1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Splash Day! (sorta)

In a nutshell, we splashed the boat, I found a small leak, and we lifted the boat out of the water. I fixed the problem and we splashed again. And then I found another small leak that requires parts to fix. So the Roamer is in the slings and on blocks in front of the lift well at the marina. Parts are on order.

The day started off just fine. Everybody showed up when they said they would. The Travelift came over and lifted the boat, but the straps were too far forward. I mentioned that to the lift operator. He said it’d be fine. The tires for the lift were on uncompacted gravel. Lifting the boat compacted the gravel under the tires, and the lift didn’t have the oomph to get out of the depressions it made in the gravel.

So they put the boat back down and moved the lift aft three feet.

Relocating the straps

Second try with some plywood on the ground in front of the tires.

But the lift just didn’t have the power to move forward on the uncompacted gravel.

So they brought in some muscle to help out

Never seen this done before

It worked!

Getting close

Splashed!

I jumped onboard and went around checking thruhulls, and that’s when I noticed a bit of water streaming in from the starboard main engine Forespar Marelon seacock. Water was getting past the thread sealant. So I had them lift the boat clear of the water and set about fixing it.

Removing the hose wasn’t too difficult

With the hose out of the way, I removed the valve.

I found nothing out of order with the standpipe

Maybe I didn’t apply enough Gasoila thread sealant. Or maybe I didn’t fully seat the valve. I don’t know why it leaked. But I cleaned the sealant off the threads as best I could and applied a different sealant: Loctite 567.

I fully seated the valve and attached the hose

They lowered the boat again and the seal for the Forespar valve appears to have held. But I could hear a dripping sound and tracked it down to the underside of the base for the OEM Chris Craft-branded seacock that originally served the genset.

In 2009, when I splashed the boat at its original marina, that seacock was dry and tight. It made the trip to Deale without leaking a drop. So after confirming that the rubber stopper part of the valve was still soft and serviceable, I didn’t bother removing it from the standpipe. I got a new sight glass and gaskets and presumed everything would be fine. But something happened in the interim and the unit is no longer reliable.

So I ordered a new Marelon valve and it will be here sometime next week.

This was a very stressful, disappointing day…

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Splash Day Breakdown

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Final Engine Test & Impeller Install

With Tent Model XXX finally retired, the last items on my pre-launch punch list are to prove the Cummins 6CTAs start reliably and then install the raw water impellers.

Since the boat is on land, there’s no raw water supply to cool the exhaust. I don’t want to overheat my brand new exhaust hoses or fiberglass mufflers, so I’ve only been letting the engines run for a maximum of 10 seconds. I’m very pleased that after so much time sitting, they light off at the first twist of the key switches. I think they may be idling too low, but that should be an easy adjustment once the boat is in my temporary slip.

I’ve never had a turbocharged boat before. I love hearing the subtle whistling sound of the turbos spooling up even at idle. 🙂

This short video shows the view from outside when I light off each engine. I don’t have the engine heaters on, but the starter only runs for a fraction of a second before the engines are running. There’s a bit of smoke, and it differs slightly from side to side, but I don’t think it’s anything to be concerned about. My Kubota tractor belches black smoke every time it starts, and it gets run a lot more often than these Cummins 6CTA have for the last decade!

The important thing is that the engines now reliably start every time I’ve tested them.

When the video is over, click Cancel or it advances to some randomly selected video at the hosting site.

With the final engine pre-launch tests done, I set about installing the raw water impellers.

I’ve had these new Sherwood 17000 impellers for far too long

They’ve been sitting in the original packaging since 2015, waiting for me to finally get the project where it is now.

I put a dab of Gasoila thread sealant on the shaft to hold the key in place

A hose clamp compressing the fins a bit helps ease installation

I also put a bit of dish soap on each fin tip as a lubricant.

Aligning the keyway to the key was a bit tricky, but I finally got it.

Each bolt got a touch of Tef-Gel

I was glad to see that the previous owner of these engines had also obviously been using a thread lubricant. I take that as a good sign that he paid attention to important details.

Starboard side is done

Port side is done

That’s it! My Roamer is officially ready to splash! All I need is the insurance company’s approval, and I’m off to the boatyard for the big launch!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Splash Day (sorta)!

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Retiring Tent Model XXX part II

I just hung up with Hagerty Marine Insurance. My survey and request for approval to launch is in the underwriters’ workflow. I should have their response in a day, so I may still be able to splash this week. Unfortunately, after six weeks of unusually dry, pleasant weather, this area now has thunderstorms forecast every day for the next week.

