Boat things Break - Propane Hose too!

Replacing our Propane Supply Hose

Our dock-lord texted that one of our lines had chaffed, so we headed down to the boat but guessed it was the line from the dock to the pylon at the front of the boat. So we stopped at WM and puchased 2 x 30' 5/8" 3 Strand Nylon dock line. I asked the WM Rep to not sear the ends as I was going to splice loops into the ends of the lines.

Down at the boat my guess was correct, but the line had not chaffed, the short piece of Dyneema that I had secured to the line had not held very well - it came off! My bad. There was some chaffe in the nylon braided dock line - should not really have been labeled as a 'Dock Line' So I swapped it out anyway.  Not having a piece of Dyneema on the boat to make a bridle to attach to the new dock line, I used 12' of the old braided line and will replace that this week.

Normally we have a fore and aft spring line, a bow line ( the one that caused todays revisit ) and an aft line, fore line and a midships line which we use to keep  the boat close to the dock when we're at the dock rather than have the boat move away from the dock till all of the lines even things out.

So my solution to the Bridle line is to make a strop with loops in each end, then secure that bridle to the line from the dock to the pylon with a prussic knot and then pass the loops over the cleats at the bow.  I'll use some 5/8" 3 Strand Nylon Dock line for the Bridle.

So, why did I mention that things break - Propane hose too? Because while we where working on the dock lines, the Starboard aft corner of the Transom moved close the dock post - close enough that the hose from the Propane tank to the regulator & solenoid bumped the post and broke by the regulator.

That hose has to be at least 10 years old but I'm guessing probably nearer to 20 years old - it was time to replace - should probably replace all of the propane hoses while at it.  AND while I'm at it I should refinish the propane tank holders.

But this brings up the next issue: I'm hoping to remove the Propane system completely but have a few things to get done of higher priority, like replacing the Standing Rigging.

We've been planning on removing the Propane system since the middle of 2024 and switching over to an Induction Cooktop and a Combo oven/Toaster/Air Fryer. Now that we have 500Ah of LiFePo4 batteries, that's a reality but not at the top of that list yet. So we'll replace the Propane hoses and Refinish the tanks.

Guess what I'm working on tomorrow at the boat while Peggy plugs into the Nav electronics to learn how to use the Radar - She will do that using a Tablet running Garmin Helm and WiFi connected to that boat. Should be a good day and hoping that our new Diesel Tank is ready this week.

Stay tuned.

See you on the water.

Tipsey Turtle Race 2025

 Tipsy Turtle Race 2025

Is it becoming a habit? We took part in the Tipsy Turtle Race this Sunday, it's the inaugural race having replaced the Mary Wells race named in honor or our sailing club's most appreciated social leader.

Anyway, about the day.

Awesome with a bit of OS at the end of the day.

We planned on an 07:55am dock departure, the crew arrived on time ( they're really good about that ) but while I was fiddling about trying to put the Virtual mark for the race into the chart plotter, we missed our 07:55 departure time, it was 08:05! But we made it easily to the first bridge so no harm done, in fact I can reduce the time to the bridge by another 5 mins and we should be good.

While motoring to that bridge ( Atlantic Blvd Bridge - opens on the hour and half hour ) myself and the crew were on deck doing our best to roll down the sail Cradle Cover ( that's Doyle's equivalent to 'Stack Pack' ) it was ok, but not as neat as I had hoped, turns out it was not so bad.

We got to the inland side of the Hillsboro Inlet bridge and waited for a few minutes with some of the other club boats, there was an incoming current of 3.9knots in the middle of the channel at the bridge, we had to push the engine to make way but not an issue, we just have to mindful that the current can push us towards one side of the bridge fenders depending on the state of the tide.

Once past the bridge, we continued to motor all the way out onto the Ocean to HI buoy. Peggy took the wheel and turned the boat into wind so we could raise the Mainsail. New practice for our crew, Carol & Gail ( again, so the ride a few weeks ago in the storm did not deter them :) ) There was almost no wind but we were able to line up the boat for the start and then, just when we were to turn towards the line, the wind died. Our chart plotter was effectively a piece of electronic art work - middle of the screen was the compass rose and both the TWD ( True Wind Direction) and the AWA ( Apparent Wind Angle ) markers were dancing around in conflict every few seconds. Wind Speed 1.0 knots, Speed through the water 0.0000knots. We were going nowhere!

Spruce Goose was pointing at us at one point but they were moving, may have gotten within 100 feet and they turned, we were on a Stbd Tack, so we were the stand on vessel - of course, it was arguable that with the wind so low then were we on a Stbd tack? Well, that was the state when our sails were on the Port side of the boat.  Anyway, Spruce Goose was able to Gybe and turn away. We finally got a bit of wind and could see a trail behind our boat - we're moving! 

The start was at 10:00 but we didn't cross the line until 10:39, so, what do you do when you cross the start line 39 minutes late - you Celebrate! We did.

