carrying at least three months worth of food on board and so I'll show you uh probably in the next couple of episodes how I tackle that anyway I am on a bit of a tight timeline here I do want to be underway in about oh 12 to 14 days depending on weather are you guys guarding wav over for me all right very good you're doing a great job look at the goose walking by the boat these guys were guarding the boat last night in fact they they weren't sure who I was and they sort of ran me off hey Rovers I'm inside one of the shops here at rush yacht and engine works and they very kindly have lent me a little bit of space to work on my Rudder so here's the rudder and what I've done is I've fabricated uh some steel when I was back in PEI and I also before I left I inserted a pin into the bottom of the trim tab so if you remember from before we had laced this through these holes here to the Rudder so the trim tab was laced to the rudder in the very same fashion that I'll be lacing the rudder to the to the uh boat through these holes now because I'm not lacing anymore I filled these holes and fared them so that's done um this Remains the Same Remains the Same I've I've drilled the holes out just a little bit bigger but the real difference is so now that it's not laced and let me just pull the uh pin here so now with the uh safety pin pulled you can see it just moves really effortlessly so that's what we were after all along the problem before was that with the lacing we tend to get a rolling rather than a pivoting but when the shaft goes through these blocks here and here uh it tends to Pivot so between the pivoting here here and the rolling the trim tab was binding and it just wasn't giving me the um reaction that I needed for the self steering I mean if you look at the um if you look at the passage I made down the Jersey coast the conditions were great uh the wind speed was strong and she self steered really well in those conditions it was about 20 25 knots uh but we need to be able to steer in the you know the five to 20 knot range as well so this should this should fix that very happy with the work of course um this is higher Now by oh about an inch than it was before so in order to um lock it off and again I don't have enough hands to do this so I I've got a little pin like I had before and we just put it through to this block and then that uh locks it off the reason you need it locked off is not when you're going going forward because the trim tab will always Trail in line with the rudder you need it you need it locked off for when you go a Stern or you push out because what'll happen is the trim tab will Trail will will uh tend to go one way or the other and then of course the rudder will follow and that just makes steering impossible all right now with this done the next job is to get it installed for there we go just that easy so I've got the rudder back on and it really didn't take that long and I had uh my friend Tom here giving me a hand feeding it back and forth you'll see that in a moment and um you can see the lashing well they're nice and tight and the trick is when you go to do this take the rudder and push it up just a little bit higher than it should be tighten up all the lashings and then take the uh take the wedges out from underneath and the weight will take it down exactly where it needs to be this rope has zero stretch to it so that's what we're after now take a look at this just with you know really just with the smallest effort the rudder is moving back and forth and then this is the key too you can see how easily the trim tab moves now so there's no more there's no more binding happening and that's that's what we are after the final thing I want to show you is right here this is um these longer length right here this is the new stuff that I just put in and these right here these are left over I'd cut them free from the uh the the first bit of lashing we did so we had, 1500 nautical miles on These Guys these are fresh of course but as you can see there's no wear on these at all these these were fine when I took them off and if I didn't have to do the kind of renovation on the trim tab I would have left the rudder on right through the winter because the lashing were virtually new so I have uh no worries that these will fail I know some of you have have indicated that but you know people have been using these for for decades and really centuries before that so now with this trim tab set up the way it is um I filled these holes now we're going to have to put bottom paint on everything the final step on this is just to squeeze a little bit of sealant into all these holes and that prevents that prevents the uh lashing well it prevents the rudder from moving on the lashings that amount of friction will keep it from from jarring one side or the other that's all you need it's not to prevent water from going in because if you go back to the construction phase you'll know that these have been overdrilled and then they've been uh filled with epoxy then redrilled so water can't penetrate so that's it on the rudder I'll uh I'll get the filled and get the tiller on next so this is 4200 I'm using and like I said I'm just sealing these holes to prevent the uh lashings from moving look at that that is the easiest movement you could require from a trim tab very nice and there's the lock very easy to engage how about the rudder how easy is that to move so again just one finger just nice in fact I've got a little breeze blowing here right now and the breeze you can actually feel it the breeze will move this Rudder so that's how light a touch it is and I'm going to show you how I control the rudder now so this is a method that was shown to me by Harold uh back in Stonington some interesting videos from back then if you're interested so this is a line that's just running from Two stanions and just pop it through this ring and then put this hook on it and then I've got a line that comes up here and you can just tension this and by tensioning it you can see you can let go of the tiller and the boat will hold whatever course so a lot of times I can just put it mid ships I can pop below make uh some sort of you know something happen talking VHF check the chart numerous things come back up here and the boat will probably still be on the same course another thing I like like about this is when I'm uh powering and coming to a dock or something i' like to engage this and then just have it angled so that the boat will come in slowly to the dock I don't have to be here I can walk forward jump ashore and take care of the lines anyway thank you very much Harold back in Stonington for showing me this a valuable skill uh a nice little technique I'm very happy to use it on Wave Rover well great to be back on W Rover's quarter deck now just a little update on the sailing plans uh I will only be stopping at one port in the aor and that's going to be on the island of FAL and the port of course will be horta just a famous Crossroads in the middle of the Atlantic looking forward to going back there in fact wave Rover is already as many of you know already painted a uh section of the key which is encouraged there with the wave Rover name and and sort of an emblem and we will be updating that emblem when we get there this time now the next protocol of course is Ireland but Ireland's not a portol the actual Port that I'll be clearing in in Ireland is Baltimore and I just love the symmetry of leaving Baltimore United States and entering Baltimore Ireland so in either case if you are a wave Rover fan and you're in horta or you're in Baltimore be advised wave Rover will be coming to town so I I also want to say if you enjoy these videos please subscribe it helps me a lot with the uh YouTube algorithm to grow the channel so the more people who actually subscribe to wave Rover and watch the videos the better it is for me and which in turn means the better it is for you because the more I can put into the channel itself uh if you really really enjoy don't forget there is a patron account as well now folks as always thanks for watching and Forge Your Own Adventure

Channel: Sailing Wave Rover

Views: 12,561

Keywords: small boats, budget, adventure, circumnavigation, boat building, Wave Rover 650, plywood bulkheads, epoxy fillets, plywood boat building, Wave Rover, Ocean capable small sailboat, Inexpensive boat building, Cheap boat to build, Junk Rig, Pocket Cruiser, Bilge Keel, Twin Keel, power tools, makita tools, aironly ventilators, building a pocket cruiser

Id: SWiLv1MF54s

Length: 14min 6sec (846 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2024