3 successes and a low blow...
07 09 2011 Posted by Daniel
I woke up Sunday morning with the vague feeling of unease that one typically associates with a night of hard partying the evening before. The kind of feeling you get when you know you drank a bit too much, and you think you did something you regret, but can’t quite remember all the details.
However, no such evening had recently happened, so as I rumbled around the cabin making my morning coffee and scrounging breakfast together I consulted the wrinkles of my brain to try and determine why I felt so unusually bummed out. Up to now I’ve had some really fantastic weeks: I’ve completed several projects on the to-do list, crossed another milestone off my list, and felt pretty decent about the financial plan moving forward. In fact, as of this holiday weekend alone, I’ve made major improvements to my navigation station, created a laptop mount out of plexiglass, and tweaked my newly installed Dyneema lifelines. I’ve even dug into my engine for some serious preventative maintenance and a bit of troubleshooting.
The engine! That was it — the source of my unease. While I had been working on it, I’d found a very serious problem, one that casts a shadow on my entire suite of plans for travel in the next year. And naturally, the significance of these issues has me very worried.
But let me back up for a second. There are a lot of neat accomplishments, lessons learned, and DIY solutions that I’ve put together over the past few weeks, and they deserve a bit of attention as well.
First up, after putting Aletheia back in the water after her bottom job, I got to work on her lifelines. I have no idea when they were last replaced, but the swages were showing all the classic signs of aging: rust trails, small cracks, and general evidence of fatigue. Making matters worse, I’d approached a fuel dock a wee bit too fast in a stiff crosswind when I was in New Orleans, and not only bent a stanchion but also raised a host of meathooks from the fine threads of the 7x19 lifeline wire which was overstressed in the immediate area of the bent stanchion. The fittings on both ends of that line were also cracked and bent. I’d crossed the lines to dock the boat a few weeks later and one of the meathooks sliced a neat cut in my foul weather gear as though it were a hot knife. In short: the lifelines were no longer a safety net - they were a liability.
Typical stanchions, prefabricated, often run about $60 new. I felt this was a ridiculous price to pay for a 24” piece of stainless tubing with a couple of holes drilled in it, so I went to the local boat parts wholesaler and purchased some stock stainless tubing, heavy walled, and a stanchion cap. Total cost: $20. A bit of careful drilling and some dremel work to polish up the edges of the holes, and I had a new stanchion.
My homebrew stanchion!
The lifelines themselves were only slightly more complicated. Instead of replacing the existing wire with more wire, I opted for the simple, extraordinarily strong, and exceptionally durable Dyneema fiber, a synthetic rope material (just as polyester and nylon are synthetic) which is, size for size, nearly twice as strong as steel and one sixth the weight. The really nice thing about Dyneema is that you don’t need to use fancy end fittings with it like you do with wire - a simple eye splice will do quite well. For the lifeline application, I used an eye splice with a ring hitch on one end, and an eye splice around a thimble for the other end. The thimbles I used are designed to be a part of a multi-purchase lashing and have a few extra nice features over a typical teardrop thimble. There are several rope companies that make line out of Dyneema, among them Samson’s Amsteel Blue (which I used for my soft shackles) and New England’s SKS-12/75, which is what I used for my lifelines (although I would use Amsteel Blue as well). John Franta at Colligo Marine was exceptionally helpful and supportive of my sailing plans and not only really helped me out with my project but he has also been extremely generous with his time and knowledge - I absolutely will work with Colligo Marine again in the future: in fact I have them earmarked for the supplies for my standing rigging, a project that is forthcoming. John designed the terminators I used for my lifelines and has pioneered the use of Dyneema fiber as a replacement for both stainless steel and PBO rigging - he does his work methodically, uses real data from destruction testing to back it up, and stands behind everything he sells.
The raw materials for my new lifelines.
Putting an eye in the Dyneema fiber is actually a very simple splice once you get the hang of it. I used a trick called a “mobius brummel” to double-lock the splice in place, this removes the need to stitch the throat of the splice and ensures an exceptionally secure tuck and bury. After performing the first splice, I would pull the entire lifeline to 2000 lbs for about 10 minutes using a rig I set up between two stout trees. I had a load cell and a vehicle recovery “come along” hand winch to put the tension on the lines. Once I had pulled out the constructional stretch and let the splice settle in, I could accurately measure the rest of the line and make my marks for the finishing splice.
