Harbour Marine Services
Incorporating Southwold & Ipswich Boatyards
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This week we craned the mast off Kalulu so we can carry out a number of jobs. We are to fit a new track system and boom along with a new mainsail, at the same time we can carry out an inspection of her rod rigging and fit new instruments to the mast.
Kululu has arrived and John has spent most of the day working through the wish/job list to put together an estimate for the client
Kalulu a J51 is no stranger to HMS and is returning for some winter works. She is coming out of the water to have her topsides and transom sanded and repainted in flag blue and we are designing and fabricating a new stainless swim platform with a teak grating. We are also replacing all the stanchions and guardrails, the forward cockpit spray hood, plus repainting the decks, replacing some of the headlining panels, upgrading the cabin lighting, upgrading the refrigeration and the usual winter maintenance works.
Kalula is a 51′ aluminium J&V design, built in 1996 for the express purpose of Ocean racing.
As such she had 8 cot berths, 8 hanging lockers, 8 lots of plates and cutlery….
In fact just about everything on board was designed with 8 crew in mind.
The boat was bought and the purchase survey carried out in the Netherlands stated,
“The hull, keel and rig are structurally in a sound condition.Cosmetically the yacht is clearly in need of a refit.”
This as it turned out was a huge understatement and goes to show that even well respected surveyors can miss significant, expensive to repair and possibly dangerous faults.
The slides along side were taken by us on our first viewing of Kalula and straight away we saw there was much more going on that the survey had suggested.
The following was found to be in need of urgent attention.
The following conditions have been found to be a structural or material defect, (Class A – deficiencies)
• Radar mast severely corroded so that GPS antenna has fallen off
• Windex masttop unit defect/disappeared
• Navigation lights not working
• Batteries are dead and need replacing
• Paint system below the waterline flaking and showing bare metal in places
The following conditions were found not to be in correct status / Different from advertised:
• Although not actually letting out exhaust gasses, the exhaust riser is in a poor condition
• Mast and protective decklight bracket damaged by prolonged movement of loose cutterstay
• Fuel injector lines to cylinder 3 & 4 severely corroded, though no active leak, these should be replaced as a leak poses a serious fire risk.
The following items were found to need attention under normal service routine: (Class B deficiencies)
• All winches and stoppers to be serviced under normal pre-season service routine (some self tailing rings damaged)
• Running rigging to be thoroughly inspected and some lines might be due for replacement before or during the season
• Engine to be serviced under normal service routine and cleaned from smoke residue and corrosion.
• Fuel filters show some contamination, need to be replaced and recurrence to be checked
• Flexible gas hoses and pressure regulator to be replaced
• Fire extinguishers to be serviced
• Liferafts to be serviced
• Mast gaiter to be replaced
• Sheet blocks to be serviced (new bearing balls needed)
However when she arrived at Southwold it was soon found that the condition of the deck below the teak was in very bad condition and in places had corroded to less than 1 mm in thickness.
The paint on the coach roof had blistered and below this again was found significant corrosion.
Cutting a long story short, the boat needed a new deck.So we erected a heat shrink tent and in order to reduce the costs we worked out a way to re -deck without dropping the mast and keeping her in the water.
All the fittings were removed and restored and in some cases replaced.
The deck was then sanded down to bare metal and all the corrosion either ground or cut out.
Templates were made up and new panels cut and welded in before etch primer and epoxy coating.
We decided to use Kiwi grip on the deck instead of replacing the teak apart from the aft cockpit area which was layed with Deck-king.
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