Sail Life - Splash day after 4 years up on the hard - DIY sailboat refit

Hi guys, welcome back to yet another fun DIY sailboat refit video here aboard good old Athena. This week it is hopefully time to put Athena back in the water after four and a half years up on the hard. I had booked the transport guys that's going to move Athena for Wednesday, then that got pushed to Friday, then to Thursday, and then back to Friday which is today. If you're new to my channel I've spent the last four and a half years refitting Athena. I've torn out most of the interior, I've made some structural repairs, I've built a new rudder, and hopefully I've also fixed Athena's osmosis problems, plus a ton of other cool stuff that's documented right here on YouTube. Like I mentioned in last week's video the transport guys are just a tad unreliable but I am really hoping that they're going to show up within the next couple of hours. When I moved Athena here to the workshop it basically involved me calling them every other day for two weeks before they finally moved Athena but fingers crossed for today. In the pit of my stomach I've got that annoying feeling that it's maybe not going to happen today but no matter what Athena is fully ready to go back in the water. I've got all of the new standing rigging attached to the mast. The cover coat is sanded or activated as per the instructions. I've got brand new fenders ready although attaching these to the boat without the mini bulwark slash tow rail in place is going to be a little bit awkward but I've got a plan for that. I've put little lift here stickers on the hull to mark the position of the slings for the next time I need to haul Athena out of the water. This is not really something that makes the boat look better but it's going to be very convenient to have when it comes time to put Athena back on the hard. I've got a big box ready with new dock lines and some other minor items that I think we might need. Also the wind instrument and the radar are all good to go. So basically all that's left to do is just to cross my fingers and hope that the transport guys actually come through today. I just got off the phone with the transport guys and they're on their way here so it's looking very possible that they're going to show up today. I've already loaded everything in my car so now it's just a matter of getting Athena to the harbor. Good morning guys! It is a crisp Saturday morning and it's time for that much dreaded commute to work and that's the walk from the 30-foot sailboat I'm living aboard to Athena. There were no big surprises when splashing Athena. This is me emerging from the boat after having checked for leaks of which there were none which is indicated by a bit of woohooing and raised arms. The new standing rigging fits perfectly. It's not tuned yet but that's okay. It fits and that's the most important thing. I wasn't super nervous that the new standing rigging wouldn't fit but you don't know until you know. You know? As far as my plans for this weekend it turns out they're shutting off the water here at the marina today. That's something we do every year to avoid frost damage to the pipes. So that means today is my last chance to wash both of the boats. So yeah that's priority number one on my list. There's a bunch of dirt in the cockpit here aboard Athena and there's a little bit of green starting to grow here near the port lights but sadly it's nothing compared to good old Obelix which looks like she's been adopted by the military and they've started covering her in camouflage. Green stuff tends to grow on boats pretty dang quick around here but usually it's very easy to clean so that's good. Far from perfect but a lot better than before. The little bit of discoloring there are in some areas where the gel coat is slightly yellow that is very easy to remove. That's done using oxalic acid. I've got a bunch of it in its crystal form but it's easier to do that when the weather is a little bit warmer because you dissolve those crystals in water and then you wash the boat with that solution and it just becomes magically white. The astute will note that the spray hood is still looking very green. The way I clean that is simply just to hand it over to a dry cleaner here in town and they do whatever they do to it and it comes back looking well basically brand new. I also managed to clean Athena just a little bit but I ran out of time. They've shut off the water so yeah this is gonna have to be good enough. Here inside of Athena everything is kind of a giant mess. I didn't tidy up the boat before putting her back in the water so there's tools strewn everywhere and also materials for the upcoming projects. Like for instance this tubular delight right here. This is the PEX that I'm going to use for the heating system aboard the boat. In the forward cabin I've got a bunch of plywood for the new headliner. I've also got a bunch of Armaflex for insulating. There are three things I would like to have here aboard Athena as quick as I can possibly get them. That is heating because winter is coming. It's getting colder by the day. Then there's lighting especially here in the saloon because as you can see I'm horribly lit for a shooting video right now so a bit of lighting would be nice. And then also there is AC or shore power. A while back I picked up this shore power inlet. This is how shore power is connected to the boat and I really like this plug except for one thing. The plug itself feels pretty sturdy. It's stainless steel, it's super shiny and nice. There's a really