We cut a hole in out boat!!! Sailing yacht refit [Season 2 Episode 13]

I'm Andy, I'm Melissa and I'm Jack and together we're working on restoring our sailing yacht. Some of you might think we're crazy taking on the challenge of restoring this boat and creating a life less ordinary and we're sure there will be blood sweat and tears but it'll all be worth it when we embark on our epic adventure around the world. Morning everybody, it's been snowing last night so it's not actually snow in the yard but there's on the hill next to us it's absolutely freezing so we're in the boat under the tarp we can't work outside so finding jobs to do indoors. The steering system on the boat is very very stiff as you can see it does turn and so if I turn this wheel oh there you go if I turn that wheel you can see that it is it is turning but it's very stiff and what we need to do then is strip the whole thing down grease it all service it all put it back together we're probably not going to strip the whole thing down today but we'll start taking it apart to highlight where this stiffness is coming from let me show you the issue. So there's the wheel in the pilot house and at the back of here let me get a light at the back of here is the this little box gearbox thing that converts the rotation to that universal joint to a shaft and then let's come through here here it continues out of the back of under the pilot the charts over here. Jack turn the wheel a bit so you can see that that's turning and it carries on down there there we are then it goes into this cupboard oh wait yeah there it is turn the wheel a bit Jack okay I'll try there it is through that turn the wheel a bit Jack yeah there we are that's turning and it goes all the way back here that box there where it changes and goes across to the rudder and what we're going to do today is take all of that apart I'm going to start by disconnecting that box so that you can we can see whether the stiffness is at the rudder end or you know in one of these junction boxes so you'll see that's the box in the back lazarette and that is where it goes into the actual steering itself that's the steering that's the rudder post which doesn't look too bad it all looks very solid but this here is the main gearbox for the main steering I would like to move that forwards I wonder if there's scope to move that forward there might be a bit I might be able to move it forward but my first thing I think is if we disconnect this here if we disconnect that and take this post out take the whole of this one out what that will tell us is if if the steering in the wheelhouse then moves freely then we know that the stiffness is in that box or in the rudder post itself but if this then turns freely then we know that the stiffness in the system is in the connections in the wheelhouse spanners okay yeah right so now can you please try the steering in the pilot house moment of truth we've now disconnected the steering system in the pilot house from the is that now turning freely right so let's go outside and see hang on let me get myself extricated from this awkward position so the steering in the pilot house is now free and the steering in the cockpit is stiff so here you go look at this watch now so the other the box behind here is not causing any problem the box in there which is really inaccessible is not causing any problem it seems to be running very freely this is the junction box that was converting to the steering outside and that's quite stiff so I'm going to take this one home and grease it strip it down and grease it give it a spin there you go so there's the steering system and the stiffness is all under this column at the back so that's going to be nice I'm going to be in there now taking all that lot apart which we need to do anyway because it's all got to be serviced and we've got to get obviously the whole of the belly of the boat under the aft end cleaned up inspected ultrasounded where appropriate cut out and welded where appropriate etc etc oh bloody hell what woodruff key's falling out oh put back in different to how it was so that black mark is no longer the top right so there that's stiff but not as not as stiff is the rudder turning no it's not connected all right yeah of course yeah the rudder's moving perfectly yeah so that the rudder I'm still going to service all these bearings of course but the rudder is working perfectly so that's great it's it's just moving you know at a push yeah the rudder's moving just with one finger really yeah well that's that's good so what that tells us is that all the problem in this system yeah is this is the box under there which is good just means that we've got to get this slot apart we've still got to take the rudder apart anyway because I want to change all of the the glands yeah but it's less of an issue yeah yeah yeah yeah it's not seized solid it's not it's not going to need a whole new rudders post or anything like that so today we're working underneath the cockpit so yesterday as you saw we were cleaning out this lazarette and this lazarette and we're going to carry on with the same we've come up with some new ideas for the seats which we'll explain as we go along but we want to get all of this area clean get the rest of the steering system disassembled or more of it we might not get all of it done today but get more of the steering system disassembled and get from from here back kind of thing under the bilges in under where the lazarettes are start assessing what we need yeah a lot of the corrosion is really obvious there's not actually that much of it for a start that's really badly corroded from the inside out there's just certain areas it's just certain small areas as we've said but what it will also mean is because the inside of the boat is so accessible i can get an ultrasound an ultrasonic metal ultrasonic metal thickness tester but one of the cheap ones that doesn't read through paint we'll get probably a an expensive one as well but if i get one of the cheap ones that doesn't read through paint then i can go around inside the boat in the bottom of the bilges expose a little bit of bare steel the size of a coin test the thickness and then just paint over it quickly before we re-insulate and repaint the whole thing and it'll just give us a reassuring sort of there's no insulation at all in the lazarettes above the waterline and what we've discovered is the rest of the boat the more we look at it the inside of the steel is in really good shape but the insulation that the has been used originally is cork tiles i mean there's no rust behind them no there's no risk behind them and the paint is in good condition but we'll show you all of that as we go along and yeah we've also had a bit of a cleanup out here because it was a bit