Millie Refurbishment

[LondonMillie]

Hi all,

i thought that I would start posting some pictures and information of the complete overhaul of my boat Millie (previously Sapperton Saul).

 

Millie is 45’ and the boat builder appears to be unknown as the listed builder says they did not build her! She is apparently 40 years old this year! The boat has a 30 degree chine and at the time of buying had a nice running 2.5L BMC.

 

Millie is being refurbished to the following basic specifications:

Full electric propultion with a brushless DC motor, 48V lithium battery bank (25KWh) and 3.3KW of solar panels on a new timber framed zinc clad roof replacing the original steel roof.

Fully insulated hull

Gas for the toilet only.

Heating from a wood pellet biomas stove/boiler.

 

The story so far:

We bought Millie a couple of years ago near Bath. The survey wasn’t great but we bought it anyway mostly because it had fairy lights on the roof... She was lifted out of the water at RLL Boats and moved by road to Shepperton Marina, returned to the water and cruised to Kingston in time for Christmas. We repainted the inside and made her ours. We were able to moor in Kingston on a pubs land where we would have a drink there every day and give updates of our painting progress. Even on Christmas Day we were there painting before going to my parents for Christmas dinner. After the new year We moved up to teddington to go through onto the canal at Brentford but when we arrived at teddington the chap in the office said “you do know the river is closed?” It hadn’t occurred to me that the river was so high you could t see the weir!

While moored in teddington we had the first royal visit of Rebecca’s Mum and stepdad from Scotland. during heavy rain we discovered the first issue that should have been a clue towards the issues that were going to be uncovered. There were huge, horrible water streaks down several parts of the walls under the windows all over our new paint. I removed the windows and re sealed them with whatever sealent Rebecca could get her hands on at teddington high street. We were eventually able to move the boat onto the canal and after a short stopover at The Fox in Hanwell moved onto our residential mooring in Northolt. 

[billS]

Welcome to the forum.

 

Your specifications for the rebuild are interesting especially "Gas for the toilet only" - that's very intriguing!

 

Are you planning to put in some sort of generator for when the solar panels do not provide enough charge to your traction batteries?

[Athy]

Welcome, Millie! I promise not to make any jokes about My Boy Lollipop. Whoops....

That bow shape does look familiar. Who was the "listed builder"? It must be an unusual company if it's still operating 40 years later; very few boatbuilders last that long.

I look forward to fuure instalmants of the story.

[LondonMillie]

36 minutes ago, billS said:

Welcome to the forum.

 

Your specifications for the rebuild are interesting especially "Gas for the toilet only" - that's very intriguing!

 

Are you planning to put in some sort of generator for when the solar panels do not provide enough charge to your traction batteries?

Hey, thanks! You know your with boaters when the convocation quickly turns to toilets! I’m going to be using a Cinderella Motion Toilet. Yes. They called it that! I will put more details about it when I get there but you will find them quickly enough. They are incinerating toilets. Very clean and no demand for elsan points. They have electric models but they are physically bigger (though still a very respectable size)

 

no generator. You aren’t allowed an electric licence with a generator because that is essentially a hybrid or diesel electric. The battery’s should be enough, especially as they will capture twice as much energy generated from the solar as a lead acid would.

36 minutes ago, Athy said:

Welcome, Millie! I promise not to make any jokes about My Boy Lollipop. Whoops....

That bow shape does look familiar. Who was the "listed builder"? It must be an unusual company if it's still operating 40 years later; very few boatbuilders last that long.

I look forward to fuure instalmants of the story.

Lol, thanks, yeah an unusual shape and the cabin roof is quite unusual and the new roof will keep the curve.

The listed builder is RW Davis and Son. They say it’s not theirs. My first boat also had a chined side but 45 degrees. The welding is atrocious. I can say that with confidence.

Edited May 31, 2018 by LondonMillie

[Dartagnan]

I spent Xmas in Kingston and walked past that location on numerous occasions watching the life on the river.  For me it’s a particularly nice part of the world.  For many a year I had wanted to own a boat and moor occasionally at that spot.

[Boater Sam]

I know of another boat that was thought to be a  R W Davis but they disowned it despite the fact that there are 2 boats of similar unusual tapered stearn design and the other is a accepted as  R W Davis!

[70liveaboard]

Hello OP

 

Do you know the steel thickness, also is the bmc engine original ?

[LondonMillie]

6 hours ago, Dartagnan said:

I spent Xmas in Kingston and walked past that location on numerous occasions watching the life on the river.  For me it’s a particularly nice part of the world.  For many a year I had wanted to own a boat and moor occasionally at that spot.

Yeah it is, my favourite place is Woodys bar. The owner is very nice and such a great selection of beer!

