Odda Sea - Life Aboard An Allied Princess Sailing Yacht - My Boat

An "instant" fiberglass hard dodger - Part 2, The Arch

nospam@example.com (Daniel) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 04:48:48 +0000

In the previous installment on this subject, I covered the origin and general construction of a hard dodger for my boat.

The dodger in and of itself is a lot of nice protection, especially for the companionway area and the very forward ends of the cockpit. However, it’s not quite the right size, shape, or position to put the solar panels, nor does it provide any shelter overhead from rain for those sitting in the cockpit proper. For this we need to extend a covering back aft to a strong support where the panels will also attach. The most useful structure for doing this efficiently is to simply put an arch across the cockpit wherever we want it, and to span the space between the arch and the dodger with a waterproof canvas. In this case, the canvas makes good sense because it’s removable if we don’t want it, if it goes overboard in a heavy wave we don’t lose the protection afforded by the dodger, and it’s lightweight and easily replaced unlike the complex shapes of a canvas dodger and frame structure. The arch, on the other hand, must be quite solid.

I designed the arch to be able to do chin-ups on with regularity, although the height is not optimal since it must roughly match the dodger’s. I did not want the arch height to exceed the dodger height, even though that would be convenient for standing under. The main reason was that I wanted the solar panels to be relatively flat in case the sun was shining from aft, to at least pick up some power. Another reason was that it would create even more windage. A hard dodger is effectively permanent windage on a boat, and though I tried to make mine rather low and at least somewhat aerodynamic (haha) it will present some not-insignificant windage, especially in very strong winds. I did not want the arch to add significantly to this.

So the arch needed to match the dodger’s height and camber, and be quite strong. Initially I decided to go with a laminate of plywood (the Luan doorskins again as they bend easily to match curves, are generally a quality wood, and are inexpensive so I can template as I go). I set up the arch shapes for the crossbeam and, just for an extra measure of strength and hopefully some stiffness, I added some carbonfiber tape to the laminate as well. Here they are curing on the forms:

However, despite being much stiffer than ordinary plywood, they were still relatively too flexible for what I was looking for. And in this moment I learned a very important lesson: strength does not equal stiffness.

For a particular structure to be strong it simply needs to be built of materials with high tensile and shear strength. A few layers of kevlar, carbon fiber, or even multiple layers of fiberglass can all accomplish this. However, this often creates a very strong structure that is rather flexible at the same time - much like a willow tree is very strong but also flexible. After some research and consultation, again mostly with Bob, I found a solution. To add the stiffness easily, without adding significant weight or expense in exotic materials, I resorted to a construction called the “torsion box”. In fact, the torsion box form of construction is so stiff that I didn’t need any exotic fibers at all, and so with the exception of re-using the laminate I’d already made with the carbon fiber in it, I made the entire structure out of simple wood, epoxy, and fiberglass as I did with the dodger.

The first step was to re-laminate the arch crosspiece to match the dodger curve. This time, I did it directly on the dodger, screwing the wood pieces together to clamp the epoxy in place. I added an extra block to increase the curve, knowing that to some small degree the entire piece would spring back a bit when I released it. I wanted the natural curve of the piece to be that of the dodger, so this extra block compensates for that springback.

To add the stiffness via the torsion box, I added some 1/2” rips of 1” dimensional cypress wood to the edges of both sides of the laminate. In the photo, the top side is getting these pieces.

The wood strips were then topped with another sheet of plywood, forming a hollow beam with the two layers of plywood as the surfaces and the wood strips as the sides.

I constructed the side pieces of the arch the same way, but was able to glue them up as a complete unit in one go since there was no complicated curve to worry about.

The box structure is clearly visible here.

It makes a very nice wood pattern on the sides too.

The arch crosspiece getting the final surface installed. The epoxy bottles help ensure that the extra pieces conform to the curve already in the previous laminates, rather than trying to pull those laminates straight.

The finished crosspiece is a very nice piece of work. I got a lot of compliments on the dock for this one.

The arch with sidepieces installed, getting a test fit in the cockpit. The dodger is flipped up behind it for a layer of filler before final sanding and painting.

Getting the angles right… note the laminated bases for the arch to adjust the final height, and the temporarily-screwed-in-place side pieces to ensure the feet of the arch stay in position until the epoxy cures. These were super helpful additions to help “flow” the arch structure into the boat and hold it in place during initial curing.

Using some cheap conduit to help align the arch and dodger, and to layout the solar panel mount spacing.

The arch got a full coat of fiberglass, with extra reinforcements in the corners and at the base. I was able to do a chin-up without the arch moving much if at all. It definitely feels rock solid and like a part of the boat!

In part 3 I’ll cover finishing the arch and dodger and installing the solar panels.

__________/)________

An "instant" fiberglass hard dodger - Part 1

nospam@example.com (Daniel) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 04:14:00 +0000

March blew by in a hurry, and April seems to be going the same way. There’s a LOT to catch up on here on the blog, but I’m still short on time to really convey the progress. I hope to write better single-topic articles on some of these endeavours before too long, but don’t hold your breath. As is the norm for now, here are some photos with brief captions.

In early March, the masts went in and a variety of preparation projects took place, including mast wiring, some electric motor troubleshooting, and the like. More interestingly, the yards and booms were crafted from Douglas-fir, but that was really just a simple matter of taking appropriately thick lumber, cutting it with a circular saw, sanding, routing, and painting. Nothing particularly fascinating or challenging there. The REAL items of interest came the weeks following. Today’s post is about one of them.

First, the sheeting arrangement for the mainsail required access for the sheets from the aft end of the cockpit. No big deal, as the mizzen already sheeted from there and the Junk rig’s loads are not radically worse. I just needed to strengthen the sheeting point and be done with it… except there was the issue of the solar panel arch, which was right in the way of the sheets and could not be accommodated in the new rig.

The arch in question can be seen above the cockpit in this image… if you look hard enough.

So the solar panels needed a new home, and I took advantage of this disruption to begin constructing something I’ve wanted for quite some time - a hard dodger. For those of you who aren’t familiar with what a “dodger” is… it’s sort of like a “windshield” for the cockpit - in the photo above you can see how effectively exposed the cockpit of the boat is, and since it’s the point of control for the sails, rudder, and other important aspects of the ship, the crew needs to be there regardless of the weather. Having a bit of protection from the wind, spray, and even the occasional overly friendly large wave is no bad thing, and can help keep the crew safe, warm(er), dry(er), and generally in better spirits.

The vast majority of sailboats out there, if they have a dodger at all, have a cloth one stretched over some relatively lightweight frames made often of stainless or aluminum tubing. This, in my opinion, is both a pain in the ass to make and easily destroyed if a person falls on it, the sun shines on it too long, or even a reasonable, moderate wave comes aboard with some intent. Any dodger, hard, soft, or otherwise, can in theory be carried away by the wrong sort of wave entirely, but the type of dodger I had in mind would be vastly less easy to coerce off the deck.

