⛵️Expensive yacht rebuild on a SHOESTRING 😵 [S2-E33]

Look who's back at the boat. Jack and I are getting started today, starting to disassemble the mast so we've got all of the rigging labelled. What I want to do is get all of the, well just start taking bits off it and see how we got on for a start. So if you look Jack, before we took the mast down I actually labelled everything. So this is the port aft lower right, so we're going to start by just taking this one off at the top and then we can coil it up. Right well Andy and Jack are working down there, I'm going to carry on doing work on the pilot house roof. But first of all I need to save this little bee before I take the tarpaulin off. Come on little bee, maybe jump. I am slightly allergic to wasps, I'm not sure if I'm allergic to bees and they do scare me, but I also like them. Come a little bee, don't fly in my face please, fly away please. There you go, start with I need to get this tarpaulin off. Yeah here's the lowers look and we've got, oh the lights that we've got are to replace these. Yeah but those ones don't move. No you can't adjust these. Oh look, look who's up there. What are you doing? Taking the tarp off. Taking the tarp off yeah. I'm just rescuing the bee that terrified me. Behind there there's a split pin. Yes I can. And you can see that if you pinch these together you can then turn it round and pull it out from this side. Do you want me to pull it out for you? So what you'll have to do first is use the pliers to squeeze those two together. Right try and push it through, squeeze it together and push it through. Yeah. Now turn, spin that round. So one of the things that you could do here, look Jack, is slip and bash your elbow on there. So just be careful when you pull that off. I like my elbow not hurting. Ideally. There you go, one. Now watch what happens. Those ones are easier. This is called a split pin and this is called a cotter pin. So can you get the cotter pin out? Yeah. Good. Then take the shroud out. And wiggle that while you're trying to pull the other. That's it. Takes the strain off it. Great stuff. So now we've got these two shrouds. Put that one back in, save the cotter pin. I'll tell you what, what might be better actually, if we put the cotter pin in in these, then it just means that we're, we definitely won't lose them. I'm just a bit worried that that's going to fall out and get lost and if we've got it in here we can tape it up and then it definitely won't get lost. Is it going to fall out on its own? No. No, I don't think so. Spying on you for a minute. Pardon? Spying on you for a minute. So just to have a more in-depth look at what we've got here, we've got swaged fittings on the top which are in excellent condition. No corrosion at all. There's barely any tarnishing even. On the bottom we've got stay lock fittings or something similar. I'm going to put the bottle screw back on. What I want to know is, we did have toggles on a lot of these. Now my initial impression was that the toggles had been put on because the shrouds, because these had been cut too short and the rig was too short. But having done a bit more research, spoken to a few people, I have a feeling that the toggles were actually put on deliberately to kind of counter shear forces so that the stay can take strain in different directions. I'm going to have a chat with Herb from a rigging doctor about that. So what I wanted to talk to you about was the rigging that we've got. The rigging that we've got was pretty much new before the boat was lifted out. It has had no use. I mean what use it has had will be very light coastal cruising. And I know that the protocol is you change your rigging every 10 years or whatever it is. And certainly for insurance point of view we probably would need to do that. But I can't see any corrosion on the rigging at all. I know you're a big fan of synthetic rigging. Yeah but I mean I'm also realistic. So yeah yeah yeah sure. So we need to, we can't change it right this minute. And the other thing that we found was that there's a lot of toggles on the rigging. And my initial feeling until I came across your article was oh somebody made this rigging wrong and it's too short and they've put toggles on to compensate. Yeah when you start seeing like six toggles in a line then it was too short. It seems to me like the both back stays have got toggles. My inclination at this point is to think that maybe this was done on purpose. Yeah. Certainly the lowers, all the lowers have got these. The cap stays don't. You should have toggles on all of them. So the whole issue when you don't have a toggle then the fitting starts to take up the force and it can't. So then it cracks. So the toggle gives it that universal joint. The fact that the cap shrods didn't have toggles might be that they either cut those a little too long and then didn't put toggles. But oh oh that's so annoying. Oh there's nothing more annoying than a sneeze that didn't happen. Continue. Yeah but the lowers definitely they do a lot more motion and therefore definitely need toggles. So some thoughts since the okay like our auburn has been sitting for years but when it was two years old when the rigging was when the rigging was two years old the rigging was already cracked. There were swage fittings. It was brand new. It was just rigged when we bought it. So I was like okay we'll keep the steel for now. And one like two years old it had cracks in it already. So the the swage is the the bottom's cracked first. So the fact that it's top is a plus. But if you have the funds available maybe cut the cut the swage off and put an either like stay with the same rack but put a compression fitting at the top. That'll be huge. Oh better than better than the swage fittings. Oh yeah so swage is actually the worst but it's cheap and fast. So people like them. But the the compression fittings those can go a long time. Like actually you can replace the you can replace compression fittings the the cone inside and the wire and we've actually got a box full of the compression fittings that came with the