On Saturday, we uncovered the flybridge and got down on the deck to see how the upper helm cables were routed. Everything comes up a PVC pipe on the starboard side. We rigged some lights and began cutting away the dozens of cable ties that had been added over the years. Once down, it was pretty easy to figure out
The dryer vent hose is original factory work and that length of hose contains the electrical wiring harness and three hydraulic steering lines. The rest of the stuff must have been added later.
We traced back all the extra wiring and now know where it goes. Nothing terribly bad here, just sloppy looking. We'll cut out the dryer hose and tuck everything back up under the bolster when we're finished.
We did want to disconnect and remove the upper helm control cables so we could measure them and order new ones. Getting the starboard port transmission cable out was relatively easy and we elected to pull it up from the engine space with a piece of clothesline attached as a pilot line. The port engine throttle cable also came out fairly easily.
The starboard throttle cable was another story. The way the helm control was mounted, there was no way to get an Allen wrench on the bolts that hold the clamp in place. It was just too close to the plywood inside the helm console.
This photo shows the port throttle cable free of the clamp that held it in place. We finally had to completely disconnect the control assembly before we could get to the Allen bolts that held the other cable.
Note the elegant factory-made cutout for the control assembly. You have to wonder how they originally assembled this if it was necessary to pull out the whole thing just to change one cable.
With the three cables out, we took them home and measured each one. The port throttle cable is 30 ft. long; the starboard transmission cable is 29 ft. long and the starboard throttle cable is 27 ft. long. We have to guess that these are the original 1980 cables. Like the cables to the lower helm, they are "no name" brands. The two throttle cables were very stiff even when disconnected. That's the reason we started this entire control cable project.
Before we quit for the day, we ordered three new Teleflex cables from MarinePartsSource. The cost was $144.96 with free shipping. That brings the total cost of this project to $255.38.
On Sunday (after digesting a delicious New York Times) we took stock as to what we could do on the boat. The control cable replacement couldn't move ahead until the new cables arrived. We decided to clean up the area where the cables and wiring run along the starboard side of the fly bridge under the bolster.
At Christmas, Santa brought us a new fender to replace one that disappeared during Storm Sandy. Before we started on the bridge we attached some line to the new fender and mounted it on the front of the boat with its three brothers.
To get a better look at the pipe that runs down into the engine space from the bridge, we removed one section of bolster. No surprises here really.
The long section of padding next to the one we removed always looked somewhat out of shape so we removed that one too.
You can see why it looked out of shape, The vinyl covering across the bottom had pulled away from the 1/4-inch plywood backing. The vinyl had been held in place by about 300 steel staples, most of which had dissolved into rust stains. We have stainless staples on hand so we'll re-staple the vinyl back in place on both of these pieces and the ones on the port side as well. No big deal, but who in hell would use steel staples on a boat? We shouldn't be surprised,. Cheapo shortcuts like this can be found on many boats that cost a lot more than our value-priced Silverton.
The 1/4-inch plywood backing was stained but showed no signs of rot so we'll reuse them.
Next it was time to remove that ugly section of rotted dryer hose. We had to snip the reinforcing wire at every turn to finally get it off. The hose appeared to be purely cosmetic and we won't replace it.
During the dryer hose removal, we encountered two small bugs that fell out onto the deck. They had apparently been living in the hose and were in good enough shape to be able to walk rather briskly. We gave them a long walk off the boat. Frances later identified these creatures as Stink Bugs and even produced a photo of them thanks to Google Images. She said that Stink Bugs are "very durible." Nice to know.
It was still early so we headed home to tackle one of the other small projects on our list.
We have two small two-step ladders that are useful for stepping from the deck down to the cockpit. The boat came with one as original equipment and we disassembled and refinished it several years ago.
We always wanted a second one and Frances researched and found the original manufacturer. They still made almost exactly the same little ladder and Frances bought one. We used it for two seasons but were disappointed in how fast it started to look like crap. The mahogany on the original ladder had been replaced by some mystery wood coated with varnish. We drilled out the rivets that held it together and belt-sanded all the old varnish off.
We'll apply 6-8 coats of Sikkens Cetol Marine Light both of the steps. They won't match the original ladder but should be fine for our purposes.
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