{"id":9903,"date":"2019-06-02T07:57:22","date_gmt":"2019-06-02T12:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=9903"},"modified":"2019-06-02T07:57:22","modified_gmt":"2019-06-02T12:57:22","slug":"90-preparation-10-execution-and-showing-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=9903","title":{"rendered":"90% preparation, 10% execution and showing up."},"content":{"rendered":"

It is often said that most projects in life are 90% preparation and 10% execution, not to mention that some suggest that 80% of success is often just showing up.\u00a0 Combined, this suggests that a lot of work goes into a project just preparing for the job.<\/p>\n

So, as I think back on all of the projects that I’ve done on Pandora, it does indeed take a REALLY LONG TIME to prepare for just about any project.<\/p>\n

First, as there were only three of these boats built and the company folded up shop shortly after commissioning Pandora, hull #3, there is nobody to call and ask about what is attached to what or how the boat was put together.\u00a0 This means that I often have no idea of what I am getting into and what “lies behind the curtain.”\u00a0 \u00a0In every way, and I’ve said this before, working on Pandora is a scavenger hunt.<\/p>\n

Last fall I showed the rigger the corroded heads on the bolts that held the mast step in place and after only a moment he said “They don’t look to good Bob, you’d better pull one and check it”,\u00a0 Ok, got it but that proved to be way easier said than done.\u00a0 \u00a0For the first order of business I spent months sweating about exactly how I was going to do that as the space where the step is housed is impossibly tight with wires and hoses snaking every which way and all very close to the bolts that needed to come out.<\/p>\n

Obviously, the first thing to do was to put a wrench on the bolt and try to back it out.\u00a0 No good, as the heads were pretty well corroded and the wrench just turned and turned.\u00a0 No movement at all. \"\"So what to do?\u00a0 Finally, after several months of “thinking” but not “doing” along with a good deal of applications of\u00a0 various products designed to release corroded bolts, I decided to drill into the head of one a bolt and tried to pull it out with a screw remover, a sort of reverse screw that you thread into a hole drilled in a stuck bolt, used to “extract” the bolt.<\/p>\n

I know that I have gone over much of this already in prior posts and you might be asking yourself “Why Bob, why go over this all again now?”<\/p>\n

Because, of all the projects that I have done on Pandora this was one of the toughest and surely the most frustrating I\u00a0 have done.\u00a0 More than once, over the winter, I left the boat after hours of frustrating work, without making much progress, feeling like Pandora was “executing” me.\u00a0 \u00a0How many times I said to myself and anyone who would listen that “I wish I had never tried to get those bolts out” they were so well secured it was clear that they would NEVER come out on their own, a fear that motivated me to tackle this “fix” in the first place.<\/p>\n

However, I kept going as the idea of the base of the mast coming loose and banging around down below was a terrifying thought.<\/p>\n

In order to get a decent purchase on the bolt with a wrench, I drilled into the bolt heads and pulled with an extractor, drilled bigger holes and put in larger extractors and pulled some more.\u00a0 I tried everything I could, abrasive cutters, cobalt drill bits, all broken and still the bolts wouldn’t move.\u00a0 There was simply nothing that I could do would loosen them. and it wasn’t until I just gave up and ground the heads off of all four bolts, with a carbide burr run by an air compressor, that I was able to lift the step up and cut off the remainder of the bolts flush with the step.<\/p>\n

Finally, FINALLY, I was able to get the step out of the boat but the old bolts were still there, if ground down flush and I still had to somehow reinstall the step.\u00a0 This meant that I now had to drill new holes immediately adjacent to the old bolts and do that in a very tight location.\u00a0 \"\"First I took the aluminum step to a welder who filled the old holes.\u00a0 \"\"Then I ground them flush.\u00a0 They didn’t look pretty at all and there was some electrolysis from the stainless bolts that had not been properly bedded against the aluminum. \"\"As I could not get the old bolts out, I had no idea about how thick the mast step was.\u00a0 First I marked the step to be sure that I could drill the new holes as close to the old bolts as possible and yet not too close to the edge of the step casting.<\/p>\n

The rigger predicted that the fiberglass step would be at least 2″ thick, perhaps more.\u00a0 I drilled and he was right, 2.5″.\u00a0 \u00a0With that in mind, I used 2.5″ lag bolts.\u00a0 \"\"I marked the spots where the old bolts were and drilled as close to them as I dared and “dry fitted” the bolts in place.\u00a0 \u00a0Everything fit.\u00a0 Good to go…\"\"One of the problems with the old stainless bolts and why they corroded so badly, is that they had not been properly bedded to insulate them from the aluminum in the step.\u00a0 \u00a0Stainless is a more “noble” metal, and when you attach two different types of metal, the one that is “less noble” looses.\u00a0 In this case, the stainless bolts won and the aluminum corroded badly.\u00a0 That is caused by a mild electric current that flows between two dissimilar metals.\u00a0 The result of this is a process of “electrolysis” that causes a lot of corrosion to both metals, especially with aluminum, which it did.<\/p>\n

There are products that can be used to “isolate” dissimilar metals and keep them from corroding and I lubed up the bolts carefully before snugging them in place.<\/p>\n

All done.\u00a0 Note the electrical cable in the upper right.\u00a0 That’s to direct power to the sea, from the mast, in the event of a lightning strike, something that I don’t want to think about.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the step is back in place and it took less than an hour.\"\" Wasn’t that easy?<\/p>\n

No, not really, and a perfect example of how many things in life are indeed 90% preparation…<\/p>\n

I guess that goes double for boats and with Pandora add the fact that I have nobody to call for advice so I have to just stumble my way around.\u00a0 Well, at least I can take satisfaction in knowing that the job is done and I did it myself.\u00a0 \u00a0Yea, I cling to that.<\/p>\n

Next project.\u00a0 The lists is long and time is short.\u00a0 \u00a0Less than two weeks till launch.<\/p>\n

Sure hope that the canvas guy shows up on Tuesday.\u00a0 \u00a0 Talk about 90% prep.\u00a0 I don’t even want to think about how many hours it took to prep for the replacement of the headliner.<\/p>\n

As I’ll be paying him to put it all back together, let’s hope that it’s only 10% of my prep time.<\/p>\n

Fingers crossed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is often said that most projects in life are 90% preparation and 10% execution, not to mention that some suggest that 80% of success is often just showing up.\u00a0 Combined, this suggests that a lot of work goes into a project just preparing for the job. So, as I think back on all of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","_s2mail":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9903"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9913,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9903\/revisions\/9913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}