Does the boat project list ever end…? It must. It has to. Or else our boat may as well have a mailbox next to its jack stands.

We’re down to the last few items on our project list — and that’s because we threw a bunch off, citing them as non-essential. We’re so close, just need to wrap up a few loose ends, including the finishing touches on our bottom job, rebuilding our AutoStream feathering prop, getting our fuel tank back into the boat, and building a bimini!

Our new electric outboard motor from ePropulsion, the Spirit 1.0, also makes its debut in this episode.

Hope you enjoy!

Lauren & Kirk

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Episode Dialogue

– Today is a big day. Holy crap, that’s huge!

– What is all this stuff? So, what’s on your shirt?

– Snapped and shot everywhere.

– Okay, so that didn’t work out.

– We’re making progress.

– [Lauren] Check it out.

– [Kirk] Damage. We’re gonna be out of here in no time, I hope.

– [Lauren] Previously on Sailing Soulianis. Nearly done with applying Coppercoat to our hull, all that was left to finish were the spots under the jack stands. After finding a diesel leak, we ripped out our fuel tank and uncovered the problem.

– [Kirk] This was the issue right here. Little bit of fuel.

– [Lauren] Oh yeah, look at that. So today we’re gonna take the fuel tank to a welder. Unannounced. So we’re hoping that they’re there. And they might be able to do something for us. So this is the offending corner. That is the lowest point of the tank, where water collected. Where corrosion ate right through the weld. Hey buddy. Oh, hi fuel tank. Just sitting in there. Amongst our towels and laundry and clothes.

– [Kirk] Other personal items.

– [Lauren] Other personal items. Just fit in there.

– Yes Chip, I know I’m not wearing my seat, Oh, there’s a freakin’ bobcat!

– [Lauren] What? Where?

– Did you see it? It just ran across.

– [Lauren] No!

– It was huge!

– [Lauren] Really?

– Yes. That was frickin’ awesome.

– [Lauren] I wonder if I got it on camera? ‘Cause I was pointing out the window.

– Yeah, you might’ve. That was a big cat. That’s freaky.

– [Lauren] I’m so glad you got to see one!

– That’s scary. You can’t run at night anymore.

– [Lauren] Well, I’m still running at night. Okay, where were we going again?

– [Kirk] We’re going to get our fuel tank fixed, hopefully. So it was very slow.

– Flush it.

– [Kirk] Uh-huh. Gotta get that fuel outta there, because you can’t weld it with that fuel.

– Okay, so that didn’t work out. It’s a new day. We’re off to a new welder. He ended up quoting us three to five hundred dollars for the repair. And we just didn’t really feel comfortable with paying more than half of what a new tank would cost. So the goal is to find another welder who might be able to do it for a little bit cheaper. Or we’re gonna do J-B Weld.

– Order a new tank.

– We’ll get a new tank eventually.

– Oh.

– [Kirk] Did you just pick him up?

– Yeah!

– [Kirk] Aww, that’s good. Were his legs all scrambling?

– No, no! He went right back in his shell!

– [Kirk] Oh, he went inside?

– Yeah, he’s not like one of those,

– [Kirk] Snappers?

– Mean snapper turtles.

– [Kirk] It’s those tortoises.

– Oh! It’s the gopher tortoise.

– [Kirk] Gopher tortoise.

– [Lauren] Right? Yeah, oh it’s so cute. He just went .

– [Kirk] Well, now we know we can pick ’em up.

– Yeah!

– So then we took it to a second welder, the one who actually fixed our spreader. They put a little bead of welding inside, and it has to slide over like a sleeve, I’m glad it fit. And we really liked, we kind of hit it off with them. I said, “hey, do you work on tanks?” We kinda knew they didn’t. Do you know anyone who does? No, no, no, no. I said all right, one other thing I was considering doing, ’cause we wanna get a new fuel tank, we just need a bandaid. Can we use J-B Weld? Which a few other people had recommended. And he said, absolutely. I would totally use J-B Weld over trying to weld something up on a tank, ’cause when you get the tank all hot, the gases expand inside the tank. You don’t know if it’s going to pop out some other corroded part that is about ready to blow, but wouldn’t have otherwise. So that’s what we’re doing, I’m getting us all cleaned up try and get this corrosion out and then we’re just gonna slather J-B Weld all over this bottom corner where we have a little bit of corrosion.