Now, a lot of people have talked about hard dodgers on sailboats before, but often what they mean is a dodger with a hard top that they can get up on, but retaining the cloth “windshield” portion. Again, not something I’m interested in.

I consulted with the eminently sensible and general expert in getting-things-done-right-for-cheap Bob over at Boat Bits (I’ve mentioned him before on this site a few times - he really is a sharp chap and thinks waaaaay outside the box as a matter of habit). His idea was clever: just build the dodger with plywood, using the “stitch and glue” method I’d just built my dinghy with. Then cover the whole works with fiberglass inside and out, and hey presto! you have a dodger which will stand up to most any abuse, look great while doing it, and be easy to build.

Now, I know that Bob can turn one of these out in about a week flat, and to be fair, I was able to do that for the basic frame and glasswork as well. But my finishing has really taken some time (not to mention I’ve been distracted by some other side projects which I’ll get to talking about shortly) so it’s not fully complete. That said, here are the photos of the templating, layout, and initial build.

I lay out the template using Luan doorskin plywood, 3-layer at about 1/4” thick. The heights will be adjusted later, here I’m trying some various angles and combinations to see what looks good.

Another view of the templating process.

Capping the final template with a roof piece, prior to trimming. I set the camber of the roof piece using a laminated curve of the same doorskin plywood, glueing two pieces back-to-back for stiffness, and then stitching that using aluminum electric fence wire to the roof piece. I tried two different camber heights before I got the look and companionway clearance I needed.

Another view of the template as I did some last minute fiddling.

I added some extensions to the sides and top to help keep a bit more spray off an occupant huddled behind it as the boat heels over a bit.

Here you can see the height of the dodger versus the old height of the arch, which is shortly to be removed.

The inside of the dodger after the fillets and glass layers cured.

The dodger gets a heavy coat of fiberglass and fillets inside and out, to encapsulate the template as a core. Now the dodger is a very strong, rigid structure with its own 3-D integrity and durability. It weighs about 35-40 lbs with the glass, wood, and all the epoxy on it. Not bad for something that started as two sheets of plywood!

In the next installment on this subject I’ll cover the companion piece to the dodger, the cockpit arch.

Stay tuned!

___________/)_________

Boat 2.0 - The Revolution Begins

nospam@example.com (Daniel) — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 21:07:24 +0000

I’ve been threatening for quite some time to discuss the repairs to Aletheia and the new rig she’s going to get after her dismasting. Well, I’m comfortable enough with the plan moving forward to finally share some of it with you, so hang on to your seats ladies and gents; this is about to get radically different from what you’re used to.

First, a sneak preview of the new rig design, courtesy the naval architecture expertise of Tad Roberts, my architect:

That’s right, folks, she’s going to be a schooner when this is all said and done! And not just any schooner, but a Chinese lug sail, also known as a “junk” rig. This rig is notable for its lack of stays, its simplicity, reliability, and ease of singlehanding - all important advantages for the type of sailing I’m planning to do.

The first and most significant bit of reconstruction necessary for this conversion was to relocate a hatch which is in the center of the cabintop. This isn’t a big deal, but it does involve a bit of fiberglass work and some nasty grinding.

First step was to cut the hatch out:

After that I ground the interior and exterior skins on the cored deck back about 3” in a bevel to provide for good bonding strength for the new fiberglass:

This required me to build a temporary “grinding booth” inside the boat using a drop cloth to contain the horrid fiberglass dust. I’m very glad that part is done now!

Next up I’ll be filling in the deck core and putting a fiberglass laminate on each side for strength. Once that’s done, I can do some final reinforcements to the deck structure in preparation for installing the mast partners.

Building the CLC Eastport Pram - A Wooden Sailing Dinghy (Part 2)

nospam@example.com (Daniel) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 06:39:11 +0000

We left off in Part 1 with the hull glued together and a layer of fiberglass on both sides of the bottom panel.

After trimming the edges of the fiberglass, the general hull shape is left:

The next task is to fill in the bulkheads which add rigidity and further shape to the hull:

Note that in this photo I’ve also gone ahead and epoxied the interior of the space inside the fore and aft thwarts which will become sealed floatation chambers. At this point I must have made a slight mistake in the positioning of the forward bulkhead, but this will show up later. Thinking back I can’t recall exactly where the mistake was made, but I believe it was from referring to the forward transom as a measurement. The transom angles forward and I believe the measurements on the drawings were referenced to the very forward edge of the transom. It’s likely that I may have measured from the edge at the height of the bulkhead instead, which would put the bulkhead a couple centimetres behind where it should have been. The point isn’t exactly where it happened, the point is that measuring accurately isn’t the whole story - it’s important, especially on a boat, to understand where the reference point is.

The next part was a lot of fun, as I got to use every single clamp I own (and a bunch more I had to buy besides) all at once, to glue together the laminated gunwales:

Once these cure, the rest of the assembly should go pretty quickly, so stay tuned and we’ll come back once the epoxy sets and I’ve done the other side.

_______/)________

That's Not a Chainplate... THIS is a Chainplate!

nospam@example.com (Daniel) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 03:25:13 +0000

chainplate |ˈCHānˌplāt| noun
A strong link or plate on the hull of a sailboat or sailing ship, to which a shroud is secured.

A relatively clean chainplate freshly removed from the deck joint.

Salt water does a pretty nasty job of corroding nearly every metal it comes into contact with sooner or later. Stainless steel, while higher up on the list of corrosion-resistant alloys, is definitely not invulnerable. Chromium oxide forms an extremely thin protective layer on the surface of the metal, and in cases where salt water is trapped against stainless steel without the ability for oxygen to get to the steel surface, this protective layer breaks down extremely quickly, allowing even stainless steel to rust away like plain iron. In particular this occurs in small crevice fractures or scratches on stainless surfaces, and because of the capillary action of the crevice, oxygen is excluded and salt water is drawn inwards, causing a continuation of the crack. This “crevice corrosion” is a key vulnerability of stainless alloys in the marine environment, and nowhere is it more dangerous, nor more likely, than at the location where a mission-critical chainplate passes through the deck of the boat on its way to a strong attachment point to the hull.

This passage is open to the seawater and salt spray on the deck side, and contains a transition between the steel and a sealing adhesive which seals the gap between the chainplate and the deck. As the boat’s hull moves under the pressure of the waves and the forces of the rigging, this adhesive bond, over time, inevitably breaks down, at first letting just the slightest amount of seawater in. If the boat is sailed frequently this may not be a serious problem for a long time, as the seawater gets squeezed out and fresh water, which does contain just enough oxygen to maintain the steel’s protection, is added. But if the boat sits for an extended period of time, or the gap is large enough that the water at the bottom, closest to the chainplate, does not get replaced nor oxygen allowed in, well, you have a recipe for a rapidly failing piece of metal whose sole purpose is to hold your mast upright. When that fails… well, it’s bad. Real bad.

