First an easy one. We installed the new stern light. It's made by Perko (just like the old one) and for the ridiculous price of almost $65.00 it came with an ordinary bulb. No LED? Well, it has one now. We took the LED bulb out of the old light and installed it in place of the festoon style bulb that Perko still supplies. We tested it with the supplied bulb and our LED and our LED is brighter.
Next comes the new anchor. The Danforth that came with the boat is woefully inadequate (as we found out one day last summer) so we set about to find the best anchor for our boat. Everywhere we looked on the internet, there was a different opinion. Even the anchor manufacturers differed. What style anchor? Even that was a confusing mix of opinions. We finally determined that a plow anchor was a good tradeoff for a boat our size on sandy, muddy or grass bottoms. When searching for plow anchors, we came across a site on Ebay that had them. We asked a question on that site. What size plow anchor should we buy? That started an exchange between us and the seller who was a SeaTow captain in Florida. He recommended a 35 lb. hinged plow anchor and, as it turned out, he didn't have one to sell us but he suggested buying one at Defender Marine in Waterford. We like Defender but we found a better price (including shipping) at BoatFix in New Hampshire.
After we found the anchor, we bought 200 feet of 5/8-inch anchor line.
To get this process started, we lowered the anchor using our windlass and took off the old Danforth. It took a little persuasion, but the old shackles unscrewed. Tomorrow, we'll install the new anchor and reel that new line up into the anchor locker.
Finally, it was time to repair the passive engine vents on the port side of the boat (we did the starboard side last winter). We've put this off because the boat next to us is so close but we found an unused stepladder and went up to take a look. The PO had re-fastened the vents with steel bolts and we had to drill those out. Why do people who own boats repair anything with ordinary steel hardware?
Behind the vents, there are plastic collector boxes that connect to the vent hoses. Silverton's method of fastening that all together was to our put metal clips on the edges of the collector boxes and then run screws though the outside vents and then though the metal clips. After 32 years, the metal clips were gone. Once we removed the outside vents, the collector boxes were just hanging there, held only by the hoses..
Thanks to a member of the Silverton Owner's Club who had a good solution. We drilled new holes at the top and bottom of the hull opening , deeply countersunk them and ran two stainless flathead screws though the hull and into newly cut holes on the collector boxes. This holds them tight against the inside of the hull.
Then we only had to mount the plastic vents that cover these openings. We had one new one and we reused one of the old ones. The old one has some minor rust stains (from those stinking steel bolts) on it but it will do for now.
While nobody else probably cares, we found the passive ventilation system on this vintage Silverton somewhat interesting. On the starboard side of the hull, the louvers face forward so air is forced into the boat as it moves through the water. There are two louvers on each side and behind each one is one of those collector boxes with two 3-inch flexible hoses attached to it. Those four hoses run between the hull and the cabin liner back into the engine space. The port side has the same arrangement except that the louvers face backwards, which draws air out of the engine space while the boat moves. One exception on the port side is that one of the four hoses has the bilge blower mounted in it. Anyway, it's nice to know that this ventilation system is once again working the way it should.
On Sunday, we began by pulling all of old anchor line up out of the anchor line locker in the v-berth and up through the windlass. It was fairly ratty looking but someone at Portland Riverside will grab it, I'm sure.
Note the red marking on the old line. We decided to mark the new line the same way but changed the distance between the markings to something made made more sense to us. We used Rustoleum spray paint in the same colors as the old line had. With 35 feet of anchor line out, we'll see five feet of red marked line; with 75 feet out, there will be 5 feet of blue marked line; with 115 feet of line out, there will be five feet of orange. Then at 155 feet the color will be green and at 195 feet, we go back to red again.
We unrolled all 200 feet of line in the boatyard driveway, measured and painted the five foot sections lightly. No need to soak this line with paint. The color is easy enough to see. Then we set up the line so that the windlass would pull it in without snagging on something.
We couldn't reach high enough to put the bitter end of the new line in the roller on the pulpit but we climbed up (carefully) on a little go-fast boat that is parked in front of us and was just able to reach. We went up on deck and stuffed the bitter end into the windlass and headed to the fly bridge and hit the switch.
The windlass grabbed the line and we sent about 10 feet down to the anchor locker where we tied a huge knot on the end. Then we let the windlass pull in all but about 15 feet of the new line. The line stowed neatly and we're glad we followed the directions regarding how to initially remove it from the spool.
Don't you just love our furry walls? Someday we're going to peel that crap off and start over. The opening to the anchor line storage area is normally covered by a mirror.
We were going to attach our new 35 lb. hinged plow anchor but the shackles we harvested from our little Danforth anchor were too small so this week, we'll go on hunt for some much bigger shackles. We hope that's the last thing we'll have to buy for the boat until it gets in the water.
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