– Yeah! That was my first hog sighting. There was a guy who was running right behind me, he saw me stop and he was like, is that a hog? I was like, should I be worried? He said, does it have babies? I don’t think that one did, but I did see the family cross when I was, I dunno, 200 yards back. So I saw a bunch of black things crossing the path. Ah, that’s cool.

– So I’ve been dreading this job a little bit, trying to figure out how to rebuild this propeller. I have to disassemble it to replace these O-rings around each of the propellor blades that are all cracked up from sitting out high and dry over the summer. And I don’t really like taking things apart that I don’t know how to put back together. So it’s always unnerving the first time. After I’ve done it, it’s usually okay. But especially something as important as the propellor to the safety and propulsion of our boat. So anyhow, I haven’t seen very many good videos or tutorials anything about how to do this. I just have the instructions from the manufacturer which are a bit scarce and have no real pictures. So I’m hoping this goes pretty smoothly. Hey Lauren? I think I need a second set of hands. We just need to not drop the blades.

– [Lauren] Okay. Okay. Cool. So what are you doing there?

– This is just a little bit of silicone grease.

– Looks like frosting. So that goes this way.

– What I don’t know how to do is how to change that O-ring.

– Up here?

– [Lauren] It was just then that our boat neighbor, Cliff, told us to stretch the heck out of that O-ring right over the prop.

– [Lauren] What did we just do?

– We just got the O-ring on.

– Nice. Check it out.

– [Kirk] Damage.

– Trying to stretch the O-ring over the entire prop, and I took out a chunk of each thumb. Hey, we got it over.

– [Kirk] Yeah! I don’t know what happened there. If we’re gonna pull this thing apart, I decided we should take as much of the grease out as we can, and put in new grease. Because I think the gray grease means that it has water in it. That’s the way it works with oil, grease is not all that different from oil. In terms of its chemical makeup. Okay, you got the top one?

– [Lauren] Little higher, there you go.

– See this is what I’m concerned about, is that this one is not lined up perfectly, but the other two are right now.

– [Lauren] Okay.

– So can you twist that one If I back this off a little bit?

– [Lauren] Uh-huh. Is it back far enough?

– [Lauren] No. There we go.

– Is it lined up?

– Yeah.

– Okay, cool.

– [Lauren] You wanna check it?

– Yeah, yeah, that’s great. You saw those gears, right? How big they were? So it would only be off by one gear. It’s not off by like, an unmeasurable amount.

– Turned into a whole day project, but we figured out how to pull everything apart on the AutoStream propellor. We put on new O-rings on the propellor blades, we put a new O-ring on the shaft. I got it all cleaned up, all sanded down. Sanded down the strut, sanded down the propellor shaft, so that we can put on some prop zincs and then I’ve got some zinc paint, running gear paint, that I’m gonna try on the propellor. I’m actually gonna put Coppercoat on the strut, and I may actually put it on the shaft as well. See how it goes. And we’re looking at our angles here, so that’s in forward gear, and there’s not a whole lot of pitch. But when we go into reverse, there’s even less. Which is what they say. But man, that doesn’t look like it’s got hardly any pitch at all. We’re hoping we did it right. But, I tested how to adjust the pitch on the propellor blades, so that we could jump in the water and change it if we need to.

– [Kirk] Dang!

– That’s what you call service.

– [Kirk] Thank you!

– [Randy] With a smile! Does this go up on Cliff’s boat?

– [Kirk] He would like it to.

– Lemme know how much further you want.

– [Lauren] Yeah, that’s good! Thanks Randy!

– [Kirk] Thank you! Holy crap, that’s huge.

– What is all of this stuff? It just says generator, motor or parts. Less than five dollars a pound. Okay so the motor came by itself.