I tell you this because I spent a significant amount of time, shed a significant amount of blood, and used a significant amount of curse words replacing, upgrading, and generally working hard on my boat’s chainplates to forestall this event. If the chainplates are removed, inspected, replaced as necessary, and re-sealed with fresh sealant every so often, hopefully any potential corrosion will be caught well before it is dangerous and at the very least one knows their rig is in good shape. Just like pulling the masts and checking them over when taking new ownership of a vessel, pulling the chainplates is another common and important task. It’s easier to pull the chainplates when the mast is already down and nothing is attached to them, so that is precisely what I did.

In order to get a chainplate out, not only do you unbolt it from belowdecks, but you must also cut away the sealant at the deck. Often, due to the importance of this location and the tough physical demands placed on the sealant, this is an extremely durable and tenacious adhesive. Removing it is not for the faint of heart and people have resorted to blowtorches, power tools, and other craziness. The goal is to free the chainplates and clean the hole of residual adhesive in preparation for bonding a new sealant in place after the inspection. I was fortunate, to a degree, in that the previous owner seemed to be a sensible sort and bonded the chainplates with a less-tenacious adhesive. This meant that it only took about an hour per chainplate to chisel, scrape, and hack my way through the rubbery goop to freedom, instead of a potential half-day or so. Once the chainplates were freed from their adhesive prison, I was able to clean them up and get a feel for how corroded they were.

Many of them were surprisingly clean and in good shape, and the adhesive protection the previous owner had applied looked to be professionally done and extremely durable. This gave me good confidence that this boat seals well when done right and does not wiggle and warp too much while underway.

However, there were a few chainplates where the sealant was either not done as well or an older and even less durable adhesive was used. In these cases, the chainplates were showing signs of accelerated corrosion, though none of them were anywhere (yet) close to what I would consider dangerous. It was for precisely these situations that I went to the trouble of pulling them, however.

I must go further!

Unsatisfied with simply inspecting the existing chainplates, though, I had already prepared by buying new, slightly larger stainless steel bar stock in order to accommodate some calculations I had done on potential rigging forces in extreme circumstances. These were not excessively large, but they give me a greater degree of confidence in their ability to handle edge cases such as knockdowns.

A “mill finish” rough surface on a freshly drilled chainplate. This is how they looked as I got them from the machine shop.

I had the stock chainplate hole pattern drilled in the new bar stock, and then I took to polishing the stock by hand as best as I could to remove those nasty, sneaky crevices and ensure a smooth surface for fresh adhesive to stick to.

An assortment of new chainplate stock on the box to the left, with a few old chainplates off to the right. Note the corrosion on the angle chainplate.

Putting a mirror finish on the chainplates with progressive sanding, then polishing, and finally buffing.

Please note: angle grinders, particularly those equipped with the nastier grades of grinding discs and/or heavy sanding wheels, are indiscriminate when it comes to what they are grinding, shredding, or generally destroying. This includes your fingers or other body parts. Please wear gloves when using these beasts as even the slightest contact can result in losing the skin off a knuckle for the better part of a week and suffering some intense pain as the nerves in that frequently used part of your finger regrow. This has been a safety advisory of The Oddasea Project. Thank you.

I spent nearly 8 hours standing in a shop and polishing the upper two-thirds of the chainplates until they had a literal mirror-finish to them. This reduces or eliminates the micro-cracks and crevices in the surface. Finally, a friend of mine who works with oil and gas hooked me up with a nasty acid which is specifically designed to chemically “passivate” the metal by creating a fluoride bond of some sort which is much much tougher than the chromium oxide layer to break down. This helps “seal off” any residual crevices and gives the stainless as much protection as I could afford to give it short of fancy electrochemical treatments and space-age techniques. To be honest, if I were going to go to that much trouble I would have just used titanium to begin with, as it does not have the crevice corrosion problem and is much more durable in seawater. If I ever have to replace these chainplates, I will almost certainly take a hard look at titanium.

Once the chainplates were polished and passivated, they were ready to be installed. This part was astonishingly easy compared to the trouble of pulling the old ones and fabricating the new. Besides simply applying adhesive sealant to the chainplate and the deck to fill the gap, I also cut a few layers of red SBR rubber to help provide a compression seal at the deck level. Combined with a metal cover plate which squeezes the rubber against the deck, the SBR helps provide some extra sealing and enhances the motion tolerance of the adhesive sealant, as well as protecting the sealant from UV. All of these combined will help give that joint as much possible resistance to the elements and the harsh duties of strong winds and salt water as possible.

With all the goop from the sealant going around, I didn’t break out a camera to get any photos of the final job, but if you’ll hold tight until I get around to the re-rigging and putting the masts back on, you’ll get a good shot of the final setup in context.

Let’s hope they give this girl a long and healthy life!

______/)______

Building the CLC Eastport Pram - A Wooden Sailing Dinghy (Part 1)

nospam@example.com (Daniel) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 03:06:43 +0000

Let’s talk about the little bugger who has been consuming my weekends so far! This saucy little craft is a Chesapeake Light Craft (CLC, for those in the know) Eastport Pram. She’s not quite 2.3 metres long with a dry mass a smidge over 34 kg. In other words, light enough for me to deadlift aboard if I need to, and short enough to fit either on my foredeck or under my main boom on the cabin top. Pardon the camera-phone quality photos in this post.

Oh, and she’s a kit that I have to assemble. But that’s really the whole point, as building a dinghy is something I’ve wanted to do for quite a long time. Some of my first sailing was done in a dinghy and I have always found there to be something quite nice about small wooden boats. But, I had the challenge of needing a dinghy in a bit of a short time, and also of not having a garage or place to build one. So I enlisted a similarly-interested friend who likewise was short of a shop. We split the rent on a storage unit with “climate control” and set about cohabiting the unit with two wooden boats in the process of construction. To help save time, I purchased the kit for the pram from CLC directly, which includes the wood, largely pre-cut and pre-drilled for stitch-and-glue construction. This saves a huge amount of time transferring the plans to plywood, cutting them out, and rabbeting laps in the strakes.

Detail of the “lapstitch” pseudo-lapstrake construction.

The CLC kit is very well done, and the documentation is superb. I won’t say either is perfect, as there were some things in the documentation that were either omitted (likely from the assumption that they would be obvious) or not exactly explained in sufficient detail as to be clear, but with a fair bit of muddling and some online research, I was able to figure everything out. I never needed to go so far as to call CLC for help, and I would describe the documentation, particularly compared to many kit boats, as being excellent, so don’t take my nitpicking to mean anything significant. I mainly chose the kit to help save time, though my friend opted to build a simpler, but non-kit boat so I got the experience of helping loft those plans.

