QuietDolphin

We spent three weeks sailing with Ann-Riis this summer and completed more than 300Nm. We sailed south from the Stockholm Archipelago till the nature reserve island of Fifång where we spent several nights on anchor in a natural harbor waiting for the winds to be favourable for our first open water crossing to Gotland.


The winds and seas turned out to be stronger than expected though, with winds reaching over 25 knots and some thunderstorms in the end. It was a rough ride with two reefs in the main and a reefed genoa, but we did a reasonably fast crossing under 12 hours.


Gotland has many to offer. We spent a few days exploring the island, the 'capital' Visby, small fishing villages and it's neighbor island Fårö with it's beautiful rauks, before heading back.



The crossing back was much slower with light winds, mostly broad reach and running. We sailed 70Nm aiming a bit higher towards Nynäshamn, so it took almost double the time and we had a nice quite night sailing too.

It was time to get rid of the old UV damaged 'red' stripes on the topsides of the hull. We tried several methods to remove it. Heating it with a heatgun, using aceton and some glue residue remover, but there were several layers of vinyl stripes accumulated on top of eachother during previous ownerships and non of these methods worked, the stickers were breaking into very small pieces.
Old UV damaged stripes

The only way we found to be effective is sanding it off with rubber disks on a driller. We used up at least 7 or 8 rubber disks during the process and tried two different types, the one with stains and the solid. The idea was that the stainted disk produces less heat and will not burn the gelcoat, but it didn't really matter. The cheapest disk does the job well too and the gelcoat didn't get burned. The whole project took at least four days for two of us with two drillers and we were exhausted.


We found the original red gelcoat to be in a fairly OK condition, there is …

Read Part 1
After careful surface preparation the bilge reinforcement project continued with laying the new laminate. I consulted with West System on what fabric to use and they suggested biaxial cloth without chopped strand matting. The biaxial cloth is very strong and CSM would just add weight. We bought 600g biaxial cloth with 45/45 degree strands from Composite24 and West System 105 epoxy with 206 fast hardener at a local marine store.
Cutting fabric
The work was done in sections, we started with the bilge bottom/floor while the keel nuts and washers were removed. It got 4 layers that come up 10cm at the bilge sides. This area gets most of the loads and we wanted to reinforce it by connecting the fabric on the bottom to the one to be layed on the sides.

In theory these types of reinforcements are suggested to be done either with the keel dropped or while the keel is hanging so it's not compressing the joint while the boat is standing on the keel. The idea is to avoid building …

Most people celebrate midsummer in Sweden by raising the maypole, we did it by raising the mast. We sold the old and worn Furlex Type B MK2 during the winter and was planning to install a new Furlex 204S during this season. Unfortunately we didn't take exact measurements of the old forestay length before selling it, so this project became an adventure too. For our excuse we did measure the old forestay, but the wire was inside the luff tubes in the storage along the mast and later we considered that was not exact enough. We were not 100% sure that the old Furlex was the correct length either.

New luff extension tubes and forestay 
Taking measurements 
Assembling the terminal
So we raised the mast with a temporary dyneema forestay which we can measure easily. We tried to set the mast straight with little tension with the temporary forestay, which was a challenge as the dyneema we had was not thick enough (just 4mm) and were stretching quite a bit. We took measurements twice with…

A long overdue project was to pull in the NMEA2000 data and the power cable into the steering pedestal for the Garmin chartplotter we purchased last year. We had to disassemble the whole upper part of the pedestal and unscrew the bottom cover in the engine room to be able to do this. There was a hole on the side of the pedestal already we're planning to reuse. It was a tight fit, but we managed to pull in two cables in the same hole and seal them off with self-vulcanizing tape. We also replaced the worn out compass light wire and while everything was disassembled gave it a good clean and new grease for the inner parts and sealant for the outer parts.


Now we just need to connect the cables in the engine room.

Read Part 1
The alternator had to be taken off during the heat exchanger cleaning project, so while at it we upgraded it to a brand new 70A alternator, changed the belt and installed new sound insulation. The old alternator used an external charging regulator made in the 80s which we also got rid of. That freed up some space on the bulkhead in the engine room, so we could re-arrange the cabling.

Old generator 
New 70A generator installed
New sound insulation is on
The positive busbar was moved from above the engine to the other side of the bulkhead, where we already had the negative busbar installed. We mounted the new BlueSea main switch there too. The old 6mm2 wires to the DC panel also got replaced with 16mm2 marine grade cables and got a 50A fuse.
Working on the new cables 
The new layout 
The old main switch was on the floor where someone made a large opening for it and installed the switch on a piece of wood. We were thinking a lot about what to do with that hole and if we sho…