– [Kirk] This is the motor.

– [Lauren] That’s a battery, and that’s a battery.

– [Kirk] Battery. Battery.

– Wow, we’re gonna need a razor blade, or something.

– [Kirk] Cliff!

– Just so happens in my pocket.

– [Kirk] Oh, this blade is so dope.

– I was packing fiberglasses yesterday.

– [Kirk] It’s like a spaceship!

– A spaceship for squirrels, Kirk. I can lift it.

– Yeah you can. Holy smokes. There she be.

– [Lauren] That is sweet.

– Wow. This is like space age, man. Ooh, so it does have a skeg. That’s good.

– [Lauren] Mmm, yeah. So we don’t crack off one of those blades.

– Is that a zinc, do you think?

– [Lauren] Oh yeah. It looks like it.

– So check this out. This is what I’m excited for. Yeah so this we can either plug a solar panel directly into it, or we can wire this directly to our battery bank.

– [Lauren] What do you think, love?

– I am freaking super excited to try this out. This is gonna be awesome.

– 30! The wind is pretty crazy today, so Kirk and I are holed up inside. Working on our respective electronic devices.

– I’m trying to figure out how to program our alternator regulator.

– And I’m working on our next episode. Well, I haven’t started yet, but I’m getting there.

– [Kirk] What’s happening now?

– Barrier coat number two. And boom’s up.

– [Kirk] Whoa!

– What what.

– [Lauren] So, what’s on your shirt?

– So this is our second small batch of CK426 Barrier Coat. We’re mixing small batches today, because we are on the last stage here. We’re just covering our jack stands and a few other spots that we weren’t able to get like the other side of our rudder, and a few little spots on our keel. This morning we had a little mishap as we were getting started. We had just mixed part A and B together, and I was stirring vigorously to combine them, and all of a sudden the stir stick snapped and shot barrier coat everywhere. Got all over my shirt, all over my shorts, all over the stuff, everywhere.

– [Lauren] It’s a good look, love.

– It just kinda exploded in my face. So we’re gonna try not to do that this time.

– [Lauren] We were really worried that we weren’t going to have enough paint.

– Yeah, so the fact that we lost like, a quarter of it. But, we ended up with enough to coat everything that we needed. So we need to do three coats of the barrier coat, on each of the spots that hasn’t gotten it yet. So we took what we had this morning, and we cut it into thirds, and then measured out what we would need for each in our measuring cup. So we’re gonna fill the part A up to this line, and then part B goes up to this line. We’re also putting 10% by volume isopropyl alcohol. So now we’re gonna fill to the next line here, with part B.

– All right.

– [Lauren] Is that it?

– I think so. Ooh, we gotta sand under here.

– [Lauren] Oh we missed that?

– Yeah. We’re making progress. We’ll be out of here in no time.

– [Lauren] We’re closer to the end than we are the beginning.

– I hope.

– This is gonna be A. And this is B. Today we are mixing small batches of Coppercoat. It’s the last few spots we have to cover up on the boat before the bottom paint project is done. We need to do four coats of copper. So we’ve measured out how much we need to split one pack of copper. Which is part A, part B, and then our copper here. The copper is so finely ground the powder is really easily introduced into the air. And so, you don’t want to breathe it. This is a 100% solids epoxy, so there’s actually no volatile organic compounds off-gassing. So once we’ve got everything mixed and the copper is contained within the epoxy, we don’t really need masks anymore. Until we go to start sanding it, and we’re creating a bunch of copper dust, then we need the masks again. ♪ Ooh ooh ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ I love to wake up in the morning ♪ ♪ But keep dreaming ♪

– Okay, ready? ♪ Without warning ♪

– [Lauren] Ready. ♪ The day is gone ♪ ♪ And sometimes I take a walk ♪ ♪ But I forget about the clock ♪ ♪ I can slow down ♪ ♪ My friends all sitting left and right ♪ ♪ I just keep on napping ♪ ♪ They’re knocking on my door ♪ ♪ But I’m knocking them down ♪ ♪ They say I’m acting crazy ♪ ♪ But I just wanna lie in the sun ♪ ♪ Whoa ♪ ♪ Lie in the sun ♪ ♪ Now I’ve been to many places ♪ ♪ And won so many races ♪ ♪ I was a child ♪

– [Kirk] What are you wearing?

