Shower Refresh

Apropos has a nice separate shower stall (some boats have a wet head that combine the shower with the rest of the bathroom). The floor has a teak grating with a water tight compartment below it that gets pumped overboard automatically using a float switch to power a pump. The lower sections of the shower walls are tiled and the upper sections painted, with teak trim between. A seating bench has teak decking with caulk, matching the outside teak decks. Teak doors open to a small storage cabinet, and above that it is a teak shelf.

The main objective was to repaint the walls. The paint was most likely original and after over 40 years, was wearing thin and had lots of scuffs & scratches. I decided to first varnish the teak with 4 coats of Petit Flagship satin, then mask the teak to paint the walls. I used a special epoxy high-gloss paint for the walls. This paint is made for wet areas and can even be used for underwater. Four coats were required to get a nice even finish with a light sanding between coats. I cleaned the teak grating and seating area then coated with Semco. A new shower curtain needed to be custom sewn to shorten the length and I improved the curtain rail attachments. Lastly, I made 6 magnetic curtain holders (3 per side) to keep it closed during showers.

The pump used to pump the shower water overboard was an original Jabsco Par belt-driven diaphram pump (43 years old!). Apropos had 3 of these pumps (bilge, fresh water, shower) on board and they worked very well for many years. I used to carry re-build kits aboard and have rebuilt them. But there are more modern pumps available now that use less power and are higher performance. I replaced the hoses and pump with a Whale Gulper 220.

More Interior Varnish

I continued with varnishing the cabin teak that I started a year ago. The teak panels just inside the companionway (both sides of the steps) were the most worn due to UV exposure when the hatch is open. Both sides required heating & scraping the old varnish to get down to bare wood, then sanded for a more even coloring. I applied 4 coats of satin varnish to the vertical planks and 4 coats of high gloss varnish to the 2 grab-rails. Here are the before and after pics.

I removed the panels in the galley that enclose the engine bay to bring them home for refinishing. First I removed the hardware, then sanded with 80 grit followed by 240 grit sandpaper, followed by 4 coats of Petit Flagship Varnish in satin. I polished the hardware and coated with ProtectaSeal, something I’ve been doing with interior brass and bronze parts for years. The teak frame that holds these panels was refinished on the boat.

I’ll continue varnishing the interior throughout the winter until my spring projects take over. This spring/summer it’s time for another haul-out where I’ll re-paint the bottom, replace the cutlass bearing, replace the shaft seal, and service the Maxprop propellor. This is the last major work to get Apropos ready for her next big cruise.

In 20 years owning Apropos, we’ve anchored hundreds of times. Bringing the anchor back up requires someone down below in the v-berth stacking the chain and a person on-deck operating the windlass. The two need to communicate because the windlass can operate faster than the person below can stack the chain. Sometimes I do both jobs by going back and forth–operating the windlass to bring in 20′ of chain, going down below to stack, then going back on deck and bringing in another 20′, and so on. Pulling in a muddy chain slows down the process because the person on deck working the windlass is also washing the mud off the chain links with the wash-down deck hose.

I’ve always wanted to improve the anchoring procedure, and finally came up with a solution while visiting another Hans Christian 43.

But first, let me explain why a person is needed to stack the chain down below.

Old Configuration

Apropos has 2 anchors on the bow–a primary anchor (65 lb CQR) with 300′ of 3/8″ chain, and a secondary anchor (45 lb CQR) with 300′ of 3-strand 1/2″ rope. The chain is stored in a lower locker located under the v-berth bunk. The rope is stored in an upper locker located forward of the v-berth. A 4″ diameter aluminum hawse pipe passes through the upper locker and feeds the chain to the lower locker.

To access the lower locker, the front third of the v-berth mattress is folded back to expose a removable panel. The reason a person is required to stack the chain is because the lower section of the chain locker was partitioned off to make room for a bow thruster, batteries, and associated fuses and windlass controls. With a smaller, shallower chain locker, when all 300′ of chain is in, the top of the pile is higher than the point where the chain exits the hawse pipe so a person is needed to “stack the chain” as it’s being brought in.

In regards to the upper locker where the 3-strand rope is stored, it also has it’s own problems–coiling 300′ of 3-strand rope takes up a lot of room and is messy. Taking the rope out while dropping the anchor and then re-coiling it when bringing the anchor up has to be done slowly and requires a person below. But this secondary anchor is seldom used and is mostly a back-up to the primary anchor (the exception is anchoring in gale conditions where it may be necessary to put out both anchors). We have only used this anchor twice in 20 years and it was in calm conditions and shallow water just to try it out.