The kit helpfully includes all the fiberglass, epoxy, and copper staple wire needed to assemble the boat, and I even saw a few syringes for epoxy injection and other necessary tools. It does NOT include mixing cups, fillet sticks, or other epoxy handling tools such as gloves, brushes, or rollers, so you will need to bring your own for those.

I’m not really going to go into a lot of detail step-by-step on the building, partly because it’s been done in many other blogs for this exact boat, but also because I’d rather you be able to view the progress as I go along and do it without a whole lot of running commentary, so now that I’ve explained a bit about what it is and why I’m building it, I’ll mostly let the photos tell the story from here.

This is one project that is very much still ongoing so I can’t yet tell you how she’s turned out, but I can definitely say that so far, so great!

The photo from the teaser is of the basic hull, strakes stitched together with copper wire, and a thickened epoxy mixture curing in the laps. This assembly and gluing is basically the first thing one does to begin construction, and it effectively creates the hull in one fell swoop. It’s a very encouraging way to start building a boat as you see some dramatic results very quickly and you have a specific object to start focusing on.

When you flip that hull over and start laying a sheet of fiberglass inside, you get this:

Adding the first layer of fiberglass to the hull for abrasion resistance and strength.

All nice and smooth:

It’ll cure:

And then you flip it over and do the same thing on the bottom:

We’ll trim the edges of that fiberglass cloth when we come back in a post or two. Break time!

_______/)________

An Intentional Dismasting, or How I Spent An Entire Month...

nospam@example.com (Daniel) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 05:40:25 +0000

No worries - the rig came down only on my terms! But yes, a huge part of the prep for this trip has been completed, and it took me nearly a month to finish, but finally I can stop spending time fretting over it and actually sit down to tell you about it! This will take a couple posts, and beware, this one is long and full of images, but hopefully you’ll find it somewhat fascinating as it’s not often a non-cruiser gets to see this side of boat work. So come along, let’s go head over to the shipyard where the masts are laying, and take a look…

My boat looks silly without her masts

For those of you who aren’t used to such intensive boat work, taking the masts down on a larger sailing vessel is typically done at the beginning of a term of ownership as a matter of proper course and prudence and thenceforth about every ten years or so as a precautionary maintenance item. Of course one would inspect the mast while it is standing on the boat much more frequently than that. Since I have been somewhat neglectful of my duties in this regard up until now, it was high time that, before I embark on a long voyage, I pay my proper dues. So down they came.

The mainmast masthead, just after I removed the VHF antenna.

Once they were down, it was a very significant amount of work to properly overhaul them - and try as I might, I still don’t think they are perfect. I did my best with the time, money, and resources I had available and I am definitely confident that they are MUCH stronger and in better shape now than when I took them down. Without going into excruciating detail, here are some of the highlights of what’s been done to them.

Basic Maintenance

Typically when dropping the masts, one would look them over thoroughly for signs of corrosion, weak or damaged fasteners, evidence of excessive stress like dimpled metal when it should be flat, and other obvious problems. All major fittings are removed such as the mast head (the portion which holds the sheaves for the halyards), the spreaders, and the tangs for all shrouds. These are the major structural components which keep the rig up and allow the sails to maintain their shape and efficiency, and so they are of critical importance. Most corrosion is caused by galvanic action between two dissimilar metals such as stainless steel and aluminum contacting each other in the presence of seawater. This is all too common on most masts, since bolts and smaller fasteners such as tang plates are typically stainless steel and the mast itself is, of course, extruded aluminum. The common fix is to insulate any large objects (the tang plates, for instance) with nylon washers or a durable sheet of plastic, and to apply a goop called Tef-Gel to the threads of any screws or bolts that go into or through the mast.

Typical corrosion spot behind the spreader tang.

In my case, there was some corrosion in a few places, though not enough to be worrisome, which I was able to address by insulating the problem fitting with some nylon washers, plastic sheeting, and Tef-Gel.

However, there was one area where the corrosion was a serious problem:

Yikes!

Yep, that’s the bottom end of the mast, where all the weight and compressive force meet. It’s pretty critical that this part be solid, and in my situation, well, solid was about as far from the case as possible.

This was caused by the mast sitting in a stainless steel step on deck, which was not drained properly nor was the mast insulated in any way from the stainless plate.

The only fix was to cut about an inch off the bottom of the mast and route out some new drain holes:

My buddy Alex doing the deed with his spiffy skilsaw.

I learned a neat trick from the rigger who helped me out with this: apparently you can use standard woodworking router bits on an aluminum mast to make gorgeous holes, cutouts, and other openings. Once I saw how nicely and quickly it worked, I’m sold on this trick. It makes using a Dremel look like the hard, long way.

Pre-drain-holes, but muuuuuch better.

After that, I cleaned up the mast and the step and gave both the bottom several inches of the mast and the inside of the step a heavy coat of etching primer and two heavy coats of corrosion protective paint.

Structural Upgrades

While the mast was being refitted, I took the time to strip off the old rigging which I was replacing, and to replace the stainless steel mast tangs with upgraded titanium parts to fit the new deadeyes for the upgraded rigging. This might sound straightforward but it represented a huge challenge: the bolts in my mast didn’t always match the holes for the tangs! I should note the tangs were what were properly drilled, my mast had sizing all over the place and it did not look like a thorough analysis of load weak points was given at the time of construction. One one shroud, the weak point was the clevis pin, on another it was the bolt holding the tang, on yet another it was the tang itself. Just no consistency at all. The new titanium tangs from Colligo Marine really kick ass and I am thrilled to get a chance to try them out.

Old rigging wire and spreader tang about to be removed.

This mismatch was solved in three major ways. First, where the mast was larger than the tang, but the tang could safely be drilled out to match the mast, the tang was sent to a machine shop and drilled. There was no way I could have drilled the titanium, so I had to send it to a local shop. Lazlo, the machinist, was absolutely amazing and did excellent work.

Next, where the tang was larger than the mast, I simply drilled the mast to match the tang and upgraded the mast bolt. While this typically means that I am adding an overbuilt part and taking a weight penalty by doing so, I am saving so much weight switching to the lightweight synthetic rigging that another few grams on a larger bolt doesn’t make much difference. Not that it matters much on a 6600 kg cruising sailboat anyway!

Lastly, and most time consuming of all, were the tangs at the spreaders. On both masts the spreader fitting was welded or integrally made a part of the lower shroud tangs. I spent some quality time with a chop saw and a metal blade slicing the old spreader fittings apart and isolating the tang portion from the spreader support portion. After this bit of metal trickery, I was able to mount the new tangs on a larger bolt which just barely fit. Fortunately, no further fabrication was required… here.

