11/11/11 Came and Went, But I'm Still Here.
12 11 2011 Posted by Daniel
I hope each of you had a really great 11/11!
I spent mine down in the depths of the engine bay, futilely trying to pull a prop coupling off the prop shaft. After breaking 2 5-ton pulling jaws I’ve given up - a friend is bringing a small cutting torch by and we are going to try that before giving up entirely on the prop coupling and just cutting it free with an angle grinder.
So! A recap of the year is due so far, with a few forward looking thoughts. I’m sure many of you are wondering what the timeframe looks like now, and so I’ll start with that first.
While the list of “to-do” projects has amazingly declined, the engine setback has had the biggest impact on my timeline with an estimated 2.5 month delay directly attributable to the engine problems. This moves the November 11 “readiness” date out to about the end of January. With a little bit of extra time for shakedown and “new feature testing” that will put a likely departure readiness at around late Feb/early March if things proceed apace from this point forward. All the other projects are actually being completed on time or early to this point, so I feel pretty good about the rest of the schedule.
I don’t have a clever date in that timeframe to put as a memorable target so why don’t we just say Leap Day, 29 Feb 2012? As good as any!
So what kind of stuff do you get to look forward to between now and then? Here’s a teaser:
Yep, I’m going to BUILD a dinghy - its going to be terrific and you’ll get a front row seat to that action. But more on these later, we’re still in the middle of an electric motor install.
Here’s where we are with that (sadly not as many pictures this time, but I’ll make up for it!):
The electrics are all ready and cabled. I broke down and spent the money for an AWESOME professional cable crimper which makes the hefty 2/0 and 4/0 crimp connections about as easy as stripping 10AWG wire. Seriously. I moved all the chargers to the now vacant engine compartment, rewired the main 12V electrical busses to make it easier to access and clean up some of the cabling, moved the 12V fuses into the battery compartment where they should have been this whole time, and installed 2 brand spanking new bilge pumps.
So that means there really is only one thing left to do: install the freaking engine already! And even with the momentum of all the recent progress behind me, I still ended up completely wasting an entire day working on a problem that isn’t solved yet: how to get the damn coupling off the prop shaft so I can put the new coupling on it! Ugh…
As soon as that’s done, I have another problem that also requires some creativity: the existing engine mounts are spaced a bit too widely for the electric motor mounts to reach. I have contacted Scott at Electric Yacht and we came up with a pretty clever plan for fixing it without resorting to significant carpentry. Naturally, though, it will delay me further. So it goes.
But, once those two issues are solved, I think we have this thing licked. While I’m waiting for my friend to arrive with an acetylene torch, I’m going to go cut holes in the cockpit coaming and install the throttle quadrant for the motor. For some inspiration, here is a photo of the engine during one of the test fit sessions:
Not bad, hm?
More to come, as usual. Stay tuned and thanks so much for reading.
___________ /) ___________
Categories : Personal UpdatesI spent mine down in the depths of the engine bay, futilely trying to pull a prop coupling off the prop shaft. After breaking 2 5-ton pulling jaws I’ve given up - a friend is bringing a small cutting torch by and we are going to try that before giving up entirely on the prop coupling and just cutting it free with an angle grinder.
So! A recap of the year is due so far, with a few forward looking thoughts. I’m sure many of you are wondering what the timeframe looks like now, and so I’ll start with that first.
While the list of “to-do” projects has amazingly declined, the engine setback has had the biggest impact on my timeline with an estimated 2.5 month delay directly attributable to the engine problems. This moves the November 11 “readiness” date out to about the end of January. With a little bit of extra time for shakedown and “new feature testing” that will put a likely departure readiness at around late Feb/early March if things proceed apace from this point forward. All the other projects are actually being completed on time or early to this point, so I feel pretty good about the rest of the schedule.
I don’t have a clever date in that timeframe to put as a memorable target so why don’t we just say Leap Day, 29 Feb 2012? As good as any!
So what kind of stuff do you get to look forward to between now and then? Here’s a teaser:
- A full re-rigging with the most traditional non-traditional materials you’ll ever see.
- New primary winches
- AIS, SSB, and other comms installation
- And the really FUN project: building a dinghy!
Yep, I’m going to BUILD a dinghy - its going to be terrific and you’ll get a front row seat to that action. But more on these later, we’re still in the middle of an electric motor install.
Here’s where we are with that (sadly not as many pictures this time, but I’ll make up for it!):
The electrics are all ready and cabled. I broke down and spent the money for an AWESOME professional cable crimper which makes the hefty 2/0 and 4/0 crimp connections about as easy as stripping 10AWG wire. Seriously. I moved all the chargers to the now vacant engine compartment, rewired the main 12V electrical busses to make it easier to access and clean up some of the cabling, moved the 12V fuses into the battery compartment where they should have been this whole time, and installed 2 brand spanking new bilge pumps.
So that means there really is only one thing left to do: install the freaking engine already! And even with the momentum of all the recent progress behind me, I still ended up completely wasting an entire day working on a problem that isn’t solved yet: how to get the damn coupling off the prop shaft so I can put the new coupling on it! Ugh…
As soon as that’s done, I have another problem that also requires some creativity: the existing engine mounts are spaced a bit too widely for the electric motor mounts to reach. I have contacted Scott at Electric Yacht and we came up with a pretty clever plan for fixing it without resorting to significant carpentry. Naturally, though, it will delay me further. So it goes.
But, once those two issues are solved, I think we have this thing licked. While I’m waiting for my friend to arrive with an acetylene torch, I’m going to go cut holes in the cockpit coaming and install the throttle quadrant for the motor. For some inspiration, here is a photo of the engine during one of the test fit sessions:
Not bad, hm?
More to come, as usual. Stay tuned and thanks so much for reading.
___________ /) ___________