nice kind of clicky thing to the lid here when you close it so that's nice and also this looks like a sturdy connection. But this hinge. If you think of the cheapest type of plastic your mind can conceive of well then you've got a pretty good idea of what this hinge feels like. It's probably just me being overly critical and I'm sure the hinge is perfectly fine it's just that the rest of this plug is so nice and so much thought has been put into this and then somebody completely fumbled the ball on the hinge. At least that's what it feels like to me but hey I am no expert and like I said I'm sure it's perfectly fine so let's figure out where to put this shore power inlet. I could put it somewhere in this little recessed area here but that would mean the cable would be laying somewhere right around here where you're going to be walking every time you go aboard the boat. I could put the inlet directly right here on the transom somewhere that would be good for when we're tied stern in but most often when we start cruising I imagine we're going to be tied up alongside that would be a little bit awkward. When I purchased Athena the inlet was located down here which I wasn't too keen on in the beginning but I think it might be the best option. Having the inlet be located there will allow us to easily connect and disconnect the plug no matter how the boat is tied to shore and it will also provide the shortest possible connection to the isolation transformer here aboard the boat which is also good. This is the closest match I've got for a hole saw but it's a little bit too small. It would be good if this was just a tiny bit bigger so let's see if Mr. Persuader can take care of that. He's no longer completely round but he should make a hole that's just a little bit bigger. Before I shove the inlet in the hole I've just connected the cable. This cable is good for now. It's good as long as we're here in this marina where we have 230 volts. As soon as we get to for instance the US this would be too small of a gauge but for now it's good. Of course it would have been easier just to use the right gauge straight away but I don't have any of that. Ah I think that looks pretty dang spiffy. I'm not completely ready to install the isolation transformer yet so right now the cable just terminates in this box which contains all of the safety doohickeys. In a rare instance of amazing planning it turns out I don't actually have the plug that goes inside of the inlet so yeah I can't use the inlet yet but I'll get that plug ordered and it should show up in a few days. With the order of the missing plug I'll add one of these swan necks. As you can see I've fitted one on this side of the mast but to be able to run the cables in a neat fashion I think I need one on the other side of the mast too. To avoid any potential issues with water getting inside of the cables I just pop them inside of a plastic bag, tape that shut and I'm gonna leave them hanging there for a few days. I thought I could make do with just the one swan neck but with two it'll look much neater and the cables will all be off of the deck which will make cleaning a lot easier so I'd rather just wait a couple of days and do it right. I ran out of steam around four o'clock yesterday and what's so awesome about having Athena be this close to Obelix is that I could just head home, take a nap, get some dinner and then later in the night waddle back, tidy up aboard the boat and get ready for today. After I had finished tidying up a little bit I also did some experimenting to see which type of LED bulb I want to use for the lights here aboard Athena. These are all of the LEDs I've tested. This is the discarded pile, this is the accepted pile and this is the I would use it for something else but it's too large for this application pile. This plastic bag contains LEDs straight out of China and it's this model here to be specific. In this light over here I've got a halogen bulb for a comparison, in this one I've got the LED that I'm gonna go with. Now let's try and swap this out for the model that's straight out of China that was sold as being a warm white. As you'll hopefully see it's certainly very warm white. I don't know if the camera is gonna pick up the difference but it is very yellow. The first time I popped in one of these and I looked at my skin I thought oh do I have some kind of kidney disease? The lighting in here right now is pretty horrible but that's because we only have these two in place. When I'm done there's gonna be around 14 here in the saloon plus some extra light underneath the deck here which I think it's gonna look really cool. The LED I've chosen to go with is from a reputable marine store here in Europe so I'm not as concerned about noise interfering with electronics and radio equipment as I would be with the model straight out of not Compton but China. Because I was able to do some late night testing last night I've already ordered 10 of these LEDs so I am itching to get some more of the headliner put up so I can put up more lights. The box here at the end of the table contains all of the fixtures I need for the saloon. I've got a bunch of delightfully fake leather and some spray adhesive. I've also got the old headliner but I've changed the layout here in the saloon quite a bit so I'm not going to be able to reuse the old headliner and also most of it is pretty dinged up like for instance this corner here and that is why I've got the forward cabin chucked full of four millimeter plywood. Let's start by jumping into the shallow end of the