S/V Rainshadow

Even though we left Rainshadow by herself while we spent the winter in Hawaii, we still made quite a few improvements at the end of the 2012 cruising season and the start of 2013 season. Here’s the list:

– Had the fuel injectors rebuilt and checked valve adjustment. Engine continues to run great.

– Replaced fuel lines as the hoses were leaking. The fuel line replacement was a terrible fiasco due to incompetence by our mechanic. Next time, we will do the work ourselves. Further info on this saga is on svrainshadow.tumblr.com (June 28th and July 9th 2013). Only words of wisdom for someone else who might do this – the brass fittings on the fuel tank are some strange British fitting from the 70’s. Treat them with utmost care.

– Installed an electric priming pump on the fuel line to make it easier to bleed the engine. This pump is inline with the Perkins lift pump and could be used as a replacement pump in a pinch if the lift pump fails.

– Replaced the primary Racor filter because the original got dropped during the fuel line replacements and the bowl was cracked. The new one is a Racor 120S.

– New starter battery.

– Added an invertor and two 120V outlets, one in the galley and one under the Nav station. We still have no shore power, and don’t plan to add it.

– Replaced the original Lavac Zenith head with a Lavac Poplar head. The original had a cracked porcelain bowl.

– Removed the Sanitred coating from the water tank using brute force. We are now back to the original blistered fiberglass, which is a big improvement over our attempt to repair with Sanitred.

– Installed an inline water filter on the galley cold water line to alleviate our fears about the venting blisters in the water tank. Chose this one: Omnipure K5522-BB Carbon Block Water Filters

– Recoated the deck teak with TeakGuard. This is the second year of use. I had to remove all of the original TeakGuard, probably because I did not clean the teak enough before the first application last year. This year, I tried a variety of treatments in different areas in hopes of learning the most robust application method. This is an interesting coating material that has very limited abrasion resistance, but it is very easy to apply (in contrast to varnish). I’ll give a full report on it in a few years after I’ve made up my mind whether I like it.

– Repaired the failed anchor light, which meant cleaning the corrosion off the contacts. We bought a replacement Bibi Electronics Owl anchor light, but we could not figure out an easy way to mount it on the mizzen. It seems better suited to a pole mounting. I am sure it would be brighter than our current weak light. We tried to buy a replacement bulb for our current Davis anchor light, but Davis has changed the bulb connection since ours was installed and Davis does not have suitable documentation to tell us the correct bulb to purchase for the older fixture.

– Replaced the rigging wire and turnbuckles on the lower main shrouds using 7/32″ 1×19 wire and Hayn Hi-mod terminals. Now the main standing rigging is completely replaced. We purchased the materials to re-rig the mizzen but didn’t have to install it yet.

– Bought a cheap used spinnaker (since our asymmetrical spinnaker ripped from top to bottom last year). This was an impulse purchase from a local marine surplus store. The more expensive item was the new Chute Scoop sock used to ease deployment. The sock can be used on our new asymmetrical spinnaker when we get serious enough about solving our light air sail problems that we actually buy a new sail rather than trying to limp along with an old worn out spinnaker.

That’s it, which is a quite a nice list of improvements after all. Rainshadow is a very comfortable boat for cruising and quite reliable, and yet each year during our cruise we compile long lists of things we would like to do to make her better and more ready for offshore sailing.