Fellin Nauti was ahead of us. I went out of the cockpit and on deck, our sails were looking good, I eased the Main outhaul a couple of inches and we started to see better progress, we soon passed Fellin Nauti, wow! We're sailing. We passed them to windward, sorry guys, we stole what little wind you had 😉

We made our way to the Virtual mark and zoomed in on the chart plotter as we neared the mark and approached it quickly, we turned Eastward then North heading back to the finish line.

Sailing was easy, we made pretty decent speed despite the light winds but we did get a VHF call from Feelin Nauti asking if we had received the latest position of the Virtual mark that had been published at 03:00am --- What! Well, it's too late now as we have already rounded 'our mark' so carry on.

Now, why did this happen?

Astrid, our Racing Chair, had published the coordinates of the Virtual Mark days ago and I had put it into my Tablet running Aqua Maps. A.M. has two formats for waypoint input, our chart plotter had a 3rd option, between them all, I had been able to screw up the input and it seems that our mark was about 1,000 feet North of the mark that everyone else had.   Come on guys - it's a fun race.

Once turned to the North, it was an easy Reach back to the finish mark. Carol took a pic as we crossed the line, we turned into wind to bring in the Genoa and to drop the main. Done for the day .... hmmm.

Back at the dock, we all work at stowing everything and getting the girls off the boat so that Peggy & I could pack our stuff and put the boat to bed for the night.  Last part was to make sure all of the thru-hulls were closed. That's when I realized we had a problem. 

We keep a puppy pad on the inside of the hull below where the tank shelf is located and we normally check that to ensure the Diesel tank is not leaking ( we repaired the tank in j2017 ). I also commented to Peggy that I smelt diesel. This was not really surprising as I had changed the water separator / fuel filter the other day and there could be some smell left over from that job. 

Turns out we had a leak from our Aluminum fuel tank ( read more about it here. )

Despite the tank woes, it was a great day out on the boat and the crew are getting even more involved in the running of the boat, the future looks good. We may even get some 'Eximius Crew' shirts

The After race party is tonight, we'll find out how we did, and we'll all share our stories of the Inaugural Tipsy Turtle Race.

See you on the water soon.

Paul 

Update 11/12/2025

We came 3rd in our group, 

2025 Tipsy Turtle 3rd Place Trophy 

Earned this cute wooden Turtle. Perfect Trophy for a perfect day on the water.

Here's a link to the race results: CLICK HERE 

We'll be back on the water in a couple of weeks. till then we'll get the Tank Fixed and fix the weeping Rudder post packing.

But we will see you on the water.

Paul

Replacing Catalina 34 Diesel Fuel Tank

Replacing our Diesel Fuel Tank

I repaired our fuel tank in 2017 using JB Weld Marine putty to cure a leak from the welded outboard lower edge of the tank, it has held to this day - Nov. 11th 2025 

This weekend after a day of light sailing, I found fuel on the Puppy Pad that we keep on the inside of the hull below the tank. Dang!

Looking deeper, there was fuel residue all down the inside of the hull and into the aft most bilge. Luckily it had not reached the level of the limber hole between the aft and middle bilge - so there was nothing to pump overboard .. Phew!

The tank is OEM from 1987, time to replace it.

Step 1: Drain the tank. I disconnected the fuel pipe from the output of the Facet Fuel pump and replaced it with a 24" piece of 3/8" hose the other end in a 5 gallon Jerry can ( I only had Gas Cans empty, so I tied a piece of string to the can handle to highlight that it was not Gasoline !! )

With the 'ignition' key on, I could turn the fuel pump on and off from inside the cabin by using the master engine control key on the cabin control panel.

It took about 20 minutes to empty the rest of the fuel from the tank. I filled the 1st 5 gallon tank, turned the pump off, swapped to the next 5 gallon tank and turned the pump back on. Total of about 6 gallons drained.

The tank is located at the foot of the aft berth behind the plywood bulkhead on the Port side. After pulling everything out of the garage ( our nickname for the aft berth ) it took only a few minutes to remove the dozen or so screws and pull out the bulkhead. Then disconnect the Fuel Fill hose, Fuel Vent hose, Fuel Supply hose ( had to cut that, just could not get the hose off of the connection ) , the Fuel Return hose and the Electrical connection for the Tank Sensor ( had to cut those too. Luckily I had anticipated that I might have to remove the tank in the future and had left some slack in the tank sensor wiring). Finally remove the two ground wires attached to the top ground strap. 

To remove the tank, there are 6 screws on the forward end of the tank that secure it to the shelf on which the tank sits.

With all that done, it's just a case of sliding the tank to starboard and into the aft berth. Once it's in the berth, then, standing at the entrance to the berth, the tank can be manhandled and placed on the galley counter ( over the sinks ), from there, it's just a case of moving it to the cabin steps and managing it onto the cockpit deck. The tank is not particularly heavy, but it is awkward.

With the tank at home, I got my tape measure out and verified the dimensions.

This drawing is an edit of the one provided by Catalina Direct. Note their drawing is not 'complete' I guess they don't want to provide all of the dimensions for sales reasons.