That said, taking down Tent Model XXX was more time consuming than I expected, even with a very competent assistant. We were able to pull all of the plastic and get half of the frames and scaffolding out of the way on Day One of the tent removal. Day Two of tent removal got cut short by the heat, humidity, and the fact that we’re two geezers who are a bit out of shape and not used to long days of hard physical labor. lol

First light of Day 2

I started disassembly at the stern

The catwalk comes off first…

Then the lumber tying the frames together gets removed…

And finally, I haul the individual frame uprights away from the boat

With each piece removed, the remaining structure got increasingly wobbly.

Only two frame sections remain!

Last frame standing…but barely

Beautiful boat surrounded by a sea of dirty, rotten lumber

The lower parts of the majority of the tent frames were badly rotted. I knew Tent Model XXX was past its prime, but now that I’ve seen how bad each piece was I’m surprised it stayed together.

It’s great to be able to see the boat without anything blocking the view

It’s hot, we’re beat and calling it a day

Day 3 started off cool and cloudy

That’s one good lookin’ boat

First priority for cleaning up was the shrink wrap

I spread out each sheet of plastic, cut it into 6′ wide strips, folded it once so it was 3′ wide, and rolled it as tightly as I could before tying it securely with twine.

Next I put my Makita cordless drill through its paces by pulling hundreds of screws that were holding all of the lumber frames together. It would have been faster to just take a saw to it, but there’s ~$1,000 worth of lumber and screws here, and I can reuse them at my house.

The sea of dirty, rotten lumber has been taken apart and loaded on the trailer

The boat looks even better when it’s not surrounded by dirty, rotten lumber

I rigged my new Hubbell shore power cable along the stainless safety line in preparation for splashing

Thank you for your service, Tent Model XXX

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Final Engine Test & Impeller Install

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: The Mast

This post is out of sequence, since in my excitement I already posted about Day 1 of dismantling Tent Model XXX. Anyway, I mentioned before that I had to remove the tent top to install the handrail. But the top also had to come off as part of the tent disassembly process, so it’s a win-win. There’s a lot of stuff that may appear to be coming together quickly, but actually it’s just a lot of things I worked on previously that I knew would one day have to happen. And when the day came, everything sort of fell into place.

Like the mast.

Rechromed parts got reacquainted with the OEM mahogany mast back in 2013

Sikaflex 291 LOT (Long Open Time) is a great product

Most caulks kick off pretty fast…sometimes too fast. And once they kick off, there’s no turning back. What I like about 291LOT is that it stays workable/cleanable for around an hour. No other caulk does that. When it cures, it’s like any other caulk. So if you’ve got a caulk job that’s complex, I highly recommend spending the money on Sikaflex 291 LOT.

That’s a seriously caulked mast

Rechromed OEM hardware slides right in place

A little squeegee work and it was ready to pull the tape. I make my caulk squeegees from Harbor Freight bondo spreaders, which I cut down to ~5/16″ width with a razor. They make a nice, clean edge, and they’re cheap, so as soon as the squeegee stops performing you toss it and use the next one.

NICE!

Rechromed mast base is next

I used fine-line tape for the mahogany and chrome

Nice!

Tool of the trade: the Makita grinder makes a great buffing platform

Mast reflector has seen better days

Somebody made this after the Roamer left the Chris Craft factory. It’s a nav light reflector that keeps the forward steaming nav light from lighting up the cabin top…a good strategy for not losing night vision.

New wires for the nav and anchor lights

Caulk on all of the metal-to-metal joints that could bring water into places with electrical connections

Coming together in 2019

These rechromed mast parts are seriously gorgeous

Fast forward to June 16, 2023, and it’s showtime!

That’s been a long time coming

Tef-Gel on the set screw for the pivot pin and the pin itself

Because…why not?

Nav, anchor light, and horn wiring get the pig-tail twist treatment for flexibility

Adhesive-lined shrink connectors finish the wiring

Last up is the mast holder-upper

As always, I use my Vix hinge drill bit to center each screw hole.

Sikaflex 291LOT in mahogany will seal the screw holes

The mast holder-upper works perfectly!

Finally, with the tent top gone, the mast can stand proud

That’s a good looking mast

Keep in mind…

This is what we started with

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Retiring Tent Model XXX part II

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Dismantling Tent Model XXX

Today was a long day. I’m beat. The tent is more than half disassembled. I think I can wrap it up tomorrow. And the surveyor says I’ll have the report tonight, so I can send it to my insurance company tomorrow. The Roamer will splash this week.

