WELCOME TO DULCINEA’S OWN WEBSITE!

Dulcinea is our Moody 40 – we bought her in July 2024, when she was berthed in Premier Marina, Gosport, with the intention of taking her to the West Coast of Scotland in 2025.  In the meantime there is much that we want to sort out.

I’ll be keeping an irregular blog of progress here – for many years I did the same for my antique firearms restoration website www.cablesfarm.co.uk  but I am not really doing much restoration now that I have the boat to fret about, so I’ll transfer my attention to this website!

9th Feb 2025   Back in the water last Wednesday!  Cue starting work on the various jobs again – it means I cna stay on the boat instead of having to stay in the local Travelodge – which is near the boat, cheap and serves breakfast from 7 a.m. so its practical!   I spent a couple of days fitting lighting and some sound insulation in the engine bay and rebuilding a bit of the furniture around the engine, plus refitting 8 doors that I had taken off to make access easier for the engine swap.  I reconnected the wiring to the mast using Wago electricak connectors that  I mounted in 3D printed boxes – much neater although I did have a couple of wires that Hadn’t made connection as I hadn’t oushed them in far enough….   Next job is to finish the emergency tiller assembly – I need to align it with the rudder – and then begin to sort out the instruments an fit the interface to the engine instrumentation and the ORCA CORE system – all joined together with a new wiring system…  I’ll be back down tomorrow as the engineer from VOLVO PENTA is coming on Wednesday morning to inspect thes engine installation so that they can give the engine a 2 year guarentee.

27th Jan 2025  Dulcinea is now ready to go back in, the engine is done, the mast is back in and the keel is re-bedded and its antifouled. At the moment the yard is very busy and the wind has been at more or less gale force for the last few working days so they can’t safely operate, and we don’t know when they will get her it.  I  am standing by for an email telling me they have a slot, but I have a feeling it will be Febraury before its in.  When its back in I can get on and put he doors back on and get the instruments sorted.   I have got most of the kit to put in an Orca Core2 and connect all the existing instruments to it – I’ll put up a separates technical post elsewhere along with the circuit diagram.

14th Jan 2025  She is still in the yard – the mast has now come out and the keel is off – Mark is waiting for some studding to make the new bolts before the keel goes back on.  Ross the rigger (from GTR Rigging derigged the mast for the takeout and found that there was no VHF antenna at the masthead – given that we don’t have any other antenna connected I’m mystified that we could pick up the King’s Harbour Master `(KHM) who assiduously controls all the traffic in the harbour – you are not allowed to move a boat in the harbour without a listening watch on channel 11.  Ross thought that there was probably enough wire to pick up the very local signal, but I’m glad its been discovered now.  I had had a look at the masthead with binoculars but I must have missed it……  Another thing to fix.  And another – it turns out that the stainless elbow and the joiner in the exhaust  were 2 1/2 inch, or about 63mm diameter, and the new exhaust hose is 60mm – so I’m having to make new ones from 60.3 stainless 316 tube – I will probably get the welder I  use for gun parts to do the welding on the elbow as I’m not sure I can weld well enough to last 20 years!  I am in the process of cutting and filing a perfect matching 90 dergee joint!

8 Jan 2025   I’ve just got back from Gosport – the mast was supposed to come out today, but Ross the Rigger got called away to an urgent job so it won’t happen until Friday, and even then depends on the wind being low enough.  I did manage to check a few things while I was down there – I’ve been working on a replacement emergency tiller, so I was able to check the sleeve I’d made to couple it anto the rudder stock – unfortunately just too tight a fit, so I’ll have to remake it.  I also checked some hooks I’d made to support the lee cloths I’m making – I need to refine that design too.   I found that the ‘house’ battery was flat, so I borrowed a battery charger to run off the extension that one of the contractors had left on the boat – hopefully that will save the battery, although I wouldn’t be surprised if it needed replacement.   While I was there Ash and Andy fitted the new propeller and rope cutter – I was quite glad we had asked for one to be fitted as I heard an account of a 68ft yacht that had caught a creel line off Southampton that had got so wound up in the propeller that it pulled the shaft and separated the gearbox from the engine and bent the ‘P’ bracket and damaged the shaft seals…….   I’m busy planning the upgrade to our instruments – I’ll put that on a separate page..  Here is the beautiful prop….

 

29 Dec 2024  I hope you all had a peaceful and pleasant holiday over Christmas.  The New Year is almost upon us, and the days are beginning to get a bit longer- at least in the Northern Hemisphere!   Dulcinea is sitting out in the yard at Endeavour Quay waiting for everyone to get back to work – I think it will be next week before things really start to happen – the mast is due to come off on the 7th – I’ll go down on the 6th as I want to get a look at the fittings etc at the top of the mast and replace anything that needs it.  I’m hoping th standing rigging is OK, it was replaced 7 years ago so it should have 3 years before it is due for a major inspection, and maybe it will need replacing then or at least within a couple of years – I’m pretty sure it hasn’t had a lot of stress since it was replaced, so I’m optimistic that it will last.  I do know that some of the running rigging needs replacing – particularly the genoa halyard as the core is bunched up in a few places.  The main halyard doesn’t get much use – in fact I would not be surprised if the mainsail had been up all the time since the rigging was replaced, so I’m not expecting it to need replacing  – All the vulnerable bits of it are within the mast anyway and thus protected to some degree.

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