Log of the S/V "Sojourner" Cape Dory 28: Recent Comments

Comment on Cabin Fever, SailCare and Goodbye to the BYC

2009-05-21T02:21:32Z

Thanks, Becky....Your information on where to order new holding tanks saved us untold hours - which will probably now be spent doing "woodwork"!!!

Comment on Cabin Fever, SailCare and Goodbye to the BYC

2009-05-02T17:03:17Z

Hi Lynn, and thanks for writing!! We always enjoy hearing from fellow sailors and don't mind answering questions of any kind.

The Expel did work, to a degree. It was all a process and I think each part of it was essential in getting rid of the smell.

The first step was to scrub (several times) everything I could reach with Clorox cleaner. I put most of my effort into following the path that we determined the leak had taken from the tank to the bilge, but no surface I could reach went untouched. Then I put a garden sprayer filled with the Clorox cleaner onto the hose and sprayed down into all the forward lockers letting the water run into the bilge (again I assume following the same path the sludge from the leak would have taken). After that I filled the bilge with bleach water, left it soak for a day and pumped it out (twice). This got rid of most of the actual residue from the leak, but didn't come anywhere near to getting rid of the odor.

The next stage, which was the Expel, because it is aerosolized, got into all those areas that I couldn't get to and did seem to help a lot, but still didn't completely get rid of it.

At that point we came to the conclusion that the remaining odor was what had been absorbed into the wood. My last step was to bleach, sand and apply 4 coats of varnish to all of the wood in the boat (yes I said ALL, even all the inside surfaces that I could get to). The surfaces of the plywood inside the v-berth area where the holding tank resides had penetrating epoxy applied before the varnish was put on as I figure not only had that wood absorbed odor, but also the actual liquid from the leak. At that point we were completely odor free, except for the pleasant smell of fresh varnish.

The boat was stored under shrink wrap all winter. We just cut the wrap off last week and after being covered all winter, it still smells nice and fresh so it would appear that the odor problem has been permanently taken care of.

It was really a lot of work, but not only did we get rid of the smell, we got a meticulously clean boat and gleaming bright wood in the process. It was worth it and we are very proud of the result.

Fair Winds and Following Seas,
Becky

Comment on Cabin Fever, SailCare and Goodbye to the BYC

2009-05-02T16:43:34Z

Well, Dan..... as it turns out we couldn't part with Sojourner after all and have taken her off the market. So much emotion is involved in our relationship with boats. She'll stay on the hard this year, and we'll continue working on her and hopefully next year we'll have more opportunity to sail and she will be there for us.

Fair Winds and Following Seas,
Becky

Comment on Cabin Fever, SailCare and Goodbye to the BYC

2009-05-02T16:25:13Z

Thanks Gerald!!

We're still here. It's been a crazy year. Our daughter and 2 grandchildren came to live with us last fall and although we love having them here it has been a huge adjustment. Our once quiet (clean) house is now pleasantly cluttered and chaotic. There's homework and softball games and skateboard parks and friends, where once there was me and Lance and boats. Also I have been taking a college class in addition to working and Lance got a promotion but can't be released from his current job until the end of the school year, so he is going back and forth trying to do both most of the time. Seems there is either no time, or when there is time there is no energy left to write. (We rarely even follow the Cape Dory message board anymore!!) The boat was tucked safely under its shrink wrap all winter, so it was sort of "out of sight, out of mind" while we concentrated on other things.

We had even decided to sell S ojourner this spring after our slip at the BYC fell through, but have since reconsidered and taken it off the market. We are not going to launch her this year though and instead plan to concentrate on repairing our decks, removing and rebedding all our hardware and repairing the area of the gudgeon shoe. That should keep us plenty busy this summer. Since our bottom will be nice and dry we are going to start off by stripping it down to the gelcoat so that when all is done we can put an epoxy barrier coat on before we bottom paint next year. These are all things she would need to be out of the water for anyway so this is a good opportunity to get it all done in one fell swoop. Assuming we launch next year, we will pull the mast first thing and secure the wires inside to stop that god-awful banging and hopefully replace the rigging as I am sure that it is original with the exception of the forestay that we put on last year when we removed the roller furling.