A finished eye splice.
To a line they came out within 1 cm finished length of my target size, so I was exceptionally happy with my consistency in both splicing and tension. I lashed the ends with a Dyneema-cored lashing line called “Spyderline”, also by New England Ropes. Its also exceptionally strong and has a nice polyester cover so it doesn’t need splices, but can be tied in normal knots. I used a soft shackle and a pelican hook to make my lifeline gates and they work as absolutely conveniently as any normal lifeline gate does. Another clever use for a soft shackle, and another win for marlinspike seamanship.
Detail of the pelican hook and soft shackle gate closure.
The best part: I did it all by myself in a single afternoon, with a little bit of the splicing done the evening before. I paid no swaging costs, no end fittings beyond a handful of terminators and the two pelican hooks, and the lines are so strong that just two of them could lift my entire boat and still have a few thousand pounds of rated strength left.
Detail of a typical lifeline lashing - this is how you tension the lines.
The new chain pipe and chain - cleverly tucked away under the shore power. You don’t need to use the anchor when you have shore power hooked up!
Having an anchor ready to deploy from the stern can be extremely handy, so I’ve been collecting a new anchor setup for a while. Aletheia already has a stern anchor roller and pin, so all that was left was to install a chain pipe to the stern lazarette where I will be storing the rode. I scored a nice deal on a stainless chain pipe, and got to work.
Locating the chain pipe was the tricky part - the geometry of the stern storage was such that I needed to locate the pipe as near the intended compartment as possible, but the shore power plug, the anchor roller location, and the curvature of the stern required some adjustment to that location. In addition I did not want to put the chain pipe somewhere I would be likely to want to relax in the cockpit. Fortunately, comfort, convenience, and structural integrity all found a happy compromise, and with a bit of hand-sawing to cut the last bits that a power saw wouldn’t fit, I made the necessary incursion in the deck. There was a substantial 1/2” balsa core in this area, which I am happy to report was dry as a bone, and I chucked a bent nail in the drill and reamed it back about a 1/2” from the cutaway, filling the void with thickened epoxy. After that cured overnight I trimmed and sanded the hole again, drilled out the bolt holes, and through-bolted the chain pipe in place, sealing it and the bolts with a thick layer of 4000UV sealant to further ensure water integrity. With such a nice large chain pipe in place, the nylon rode is easy to stow below quickly and the chain can come out quickly as well. Plus, it has a spring-loaded lid which helps keep the majority of water out, and I can always cap it off with a heavy bung or other seal when heavy weather hits.
I can also easily and quickly redeploy the secondary rode forwards if necessary. I’ve put an FX-23 fortress anchor paired with 50 feet of 5/16” G4 chain and 150 feet of 5/8” six-plait nylon rode. I have another 300 feet of 3/4” double braid with a short length of chain ready as a tertiary anchor rode if necessary, also stored in an aft locker.
Despite the “age” on this photo it was taken yesterday of my latest navigation station mod - the laptop mount.
Another area of major TLC for the boat was the on-deck navigation suite. Having a ketch rig with the wheel in the after part of the cockpit, there isn’t a convenient pedestal to mount the navigation electronics upon. The cabin is too far away for convenience, the area around the wheel is both too low and also used for sitting and moving around, and the mizzen mast holds both the sensitive navigation compass as well as being directly in the way of going belowdecks, not a convenient spot to mount a host of bulky objects. I’d briefly considered mounting the suite of gear on one or the other coaming, but that proved both annoyingly inconvenient on one or the other tack, as well as blocking a substantial and desirable part of the cockpit seating and relaxing space. No good either. What to do?
It dawned on me that mounting the electronics hanging down from the solar panel arch might make good sense, so with a jigsaw, some scrap starboard, and a few stainless U-bolts, I’d soon fabricated a nice platform from which to begin the experiment.
Lo and behold, not only was it convenient, but it made running the cables a simple matter.
Inside, I made some changes as well. I installed a second VHF (this one integrates better with the AIS and DSC equipment I will be purchasing shortly, as well as offering a hailer function for fog signals) alongside my primary VHF. I’m still waiting on the antenna, but I’ll put it on the stern, on the opposite side from the AIS VHF whip.
