Rain, oil and ozone

Good to be under roof today - rain and Sun take turns every half an hour.
Jim was taking up “Kaika” today - I’m sorry for you mate!

All spare parts and materials arrived yesterday so today I could finalise engine winterising. First step was to get it up in temperature and purge sea water part of cooling system. I connected sea water intake to a bucket and started the engine - now fed with sweet water and emulgating oli 10:1 ratio. Once Yanmar drunk the bucket it was warm enough for oil and filter change.

When done I started the engine again to adjust the new oil level and get it into all cavities. Cooling system was now purged from sweet water by antifreeze solution. Easy but little messy job - it’s hard to contain all possible spills in so confined space of the bilge.

In preparation for oiling the bilge I removed bilge pump and flotation switch.

This year I decided to run ozone therapy in the cabin: even though I’ve washed the whole boat before last season - and oiled it - we still notice the scent of “old cupboard” on clothes which were stored on the boat. This must sit in the wood itself so ozone would be the best way to eradicate the scent.

Roughly calculating it turned out that this volume should get 40 minutes of ozone dose. I removed all sensitive materials from the cabin (smoking pipes, tobacco and my cell phone), sealed the cabin and started the devil.

While O3 was killing everything inside I started building “linseed oil therapy system”. Nothing fancy - transparent tubes, split-connectors and collapsible plastic jugs to store the oil-turpentine solution. The idea is that jugs will collapse as they lose the oil so I will not need vents to keep oil running.

It took me a while and in the meantime the ozone generator finished the job. I opened the cabin and all hatches and waited additional 20 minutes before going inside. That proved to be too short: once in the cabin I made a mistake - I took a breath…
I jumped out of there coughing - and continued doing so for the next 20 minutes. Yes, this thing needs few hours to deactivate!

I went home for lunch and came back 3 hours later. It was now safe to go inside so I could install the oiling system. Following Börje’s advice I use 50-50 solution of prima-sort linseed oil and turpentine. The barrel I ordered is 25 litres of oil, same amount of turpentine came in 5l jugs. Not exactly cheap therapy but hopefully will make the wood feel good.

Two 5l jugs are placed on the fore and aft of the deck. Pipes go belowdecks via vents.

Routing and holding in place the pipes belowdecks was a bit challenging but at last they got their places.

I spend a longer while adjusting the flow so that it does not go too quick. The idea is that slowly floating oil will be absorbed by the garboard joints and keel timber. Once a week I will check if jugs are empty and if so - I’ll suck out the remaining oil from the bilge. It will then go back into circulation. This will also give me a hint how much oil was absorbed. This winter Meritaten is supposed to drink at least 50 litres. If that goes quick I’ll order more oil and will continue until Christmas.

Tomorrow I plan to continue renovation of my old dinghy Glypto - sanding, sealing the joints and staining. Then oiling with Owatrol.
I need space in the workshop so Glypto needs to be finished and moved out.