S/V Rainshadow

Our boat has 10 portlights, 5 on each side of the cabin. We learned on our recent passage to Hawaii that they are leaking. There are multiple reasons why.

For months as we considered our upcoming passage from Seattle to Hilo, we worked on a list of things that HAD to be done before we set off. The list varied in size throughout the spring, but once we reached the boat, pragmatism and schedule reduced the list to a more manageable size. Here is […]

  In the spring of 2015, we left our land-based home in Hawaii and returned to the Pacific Northwest.

We headed from our winter home to the boat in May, and spent some time doing repairs, both at the marina and while underway on our 1st summer journey to Barkley Sound. Here’s the list of repairs/improvements:

Rainshadow spent a month on the hard at Sea Marine in Port Townsend starting in late September so we could complete the following maintenance tasks:

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 […]

If you need to replace the engine mounts on your Perkins 4-108, here’s the simple answer:  use Bushings Inc. DF 2207-2 mounts. Now, it was a lot of work to figure this out, so I am going to give the long answer too.

Rainshadow overwintered at her slip at the Port of Poulsbo. It’s a good slip, but we were spoiled rotten having our boat only a 1/2 mile walk away prior to this – now it’s a 35 minute drive each way. Anyway, it didn’t stop us from making a lot of improvements this winter/spring.

OK, so the sailing season is over for us, and I have started several projects, including tearing down the boom.

We hauled out on July 21st, hoping to “haul and hang” for an hour to pull off the old Axiom and put on the new one, but with the nagging fear in the back of our minds that we should have replaced the white metal bearing during our haul out in June.

Axiom made the new prop in just under three weeks, and UPS got it here in just five days. What an amazingly flat world. 

We hauled Rainshadow at Sea Marine in Port Townsend for a week, starting June 13th. We had a nice stay there. Sea Marine pushed a staircase along side the boat, so I could climb aboard (I certainly would not be able to climb a ladder). So we lived aboard on the hard, and worked on […]

Prop analysis for the Nic 38

It’s been a long cold and wet winter. Finally, the 3rd week of April has had some reasonable sailing weather – good wind and not-so-cold temperatures (mid 50’s F). So we took Rainshadow out for a day sail, and had a wonderful time.

We have a Yamaha 8 HP 2-stroke outboard for our dinghy (1999 model 8SMHX). I reported earlier about how to change its water pump impeller (here). We did that because the telltale wasn’t flowing water, and it still wasn’t after we serviced the water pump. So we took off the head cover to look at […]

Our dinghy came with a Yamaha 8 HP 2-stroke outboard (1999 model 8MSHX). We we started it up for the first time, there wasn’t any water coming out the telltale hole so we decided it was time to service the water pump.

Winches on boats need servicing occasionally – yearly according to the manufacturers. They’ve got a lot of bearings in them, and gears if they are two-speed winches, all of which do much better with some nice clean waterproof marine grease. When you don’t service them for a while, the grease becomes like sticky tar. Then […]

Yesterday, we were all set for our first overnight cruise. The engine was running, Van was ready to cast off the docking lines. He was telling me the plan, but I was preoccupied. “Are you listening to me?” he asked.

We pulled a sample of diesel from the bottom of the tank to learn about what’s going on down there. At first, the fuel looked pretty clean, but then we scraped the bottom of the tank with the sampling tube, and a bunch of gunk came up.

Rainshadow’s Perkins 4-108 diesel engine uses sea water (otherwise known as ‘raw water’) to cool the lube oil and engine coolant in a two-part heat exchanger. General lore is that you’re supposed to periodically remove the heat exchanger and clean the tubes that carry the sea water through the housings. Rainshadow’s heat exchanger had never […]

While Luke was home from university for spring break, we decided that with his help, it was time to send Van up the mast. We had some burned out light bulbs, and Van wanted to inspect the rigging up there.

As Brion Toss said at this year’s Seattle Boat show, if your boat is more than 20 years old and has spent any time at all in warm climates, you have to pull those chain plates. So during that nice sunny spell we had recently, we did pull a few, and Brion was right – […]

People are starting to ask what’s happening with the boat, so I figured I better make a new post.