restoration – The Seadog Life

Renovating the bathroom

Owner — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 17:46:24 +0000

Here’s a short video with pictures of the renovation process that was done to the bathroom aboard Seadog in December 2018.

Building the custom marine fridge

Owner — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 16:06:38 +0000

In this short video the building process for the custom marine fridge aboard Seadog is shown. The Isotherm 3251 ASU SP package was used as the refrigeration system. For insulation material a two-component PU foam was used, together with plywood and 4 layers of epoxy for the finishing layers.

Rigging the new mizzen mast

Owner — Sun, 22 Apr 2018 21:12:06 +0000

The cold weather in February 2018

Owner — Sun, 04 Mar 2018 09:18:24 +0000

Here are some more pictures of the current weather in the Netherlands.

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

Owner — Wed, 28 Feb 2018 12:17:51 +0000

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.

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

Owner — Wed, 20 Dec 2017 12:25:40 +0000

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.

Seadog Haul Out (2017-10)

Owner — Sun, 29 Oct 2017 15:48:30 +0000

Installing solar panels

Owner — Sat, 29 Jul 2017 08:08:18 +0000

The first two solar panels have now been installed and are performing tremendously well.
I first hooked them up in series and later in parallel for testing purposes and it seems the best option (for how the panels are placed at this time) is connecting them up in parallel.
My record to date (on a particular sunny day) was a little more than 60 Ah from one panel alone.
Of course this was in perfect conditions and the average Ah a day will be far lower, but this already exited my expectations about how much energy one panel would be able to produce in one day.
See the pictures below for more details about the panels I used. On a later date I will be writing up a more detailed blog post about how I tested my setup and why I choose parallel hookup instead of in series.
Also created a new battery enclosure for the starter battery to make more room for the two 200 aH batteries that will go alongside the starter battery.
Plus redid all the wiring to and from the batteries to make the setup more compact and less messy (which can, and will still be approved upon)

Hoisting the mast onto the boat and the first real sailing trip

Owner — Thu, 29 Jun 2017 16:59:41 +0000

Although I kept and stored all the old rigging to reuse with the new mast, I still decided that in the end it was a better to just buy completely new rigging.
Sure, it costs a lot of euro’s to do so, but this way I can be sure that when the winds are blowing strong the mast will stay on the boat and nothing will break (which would have dire consequences when under sail).
I hired a company to do all of the rigging onside (at the marina), which meant that within 3-4 hours the mast was standing on the boat and all the rigging was done.
On the same day we took the Seadog out to the lake and hoisted up the jib (front sail). And even with wind speed’s of only 2 Beaufort Seadog was going quite fast.
We couldn’t yet take up the main sail because not everything was ready for that yet. But a few days later we also took up the main. That day there was even less wind, but Seadog still kept on moving. And at the end of the day wind speed’s went up to 3 Beaufort and we were speeding through the water!
The mast hight for the Seadog now is 12.65 meters, and the bridges at the Gooiermeer have a hight of 12.80-13 meters.
Which means it’s going to be quite intensive every time we go under the bridges. Especially if there are big waves, but the first test runs went good, so I guess there’s nothing to worry about….
As always there’s still a lot to do, but from now on it’s also time to go sailing now and again 🙂 (finally)!

Painting the mast and building a custom mast foot

Owner — Thu, 25 May 2017 16:40:42 +0000

It’s taken more than a few weeks (more like a few months), but the Seadog can Sail!
We had to build a custom mast foot and I decided to paint the new mast white.
It’s not really necessary to paint an aluminium mast, and it’s also not easy because paint does not want to stick to aluminium. But I’m very happy with the result and this means I can also paint the second mast with the same color white to make it look identical to the main mast.
See some pictures below of the process. The next post will show when the mast was hoisted onto the boat and the first time we took here for a sail.
Building custom mast foot

Painting the mast and mast foot