You can see the new tangs just to the right (e.g. below) the spreader fittings here. You might have to click this image to see the full width.

The last major structural upgrade I made was to add a compression post between the spreaders. This is a typically critical modification made to prevent the inward force on the spreader from crushing the mast in severe conditions. My boat did not have this support and so I reamed out one of the spreader bolt holes just large enough to drop a thick-wall aluminum pipe in and have it come to rest on the other wall of the mast. By running the spreader bolt through this pipe, the compression load is taken up by the pipe and not the mast wall. I did this to both the main and the mizzen mast.

Fabrication

However, my fabrication efforts did not stop there. During my previous removal of all fittings and fasteners, I noticed a serious stress indicator on the forestay tang.

Note the oblong hole in the tang where a clevis pin went. Apparently the stress on this tang was so great that it exceeded the yield strength of the tang metal and permanently deformed the hole. This has weakened the tang, and it’s also evidence that the tang was not strong enough to begin with. So I went to source a new one.

Turns out nobody makes the part. Fabrication to the rescue!

Again sparing a lot of the details as to the why’s and wherefore’s, I had some chainplate stock left over from the chainplate replacement I’ll tell you about in another post, and using a combination of grinders, somewhat cantankerous old drill presses, and a copious amount of head-scratching, mathematical calculations, and consultation with the local rigger for sanity checks, I determined that the best route was to simply drill two chainplate bars and run the clevis pin between the two holes. So that’s what I did. Should be about two to three times the strength of the previous fitting at minimum.

Electrical Upgrades

My work with the masts wasn’t limited to just metalwork, fabrication, and preventative maintenance. I was also very interested in replacing the traditional bulbs on the mast lighting with LEDs for a huge power savings as well as greater visibility. The masthead lights are used for both navigation and to give notice when I am at anchor, so they are quite critical! In addition, there are other lights on the mast which are required when the engine is running and yet other lights which simply illuminate the foredeck so I can work in the dark.

New Bebi 2NM LED lights in the Aqua-Signal housing. Warm-white LEDs, so the green looks green and not blue.

In addition to the illumination, the masthead is where the VHF radio antenna goes, and that was in sore need of replacement.

On the mizzen mast there were no lights that needed work, but a bunch of wires indicating a forest of antennas had previously graced the top of this mast needed removal. My plan was to put a wind generator atop the mizzen in lieu of further radio communications, and so I removed the mizzen masthead and took it to a local welder who did a great job welding the requisite pipe onto it for a wind generator mount. The wiring for this was simple, or so I thought, and so I ran a twisted pair of wires up the mast and reassembled all of that.

New wind-gen mounted on it’s spiffy pole atop the mizzen.

I should note that running wires up a mast is not something one does haphazardly. In my case I needed to run 8 wires for power/lighting and 1 heavy cable for VHF up the mainmast and have various combinations of these wires exit the mast at no less than 4 separate points along the way up. In addition, I did not want the wires to hang loose inside the mast and clang around. Some folks prevent this by riveting a PVC pipe up one side of their mast as a conduit. I was wary of putting further holes in the mast, so I did the next best thing: tie three heavy-duty zip-ties around the cable bundle every half-meter or so, with each zip tie pointing in a different direction. When you shove this mess up inside the mast the wires end up suspended by the zip ties more or less in the middle of the mast and nicely cushioned by the spring of the ties. This prevents them from slapping all around inside the mast when the boat rolls around at anchor.

In order to get the cables to come out at the right exit points I used the existing wires as chases and pulled a separate chaser line of nylon cord to the foot of the mast from each point. I next laid out the entire bundle of wire alongside the mast, marking where each pair or set of pairs would exit. I zip tied the bundle together, and attaching each wire to the appropriate chase line I was able to iteratively snug up on each chase line and “slurp” the whole snaky assembly right into place. I would like to say it worked perfectly the first time, but it didn’t. I ended up having to remove the spreader bolt as somehow I got one conduit line on one side of it and the other opposite, forcing the entire bundle to get jammed right as the next set of zip ties hit the spreader bolt. After that it was pretty much a cinch. Another day of switching out the lighting, securing and corrosion-proofing the electrical connections, and generally ensuring it was a job meant to last, and I was done and onto the mizzen. Fortunately I only had to pull the old lines and run a single pair up the mizzen, so that was pretty simple after having done the crazy bits with the mainmast.

Thus endeth the prep work

So far, what I’ve described took about three weeks of at least half-time work and many of that was full-time days of fabricating, cleaning, measuring, prepping, etc.

I’ll come back shortly with more to this story, including a whole saga on chainplates and a nice interlude where I introduce the slickest rigging material you’ve never seen, before we get around to putting the masts back on the boat.

_______/)_________

Let's Talk Electric Propulsion Part 4 - Dealing with Range Anxiety

nospam@example.com (Daniel) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:13:23 +0000

This is part 4 in the Electric Propulsion mini-series here at Oddasea.com. So far we’ve covered a pretty thorough overview on electric propulsion, a detailed tour of my installation, and a discussion on recharging and power management. Now, let’s talk about the psychological aspects of using such a different technology - we’ll deal with the good, the bad, and the ugly right here.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the electric propulsion drivetrain for a boat, especially a sailboat, requires a different mindset than does an internal combustion engine such as a diesel or gasoline engine. This is unavoidable, and as I’ve covered in previous parts of this series, has both its rewards and its challenges. I’ve talked about a number of the rewards already - clean energy, renewable using natural resources like sunlight, wind, and boat motion, quiet and efficient power, reduced space needs, and a dead-simple drivetrain requiring little to no maintenance beyond keeping the batteries happy. Now, let’s dig into some of the challenges.

I prefer to call these topics challenges rather than problems for a very specific reason: they are only problems if you let them be. For instance, in older times, sailors didn’t have the option of ANY kind of internal propulsion. It was sail, row, or, well, hope your anchor held. Rather than, centuries ago, decrying sailboats for lacking this option, they simply chose to develop their sailing skills, learn the limits of what they could and could not do, and were quite happy with that, in fact. To this day, many small boats have no provisions for propulsion other than sail, and even some large boats eschew the idea entirely. Its not unheard of, and thus I don’t consider it a problem. It’s simply another way of looking at a situation.

Range Anxiety: A Case Study

The first, and most noticeable challenge, from the perspective of someone used to having an engine on their boat, is the range of the electric motors and their associated battery banks. I’ve gone into detail on this back in Part 1, so refer there if you want to understand more about why this is. The general factor is that an electric motor will have 1/10th the range of the equivalent diesel, battery weight for fuel weight equal. My boat has an estimated electric-power range of about 15 nm, though I chose a battery bank half the size of the fuel tanks I was replacing. I can easily add more capacity if I so desire.

