Trip to The River Orwell / Harwich – UK

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On 8 May the Seadog and crew headed out for the first big trip to the UK. The first stop was Amsterdam to calibrate the birthday of my sister on board in Amsterdam Marina. The next day we first had to do some more preparations, then headed off to the seaport of Ijmuiden. Along the way to Ijmuiden we had to help tow a boat with engine troubles. Turns out a few days later we would also need to be towed into Harwich – UK with engine troubles of our own.

Below some pictures and video clips of the journey from Huizen to Amsterdam, then from Amsterdam to Ijmuiden and from Ijmuiden to Harwich. We started with a crew of three, but are now still in Harwich trying to fix the engine troubles and one of the crew had to head back to NL. All things considering we’re actually having a very good time. The weather has been nice and will stay nice for the coming days. But we’re also really looking forward to the journey home. More about that in the next blog post.

Prepping the second mast and the navigation equipment (testing out very old radar)

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Work on the fridge / freezer box is still underway, but a second project has also started this past month. The mizzen (second) mast has been lying in wait for almost 2 years, and the time has finally come to prepare it for painting. Also all the navigation equipment needs to be in order so those can be mounted on this mast. The mast has now been sanded and the first layers of paint (primer and first layer coat) have been applied. The temperature plummeted way blow zero (see pictures of the Seadog in the ice below this post), so painting has come to a hold. But with a little luck we can start painting again next week.

After first sanding stage
Cleaning up and prepping for paintjob
Ready to start painting
After first layer of primer paint
After first layer of primer paint
Prepping for navigation equipment
Sanding for next layers of paint
Sanding for next layers of paint
Sanding for next layers of paint

I was lucky enough to get a free (be it, rather old) radar system from a friend of my dad. After some due consideration I decided that if it worked I would install it on the mizzen and not bother buying a new (and very expensive) radar system for now. And lo and behold, after some tinkering and even a little guess-work with the wiring, it seems the system is still operational.

 

Seadog in the ice….

Ice, rain and snow

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As you can see there were some snowy days here in the Netherlands. But nevertheless work continued aboard the Seadog.

On the starboard side some of the holes that were made to access the through hull bolts were patched up.  And this time two hose connectors were laminated at starboard and port side at the back of the ship to allow excess rainwater to flow out of that hallow space in the top of the hull. Which are connected right into the drainage pipes underneath the waterline. Also all hoses aboard the entire ship have now have been replaced by new hoses with  stainless steel hose clamps. Plus, the storage lockers at the back of the ship finally got there much-needed cleanup as well.

The building of the custom fridge / freezer has not  halted, but only had some minor progress in favour of the above tasks. All the needed supplies are now aboard, so hopefully more on this subject in the next post.

 

Building a custom fridge box inside a sailboat: Step 1 – Preparations

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This past week preparations were made for building a new fridge box inside the boat. There has always been a big empty space beneath the kitchen counter that has been hard to reach ever since the stairs were moved there. The fridge box will be placed in that empty space and will be accessible from the top. Although in this case there really was no other option, it actually always a good idea to have the fridge opening at the top. This way the cool air inside the box will not fall out when you open the door. The plan is to insulate the fridge with a minimum of 10 cm insulation to further increase the efficiency of the fridge box. In some places even more insulation will be used, especially in the small space where the freezing section will be.

To compensate for the immense thickness of insulation there will need to be a lot of empty space available underneath the kitchen counter. Therefor all unneeded planks and beams were removed and some much-needed cleaning and painting was done to prepare this space for the placement of the new fridge box.
The holes that were made to access some of the bolts that go through the hull of the boat were also closed off again. Plus some of the 230 volt wiring was redone now that those parts were easy to access.

The cooling unit used to cool the fridge box will be the Isotherm 3251 ASU Self-Pumping Water-Cooled Component System which is one of the most efficient systems out there, while also being near silent (no spinning fan). With this system the sea water-cooled skin fitting/heat exchanger replaces the air-cooled condenser and cooling fan that normal systems use. The through-hull fitting of the kitchen sink was replaced with this special fitting last month when the boat was on the hard (out of the water).

Isotherm 3251 ASU Self-Pumping Water-Cooled Component System

The building of the actual fridge box will follow in an upcoming post. Till then, fair winds and following seas…