grubby what we've discovered is that these seats at the back here these are were not part of the original design they don't match the ones at the front if you look these ones lip in and those don't they are plywood seats with fiberglass over the top and they're delaminated and they're trash so we're going to get rid of them all together we're going to probably keep these two because these are just fiberglass and they're grubby but they're in so they're sound and solid and what we're going to do is keep these but from here backwards i'm going to weld sheet steel from here to here and then take it in on an angle to about there so that the seat will be that shape maybe with a nice curve or maybe just an angle and the same the other side so take it to here and then take it in and it'll mean that standing in the helmsman's position that's the gas locker look at that it's not rotted through it's just full of water but it means standing in the helmsman's position i'll have foot room all the way across to the the cockpit combing there and it'll mean that i can sit on the cockpit combing here to steer or i can sit on the back of the transom where i'll put a little bit of a seat either side and it'll just be a nicer position hey we yeah and it and what we can also do then i've suddenly just suddenly thought is if the seat's cut in here like that we can then have a fold down seat either side which if you want to sit there you can just fold it down and sit on it and if you want to stand there you can fold it up or we can do that cool thing that they do on the racing boats where we actually have a little leg underneath it that adjusts the angle of the the um the seat and where you stand on oh that's taking it a bit too far isn't it i'm getting carried away so there you go we're going to be taking these off again in a second working under there uh in terms of the gas locker i'm going to cut that out completely yeah the bottom of there that's not the bottom of the boat that's just the bottom of the locker but i'm going to cut that gas locker out that's going uh those cockpit drains are going i'm probably going to cut out the middle of the transom beef it up and put a swinging door in the transom so that you can step down onto the bathing platform without with just through that through the transom because there's a big drop then onto the there's you're way above above the water line there um but i'll beef it up first and put some to stop it distorting when i cut the transom in half uh but as you can see the middle of the transom there's trash so i'm just going to cut it here straight down there and there and put a swinging door um or even two with a little seat over the top like you get on the sirius three three eight ds sirius 38 ds just a door in the transom basically but obviously i'll beef up the strength before i start cutting holes in the lots of ideas yes just in case you're wondering why are they still pumping water out of that boat we've didn't pump all the water out but obviously it wasn't covered up um we've established where the water's coming in now uh which we had a pretty good idea before but it's just pouring in through the lazarette so now obviously the cockpit's covered we're now getting the water out of the boat and giving the bilges a good clean so we can see exactly um what we need to do in here what we need to cut out what we need to replace what we need to just treat i'm gonna see if i can remove this monstrosity i'm trying to get the uh steering gearbox off the bottom of this quadrant uh it'd be nice to actually get the pillar off as well and get the whole lot home for for working on we'll see how we get on today you might not have time for that but um at the very least i'd like to get the the gearbox off the bottom although i don't actually know how it attaches there's a row of bolts holding it to the deck but i don't know what's jack is dismantling the step for us good job how's today going darling steering system is working but but not wanting to come apart to come off the boat to be serving there's actually a reasonably large quantity of sand yeah there's actually sand in the bottom of the steering box right how's that going there goodness only knows another one and because the whole box is seized together i'm actually having to take the steering box apart in situ to take the spline drive off so that i can get the shaft out so i can get it apart rather than the normal proper way which is just undo the cap and the retaining bolts just nightmare so this transfer box here yeah um takes the rotational force from the wheel and pushes it this way to turn the rudder post and also comes out this side um so that you can uh power the power from the steering at the front in the pilot house right this is where i slip and hit my knuckles no we're all right all right and the difficulty is going to be once i start slackening the last couple of these looks very heavy it's very heavy and i'm wondering if it's just going to fall and hurt me i'm starting to get irritated by the long hair oh yeah now because it's at that length where it's too short to tie any snakes i don't think there's snakes in the bilge i'd definitely let you know if i found a snake in the bilge we're not in australia there's a question for trev hedges question for trev hedges jack's just asked are we likely to find a snake in the bilge not in this country but trev would jack be likely to find a snake in the bilge of his boat in your country there you go that's the strangest viewer question yet or any anywhere any country that has yeah what countries from our viewers would jack be likely to have to watch out for a snake in the bilge i didn't see any snakes when i went to australia did you know yeah at the zoo we saw some snake patterns on the beach yes this is flipping hard work we saw some lizards in bali running up the walls um yeah and a huntsman crawled over my hand that scared me sure yes yes a crab crawled over my foot in the sea and i have never moved so quick in my life the thing that makes me move fastest in the sea isn't crabs or or sharks it's toilet paper when you see a bit of bog roll floating past you get out pretty quickly and we got it three i've got two more to do hang on a minute what did you say i've taken out three i've got two more to do because i'm taking out the ones here and ones on top okay well um update steering update uh there's the steering pedestal is all disassembled the gearbox at the bottom that obviously converts the rotation sorry here's melissa all right the gearbox at the bottom was all full of old grease and sand um but it's reasonably free uh but it won't come apart and the spline drive at the top here is seized onto the main down shaft so we can't get that apart and try as i may we've we've tried