Now, to the average boater, that’s absolutely unacceptable. They are so accustomed to the idea that if the wind dies, you motor. If you’re in a hurry, you motor. If you want to sail up the ICW against the prevailing wind, you motor. That’s fine for them, but that’s not the only way to look at the situation. Americans, in particular, have got this whole idea of “getting there” fixed in their heads. In that mindset, it’s not about the trip, it’s about “getting there”, and doing it as fast, for any given mode of transportation, as possible. Now, while I understand that bobbing around in 35C weather in the middle of the South Pacific with no wind for a couple days or even a week in a row isn’t the most fun in the world, what do you think sailors without motors and without cold beverages in the fridge did even, oh, just a couple decades ago? Sure, they didn’t thoroughly enjoy the situation, but it wasn’t necessary that they get out of it immediately.

I’m not advocating going sailing for the express purpose of bobbing around in the South Pacific in 35C weather with nary a breeze for a week. I’m simply giving about the worst case scenario I’ve ever heard anybody throw up as a reasonable likelihood for using - nay, demanding - long range power propulsion on a sailboat. I’ll cover a few other scenarios in a minute, but I have a couple answers for this one.

First, slow down. This is not only a pretty worst case scenario, its also largely avoidable and totally bearable. The ITCZ is variable, but there are better and worse places to cross it, times of the year to do it, and ways to go about it. By spending a little more time preparing, learning about the ITCZ, and where it is at various times of the year, plus planning a trip through it at the right time and where it is narrow (and also setting a course nearly as straight across it as possible) you can minimize the time you spend in it and choose, generally speaking, more favorable conditions for yourself while you are in it. Then, just sit back, bob around, read a book or play the guitar, maybe spend some quality time with the person you are sailing with, and generally chill out for a couple days. This Too Shall Pass.

Oh, I didn’t mention that you can squeeze a couple knots on the electric motor and recharge using solar. That’ll get you out of the ITCZ a bit faster, and that’s without a single drop of generator power, which you can always fire up for more juice and overnight motoring. So there are far more options than the “get there fast” crowd like to talk about. But if “get there fast” is the point for you, then why are you on a sailboat anyway? Fly there and charter a sailboat if that’s your thing.

Now that the Grand Worst Case scenario has been discussed, let’s talk about another “dealbreaker” for a lot of the should-own-a-powerboat-instead crowd: the ICW and the GIWW. But first, my honest opinion: why in the hell would you want to take the ICW/GIWW in a SAILBOAT for more than a short inland passage to get somewhere specific between offshore runs? It’s absolutely a horrid proposition (this coming from a guy who spent nearly 2 weeks on it in a sailboat, mind). The ICW/GIWW was NOT meant to be sailed. It was not designed for sailboats (actually it wasn’t really designed for recreational craft at all), and while SOME sailboats can actually sail it just fine (shoal draft, small boats with low tacking penalty and/or self-tacking rigs come to mind) the majority of our boats in many cases are hardly able to do a 180 degree turn in the middle of the ICW in many parts. And if you’re taking a sailboat in a place specifically designed for a powerboat, you’re on a fool’s errand in my not-so-humble opinion. As far as rivers go, for centuries sailboats have sailed rivers, waiting for the right wind and occasionally being towed along as necessary. Engines have never been necessary for the right boat in those circumstances.

So, there are a couple solutions to this situation as well. The first is obviously not to take a sailboat where that boat is not designed to be. However, if one insists upon firmly shoving a square peg into a round hole as it were, then accept the compromise that comes with that and run a genset in a series-hybrid propulsion manner for the duration of the trip. Of course a compromise is often achievable as well, with offshore runs tempered by inland access if the weather gets feisty. This would be a likely - and entirely reasonable - scenario for the electric motor, as the run to get in the lee of an island often requires only a few miles of motoring in and out, and overnight a wind generator can recharge a good portion the main bank. This allows a useful range heading inshore and, with a good blow, a nearly full charge not even 12 hours later. Those of you less averse to burning fossil fuels can recharge even faster or from even deeper discharge with a genset.

The principle trick remains to think ahead, anticipate the weather, tides, and other factors, be circumspect of your craft and your limitations and to stay within those margins. Over time not only will you be a better sailor but you will also develop a much more healthy philosophy of using your boat as it was designed and not trying to make a perfectly good sailboat into a terrible powerboat¹. By following this philosophy, range anxiety will effectively be eliminated. People have been doing it for centuries.

Auxiliary Services

The other major difference in a boat not equipped with an internal combustion engine is that it must differently handle services commonly assigned to the engine. Engine-mounted watermakers, refrigeration, and other large power consumers are not an option. There is less of an option to fire up the engine and recharge the batteries in the middle of a storm. With a small portable genset a certain amount of adverse weather can be handled but nothing particularly serious. The answer, again, is almost more philosophical than physical: preparation. By thinking ahead, reducing the energy consumption of a vessel through conscious elimination of inefficiencies, conversion to manual processes, or other simple reductions in system load, the runtime draw on a main battery bank is greatly reduced. In addition, alternative energy sources such as wind and solar generation are a must. And last, but not least, remember that the electric motor is itself a charging source when the boat speed is in excess of about 5 knots by propeller regeneration. This comes in handy when the wind pipes up. But perhaps most importantly is just to have a very solid electrical system, keep a close watch on your charge state, and treat your batteries with respect. Preparation is the greater part of prevention.

I should note that I personally subscribe to the philosophy that most services people are accustomed to are not, in fact, the conveniences that they pretend to be. I have come to prefer foot-pumped water for its reliability and lower inclination to drain my water tankage in the event of a system leak, for instance. As a result, pressure water does not exist on my boat. Not only am I quite content with the idea, but my guests adjust very quickly and often remark how much they like the arrangement.

Another philosophy I subscribe to is that any electrical device I have aboard my boat I am prepared and able to do without for any length of time include an entire voyage, if necessary or if I so choose. As a result, my electrical system, while convenient, handy, and often quite useful, is not a necessity, with the current exception of my running lights for which I have not been able to find a quality oil-lamp replacement for at any sort of reasonable price.

Final Thoughts

The most dangerous thing on a sailboat is a calendar. ~ Anonymous, oft requoted

Its really true that modern sailing philosophy has so far removed itself from safe, sane, and even enjoyable traditions of sailing as to divorce a great portion of the pleasure from the process and replace it with a great deal of fictitious ideals which are only occasionally borne out by experience. The tragedy is that those ideals replace what are, in my mind, much greater pleasures which are actually borne out by experience quite often. These nearly forgotten pleasures are many. Among them lie confidence in one’s abilities through hard work and self-education. Also included, a true sense of freedom borne out of reliance on skill and creativity versus tools and external systems. But above all, a childish sense of exploration and curiosity, created by the boundless travel afforded by a sailboat, furthered by the lack of need for much beyond some simple and easily obtained materials and bodily sustenance in the form of food and good humor, and ultimately rewarded in the journey itself, a passage of endless serendipity and treasured experiences appreciated through challenge and the clever application of skill to naturally afforded resources such as the wind and water and heightened by the closeness of nature, the lack of abstractions and insulations, and the direct relationship between action and result.