 

5 hours ago, Boater Sam said:

I know of another boat that was thought to be a  R W Davis but they disowned it despite the fact that there are 2 boats of similar unusual tapered stearn design and the other is a accepted as  R W Davis!

How odd, it is a pretty specific hull shape, I would be interested to know of others and any pictures.

 

5 hours ago, 70liveaboard said:

Hello OP

 

Do you know the steel thickness, also is the bmc engine original ?

It is around 5-6mm. I am un sure if the BMC is original, I am tempted to say it isn’t. There is remanence of an old hydraulic steering mechanism that attached to the tiller at the base and also something that could have been an alternative throttle system from an earlier engine.

Edited June 1, 2018 by LondonMillie

[LondonMillie]

I had ordered a nice big alternator and new inverter to fit to the BMC but things started to change and I decided that I wanted to go all electric. I sold the engine to someone else on the marina and as a big group we had a fun day moving the boat up, creating a DIY engine hoist and lifting the 370Kg out and onto the land. As the boat was already very light due to underbalasting I put 400Kg of sand bags in to compensate.

 

Millie’s layout from stern to bow is:

Kitchen

Living room

Bathroom

Bedroom

This layout is going to be kept but with changes to the amount of space given to the rooms. She has a huge cruiser stern which I intend to use as a main seating area.

 

After we had been living on the boat for a while it started to show some issues. The biggest of which was discovering that the cabin bilge was full of water. There was no easy way of seeing into the cabin bilge but it was very rusty. At the same time I discovered issues with the gas installation that was less than safe and so I decided that refitting the boat room by room would be a good idea starting with the, Kitchen. I stripped out the kitchen back to the metal and made my first major purchase a Bristle Blaster by Monti. In theory a great product giving steel a comparable finish to sandblasting but in a rotary tool, it would give the perfect finish for me to coat the inside of the boat with Zinga. Alas the progress was very very slow with that tool so I decided to have the inside of the kitchen space media blasted. The bristle blaster has its uses but not for the £900 asking price. Now I have it I can use it on areas after welding or prepping bits for paint and it is handy. deciding to have the media blasting done was the biggest mistake I made. The company responsible were complete cowboys. They did not achieve SA2.5 finish and made a total mess of the boat without care. I treated the rest of the rust with FE123 and then coated it with a 2K Epoxy Mastic (a product from rust.co.uk that I recommend) We spent a long time with a kitchen on the back deck and a sink on the back of the boat next to us. In the summer it was ok but not easy. It was like that for a year or more before I decided to make more drastic steps to work on the boat. This was a pretty bad time it put tremendous strain on us and because things kept going wrong I became totally demotivated about it all.

 

Just before the boat was moved up for sand blasting it also came to light that the installation of the wood burning stove was very dangerous. Not only were the tiles on MDF but the flue was some sort of home made double skin with a 3” internal diameter that was not sealed correctly to the stove. The gases could rise between both tubes but would have nowhere to go. I pulled all that out and refitted temporarily a nice piece of 316 stainless inside the boat and a 316 double skin chimney on the outside. It worked really well and looked great as the stainless changes colour.

 

I often carry out refurbishment projects for work and I always start from the beginning, strip something completely apart and start again. It is the only way to do it, so you can address all the issues at each stage. After a long time making no progress (and things not going well when I did try something) I decided it would also be the best option for Millie.

Edited June 1, 2018 by LondonMillie

[LondonMillie]

At the end of 2017 a video appeared on my instagram feed. By chance it was of a narrowboat being media blasted by P&S Marine. I was impressed with the finish they were achieving and I decided that I would use them for blasting the boat and then I would apply the coatings.

 

About 5 years ago lots of research and talking to other engineers led me to a product called Zinga, a galvanic film system that is comparable to hot dip zinc plating. The Zinga requires an SA2.5 blasted metal profile. This is a high level of totally bare, clean metal with a rough texture. This isn’t an advised ‘best practice’ option, it is a technical requirement. Just like you would not dip dirty or painted steel into a zinc bath. I should also say at this point (because lots of people seem to know better) Zinga is not a paint or a Zinc rich paint. Just because it is applied by spray or brush doesn’t make it a paint. They then sell suitable overcoats for hard wearing pretection and an undercoat before a finishing top coat of chosen colour goes on. One area it really helps is that it can be applied in a wide range of weather conditions and even in high humidity which opens a lot of doors for when the work could be done. I ordered a compressor and spray equipment to paint. The 3M Accuspray gun offered a flexible system for me to spray both primer and top coat by changing the nozzle size of the gun.