back. So somebody at some point was intending to do that. Yeah so cut off the swage right at the bottom like keep as much wire as you can and if it's short add toggles to bridge the gap. But that'll that'll be a lot better. Oh wow so that's fantastic news. But yeah in terms of replacing the entire rig now my sort of feelings again are put the rig back on exactly as it is and then we can the mast is not going to fall down unless we end up finding ourselves in a kind of Eric Andera NBJS kind of force 10 which we're not going to do. Yeah we're going to avoid yeah yeah yeah no um no deck stand. Deck stand okay deck stand but uh but still yeah you're not going out in hard stuff. And then we can obviously re-rig the entire boat when we get somewhere a lot cheaper because the UK the UK is frighteningly expensive for this kind of stuff. That's it pull it nice and tight lovely. I think I have well figured out why it wasn't coming out because I forgot to do the back end. So yeah starboard back stay port back stay baby stay port aft lower port forward lower starboard forward lower starboard aft lower starboard cap shroud port cap shroud Melissa has just got back with drinks and stuff and the question I want to ask you Melissa if you come and have a look we've got all of the shrouds and stays off apart from the forestay with the roller reefing what I want to discuss with you and we maybe will discuss this during the day is should we disassemble the entire mast as in take everything off that's debate really what are we taking off and what are we not um I don't know I mean the rivets we're not going to no I'm not going to start drilling out these monorivits at the minute but everything else winches shall we take more off and then see how we are yeah okay it's a bit of a debate as to how much we pull this mast apart I think the next thing I'm going to do is start taking the spreader lights off and then disassemble the spreaders themselves just because it makes the mast lighter and easier to move around next thing yeah so spreader lights and spreaders we've arrived on the boat this morning to find presents from somebody heat shrink there's not even a note to say who this is from wire strippers hose clamps no tie wraps sanding pads for the little mouse sander circlips I've got a special tool for doing these I'll show you when we come to use them a wood carving disc oh nice yeah these are they're nice they're they're deadly deadly but they're very nice I've never used one I've always looked at them and thought I'd like to get one of those but with my track record I'll probably kill myself so I'll be very careful with it more circlips different size electrical fittings lovely that's so kind and there isn't even a note to say who it's from what's in there a tap and die set yeah I'll show you how to use that what have we got in here oh we've got I think we know who this is from yes I can't remember the name of the person that said they were going to do this but I'm going to put their name on the screen now thank you very very much these are spreader lamps yes they go on the mast on the spreaders that's right and then you can angle them so they can't wait yeah I know you hang you go up the mast and somebody stands at the bottom and you go a bit further forward a bit further back you get them where you want them and they shine on the deck so that you can oh that's gonna help my knees and your knees amazing knee pads that's fantastic and what else is in there there's more stuff well this is so generous that is some sticky self-sealing tape oh I think these are for the um the die grinder yeah die grinder polishing pads and cut it and sanding pads multi-tool blades oh wow for the multi-tool that's amazing hang on more heat shrink more tie wraps terminal ends this is incredible what's this oh hole cutting saw and he's in heaven wow yeah just don't that's amazing no no no you don't kill yourself with those those are just for cutting holes that's pretty hard to hurt yourself with one of them well yeah you'd have to put it into yourself jack it cuts it cuts you put that on the drill and you saw a big hole through that's so kind of so kind of you whose name was on the screen I'm so sorry I don't remember the name it's on the screen or it was a second ago and we assume all this stuff is from you so thank you I'm assuming it's all from the same person because there's no note with it so we'll assume that it was from the same person oh my goodness that's amazing thank you thank you thank you very very much doesn't matter so he's in one of those time bomb things cut the wrong one no it's not like a bomb cut the red wire don't cut the green wire can't cut the blue wire you can leave that on if you want what was that let me drop the drill roller reefing force stays off nice next is all of this gubbings then all this masthead electronic stuff off without causing too much destruction yeah this is actually broken so it's going to be another thing we need to uh ankle light and tricolor ankle light and tricolor whatever you want to call it tricolor tricolor what's happening now is we're tidying up these cables that come out of the the bottom of the mast and come out the top some of these go halfway up for the spreader lights and the different lights and different equipment on the mast so what we've got to do is uh we don't want to pull them all out today because when we're here another time we're going to attach what's called a mouse line to each one so we're going to attach a piece of string pull it all the way through so that we can pull a brand new piece of wire because we're going to put brand new wires in the mast okay what i want you to do jack is cut them all off to the length of the shortest one like that so that bit can go in the bin and then when you've got them all at the same length doesn't matter about the labels because we're going to rewire everything anyway uh curl them all up and put some tire wraps around to keep them nice and neat yay so as you've seen we're not doing mouse lines for the electrical cables today but what i am doing is pulling out some