I have had the very good fortune to meet up with a master shipwright/aluminum boat specialist, "Cap" has been a wealth of information. He operates a one man mobile welding service out of his shop/truck and will be handling some of the more critical welding requirements on the Kaian. Since I had forgone the usual process of having a professional survey conducted on the vessel prior to purchase, I was somewhat relieved when after giving the Kaian's hull a thorough going over, he pronounced her stoutly built and structurally in great shape.
In trying to make use of the relatively dry weather I've encountered, I decided to start prepping the weather deck for refinishing. Cap recommended getting it down to bare metal and starting from there with a rigorous paint scheme. Striping the deck entailed several gallons of the best chemical striper I could get my hands on. Took about a week to get as much of the old paint off using this method. Then it was time for the grinder. Here again Cap's suggestion was to be aggressive, way more aggressive than I would have been. "Brutalize the plate" he said, she's been over built with 5/16th"plate, so attack it, give the new paint something to bite into. Out came the 16 grit wheels on the grinder. So far about 10 days on and off of grinding is producing a deck so shiny I had to start using safety welding glasses because of the glare coming off the deck in the sunshine. It's looking fantastic, all the surface oxidization that had occurred in areas where the paint had failed, is gone. Cap has assured me that following the proper steps in the refinish process, the new paint system should be good for a long time, he has boats he worked on 20 years ago going strong with the paint holding up and no corrosion. Sounds good to me.
On rain days when I can't work outside, I've been tackling some indoor projects. I don't really have a detailed plan of action in terms of the order I am doing the projects. My attitude has been that ultimately it all has to get done, as long as I am not doing something that will need to be undone, or adversely effects another component, I work on what I feel like working on at the time. Sometimes I'll start one job only to leave it after a couple of hours and do something else just because I can and it interests me more at that moment. This may sound a little disorganized, and it may not be the most efficient approach to project of this size, but it suits me. I want to look back on this part as enjoyable, as being in the moment, as doing what I've always wanted to do. So far so good.
Here's some really exciting stuff, the "heads". The boat has a couple of wilcox-crittendon skipper heads. When I first looked at them, I thought "these are going over the side", but on closer inspection and some research, I found them not only to be keepers but really good keepers at that. I seems that not only are they still being manufactured, they are a the top of the range in terms of being a premium product. Solidly built completely of bronze, they came apart with no problems, and I even found that when I rummaged around in the boxes of gear I had in container, I came up with a couple of complete rebuild kits. So now the old heads are shining brightly, functioning perfectly with the new rebuild parts in place. Testing was only possible outside with a hose in a bucket since the holding tanks aren't fitted yet. 
Which brings me to the holding tanks situation. From what I can determine, this boat was originally fitted with the above mentioned heads discharging directly overboard. That was back in the day when it was perfectly legal. Then at some point, 2 Lectrasan units were added to the matrix. These units somewhat "treated" the waste before it went overboard. Through a process of electrically charging the seawater used in the flush process, an acid was created which destroyed any bacteria present. This treatment system is coast guard approved and has become quite popular as an onboard way to handle "black water". The problem with the system is that it is very electricity hungry. In order for it to work effectively it needs to draw a considerable amount of power from the ship's batteries. The upside is that there was actually no black water storage on board excepting what was in the unit itself. Hence the Kaian had no holding tanks whatsoever. This situation is unacceptable due to the increasing presence of areas and anchorages where there is a no discharge rule. Boats must therefore be able to contain and store all of their waste. Here's how I handled the storage problem. The Kaian is constructed with a box type keel. In other words, excepting the portion of the keel that holds the lead ballast ingots, it is essentially a tank. The aft portion was actually in use as a fuel tank, holding around 200 gals of diesel. I determined that since there are 2 additional 150 gal fuel saddle tanks, I would convert the keel tank to a split gray/black water holding tanks. This has entailed cutting open the top of the tanks in order to clean out the diesel crud residue, remove some existing baffles, and weld in a new wall to create a separate tank in the aft section. This will be the gray water tank and will have the existing aluminum surface clean but otherwise untreated. I was advised against treating the black water in the same fashion.