everything that i know how but that's the beauty of a steel boat uh what i can do now is just cut around it and weld a new piece of steel we're going to be putting a new floor in the cockpit anyway so rather than rather than trash this and it may end up being trash anyway as i said before but um rather than cut through this and cut through the shaft and you know destroy it i'm just going cut a piece of a flap a piece out of the floor of the boat take the whole steering system out take it home put it back together because it's dead easy to weld a small little patch into that into the cockpit floor much easier than than repairing a damaged steering system so um that's what i'm doing now that was hard work yet again we're finishing in the dark uh having achieved kind of what we set out to achieve um and a hole in the boat but the steering system is out and there's a big hole and trust me i would not have cut a hole in the floor of the boat unless i felt it was absolutely necessary um big advantage is is it means we can we can flip in it is that four mil yeah it looks like it might even be five that is some thick steel and it was it was a swine to get out but it means i can take this home i can strip it down properly in the workshop um and get it all back together decide whether we need a new one on that yeah decide whether we need a new one or not or whether we're just going to ditch it and go for tiller steering because that's another option we could just ditch it and have a tiller we could do um i'd rather not i'd rather not i'd rather have a wheel um but yeah uh all in all um a successful mission but the lazarets are empty that side i've stripped absolutely everything on the starboard side all the wires all the pipes all the old gas pipe all the old the pipes for the air dispatcher the pipes for the bilge pump this side i haven't yet stripped the wiring as you can see that's the exhaust and there's some old wiring going to the arch uh so i've got to do that uh and the steel in the floor of the boat is really really nice yeah apart from the places that it's not yeah there's a few little areas where it's gone really bad but the majority of it 99 of it is in really good condition so um obviously this we're going to be putting a new floor in here anyway so i'm not too worried about cutting a what a weird sight that is a cockpit with no wheel dumped a little plank of wood over the top of the hole i've cut so that nobody puts their foot down it by mistake uh got that piece of wood back over the gas locker what was the gas locker it's going to be chopped out uh and as i say the plan is to change the arrangement of the back seats the aft seats completely um opening up the deck space making it a nicer place to stand at the helm get rid of that silly chair that was in the in the middle and um yeah so a lot of fabricating to do at the back here lots and lots and lots of fabricating so i'm not actually that worried about rusty metal because a lot of it's going to get chopped out and changed anyway just before we go um we thought we'd just do an update of the board we haven't done that for a little while uh so um let's have a look at the things that we have done and things that we haven't done right we'll start over here with urgent preventative uh empty the bilge done take it off that's this one here okay done you can take the little piece of tape off clean the bilge done more or less okay so it's not it's not ready to paint but it's pretty more or less done good to do keep the boat dry that's get the tarpaulin over it yeah we'll do that in a minute keep the boat dry that's now got a tarpaulin over it done okay and keep the water on the outside done well yes basically now this one treat rust spots we'll leave that because we've done some but we haven't done okay boat moved yes done yeah go for it yeah where's like the lazarettes and stuff like that so that's gonna stay up there all right put keep the water on the outside back then please jack denied so that's yeah because the lazarettes are really rotten right mast down not done cover with tar done yeah wait i thought we've already done that one yeah no we've got yeah yeah we've we've written the same thing in different ways number of times which makes us feel better right to do metal work bow sprit grind back to bare metal to assess for to repair or place we didn't actually need to grind it back but we've assessed it and it's going to need to be replaced pull that one off okey dokey it's a bit hard to pull it off with the tape board the windows up no uh move that one up then move that one up so we've not done that but we don't actually need to because we're probably just going to take them out and replace it for that remove the windlass replace the main plate remove the pulpit push pit the pulpit that should be for straightening done uh yeah we have all right let's look over this side comfort wise we're not interested uh disassemble the steering system that's what we did today done this one no top one some jack service the steering system move that one up because now it's been disassembled we can service it i think it's going to be all repairable remove the rudder no not done that the rudder moves really nicely it's moved the keel now so we haven't done any keel work yet engine work we haven't done yet that's for when chris gets here sales the sales are all now at performance sales in evesham in the care of robo and he says they're all in excellent condition they need the sacrificial strips replacing but the sales themselves are in absolutely perfect condition cup two or two or three of them look like they've never been used to do electrics not done any of that so good so that's it guys um we're done for today we're calling it a day there uh can melissa be seen in shot can you be seen in shot say bye bye to everybody bye bye everyone what so about one two three four five six seven eight nine yeah we've we've done loads uh it doesn't seem like a lot to us but i'm sure to you guys maybe it does i don't or maybe it doesn't but um yeah onwards and upwards and every step is a step in the right direction uh today was a hard day getting that uh steering system off was really hard work on the brink of tears at points today it was hard work it was hard work but that's what it's all about and i now know how that steering system works in an intimate way uh which is not a bad thing yeah and i'll know more soon once i've had it uh rebuilt it thanks very much for watching guys uh and uh yeah we'll see you all next week bye bye bye as always thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed the episode please don't forget to click the thumbs up button and if you want to make sure you don't miss any more episodes click the 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