Ep57 - Boat Projects Galore! | Rigging, Fiberglass & Plumbing Refit Progress
A week of real refit progress: rigging prep, fiberglass repairs, plumbing work, and the small projects that keep a big rebuild moving forward.
Episode Overview
This week aboard Roam was all about steady, hands-on progress — the kind that doesn’t always come from one big milestone, but from knocking down a long list of projects that keep the boat moving toward readiness.
We tackled a mix of rigging prep, system layout, plumbing work, and a fiberglass repair that quickly grew larger than expected. None of these jobs were flashy on their own, but together they represent real forward motion after months of teardown and waiting.
It was a week full of crawling into tight spaces, measuring twice, improvising once, and ending each day knowing the boat is a little more seaworthy than it was before.
📽️ Watch Episode 57 👉
Rigging prep, fiberglass repair, and plumbing installation during an active refit week aboard a cruising catamaran.
Rigging Measurements and Planning
We started by measuring for several key rigging components:
- New sheaves for the boom and mast
- New turnbuckles and jaws for the standing rigging
These are critical details that directly affect how smoothly — and safely — the rig will function. Careful measurement now saves a lot of frustration (and risk) later.
Mapping the VHF Cable Run
Next up was tracing and measuring the full VHF cable run.
That meant crawling through deck lockers, under the nav desk, and into spaces that rarely see daylight, mapping out a clean, serviceable path for the cable. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s exactly the kind of planning that prevents future problems and makes systems easier to maintain.
When a Small Leak Turns Into a Big Fiberglass Job
What started as a leaking valve repair quickly turned into the biggest project of the week.
Working in extremely tight quarters, we cut out the old valve and glassed in a new fiberglass tube. To keep epoxy where it belonged, we used a balloon to apply pressure from inside the tube — messy, awkward, and surprisingly effective.
The result: a sealed leak and a repair we’re confident in long-term.
This was one of those jobs where patience mattered as much as technique.
Continuing the Freshwater Plumbing
With the leak behind us, we continued running PEX plumbing for the freshwater system into the galley. Each section completed brings us closer to having fully functional water systems again — a big quality-of-life milestone on any liveaboard refit.
In This Episode
- Measuring rigging components for mast and boom
- Planning and tracing the VHF cable run
- Fiberglass repair in tight spaces
- Creative epoxy techniques for leak repair
- Continued PEX plumbing installation
Looking Back to an Earlier Lesson
Some of this rigging work traces back to lessons learned the hard way — including a past failure that cost us our gennaker.
📺 Episode 14 – The one where the sheave broke and we lost our gennaker
https://youtu.be/RMrTujr7b6c?si=pdaKsK4Y9P5cAPXg
What Comes Next
With multiple systems inching forward, attention continues to shift between structural work and systems integration.
That momentum carries us into EP58, where deck prep moves forward — until winter weather forces us to rethink the plan yet again.