Personally, I find that, in both the advantages and the challenges of the electric motor as compared to the diesel engine, I have taken a great step towards these pleasures and away from the contrivances of industry and commercialized society. I have become more self-reliant and challenged myself to be more engaged with my voyage. I have gained fewer distractions and realized a greater reliance upon and harmony with nature rather than against her, and I have not given up a level of mechanical assistance which is there when necessary and does provide both a greatly appreciated aid and a further degree of peace of mind. As a result, I consider this decision one of the greatest modifications anybody can make to a larger sailboat.

If you are interested in going electric on your boat, I am glad to discuss general questions as well as the topic as a whole. Specific questions to your installation will be best directed to your vendor. And if you need a vendor, I can highly recommend Scott at Electric Yacht, whose technical assistance and product I can personally vouch for.

Thanks for reading this mini-series on Electric Propulsion. Normal blog content will resume forthwith!

Footnotes:

1. Not that powerboats are terrible. Sailboats, however, are near-universally terrible powerboats.

_________ /) _________

Let's Talk Electric Propulsion Part 3 - Power Management, Recharging, and Regeneration

nospam@example.com (Daniel) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:50:33 +0000

This is part 3 in the Electric Propulsion mini-series here at Oddasea.com. So far we’ve covered the ‘why’s, and to a limited extend, the ‘how’s for my particular case. Now let’s dive into a more detailed discussion of what helps keep this whole system working, puts energy back into it, and how I go about managing the whole process.

First, a bit of background. Combustion engines require fuel to produce heat, the energy from that heat is captured via the resultant pressure change as force and, hence, power. When the fuel is consumed, the engine is useless until the fuel is replaced. While this can be accomplished fairly quickly when the vessel is physically at a fuel dock, on the order of 10-20 minutes or so, if the vessel is not so located at the time the fuel is needed it can be quite an ordeal to refuel.

Electric motors run off of any available electrical supply. If the supply is not sufficient to meet the current power demands of the motor, the reserve capacity of the batteries is utilized. Once the batteries are depleted, a similar situation remains for the electric motor as for the combustion engines: the energy needs to be replaced. While hydrocarbon fuel is a physical material and can be relatively rapidly transported from one location to another, it is not yet practical to swap out entire packs of batteries aboard a ship, thus the much slower process of replacing the energy within the batteries - energy which is not in a direct material form and therefore much less able to be rapidly transported. So while the combustion engine, when in the vicinity of a fuel dock, can be replenished in a handful of minutes, the electrical motor’s battery bank requires several hours to properly recharge. This can be seen as a clear advantage for a diesel setup, for instance, but where the electrical system falls short, it makes up for that shortcoming in some very significant advantages elsewhere: namely:

That it can be charged at nearly any time using a variety of sources which harvest the free and abundant energy directly provided by nature.

That such charging sources can and often are even utilized AS the engine is running, to lessen or occasionally even eliminate the drain on the reserves, reducing the amount needed for replenishment later, and

That it does not remove the ability to use fossil fuels as a strategic power source should they be the most expedient for a given situation.

Thus it can be argued that the electric motor enjoys a host of advantages over a diesel engine in its ability to gain additional energy for propulsion from nearly any location and at nearly any time via a diverse and redundant array of means without forfeiting the ability to utilize rapid replenishment via fossil fuel means if so desired as a fallback strategy.

Let’s cut the academic talk a bit and see what I’m actually talking about.

On my boat, I charge my batteries in three primary ways, with one fallback method. These are:

1. Wind Power. At the conclusion of my current rigging project, a 48V Air Breeze Marine wind generator (nominally rated at 160W average output power) will directly put power into the primary propulsion battery bank whenever it has enough wind to be useful. This is mounted on the mizzen mast so it is largely clear of all wind disturbances and from similar installations on my friend’s electric boats, I expect it to be a primary power source for keeping the batteries topped off under normal use. Those of you who are saying it won’t be enough without having tried it: its being done right now by many folks and it works for them just fine.

2. Solar Energy. My boat has been equipped with a pair of Kyocera 135W panels on a custom aluminum arch just underneath the mizzen for nearly a year now. These supply 95-100% of my house loads on a daily basis depending on how bad the weather is and for how long. I’ve been quite happy with this installation and only find a need to top off the batteries once every couple weeks if we’ve had a significant spell of bad weather. These will, for the time being, continue to be routed primarily to house loads, but I am adding a switch to a 48V boost charger which can directly use them as a charging source for the 48V bank as well. This lets them be a solid alternate power source for motor charging when the house bank is just fine and doesn’t need a top off.

3. Prop Regen. The least useful but most powerful method for regeneration is a feature uniquely provided by the electric motor itself: the ability to turn into a generator when the boat speed is high enough to spin the prop under sail. Since my boat has a big honking 3-bladed 17x9 prop which does not feather, it is capable of generating a significant amount of power - as long as the boat is going fast enough. This typically means speeds in excess of 5 knots, with the power just about doubling each extra knot. If the boat is really doing well, close to hull speed, this will be the single biggest recharging component onboard, bar none. When I’m just noodling along, well, its pretty darn useless. So, it becomes the third option for charging the batteries, but data from other boaters suggests that its one of the more useful options on longer range trips as that is when it has the best opportunity to be useful. Its a nice fit for my use case.

4. The fallback is the good old gas generator. In my case, the cruiser’s favorite: a 2kW gasoline unit outputting 120V into the 48V shore power charger. This can recharge my 48V bank in anywhere from 4 to 8 hours depending on how empty it was and whether I want to charge it all the way to float or not. It can also provide enough continuous output power to run the vessel at a smidge over 3 kts for as long as I can keep it full of gasoline. Since I was going to carry this anyway based on the general majority opinion of fellow cruisers, it made sense to set it up so that it could be used as a fallback propulsion assist.

I should note that if I am ever to operate in the “genset running, directly powering the electric motor while underway” mode, my ship would basically be a series-hybrid propelled vessel, much like many hybrid cars are today. This dual-mode operation is, remarkably, still more efficient than a direct combustion->transmission->prop drivetrain due to the ability of the genset to run at its most efficient RPM.