In trying to make use of the relatively dry weather I've encountered, I decided to start prepping the weather deck for refinishing. Cap recommended getting it down to bare metal and starting from there with a rigorous paint scheme. Striping the deck entailed several gallons of the best chemical striper I could get my hands on. Took about a week to get as much of the old paint off using this method. Then it was time for the grinder. Here again Cap's suggestion was to be aggressive, way more aggressive than I would have been. "Brutalize the plate" he said, she's been over built with 5/16th"plate, so attack it, give the new paint something to bite into. Out came the 16 grit wheels on the grinder. So far about 10 days on and off of grinding is producing a deck so shiny I had to start using safety welding glasses because of the glare coming off the deck in the sunshine. It's looking fantastic, all the surface oxidization that had occurred in areas where the paint had failed, is gone. Cap has assured me that following the proper steps in the refinish process, the new paint system should be good for a long time, he has boats he worked on 20 years ago going strong with the paint holding up and no corrosion. Sounds good to me.
On rain days when I can't work outside, I've been tackling some indoor projects. I don't really have a detailed plan of action in terms of the order I am doing the projects. My attitude has been that ultimately it all has to get done, as long as I am not doing something that will need to be undone, or adversely effects another component, I work on what I feel like working on at the time. Sometimes I'll start one job only to leave it after a couple of hours and do something else just because I can and it interests me more at that moment. This may sound a little disorganized, and it may not be the most efficient approach to project of this size, but it suits me. I want to look back on this part as enjoyable, as being in the moment, as doing what I've always wanted to do. So far so good.
Here's some really exciting stuff, the "heads". The boat has a couple of wilcox-crittendon skipper heads. When I first looked at them, I thought "these are going over the side", but on closer inspection and some research, I found them not only to be keepers but really good keepers at that. I seems that not only are they still being manufactured, they are a the top of the range in terms of being a premium product. Solidly built completely of bronze, they came apart with no problems, and I even found that when I rummaged around in the boxes of gear I had in container, I came up with a couple of complete rebuild kits. So now the old heads are shining brightly, functioning perfectly with the new rebuild parts in place. Testing was only possible outside with a hose in a bucket since the holding tanks aren't fitted yet. 
Which brings me to the holding tanks situation. From what I can determine, this boat was originally fitted with the above mentioned heads discharging directly overboard. That was back in the day when it was perfectly legal. Then at some point, 2 Lectrasan units were added to the matrix. These units somewhat "treated" the waste before it went overboard. Through a process of electrically charging the seawater used in the flush process, an acid was created which destroyed any bacteria present. This treatment system is coast guard approved and has become quite popular as an onboard way to handle "black water". The problem with the system is that it is very electricity hungry. In order for it to work effectively it needs to draw a considerable amount of power from the ship's batteries. The upside is that there was actually no black water storage on board excepting what was in the unit itself. Hence the Kaian had no holding tanks whatsoever. This situation is unacceptable due to the increasing presence of areas and anchorages where there is a no discharge rule. Boats must therefore be able to contain and store all of their waste. Here's how I handled the storage problem. The Kaian is constructed with a box type keel. In other words, excepting the portion of the keel that holds the lead ballast ingots, it is essentially a tank. The aft portion was actually in use as a fuel tank, holding around 200 gals of diesel. I determined that since there are 2 additional 150 gal fuel saddle tanks, I would convert the keel tank to a split gray/black water holding tanks. This has entailed cutting open the top of the tanks in order to clean out the diesel crud residue, remove some existing baffles, and weld in a new wall to create a separate tank in the aft section. This will be the gray water tank and will have the existing aluminum surface clean but otherwise untreated. I was advised against treating the black water in the same fashion.
The corrosive forces at play would reek havoc with an aluminum tank in no time. The only solution was to fit a plastic corrosion proof tank within the space. The new tank was constructed by a small custom plastics shop I found in Portland. Jerry at Spectrum Plastics was great, he took my crude drawing a produced a tough PVC tank that will be there forever. I had him place 2 -- 1 1/2" pickup tubes where I needed them, as well as 2 -- 1" vent outlets and 1-- 2" waste inlet. What feeds the system is gravity. I was able to run 2" PVC rigid tubing directly from both heads to the waste tank. In all it's a run of about 25'. Had to go through 5 bulkheads so I cut the pipe in to sections that fit between the bulkheads. Then used 2 1/2" wire reinforced hose as a thru bulkhead connector.
Result is that I achieved a 1/4" per ft drainage from the heads to the tank, gravity flow just like on land, with a flush out fitting at the head end so I can connect a deck wash hose and blow the system out periodically. Both gray and black water tanks will have the capability of either being pumped out via a pump out station or being pumped out while at sea via a selector valve and a macerator pump discharging overboard. I'm hoping that we will have a 3-4 week holding capacity between pump outs. Only experience will confirm this estimation.
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