Fabricating a laptop mount rounded out the navigation modifications. I needed a secure way to mount the laptop while underway, both for casual use and for navigation purposes. I’d seen a very clever idea at Anything Sailing and decided to make a few modifications to adapt it to my purposes. I didn’t want the “tray” to wrap up around the laptop edges for two reasons: I have a very thin laptop and any wrap would become annoying and block access to ports, plus I wanted to be able to use a variety of equipment on the tray and not just one specific laptop. So I opted to use Velcro to hold the laptop in place, and make the tray flat. I found some industrial velcro with heavy duty adhesive and applied the “rough” side to the tray and the “soft” side to the laptop. It holds the laptop on so securely that it takes considerable effort to lift the computer off the tray. I also did not want the screws to protrude in such a way as to scratch or dent the bottom of my computer, so I layered the acrylic. One layer, which was smaller, bolted directly to the mount. The other layer was the size of the laptop’s base dimensions and I drilled oversize holes to allow the heads of the screws to be completely inset. By gluing the upper layer to the lower one with acrylic cement, I was able to effectively countersink the bolts without running the risk of cracking the acrylic over time.
The unadorned laptop mount - extremely solid and yet lightweight and corrosion proof.
I’m so far very happy with the tray, but I ended up going up a size on the RAM mount - I’d originally used the “B” size ball mounts and the “C” size were much more suitable to holding the laptop steady while typing. Once I made that change, it was a perfect solution.
As I alluded to earlier, however, not all has been peachy on the progress front. The skeleton in the closet for this boat has been the engine and drivetrain, whose condition I was never very sure of and have always been a little suspicious about. Since I bought her, I’ve been somewhat constantly performing a variety of maintenance tasks, including replacing the exhaust system, cleaning out the heat exchanger, and generally doing all the preventative maintenance that one typically does. But this weekend, having a little extra time on my hands, I decided to start tackling some of the unknowns and uncluttering some of the horrific mess of fuel lines and rusted valves and ancient pumps that the previous owner had left in a nearly undecipherable tangle of razor sharp hose clamps and frozen fittings.
Before diving into the engine, I knew a few things that needed work already. The oil cooler was corroding visibly, the heat exchanger had a lot of buildup in the tubes that two previous acid cleanings failed to remove, so a new exchanger was also on the agenda, and the freshwater pump was visibly leaking - a clear indication that it was past due for a rebuild. No big deal - except rebuild kits for this model pump are nearly impossible to come by these days and apparently all the shops try to sell you a new one. I have one spare, but what happens when, inevitably, it also begins to leak, when I am on some island in the middle of nowhere? Its a big chunk of change, let me tell you…
The corroding top on the oil cooler can be clearly seen here. The high pressure hoses to its left also failed.
As I started removing parts to access the oil cooler and water pump, I began seeing signs that problems were not restricted to “normal” maintenance items. The first indication was the oil cooler high pressure hoses, which literally disintegrated when I gently twisted them away from the cooler. The second clue was the utter lack of an installed zinc in the oil cooler - a cooler I was told specifically did not have a zinc. Well, the PO was right… there was no zinc in the oil cooler. But there sure should have been. With serious corrosion around the exterior and a missing zinc inside, a new cooler was quickly added to the list of stuff to get.
Then I got the rudest shock of them all: while removing the freshwater radiator hose from the exhaust manifold, the entire hose nipple came off with the hose. This is a solid block of cast iron with integral nipples, and the corrosion left the iron weak, crumbly, and a light gray color. The nipple on the front of the manifold was not as weak, but showed the same signs of corrosion damage and impending problems. In short, the manifold was a ticking bomb on the whole engine.
When I tallied up the replacement, repair, and rebuild costs for the various components that I now knew needed work, I realized that the cost was approaching the “Very High Number At Which I Previously Decided to Reevaluate the Engine’s Existence”, and I still did not know what surprises the rest of the engine might have in store. Some serious thought was required as to how I was going to approach this situation.
Regardless of the decision, though, one thing is sure: this has definitely blown my November 11 “ready-by” date, and my current budget, completely out of the water. Bummer.