pool. This should be one of the easier pieces because it's nice and square and it should fit here which it does so I can use this as a template for the new piece of plywood. For me to use this as a template I'm just going to have to peel back the old fake leather but fortunately that is very easy. Here at this corner you can see why I can't reuse this piece of plywood. At some point it's been dropped on its corner and it's just been smashed to bits. I have moved around these beams a little bit because I epoxied them in place so I might have to just ever so slightly modify the shape of this. It looks like there's a little bit of a bigger gap up here than down there. About five millimeters should do the trick. From the little bit of measuring I did I know that I need to add about five millimeters here but the rest should be just an exact copy. Yep a 100 perfect fit. Of course getting the plywood to fit I feel like that's within my skill set. Applying the fake leather to the plywood is where it's gonna get tricky. I think the webshop where I purchased this fake leather might have messed up a little bit because they just sent it kind of folded up and that has left some pretty noticeable creases in the fake leather. I don't know if the creases are gonna show up on camera but I don't think those are gonna go away. Let's do a small test to see if those creases are gonna be visible once this is glued to plywood because I certainly don't want big creases running across the headliner that would look stupid. No matter how much I seem to push down on the area with the crease it still seems to be visible so I think I'm gonna try and get my hands on some fake leather that hasn't been folded. Yeah that crease is definitely gonna be visible. I don't want that. That's a little bit of a shame but I can still go ahead and cut the rest of the plywood. This is definitely gonna be one of the more tricky areas. I have lowered the headliner a bit to be able to fit some insulation up there and that means that this shape probably no longer fits. Maybe the leather situation is a blessing in disguise because I can still cut all of the plywood now and put it up so I can put up lighting and then I can add the leather later on. That way the leather doesn't get dirty or anything. This is the old headliner and because I have lowered the headliner you can see there's quite a noticeable gap here and also around the little trim pieces. Now if you're wondering what's up with the paper towel here that is to diffuse the light inside of the boat for when shooting video. It's not because of privacy reasons or anything like that. It is just because of the camera and of course it is not just a fixed offset along the entire perimeter. There are variations so I'm gonna have to tag something onto the old headliner. A little bit of nice stiff cardboard cut into little triangles and some hot glue should do the trick. It's surprising how often hot glue comes in useful here aboard Athena so I think it's time I switch out this cheapo matic hot glue gun for something that heats up just a little bit faster. Now it is just a matter of gluing these little cardboard pieces in place with the offset. Hopefully this will give me a little bit of a better fit. I'm going to attempt to average out my little offset here because if there is a little gap I don't think it's going to be as visible if it's a nice soft curve. After a fair bit of fiddling around I have now got the two curved forward pieces. Figure it out. They're only held in place by a few screws so they're not perfectly shaped yet but I think that looks pretty dang spiffy. I pulled down the piece of the old headliner I used for testing those LEDs. I made a paper template and cut some ArmaFlex and put that up there and then I got another piece of the new headliner put in place. I'd like to put up headliner in this section too but to do that I need to cut these bolts here down they're a little bit too long. I also need some more plywood for supporting the headliner on this side over here. All of that stuff is up at the workshop. I'm almost out of video shooting time for this week. I need to start rendering this video pretty soon so I think I'm just going to end this video here but then next week without the interruption of having to splash Athena I should be able to get the shore power connected get all of the lighting put up in here and possibly also start running that PEX tube for the heating. I am of course super happy that Athena is back in the water. It is quite the milestone but then at the same time I can't really celebrate it because there's still so much work to be done here inside of the boat and we are planning on leaving in a little over 200 days. Judging by last week's video I'm sure I'm gonna get a lot of questions asking why I put Athena in the water now rather than just keep her up at the workshop. I've already answered that in the previous video but just to give you the cliff notes version the cradle Athena was sitting in is not my cradle and the guy that owns the cradle would like to use it for his boat and also having Athena right next to Obelix does mean that I can come and go a lot quicker so I can get a lot of smaller stuff done which I think at this stage is actually going to be quite the upside. And on that cheery note I will end this week's video here. I hope to see all of you guys back here aboard a floating Athena next week for yet more DIY fun. As always feel free to leave a comment down below and don't forget if you've enjoyed this video remember to leave a like. See you!