The day started early with me removing the roof frames

The roof frames behind the boat are gone!

This was a very precarious scaffold to remove

The vent fan is gone!

I can see the ground from the helm station!

The plastic is coming down

I had a helper–somebody I met on a boating forum!–who was a boss when it came to loosening the shrink wrap.

Let the strip tease begin!

Great…now I’ve got song ‘The Stripper’ stuck in my head…

While my able assistant pulled plastic, I was removing scaffolding

Section by section, I removed the frames and scaffolding

The big reveal!

That’s one good looking boat

It looks pretty much just as I imagined it would

The header picture on this blog is what I envisioned the boat could look like. Granted, I didn’t think it’d take this long to get there, but I believe I nailed it.

The boat is also insanely shiny

Looks like a bomb went off around the boat though

Tomorrow I’ll tackle the starboard side and clean up

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: The Mast

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Walk-Through Video

I did a full walk-through yesterday in response to some requests for a video.

Enjoy!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Dismantling Tent Model XXX

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing Mahogany Handrails

Things are flying along on the boat. Lots of stuff that’s been in the works for more than a decade have fallen nicely into place. The surveyor still hasn’t gotten me his report, so I don’t have the insurance company’s permission to splash yet. But I’m going full steam ahead on dismantling the tent. Tomorrow’s the big day to pull it all down. If anybody in the Deale, MD, area has “dismantle massive shrinkwrap tent’ on your bucket list, this is a golden opportunity. 🙂

It rained overnight after I cut off the tent top over the bow

I mentioned before that the base for the handrail stanchion brace wasn’t fitting right

The part that it fits into was also riding too high on the stanchion pipe. I finally decided to just cut them and weld the shortened braces back together.

Harbor Freight metal-cutting bandsaw is a great tool

Shortened parts ready for TIG

That should do the trick

Not perfect, but I think they’ll do fine

It’s perfect!

The stanchion top piece wasn’t flush with the handrail before

Lopping off 1/2″ of the brace brought the top piece level…just what I needed.

And the base is flat to the toe rail…perfect!

Taping everything off for caulk

All of the threaded parts also got a generous dollop of Tef-Gel.

Good squeeze-out

Clean up with a squeegee, then pull the tape and wipe up with mineral spirits

Nice!

Next up: the stainless safety line

I got the stainless swageless turnbuckles and swageless jaws for the lifelines at e-rigging.com. I’ve had the stainless wire rope in the garage for years. It’s nice to finally get it out of my way and on the boat.

The wire rope is threaded through all of the port stanchion pipes

The turnbuckle jaw is attached to the bow rail.

Tef-gel in all threads and metal-to-metal contact areas

Swageless jaw is tightened to spec and ready for tensioning

Turnbuckle at the bow rail tensioned the safety line

Next, I tackled final installation of the port aft mahogany hand rail.

316 stainless screws and Sikaflex LOT caulk secures the handrail to the stanchion tops

I didn’t bother taping the handrail off…just applied the caulk to all of the stanchion tops, lowered the handrail into place, then drove the screws home. Cleanup was easy with a squeegee and little rags dampened with mineral spirits.

The joint between the two sections of rail was the last step.

The rails are coated on the ends, so there’s no exposed wood. I taped off the joint and injected Sikaflex between the two.

The original stainless steel plate joints the two rails from below

That’s a wrap for the port side handrail!

That looks great!

I repeated the process on the starboard side.

A tip for installing pipe stanchions threaded in NPT

Having spent all that time polishing stanchions, the last thing I wanted to do was gouge them with a pipe wrench while snugging them during install. Since the pipes are drilled for the safety line, a long driver bit just fits in the hole.

Wrap the pipe with a cloth and open the wrench jaws wide

The jaws are biting on the driver bit, not the pipe.

Starboard handrail is done!

I tensioned the turnbuckle, and that was a wrap on a very productive day.

Boom

This was all from today, by the way. You probably noticed the tent top is peeled back a lot further than it was at the start of this article. It’s sooo nice not having that tent locking in heat!