Stay tuned for more updates on the engine saga, and a plot twist which is currently in the works…
P.S. If any of you have Twitter, I post various thoughts, mutterings, and updates too trivial or undeveloped to blog about on my twitter feed: @OddaSeaBlog. Click here to
____ /) _____
Categories : Maintenance / Repairs, My Boat, Ship EquipmentHowever, no such evening had recently happened, so as I rumbled around the cabin making my morning coffee and scrounging breakfast together I consulted the wrinkles of my brain to try and determine why I felt so unusually bummed out. Up to now I’ve had some really fantastic weeks: I’ve completed several projects on the to-do list, crossed another milestone off my list, and felt pretty decent about the financial plan moving forward. In fact, as of this holiday weekend alone, I’ve made major improvements to my navigation station, created a laptop mount out of plexiglass, and tweaked my newly installed Dyneema lifelines. I’ve even dug into my engine for some serious preventative maintenance and a bit of troubleshooting.
The engine! That was it — the source of my unease. While I had been working on it, I’d found a very serious problem, one that casts a shadow on my entire suite of plans for travel in the next year. And naturally, the significance of these issues has me very worried.
But let me back up for a second. There are a lot of neat accomplishments, lessons learned, and DIY solutions that I’ve put together over the past few weeks, and they deserve a bit of attention as well.
Lifelines
First up, after putting Aletheia back in the water after her bottom job, I got to work on her lifelines. I have no idea when they were last replaced, but the swages were showing all the classic signs of aging: rust trails, small cracks, and general evidence of fatigue. Making matters worse, I’d approached a fuel dock a wee bit too fast in a stiff crosswind when I was in New Orleans, and not only bent a stanchion but also raised a host of meathooks from the fine threads of the 7x19 lifeline wire which was overstressed in the immediate area of the bent stanchion. The fittings on both ends of that line were also cracked and bent. I’d crossed the lines to dock the boat a few weeks later and one of the meathooks sliced a neat cut in my foul weather gear as though it were a hot knife. In short: the lifelines were no longer a safety net - they were a liability.
Typical stanchions, prefabricated, often run about $60 new. I felt this was a ridiculous price to pay for a 24” piece of stainless tubing with a couple of holes drilled in it, so I went to the local boat parts wholesaler and purchased some stock stainless tubing, heavy walled, and a stanchion cap. Total cost: $20. A bit of careful drilling and some dremel work to polish up the edges of the holes, and I had a new stanchion.
My homebrew stanchion!
The lifelines themselves were only slightly more complicated. Instead of replacing the existing wire with more wire, I opted for the simple, extraordinarily strong, and exceptionally durable Dyneema fiber, a synthetic rope material (just as polyester and nylon are synthetic) which is, size for size, nearly twice as strong as steel and one sixth the weight. The really nice thing about Dyneema is that you don’t need to use fancy end fittings with it like you do with wire - a simple eye splice will do quite well. For the lifeline application, I used an eye splice with a ring hitch on one end, and an eye splice around a thimble for the other end. The thimbles I used are designed to be a part of a multi-purchase lashing and have a few extra nice features over a typical teardrop thimble. There are several rope companies that make line out of Dyneema, among them Samson’s Amsteel Blue (which I used for my soft shackles) and New England’s SKS-12/75, which is what I used for my lifelines (although I would use Amsteel Blue as well). John Franta at Colligo Marine was exceptionally helpful and supportive of my sailing plans and not only really helped me out with my project but he has also been extremely generous with his time and knowledge - I absolutely will work with Colligo Marine again in the future: in fact I have them earmarked for the supplies for my standing rigging, a project that is forthcoming. John designed the terminators I used for my lifelines and has pioneered the use of Dyneema fiber as a replacement for both stainless steel and PBO rigging - he does his work methodically, uses real data from destruction testing to back it up, and stands behind everything he sells.
The raw materials for my new lifelines.
Putting an eye in the Dyneema fiber is actually a very simple splice once you get the hang of it. I used a trick called a “mobius brummel” to double-lock the splice in place, this removes the need to stitch the throat of the splice and ensures an exceptionally secure tuck and bury. After performing the first splice, I would pull the entire lifeline to 2000 lbs for about 10 minutes using a rig I set up between two stout trees. I had a load cell and a vehicle recovery “come along” hand winch to put the tension on the lines. Once I had pulled out the constructional stretch and let the splice settle in, I could accurately measure the rest of the line and make my marks for the finishing splice.
A finished eye splice.
