Making MAYAN Look Nicer

Making MAYAN look nicer:


Since first setting eyes on MAYAN, probably over 35 years ago, I have been struck by how starkly "white" and "gray" she looked. I loved her lines, but David's desire to minimize maintenance and to reduce it to something that his hired hands could do lead to ever growing fields of white paint and bare teak. As a footnote, we've found that over the 46 years David had folks looking after MAYAN, she had more than 30 "skippers". Sadly, all that change shows at times. While a paint-n-bare-teak finish makes a great deal of sense in Florida, where MAYAN spent the first fifteen years of her life with David, it is unnecessary here in California. Especially while she is under the care of someone who actually enjoys the process of keeping her looking good.

MAYAN In Santa Barbara, Circa 2010

After a few months of working on MAYAN's other issues, we stepped back and taken a look at the various options. The most common bit of trim that folks add is a varnished cap rail. While MAYAN does have a teak cap rail, advice from Wayne is that it is too weather-worn to serve as a varnished piece at the level of quality that we like to achieve. "I can replace it with two weeks work, but we don't want to start that now." was Wayne's advice, something with which we agreed.

The second bit of traditional trim to be varnished are the hand rails and the edges of the trunk cabin, I personally dislike both of these options as varnished hand rails are much more difficult to keep a grip on when wet and I've watched competent sailors slip and fall on their ass as they step on a varnished wet cabin edge. Indeed, we have traditionally gone the other direction, stripping both of these surfaces to provide better traction for hands a feet. The spars could be varnished, and they are lovely solid sitka spruce, but I'm feeling a little old to sign up for hanging in a bosun's chair for a week a year to maintain the gloss. Based on one final factor, that it's a LOT easier to maintain large flat surfaces than small complex ones, we settled on the cabin sides as the best target-of-opportunity for our scrapers, sandpaper and varnish brushes.

We did some test stripping, to see exactly what sort of wood we were dealing with and what condition it was in. We hoped that the wood had retained some of its varnish, as we have pictures from the '40s of MAYAN with varnished cabin sides. The test strips showed white paint deep within the grain of the wood, but it also showed that her cabin sides were solid Honduras Mahogany about 3" thick. We decided that we could sand off a couple of millimeters and it wouldn't be missed. So, it was game on.

Whenever you strip the paint off of a 67 year old piece of painted wood you're going to find some surprises, this job was no exception. It appears that the after end of both sides of the trunk cabin had been damaged at some point, also the after edge of the cabin, which runs athwart ship just forward of the bridge deck and is the most conspicuous piece of wood in the boat to those riding in the cockpit. Wayne's guess is that the cabin top leaked and the freshwater got down in around the corner post in the after two corners of the house, and down the sides of the companionway and engine room hatches. Around each of these areas there were well done repairs, but they are repairs that assume that the boat's cabin sides would be painted, not varnished, so putty was liberally used and the joints weren't tight.

"No problem." says Wayne, "We'll just cut that out and match it." I looked at the 2' high by 3' long chunk of the cabin side on each side and swallowed hard. "OK, now or never." and off we went.

Routing Out The Old Seam

All Cleaned Up, Waiting For A Spline

The first step was to fix a relatively small problem. The planks used to build the trunk cabin originally are about 18' long, so they couldn't do the run of the entire side of the cabin. The builders had installed a very nice locking scarf, but the joint wasn't tight. Someone had widened the joint with a router and filled it with an epoxy putty, probably because they wanted to put a hard paint over the surface (which they did) and the movement of the wood beneath hard paint caused cracking. In the picture below you can see Ruben, one of Wayne's team of master wood workers, has set up a jib for the router and is cutting a fixed width groove where the putty used to be. He'll fill that with a Honduras Mahogany strip and once sanded and varnished the joint will disappear. Varnish, being much much more elastic than paint, will have no trouble keeping this joint covered and sealed.

First Router Cut

A similar technique was used by Wayne's carpenter, Ruben, to start to remove the top layers of wood at the after end of each side of the cabin. Because we were going to cover up these joints and the bolts that were added to hold the cabin side to the corner posts, we've documented all this with photos and a description for future caretakers of MAYAN. The initial cuts along the edges of the area to be removed are guided by the cabin top, the deck, and two plywood guides that are clamped to the side of the house. This leaves clean edges. The next step, which Ruben has started here, is to router out all the excess wood within the target area.

Starting To Router Out The Area

In this close-up view you can see the first cut, approximately 1/2" deep, made by the router. Ruben then re-set his router depth to finish everything to a depth of 3/4". He choose not to do this in one cut because the load on the router is pretty high, but also because when the router is loaded up the tip of the blade tends to jump a bit and leaves patters on the finished surface. This way, the floor of the inlay will be much smoother and easier to glue to.

Aft Edge, Showing Lag Bolts

This close-up is of the after edge of the cut on the starboard side. The bolt heads, which hold the cabin side to the corner post and after edge of the cabin, can been seen; as can one of the glue joints that will be buried under the new wood.