of the old running rigging and popping through some mouse lines for the running rigging mast is more or less stripped down still got more to do but what i'm trying to do at the minute is tackle this this is the sort of in mast furling system it's not in mast it's an external add-on to the mast as you can see um now i've got to get this cap off because it's seized inside there but this is aluminium and all of these screws are stainless and every single one of them is absolutely locked up i've been trying the electric input driver and the handheld thumbpit angle grinder and it's just shattering these bits they're just you know they're just breaking so the only option now left to me is to snip the ends off the screws and take this home and just drill them out here we go cap on top of the roller drum which actually does turn and what's broken off is this section here which is the which is going that's going to be bad this section here should have another shackle on it for for to pull up the mainsail so therein lies our issue uh no i think i can fix it yes i'm aware i'm wearing a silly hat but the problem is taking these out some idiot i don't know who would do such a thing painted the inside of the pilot house and painted over the nuts just making it a little bit harder called for backup jack's gonna come and help me what i need you to do i'm gonna hold the nut okay on the inside and you very slowly need to do that yeah okay okay which one i'm jack help get all these out we just need a bag to put these in i'm just sleeping on the job i'll just show you this is not looking the best but i think it will clean up okay let's have a look obviously this had a major issue around this hatch okay hello jackham a train has just arrived is your recording no please don't dangle it over my boat i'm not crazy jack's having fun watching them lift this boat up i haven't been able to use any power tools on this um but i'm gonna be back sunday um the reason i haven't is because it's a bit windy i don't want all the the dust and rust blowing everywhere so it's too windy to do that so i've just started bashing with the chipping hammer unfortunately um there is going to be a bit of work to do on this one um but overall it's not too bad that's one end we had to move i had to move up the top end of the mast because they were shifting about with the crane so uh i'm back down here now and this is this cable system that i'm talking about it's very old i would really like to replace this whole system with a winch and a rope but we can't afford new winches at the minute we've got some sheet winches and i'm constantly looking out on ebay for sheet winches sheet winches i think will be okay for now they're not great but they'll be okay and then but this one i think we really do need to change it's just going to be a matter of cost at the minute so we'll have to just wait and see the other one i'm going to try and get off and see if we can um see if i can service it i failed i was going to strip this winch down and service it but i've got a new um stripping ring to put on the top as well but i can't because i haven't got the correct tool to go down the inside of there pants never mind so i think the next thing these two sheaf blocks here are running nicely that one needs cleaning up can you see what i mean about this steel cable i want to replace that with a rope and the sheaf block will take a rope so that's not going to be a problem uh but let me flip the mast back over and we'll have a look at the ones the other side the palliared sheaves for the um for the uh genoa and the stacel i've got to flip the mast over again to do that so in here we have got some old tuffnel blocks look and they are knackered and i'm very worried about how we're going to get at them maybe they're not blocks maybe they're just like bushes of some sort but i'm very worried about how what we're going to do about them oh there's an end cap here maybe that's the pin to get at these i have a feeling it might be right let's tackle that and then melissa needs some help um so i'm going to try and get this uh coupling off this here and i'm going to try and get that off and we're going to have a look at them it's another one that's completely seized in that's the problem when you've got stainless into uh aluminium it just is impossible to get it back out again after a few years well it started raining again as you can see typical wales so we're going to have to stop now uh that might mean that this carries on in the next episode or it might mean that it carries on in five minutes but what have we achieved well very simply the mast is disassembled mostly the top of the in mast furling is disassembled we have mouse lines replacing the running rigging we have the spreaders completely off the boat we have all the standing rigging off the boat labeled and ready to be inspected by a rigger possibly even replaced all the old running rigging is ready to go in the bin the cables are all tidied up ready to be replaced with new electrical cable the bottom of the mast looks to be in great shape no splits no cracks in the aluminium whatsoever a lot of these pulley blocks are going to need replacing or at least servicing and freeing up i failed to get this winch apart because i haven't got the right tools with me i would really like to replace this steel halyard system for the main with a rope halyard and a different type of winch and in meanwhile melissa has been working on the pilot house roof and she'll show you what she's achieved basically made some holes in the boat um i've taken the two hatches off started chipping away at the rust and cover them up with perspex and the tarpaulin so that's amazing we've done fantastically well it's now actually properly raining so i'll go and get a quick um goodbye to the episode and then i need to put all my tools away before we go i'd like to thank all you before we go before we go i'd like to thank all of our patrons and also people that have bought us stuff on amazon and a primary store big special thanks to the gentleman that left a bag of thank you thank you