To a line they came out within 1 cm finished length of my target size, so I was exceptionally happy with my consistency in both splicing and tension. I lashed the ends with a Dyneema-cored lashing line called “Spyderline”, also by New England Ropes. Its also exceptionally strong and has a nice polyester cover so it doesn’t need splices, but can be tied in normal knots. I used a soft shackle and a pelican hook to make my lifeline gates and they work as absolutely conveniently as any normal lifeline gate does. Another clever use for a soft shackle, and another win for marlinspike seamanship.
Detail of the pelican hook and soft shackle gate closure.
The best part: I did it all by myself in a single afternoon, with a little bit of the splicing done the evening before. I paid no swaging costs, no end fittings beyond a handful of terminators and the two pelican hooks, and the lines are so strong that just two of them could lift my entire boat and still have a few thousand pounds of rated strength left.
Detail of a typical lifeline lashing - this is how you tension the lines.
Stern Chain Pipe
The new chain pipe and chain - cleverly tucked away under the shore power. You don’t need to use the anchor when you have shore power hooked up!
Having an anchor ready to deploy from the stern can be extremely handy, so I’ve been collecting a new anchor setup for a while. Aletheia already has a stern anchor roller and pin, so all that was left was to install a chain pipe to the stern lazarette where I will be storing the rode. I scored a nice deal on a stainless chain pipe, and got to work.
Locating the chain pipe was the tricky part - the geometry of the stern storage was such that I needed to locate the pipe as near the intended compartment as possible, but the shore power plug, the anchor roller location, and the curvature of the stern required some adjustment to that location. In addition I did not want to put the chain pipe somewhere I would be likely to want to relax in the cockpit. Fortunately, comfort, convenience, and structural integrity all found a happy compromise, and with a bit of hand-sawing to cut the last bits that a power saw wouldn’t fit, I made the necessary incursion in the deck. There was a substantial 1/2” balsa core in this area, which I am happy to report was dry as a bone, and I chucked a bent nail in the drill and reamed it back about a 1/2” from the cutaway, filling the void with thickened epoxy. After that cured overnight I trimmed and sanded the hole again, drilled out the bolt holes, and through-bolted the chain pipe in place, sealing it and the bolts with a thick layer of 4000UV sealant to further ensure water integrity. With such a nice large chain pipe in place, the nylon rode is easy to stow below quickly and the chain can come out quickly as well. Plus, it has a spring-loaded lid which helps keep the majority of water out, and I can always cap it off with a heavy bung or other seal when heavy weather hits.
I can also easily and quickly redeploy the secondary rode forwards if necessary. I’ve put an FX-23 fortress anchor paired with 50 feet of 5/16” G4 chain and 150 feet of 5/8” six-plait nylon rode. I have another 300 feet of 3/4” double braid with a short length of chain ready as a tertiary anchor rode if necessary, also stored in an aft locker.
Navigation Station Mods
Despite the “age” on this photo it was taken yesterday of my latest navigation station mod - the laptop mount.
Another area of major TLC for the boat was the on-deck navigation suite. Having a ketch rig with the wheel in the after part of the cockpit, there isn’t a convenient pedestal to mount the navigation electronics upon. The cabin is too far away for convenience, the area around the wheel is both too low and also used for sitting and moving around, and the mizzen mast holds both the sensitive navigation compass as well as being directly in the way of going belowdecks, not a convenient spot to mount a host of bulky objects. I’d briefly considered mounting the suite of gear on one or the other coaming, but that proved both annoyingly inconvenient on one or the other tack, as well as blocking a substantial and desirable part of the cockpit seating and relaxing space. No good either. What to do?
It dawned on me that mounting the electronics hanging down from the solar panel arch might make good sense, so with a jigsaw, some scrap starboard, and a few stainless U-bolts, I’d soon fabricated a nice platform from which to begin the experiment.
Lo and behold, not only was it convenient, but it made running the cables a simple matter.
Inside, I made some changes as well. I installed a second VHF (this one integrates better with the AIS and DSC equipment I will be purchasing shortly, as well as offering a hailer function for fog signals) alongside my primary VHF. I’m still waiting on the antenna, but I’ll put it on the stern, on the opposite side from the AIS VHF whip.