Finally, the entire bottom of the area to be covered is smoothed with hand planes of various types to insure it is flat and true. The next step will be to fit a piece of wood to this hole, as a large piece of inlayed wood, or what Ruben is now calling "The Big Dutchman".

Over on the port side, we've taken the opportunity to remove the shore power plug, which was mounted directly to the cabin side, and cover the hole with the 3/4" inlay. I relocated the shore power plug into the engine room and cut a small groove in the top of one of the engine room hatch boards to let the cord get below. I've never liked having a shore power cord where the salt spray can get to it. Yes, we can put a cover over it, but the darn thing was the only piece of chrome aboard MAYAN and it looked UGLY mounted on the cabin side. In the engine room it'll be safe, dry and out of sight. Re-running the size 6 wires for the 50 Amp connector was a PITA, but now that it's done I'm a much happier guy.

Square Inlay Cut Awaiting New Wood

Auxiliary engine maintenance - less glamorous than Rock Stars, but critically important

Aux Engine - Yanmar 2GM20F

To avoid running the main engine aboard MAYAN, which is a 130hp Mercedes Benz OM-352 bus engine, for prolonged periods at light load to cool the refrigeration and charge the batteries, MAYAN has an Yanmar 2GM20F 16hp auxiliary engine located in the port side of the engine room.  As is typical of most cruising boats that make relatively short trips, the auxiliary engine gets a lot more hours than the main engine.  We don't know exactly how many hours have been put on the auxiliary engine, but from the looks of things it's at least a thousand or more.

Rust under old muffler

The update to this engine started with the observation of pin-hole leaks in the side of the water-lift muffler.  Sadly, this muffler was constructed of what appears to be 304 stainless steel and, as is typical of this metal, it started to fail all along the welds.  The leaks had drained water on the wood cleats supporting the muffler, and as a result rot had set it.  The Yanmar 2GM20F is notorious for clogging up its exhaust mixing elbow, and our auxiliary engine was no exceptions.  Given we were going to be pulling off all the exhaust pipes anyway to replace the muffler, it made sense to strip off the mixing elbow and taking a look.  Sure enough, the exhaust hole was over half clogged with soot and chunks of rust.

Exhaust Mixing Elbow, the silver thing

A quick trip to the Bosun's Locker in Costa Mesa yielded a new mixing elbow, some new hose, a gasket and a new fiberglass water-lift muffler.  Some sailors are concerned about using fiberglass to build the muffler.  This concern is based on the scenario in which cooling water is blocked to the engine and prior to any other warning or alarm the hot exhaust melts (or worse ignites) the muffler.  We're not concerned about this primarily because the exhaust note of the Yanmar is quite noticeably different and louder when running dry.  We will certainly notice the bellowing.  The second failure scenario is that one can't hear the auxiliary engine running dry because the main engine is also running and masking the sound.  This shouldn't happen aboard MAYAN as some other engineering we're doing will make running both engines at once extremely rare.

While we were at work on the Yanmar, we also discovered the air filter was heavily clogged with dust and guck, so it was replaced.  Given the significant increase in air and exhaust flow, the Yanmar should run substantially better.

Top view of auxiliary engine

Of course, whenever one starts pulling on the "thread of a sweater" of one project.... it leads to others.  While we were pulling the muffler thread from the sweater of our project it became clear that it was completely impossible to access the muffler and the exhaust system (including the sea water through hull) due to the way in which the refrigeration compressor and water-maker pressure pump were installed.  This was unacceptable for any number of reasons, primarily because in the event of a hose failure it wasn't possible to get to the sea cock to turn off the flow of sea water.  In the picture to the right one can see the water-maker pump (black pump on the far right), which was mounted above the refrigeration compressor, which was mounted above the exhaust muffler, and all of this left only 5 inches of space to try and squeeze through to get to the sea cock.

Aux engine stripped down

We had been planning to change our refrigeration strategy anyway, so we took the opportunity to remove the old system, clearing away the compressor with its two belts, the condenser, dryer and head exchanger.  Of course, the removal of all this required the temporary removal of the high pressure pump for the water-maker.  We'll reinstall the water-maker pump when we prepare for a long trip that requires that device aboard.  In the mean time, we'll be able to easily and safely get at things.

Once again, as we pulled the thread of cleaning things up to make it easier and safer to access things, it became obvious that this was a great chance to get a coat of paint on the auxiliary engine.  Of course, while this wasn't in "the plan", it was painfully clear it needed doing.  In the picture to the right we've masked off all the non-Yanmar-gray bits and painted up the engine.  The painting process is a crazy dance of sticking one's head out the hatch to get a lung full of fresh air, going back into the engine room and painting until one needs more air, and repeating the process until the engine is well painted.  I suppose I could get a breather, but this works.

Finally, with the engine painted and the excess equipment moved aside, the high output alternator received new belts and was tensioned.

This project, which originally set out to fix a small leak in the muffler was scheduled as a one-day job.... well... like almost every project on a boat it ballooned into a four day set of interlocking projects.  While at each step of the way it was clear that the additional work both needed doing and would improve MAYAN, it illustrates just how difficult it is to "plan" projects on a boat, even for those who have been planing projects for years.