 

By combining it with the PPS system It also ment that it is much tidier and requires far less cleanup. The gun is a HVLP system that also gives reduced overspray and so less wastage. When it comes to spraying these coatings and paints it is important to protect your lungs. Because the spraywork is outside a full face resperatior with air filters is sufficient enough but when working in confined low ventilation areas an air fed mask is needed.

 

I wanted to start with getting the hull sound. That way I would be relaxed knowing the boat was going to be safe for many many years to come. With the Zinga and subsequent overcoats offering decades of rust free happiness to the already old steel.

 

I booked in to P&S Marine for March and arranged with my friends Tom, Ania and Alec to tow the boat up to Watford. Of course it turned out it was the exact timing we had the horrendous weather where the canal froze solid and around the boat it was frozen to the point it wouldn’t even wobble in the water! So we had to postpone the move and work until the 21 May. Which luckily coincided with Rickmansworth Festival!

[LondonMillie]

On the 18th we started the trip from Northolt to P&S Marine. With the amazing help from Ania and Tom and in the support boats Alec and Mark. The plan to go up past Rickmansworth, drop off Millie and then return to Ricky for the festival. We towed the boat strapped to the side of Emily Rose. It was a tight squeeze in places!

 

We stopped off on the way and opposite Watford Marina.

We had BBQ’s on a neat little charcoal Grill in the evenings with meat from the glorious Hook and Clever on Pitshanger Lane.

The festival is a real mixed bag but the smaller field is very pretty with nice music, food and drink. Though Rebecca was working during the move she was able to join for a day and we enjoyed some of the journey back to northolt too which is more what the weekend is about than the festival itself. It was lovely to catch up with friends that I haven’t seen since moving away while the work happens. I stayed a little out of Rickmansworth closer to denham in a beautiful airBNB with a special background to it. More importantly the best water in the south due to a whole house water softening system!

When we first moved on to the boat my intention was to just get her good. Sadly  as became apparent further in, I can’t do that. I bought a new custom plastic water tank from Tek Tanks and a new alternator and inverter. The tank is still to be installed (though I wish I had ordered bigger) the alternator and inverter are now totally redundant and for sale as I don’t have an engine and the inverter is the wrong DC voltage. The idea of an electric boat is so appealing to me. No more burning of diesel and the ability to drift through the countryside silently to enjoy the surroundings smells, sounds and all. When we were cruising both this and the previous boat it was the first thing that got to us was the engine noise. So with electric propultion I really want to show that boats should not be built with engines any more. If cars can at a practical level have pure electric propultion a 20T boat certainly can.

 

My research into the propultion started with the discovery of a brand called Enstroj they make a range called Emrax with the smallest motor being 30KW Contiuous 70KW peak 100NM to 150KW continuous 300KW peak 1000NM! All under 40Kg! Sadly these motors have two major technical disadvantages, 1 they require a very complicated asynchronous AC controller that is very difficult (to the lay person) to setup but 2, they require high DC voltages. The motors and controllers are still comparable in price to a new engine (half the price of an £8000 engine for a high quality choice) but really they are complete overkill for a canal/river based boat. The only advantage that could push the scale in their favour is their incredible efficiency approaching 98%!!

I then found Revolt, a manafacturer making the right sized motors in Israel. Able to run from 48V which is the top end of “low voltage DC” means that your battery system can be compatible with friendly inverters and chargers and simple DC/DC converters to power lights and the rest of the domestic system on a boat. I purchased the biggest motor they made at the time and a suitable controller that is programmable from an android app made by Kelly. 18KW peak and 15KW continuous it is a very capable motor. Being well received in the market the cost of the motor and controller was around £800!

Though over the last couple of years high DC voltage inverters and battery systems have become more prevalent as people still struggle with 12v the idea of suggesting a 120-800VDC system seems reckless. Everything I have decided to use is off the shelf in modular packages that makes it easy and approachable for anyone.

Edited June 6, 2018 by LondonMillie
Dyslexia

[Canal321]

Nice update. I enjoyed reading it

I look forward to your updates, especially about the electric motor. 

[LondonMillie]

22 hours ago, Canal321 said:

Nice update. I enjoyed reading it

I look forward to your updates, especially about the electric motor. 

Thanks! There is so much to tell and so much more to experience!

[70liveaboard]

Have you thought of doing a YouTube channel to follow your progress ?

[LondonMillie]

Sorry I haven’t updated yet but a combination of being ill and working flat out on a contract has put me behind.

On 14/06/2018 at 13:39, 70liveaboard said:

Have you thought of doing a YouTube channel to follow your progress ?

Hey, yeah I would like to do a YouTube channel when the boat is finished while I travel in the boat I will make episodes and explain the installation and work and then the actual ability as it being used. I have and will continue to take bits of video of the work and should be able to edit some of it in to episodes. It’s all a balance of time. I hardly have time to think at the moment!