Catalina Direct have been a great resource for getting stuff done on Eximius, and they are always very helpful. That's particularly important with the recent loss of the Catalina Factory - at least, it looks like the factory is going away unless they can find someone to take it over - PLEASE - but note! Catalina Direct is not any part of Catalina Yachts. 

The option for buying the tank are challenging. The one from CD are a known replacement. It's very slightly smaller than our original tank. I have asked a couple of companies for a quote on making a replacement, waiting on a reply most likely tomorrow.

Meanwhile: With the tank out and the aft berth empty, I can do a few things.

• Clean up the tank support shelf
• Clean up the inside of the hull from the shelf area all the way down to the aft bilge. 
• Both of these require plenty of cleaning, degreasing, I may even get the bilge paint out, not necessary but would be nice.
• Clean up the inside of the under sink cupboard in the head.

The tank has certainly got a healthy growth of Diesel Bug, the new tank will be virgin clean but the supply hose is probably infected, so a new hose is in my future.

The Forward end of the old tank has a tab for screwing down to the support shelf but there is no tab on the aft end of the tank ( narrow end ) but the fuel fill hose is very rigid and should prevent the tank moving but I think I'll add a hold down strap all the same.

While at it, I'll do some general cleaning hopefully to reduce the diesel smell in the cabin.

Stay tuned.

See you on the water - when the new tank is installed.

Paul

Crew training

Crew training aboard Eximius

After owning Eximius for 10 years, we finally got to have crew aboard for a local Ocean race and what a difference! 

We have had crew aboard for a 40nm trip, but it was literally a straight line cruise from Hillsboro Inlet to Lake Worth Inlet, so just the three of us: Myself, Peggy and one crew.

On our last race, we had two crew and what a difference that made. The day was Stormy, Wet and wild but the two 'girls' were still smiling when we got back to the dock despite not finishing the race. 

Luckily, they both wanted to come out with us again, that's a good sign, and they are this weekend. But also, our sailing club has a lot of potential crew to call upon. I happen to manage the club's website ( https://www.hisc.org ) and have put a 'Crew Pool' system in place where club members can volunteer to be crew on the boats that skippers own.

However, the question often arises is 'But what experience do they have' and that is a good question. I'm looking to see how we can establish that criteria for each wanna-be crew, it's a challenge. 

So, one thing I'm considering:- What are the benefits of training regular Crew. 

We seem to be a decent skipper and admiral, my 60years of sailing experience and quite a bit of education ( Navy as well as ASA 101 ) so I believe that we could offer crew some useful sailing education.

Just like 'I'm not a Bank', I'm also not a 'Free Sailing Classes provider' but would not want to charge crew for 'training'.  However, having better educated crew is a benefit to all onboard.

Ok, having convinced myself that it would be worth my time to offer some sailing education, now I need to figure out what to offer.

Let me say from the outset - I would / will suggest the ASA courses but many of our club members have done at least the ASA 101, some a lot more, obviously, this subject is not aimed at those 'crew' that do have experience - in their case, it's not so much training but in education about how we run our ship.  A frequent phrase we used in the Royal Navy was 'Different Ships - Different Cap Tallies - that refers to the ships name tally that junior sailors have on their caps, those Tallies change when you change ships - so to do the ships procedures.

For the less experienced crew, there are some basics. A good friend of mine told me that when you get a new crew, educate them on one job and help them get good at that job. I like that idea.

BUT - that's a long slow process, and going out  for a sail with the simple goal of practicing a particular process, such as 'Putting in a Reef' can get crew up to speed much more quickly.

I did have the opportunity to educate a bunch of our club members on correct Radio Procedure ( My Ship ) and have the documentation that I used. It would be easy for me to type up some other processes ( such as Reefing ) and take the crew out for practice ( Crew Training ) 

You may have ideas on this and I sure would like to hear about them, so go ahead and comment on this subject - I'll toss out any crazy comments, no offense, but so far my blog has had over 500,000 views and I delete junk comments. I really do look forward to your input.

See you on the water - hopefully with crew.

Paul

Time to leave the dock

 When is the time to leave the dock?

Our new dock is awesome, just 20+ minutes from home, an extremely nice location and a great dock-lord. And it's only 55 mins from the Ocean and 3 bridges ( Compared to our original dock which was about 90 mins from the ocean five bridges, one of them the main line railroad bridge for the Brightline train system).

Now we can participate in a lot more of our sailing club events, we have been in more club regattas and cruises in the past 12 months than we had for several years at the old dock. This is a big deal and we're very grateful to the home owner.

We have to calculate the time to leave the dock in order to get to the club races start line. Leaving the dock at the wrong time can cause us to wait an additional 30 minutes in order to get into sync with the bridge opening times.  If we have crew onboard, and yes we have finally managed that, then we have to inform them of the dock departure time.

So.... I created a simple spreadsheet to show what times we need to leave the dock in order to get to the Ocean side Start line. It's simple: Just determine what time to arrive at the start line and then look for the dock departure time.

Thanks Carol for pointing out my early morning error - just a reminder to don't make decisions before my morning Coffee.