The view from the salon got a lot better today

I got handrails!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Walk-Through Video

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing Side Deck Handrails

Way back in August of 2013, I had the original mahogany handrails sanded and coated with Imron MS1 polyurethane clear. They turned out very nice and have been sitting under the boat in bubble wrap ever since. The handrails weren’t a pre-splash priority since the boat would float just fine without them. But it’s nice to have safety rails, and they’ll look great when they’re installed. Plus, it’ll be a lot easier installing them while I still have the catwalk scaffolding around the hull that makes up the lower structure of Tent Model XXX. The tent is coming down this weekend, so I got to work installing the handrails.

Bags o’ 5/16-18 oval head machine screws in 316 stainless

There are 18 chromed bronze stanchion bases, and they each need four 3″ long machine screws. The only screws I could find that met those specs in 316 marine-grade stainless have slotted heads. I’d prefer Phillips, but I could only find those in 18-series stainless.

They’re not shiny

The original stanchion base screws were once-shiny chromed bronze. So I cranked up the polisher and made the stainless shine.

Left is polished, right is OEM

Stainless shines like chrome!

After polishing all of the hardware, I went to the boat and started installing stanchions.

Taping off for caulk is tedious

I temporarily installed each stanchion base with a couple of screws, then taped off the mahogany toe rail and stanchion base. Then pulled the screws, applied caulk, reinstalled the screws, squeegeed off the caulk that squeezed out, pulled the tape, then cleaned up any caulk residue with mineral spirits. And I repeated that process for the 18 main stanchions, four cleats, and two bow rail bases.

Tef-Gel goes in every screw hole when installing hardware on the rails

Let the stanchion installation begin!

Several hours later…

These stanchions on both sides were challenging

The stanchions themselves installed easily enough. It was the diagonal braces and their mounts that caused trouble.

The mounting bases don’t lie flat on the toe rail

If I screw the mounting bases down as-is, there will only be solid contact on the edge…and that edge will cut through the clearcoat. While I pondered on how to solve that problem, the next day I installed the bow railing. Since the tent was in the way, I decided to cut off the top over the bow.

First sunlight on the deck in years!

The forward-most stanchions are the bent ones you can see above. With the tent in place, I couldn’t rotate them to thread them into the stanchion bases. That was as good an excuse as any to cut part of the tent top off. Even though it was still early, the tent immediately got cooler once that plastic cap was gone.

Rechromed bow piece fit perfectly and looks great!

Bow rail is installed

Rail hardware screws are installed with Tef-Gel

Handrail adapter is installed

Rope attached to the tent roof frame supports the handrail while I attach the forward end

Sikaflex 291 LOT mahogany caulk and stainless screws secure the handrail to the stanchions

Port forward handrail is done

Repeat the process on the starboard side

First light!

With the blanket off the bow deck, that’s the first time sunlight has come directly into the (nearly finished) V-berth through the refurbished hatch.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing Mahogany Handrails

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Polishing More Side Deck Stanchions and Bow Railing

I went to my soon-to-be home port marina yesterday and signed an annual contract for the best slip in the joint, effective July 1, 2023. Electricity is included, and it’s 1/4 less than the land storage fees at the current marina in Deale, MD (under new management). Can’t wait to move the boat. Unfortunately, the surveyor was supposed to get his report to me by Wednesday, but now he’s saying he hopes to finish it this weekend. Then it has to clear my insurance company, so I don’t see how I can splash on Monday.

That said, I started polishing the side deck handrail stanchions in 2016 and followed up by polishing three more stanchions in 2019. This article covers me finishing the polish job on the the remainder, including the big bow deck stainless safety rails earlier in the spring of 2023. Even though they’re not mission critical for launching, I’m trying to get them installed while I still have the scaffolding around the boat.

I started with lots of dirty, scratched, and ugly stainless pipe

Some of the stanchions are new ones I made that have never been polished

My ShopSmith was the center of this polishing operation

I converted the machine to lathe mode for the straight stanchions

When I sanded the stainless in earlier efforts, I tilted the sander left and right, causing the pipe to roll back and forth on a wooden table top while I worked the sander up and down the length of the pipe. This time, I attached a pipe wall-mount fixture to the ShopSmith machine’s lathe faceplate, then threaded the stanchions into the fixture. On the opposite end, I installed a pointed lathe center then used a hole saw to cut a 7/8″ groove in a piece of 3/4″ plywood. Then I used a 1-1/4″ holesaw to remove that round piece with the groove in it, which I call a bushing. The stanchion pipe fits perfectly in the 7/8″ groove, and it’s naturally centered. I soaked the center hole in the plywood bushing with oil for lubrication, then used the quill (power head) feed handle to press the bushing home on the lathe center.