New Configuration

I was aboard another Hans Christian 43 in the Puget Sound region with a different interior layout. It had a head up front where my V-berth bunk is, and a Pullman berth where my port side head is. The Pullman vs V-berth configurations were choices given to new owners during the build process. In the Pullman configuration, the chain locker is forward of the head and is accessed through a small door, exactly like the upper (secondary) locker is on Apropos. In the Pullman configuration, the lower locker that’s on Apropos is used for plumbing and the holding tank.

So it occurred to me, why not use the upper locker to store the primary anchor chain (either 300′ or part of it)? To do this, I first removed and cut the hawse pipe that runs through the locker. While I had it out, I cleaned and painted the locker and also the pipe (I plan to make a collar to be able to re-join the pipe in case I want to restore it back to original).

I also decided to store part of the chain in the lower locker to decrease the chain pile in the upper locker. After experimenting, I came up with 225′ in the upper locker and 75′ in the lower. The floor of the upper locker looks like this with the hole leading to the lower locker. Here’s a picture showing 225′ of chain stacked in the upper locker.

Since the upper locker is where the secondary anchor 3-strand rope used to be stored, I thought about how I could still have some line in the locker to be used for the secondary anchor. I came up with the idea of installing a spool with enough rope to be useful for a lunch anchor, where you just want to drop an anchor for a short stopover. This is usually done in shallow waters and calm conditions when putting the larger anchor with chain isn’t required. I mounted a black ABS pipe running fore/aft in the upper part of the locker. The pipe serves as an axle for the spool and is held on each end with endcaps that are mounted to starboard, then the starboard is mounted to bulkheads. I had to custom make wedges because the surfaces where the endcaps were mounted were not perpendicular to the pipe. The spool is big enough to hold 150′ of 1/2″ 3-strand nylon rope. The deck hole where the rope goes to the windlass is directly above the spool. I also saved the original 300′ of 3-strand and put it on a larger spool to keep on the boat for emergency use (in gale conditions or if I ever lose the main anchor).

For now, I put 60′ of 1/2″ 3-strand nylon rope on the spool, after testing it out in the spring, I’ll replace it with the maximum amount of rope that fits on the spool, about 150′.

These modifications should make anchoring a lot easier. I’m looking forward to trying it out in the spring.

Apropos has a 20 gallon stainless steel holding tank (black water tank). An electric toilet flushes into it, and a drain at the bottom leads to a macerator pump for emptying it. A port at the top side is for a vent. Ventilation is very important for holding tanks and is needed for turning anaerobic bacteria (smelly) into aerobic bacteria (not smelly). A 3/8″ hose connects to the existing vent port and runs about 20 feet to a thru hull fitting at the bow (port side). This location was chosen to be at the highest part of the hull to keep sea water from going in. The problem was that the vent size was too small, which limits the amount of air reaching the tank.

The improvement involved adding another vent with a larger port and a larger hose. This should more than double the amount of oxygen reaching the holding tank. An additional task was to add an 8″ port to the top of the tank, useful for inspections and cleaning. I also removed the tank monitor that’s mounted on the top of the tank and gave it a good cleaning.

I used a hole saw to make the hole for the vent, and a jigsaw to cut the hole for the inspection port. Drilling and cutting into stainless steel requires special carbide tipped drill bits and jigsaw blades and a lot of patience (it took over an hour to cut the hole for the 8″ port). I ran the 5/8″ vent hose to the same location as the original vent, except I put the thru hull fitting on the starboard side so now the tank is vented to both sides of the boat.

Back in 2014, before leaving on our South Pacific trip, I made ratlines for the port side shrouds on the main mast. They were useful in spotting reefs and bommies in the clear waters near islands and atolls–being higher up in the rigging reduces the glare, making it easier to spot them. These ratlines were made up of 5 teak “ratboards” and 6 3-stranded rope “ratlines”.

2014 Version

The teak boards stayed in place for 10 years without moving, but I couldn’t get the lashing on the rope ratlines to hold them in place so they would sometimes slide an inch or two. While still functional, this made them appear uneven and looked bad until I slid them back in place. The other downfall of using the rope was it hurt when climbing barefoot whereas the teak boards were way more comfortable on bare feet.

Since I had to remove the ratlines when replacing the standing rigging in 2024, it gave me a chance to redo and improve them. I decided to do away with the 3-strand rope steps and use all teak ratboards. I already had the extra teak left over from 2014, so it was just a matter of deciding on the number of steps and spacing. I ended up using the original 5 teak boards and making an additional 3 more for a total of 8 ratboards, spaced about 28″ apart.

I used a slightly different lashing method that looks cleaner and should keep the ratboards in place for many years. Before installing them, I sanded each board and applied 5 coats of teak oil. An annual coat of teak oil should keep them looking good.