Fabricating a laptop mount rounded out the navigation modifications. I needed a secure way to mount the laptop while underway, both for casual use and for navigation purposes. I’d seen a very clever idea at Anything Sailing and decided to make a few modifications to adapt it to my purposes. I didn’t want the “tray” to wrap up around the laptop edges for two reasons: I have a very thin laptop and any wrap would become annoying and block access to ports, plus I wanted to be able to use a variety of equipment on the tray and not just one specific laptop. So I opted to use Velcro to hold the laptop in place, and make the tray flat. I found some industrial velcro with heavy duty adhesive and applied the “rough” side to the tray and the “soft” side to the laptop. It holds the laptop on so securely that it takes considerable effort to lift the computer off the tray. I also did not want the screws to protrude in such a way as to scratch or dent the bottom of my computer, so I layered the acrylic. One layer, which was smaller, bolted directly to the mount. The other layer was the size of the laptop’s base dimensions and I drilled oversize holes to allow the heads of the screws to be completely inset. By gluing the upper layer to the lower one with acrylic cement, I was able to effectively countersink the bolts without running the risk of cracking the acrylic over time.
The unadorned laptop mount - extremely solid and yet lightweight and corrosion proof.
I’m so far very happy with the tray, but I ended up going up a size on the RAM mount - I’d originally used the “B” size ball mounts and the “C” size were much more suitable to holding the laptop steady while typing. Once I made that change, it was a perfect solution.
Engine Trouble
As I alluded to earlier, however, not all has been peachy on the progress front. The skeleton in the closet for this boat has been the engine and drivetrain, whose condition I was never very sure of and have always been a little suspicious about. Since I bought her, I’ve been somewhat constantly performing a variety of maintenance tasks, including replacing the exhaust system, cleaning out the heat exchanger, and generally doing all the preventative maintenance that one typically does. But this weekend, having a little extra time on my hands, I decided to start tackling some of the unknowns and uncluttering some of the horrific mess of fuel lines and rusted valves and ancient pumps that the previous owner had left in a nearly undecipherable tangle of razor sharp hose clamps and frozen fittings.
Before diving into the engine, I knew a few things that needed work already. The oil cooler was corroding visibly, the heat exchanger had a lot of buildup in the tubes that two previous acid cleanings failed to remove, so a new exchanger was also on the agenda, and the freshwater pump was visibly leaking - a clear indication that it was past due for a rebuild. No big deal - except rebuild kits for this model pump are nearly impossible to come by these days and apparently all the shops try to sell you a new one. I have one spare, but what happens when, inevitably, it also begins to leak, when I am on some island in the middle of nowhere? Its a big chunk of change, let me tell you…
The corroding top on the oil cooler can be clearly seen here. The high pressure hoses to its left also failed.
As I started removing parts to access the oil cooler and water pump, I began seeing signs that problems were not restricted to “normal” maintenance items. The first indication was the oil cooler high pressure hoses, which literally disintegrated when I gently twisted them away from the cooler. The second clue was the utter lack of an installed zinc in the oil cooler - a cooler I was told specifically did not have a zinc. Well, the PO was right… there was no zinc in the oil cooler. But there sure should have been. With serious corrosion around the exterior and a missing zinc inside, a new cooler was quickly added to the list of stuff to get.
Then I got the rudest shock of them all: while removing the freshwater radiator hose from the exhaust manifold, the entire hose nipple came off with the hose. This is a solid block of cast iron with integral nipples, and the corrosion left the iron weak, crumbly, and a light gray color. The nipple on the front of the manifold was not as weak, but showed the same signs of corrosion damage and impending problems. In short, the manifold was a ticking bomb on the whole engine.
When I tallied up the replacement, repair, and rebuild costs for the various components that I now knew needed work, I realized that the cost was approaching the “Very High Number At Which I Previously Decided to Reevaluate the Engine’s Existence”, and I still did not know what surprises the rest of the engine might have in store. Some serious thought was required as to how I was going to approach this situation.
Regardless of the decision, though, one thing is sure: this has definitely blown my November 11 “ready-by” date, and my current budget, completely out of the water. Bummer.
Stay tuned for more updates on the engine saga, and a plot twist which is currently in the works…
P.S. If any of you have Twitter, I post various thoughts, mutterings, and updates too trivial or undeveloped to blog about on my twitter feed: @OddaSeaBlog. Click here to
____ /) _____