With the ShopSmith turning at it’s slowest setting, I started sanding with 220 or 400 grit, depending on how nasty each stanchion was.

I had a tray of water to wet the wet/dry sandpaper; this was 220 grit

I also tried using WD-40 to wet the sandpaper

There’s a professional polisher who has a youtube channel, and he highly recommends using WD-40 when sanding stainless in progressively finer grits. I have to say, it’s far messier than water and the paper doesn’t seem to last any longer. So I switched back to the tray of water.

400 grit with water lubrication

800 grit with water lubrication

1200 grit with water

Time for the buffer

I found that my plywood bushings would last for about four stanchions. When they wear too much, the stanchion goes off-center too easily and wobbles around too much.

Nice!

I repeated the process for all of the straight stanchions.

Polishing the bow rail was a much bigger challenge

I used a hole saw to make a 7/8″ hole in a 2×4, then I split the 2×4 down the middle to make two softwood jigs that I could use to clamp the bow rail to a table. The pine is super soft, so it doesn’t scratch even sections of the rail that I’d already polished. I’d clamp the rail down, then sand with progressive grits and polish, then move the jigs down and repeat the process.

The chromed bronze fittings dug some nasty scratches into the rail

Those are some deep scratches

80 grit flapwheel on a grinder made the worst of the scratches disappear

What I found is that these chromed bronze rail fittings are very particular about how you orient them on the rail tubes. Even the straight stanchion tubes can be challenging. If the fittings absolutely won’t go on the tube one way, try gently turning them around the tube. The Y fitting above makes deep gouges if you force it. But if you rotate it to just the right position, it slides by that area very smoothly. Once past that area, it hung up again. No problem: just rotate it 180° and it once again slides easily past that area. Every time it starts to hang up, stop, back up a bit, and rotate it until you find the sweet spot. That’s the only way you can install these without gouging the polished stainless tube.

My secret to polishing stainless is a tray of water

The wet/dry sandpaper seems to last 2-3 times longer when it’s lubricated.

220 grit

400 grit

1500 grit

Final polish with black emery compound

I repeated that process along the entire length of both bow rails. It took about six hours to do both, but I think it’ll be worth it.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing Side Deck Stanchions

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Transom Door Seal

The marina manager says Friday they’re too busy to launch my Roamer and that next Monday would be best. So unless the surveyor or my insurance company lob a grenade at me, Tent Model XXX is being retired this weekend and the bottom gets wet around noon on Monday, June 19, 2023. The boat will have been on the hard in Deale, MD, for 4,998 days, or 13 years, 8 months, 7 days. I mostly worked on the boat on weekends, which converts to ~four years spent refitting the boat to this point.

A proper accounting of the time it’s taken me to get to this point would have to also note the numerous time-sucking disasters that I had to deal with, starting with the Paperwork SNAFU, which took two years to resolve, during which the boat sat fallow. Then the bastard thieves who cleaned me out in 2014 cost me around six months. Then there was the boat next door that blew up, damaging the tent and my paint in 2015, which took a couple of months to recover from. The next big one was that Nor’easter in March 2018 that whooped Tent Model XXX and badly damaged my brand new Awlgrip paint, which cost another three months. And let’s not forget all of the paint repairs that had to be done last fall and winter when we found cracks that originated in the Interlux Watertite epoxy fairing compound a former boat worker had applied to the sandblasted hull in 2008.

I will never, EVER do anything like this EVER again…unless somebody offers to buy the boat for a cool million. That’d make it all worthwhile. 🙂

Anyway, so in preparation for de-tenting the boat, I remembered that the gap around the transom door would be a straight shot for rain to get inside. I found an off-the-shelf solution that doesn’t look too bad.

The gap around the transom door will absolutely leak rain inside the boat

Frost King Door Seal to the rescue!

I thought these gaskets had a peel-n-stick adhesive strip, but it turns out they don’t.

Contact cement to the rescue!

I applied two coats to the back-side of the door seals and to the painted door frame.

Nice!

No more open gap!

When the canvas is installed back here, I expect the transom to be weatherproof.

I’ll close with a couple of shots from the day the surveyor visited. That was the first time I’d seen the entire dashboard dust-free and shiny. It was a good day.

Good looking helm dashboard

Remember what I started with…

The surveyor really liked my custom welded aluminum instrument panel

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Polishing More Side Deck Stanchions