It's nice to know people follow the blog though, and we love to hear from other sailing "friends". The cover is off the boat now and summer break is almost upon us so we hope to be concentrating more on the boating side of our lives soon. Thanks for writing!!

Far Winds and Following Seas,
Becky

Comment on Cabin Fever, SailCare and Goodbye to the BYC

2009-04-30T21:23:50Z

Hi Becky...Please excuse me for bringing up old stories here, but I am very interested to find out how EXPEL worked for you back in the days when you had a smell or three on the CD28.....we've torn everything apart and our noses are still being assaulted!!

Comment on Cabin Fever, SailCare and Goodbye to the BYC

2009-04-16T23:41:19Z

Becky,

Thanks for taking the time to respond. We understand your situation, and we're trying not to get too far ahead of ourselves for fear of the same result. We've got an 82 Typhoon Daysailer that we have fixed up and love, but are looking to upgrade to a CD27/28 so that we venture farther afield, do overnights on Lake Champlain, etc. However, we're concerned that with our limited time availability (damn jobs!) we'd now have two boats, couldn't sail them both enough, expenses add up, etc. If we were semi-retired we'd just move the Typhoon up to our place in Maine, but we barely have enough time to get up there in the first place. Oh well, it will all work out somehow. Hope you find a buyer that will care for Sojourner like you did!

Dan and Chris

Comment on Cabin Fever, SailCare and Goodbye to the BYC

2009-04-15T21:47:48Z

Hi Dan. Nice to hear from you.

Well, I will say that the yacht club thing certainly set things in motion. And once our apple cart was upset and we got to thinking about what we were doing (and hearing the prices for a slip in a place anywhere near as nice as the yacht club) we decided that the thing that made the most sense for us right now was to sell and buy something small and trailerable that could sit in our backyard ready to go on the rare occasions when we had the time, but able to be ignored the rest of the time (and costing us nothing beyond the purchase price).

But the yacht club thing was only part of what actually led to our decision to sell. We live in an 80 year old house that needs a ton of repair that we always put off doing in nice weather because we feel guilty if we are not either sailing or maintaining the boat (after all, it's costing us a fortune, right!?!). Also our daughter and 2 grandchildren came to live with us this winter. We are helping her with the children and they don't enjoy sailing nearly as much as we do ("Can't this thing go any faster.....?"). We figured that if we spent 7 good weekends aboard during the short season we have here it would run us about $1000 a weekend when we tallied up our yearly expenses. We could take the whole family on a cruise 2 times for the same amount and not have the maintenance headaches in between (might actually get the stones reset in our front porch or get the gutters cleaned out, or the siding painted, or the front door replaced, or.........you get the picture).

Well, that's probably far more information than you wanted, and I hope I didn't put YOU off of buying that 28 you're looking for. We worked on our boat really hard last year. I am off all summer (I work at a middle school) and I worked full time everyday on it. Lance put in his share of hours every weekend and on his vacations. She's beautiful and I am sure someone will love her. Maybe that someone might even be you!!

Fair Winds and Following Seas,
Becky

Comment on Cabin Fever, SailCare and Goodbye to the BYC

2009-04-15T12:20:38Z

We've been looking for a CD27/28, and saw Sojourner posted recently on Yachtworld. What happened? Did the yacht club relocation not work out?

Comment on Cabin Fever, SailCare and Goodbye to the BYC

2009-04-08T13:03:20Z

well I had given up on you guys but I am glad to hear your still around...welcome back...

Comment on Things That STINK

2008-08-18T03:41:31Z

Im with you on the bimi but lazy jacks are great. You just have to loosen them when you are hauling up the main. Give it a try, its better than loosing the main in the water.

I'm glad the lazy jacks work out for you. We all have different ideas about what's worth the aggravation and what isn't. I'm a pretty good deck ape and don't mind doing it the hard way. The lazy jacks were a pain in the a-word.
Becky