– Well, it’s the new latest fashion trend. You know what I noticed? Is that whenever I put on this suit, well, when I actually have it on, not when I have it tied around me looking all ridiculous is that the only thing everyone else will say to me is, oh, love your fashion statement. But when you wear it,

– [Kirk] Nobody says shit.

– No one says anything.

– [Kirk] It’s ’cause I got good fashion.

– Yeah no, it was like 90 degrees out today, and I put on the suit, and it had been like two weeks since I sanded, and I forgot that sanding copper really isn’t that big of a deal. You just need a face mask. And so I was sweating in the suit and then Kirk told me, hey, you don’t need to wear that suit. But I just washed my hair last night. So I didn’t want to get copper in my hair. So I covered the one thing that I need to cover.

– [Kirk] Turn around.

– And left everything else out.

– [Kirk] You’re supposed to turn around.

– And these are my painting sanding socks.

– [Kirk] Oh yeah.

– I had one pair the whole time.

– Well, here’s how I’m dressed. It’s very hot today.

– More importantly is how your head is dressed.

– My head is wrapped in a winter, in it’s winter coat. I told Lauren a month ago I wasn’t shaving or cutting my hair until we got the boat out of the yard. And then we delayed our launch. And then we delayed our launch. And then we found a fuel leak. And then we delayed our launch again.

– So now you look like a cross between a sheep and a bear.

– Does that make me a shear? Or a beep?

– Look at that. How much diesel fuel that pulled out. Those all used to be almost white. Very light gray. We’ve still got a little more to suck up there. And back here. And it’s not quite getting sucked up the walls yet, all of it. But it’s coming out, little by little. I haven’t smelled it recently, which has been nice. We no longer have any here, on the floor. There’s no sheen at all.

– [Lauren] Oh wow, that’s pretty good.

– [Kirk] So it sucked it up out of that piece of wood, enough that it’s not coming up any more. We’ve still got a little bit in there, and this has some. But we’ll get all that sucked up. So I would say the kitty litter project has been a major success.

– [Lauren] So we’ll see how that looks in a week, huh?

– Yep. So today’s a big day. We have put up a few pieces of paper here with all of our big projects on them. Today we get to check off a bunch of these. Alternator upgrade. Wait. Do I squiggle or do I straight line?

– [Lauren] Squiggle the stuff that we didn’t do and we decided we’re not doing.

– [Kirk] Alternator upgrade, boom.

– [Lauren] Done!

– [Kirk] Bilge pump we haven’t done yet. External monitor we haven’t done yet. Re-plumb starboard tank we haven’t done yet. Deck wash we haven’t done yet. Rebuild water pump. Haven’t done yet. Replace engine zincs.

– [Both] Done!

– [Kirk] Rebuild prop and add zinc.

– [Both] Done!

– [Kirk] Wait, that’s it.

– [Kirk] Oh, bottom paint! Done!

– [Lauren] Woo! All right, so the ones that had a big dot next to them were ones that we determined about a month ago, we needed to do before we launched.

– [Kirk] Everything else we can do underway.

– [Lauren] Yeah, that is our last one right there. Bimini and solar install. So what’s the plan, Stan? We’re gonna be launching?

– We got two weeks to completely figure out how to construct, sew and install a Bimini.

– [Lauren] And then we also need to put the dodger back up, run the lines. Wax and buff the hull.

– Give everything a good washing.

– [Lauren] And put our fuel tank back in our boat.

– Oh yeah, that too. That’s a big one.

– [Lauren] Because right now, there’s a hole there. ♪ Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo ♪ ♪ Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo ♪ ♪ Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo ♪ ♪ Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo ♪

– Either we’re perfectionists, or we’re idiots, or this just isn’t that simple. This is the day we leave the boat yard.

– We’re finally outta here.