Managing Power

I manage the battery state of charge via two main information sources. While operating the electric motor, the motor controller’s display calculates current power draw, estimated remaining charge, and remaining runtime at current draw, as well as engine rpm and environmental data such as winding temperature, etc. This information, much like the “efficiency” and “regen” charts in a Prius, helps me to balance power consumption versus boat speed, conserving my power and knowing how much of it I have left. Its like a hyper-accurate fuel gauge.

When I am not in operation mode, a Bogart Trimetric 2025-RV 48V battery monitor gives me current battery state of charge, amps/volts, and historical data. I use it to keep track of my charging systems, know when I need to recharge or top off the batteries, and generally ensure that I am staying on top of the system as a whole. Its a bit more accurate than the motor controller for things like “how full are my batteries”, “did I give them a complete charge yesterday”, and “how much power am I using right now” (when the motor is not what is drawing the power).

Strategy and Resource Utilization

The unique requirements and capabilities of the electric motor setup for a long range cruiser require much more careful power management versus a diesel - much as the diesel requires much more careful maintenance. If I don’t want to get caught with my proverbial pants down, from a power perspective, I need to keep an eye on my battery charge state, whether or not my charging systems are doing their job, and whether or not I am likely to need power in the near future if I am choosing to use a lot of it right now. While I expect much of this will come from experience, a little forethought and learning from others is entirely appropriate right now. As a result, there are two major mindsets I am combining to develop my current strategy on power use: that of the cruisers without engines (the Pardey’s, Slocum, et. al) and that of my fellow electric boat owners - most of whom do shorter coastal passages or day trips. By planning my routes and sailing my passages with the mentality that I don’t have an engine, I’ll minimize situations where it becomes needed. And conversely, by strategically using the engine when I have an excess of natural power to regenerate, I’ll cut my power use and ensure a useful reserve. But its still there to help me fight a tide rip through a cut, or to catch that mooring when the wind dies, or to squeeze an extra knot or two out of a light headwind between islands.

A different kind of sailing? Indeed. And one I’m quite happy to look forward to.

Stay tuned for the next part: dealing with range anxiety.

______ /) _______

Let's Talk Electric Propulsion Part 2 - Installation Tour

nospam@example.com (Daniel) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 18:22:18 +0000

Let’s take a break from the theory of electric propulsion (in Part 1 of this mini-series) for a bit and get down to ~~brass~~ silicon bronze tacks with a guided tour of my particular installation.

If you refer back to the description of an installation in Part 1 of this article, you’ll see that we described the electrical system with fairly few words: batteries, some control cables, and the motor. That’s pretty much it, and as Bob at Boat Bits recently pointed out: its pretty boring! But I think its illustrative to highlight one of the biggest practical advantages of the electric install: MORE SPACE available for other uses (not to mention more space that is now usable because high heat is not a major factor anymore). So, here is a general photograph of the engine compartment as it is with the electric motor in it:

Where’s the motor you ask? Good question, its hard to see, even though that entire white-painted frame used to be chock-full of my diesel engine.

The Electric Yacht 180ibl is not much bigger than the transmission on my old diesel and is the black box with the blue label on it, sitting low and aft in the engine well. Here’s a closer look, and I took the cover off the box so you can see more detail:

The mass of cables surrounding the control box comes pre-wired for you, so the only two cables you really need to hook up are the positive and negative wires running up from the lower right hand corner of the photograph - which come from the master battery switch and a relay controller. A few smaller cables for the intelligent control module make up the remainder of the pretty straightforward install. In fact, the part that took the longest was just ensuring that my old motor mounts would fit the new motor - which is something one has to do for nearly every repower anyway and took just a couple hours over a few days to get right. The motor unit weighs less than 50 lbs by itself so its not difficult to put into position by yourself - I installed it without any assistance (unlike the removal of the diesel which took a team of people and a power crane to get out). The electric motor mounts are lightweight yet rigid aluminum. Here are a few more views of the installation as I approached final placement of cables and stuff:

Next, let’s take a look at the power control circuitry, before we get to the battery installation.

Here is a view to the port side of the engine compartment. This used to hold the fuel filter and routing system, along with spare water pumps and impellers, among other odds and ends. Now it is dominated by the 48V charging system (25A at 48V programmable charge controller), with the massive sealed relay visible on the right hand side of the photo. Behind the relay and to the top right of the picture is the main battery cutoff switch which runs through the bulkhead and is accessible outside the engine compartment. Not shown in this photo is the wiring for the DC-DC converter which allows me to use the 48V battery bank to power or maintain charge on my 12V DC system, which has its own bank of batteries (though, in all honesty, with a redundant DC-DC converter in the event one failed, I could absorb those batteries into my 48V system and not really need two banks - many electric boaters do precisely this, feeding the house 12V loads off the converter).

This brings us to the battery installation. Those of you who have been following the blog for some time have seen the periodic posts on battery installs and already know what the system looks like and how I securely attached them to the boat. Here is a recap photo of the battery bank, nearing completion and ready for final cabling:

After cabling, I rebuild the cabin sole decking over the battery compartment. Instead of sealing the decking down, though, since I had designed the battery tray for drainage I simply screwed the decking in place, making it fairly simple to later access the batteries for replacement. Since they are sealed AGM batteries, no maintenance is possible or necessary and therefore complete ease of access was not needed. A quick spray of CorrosionX HD on the battery terminals to help guard against the inevitable corrosion was the final touch.

The batteries terminate into a huge T fuse, capable of handling and interrupting the entire current output of a string of 8 high-amperage 6-volt batteries. The current capability of this bank is enormous, so it pays to treat the system with RESPECT. As a result, the fuse is located less than a 7” cable run from the primary positive power terminal on the bank. In addition, I cross-connected the series string, which helps to reduce the EMI (electromagnetic interference) produced when the system is operating at higher amperages. This reduces compass flux and other unwanted interference and is a simple thing to do when installing the system that can have a very significant effect on the final result.

Another simple thing to do that pays off is to twist your cable pairs whenever possible. With these heavy gauge (2/0) cables its difficult for short runs but with the longer runs such as to and from the fuse to the battery switch and to/from the relay to the motor, the runs are easily twisted together. Again, this reduces interference and helps prevent things like radio noise, compass deviation, and other unwanted side effects of high current conductors in close proximity to other systems.

Notable Differences

So, there aren’t many comparison notes I can make that I haven’t already illustrated. We’ll do a full on-the-water review later in the month or early next month as I have a rigging pull scheduled for early next week and am frantically preparing for that. To give you a pretty good summary of the differences so far, I’ll leave you with a diptych or two for thought:

Stay tuned. The next article in this series will deal with recharging strategies and power management.

__________ /) _____________

Electric Re-Power Progress Update 3

nospam@example.com (Daniel) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:15:30 +0000

Its time for another installment of the ongoing electric motor installation saga! Here we go…

We left off with the fuel tank removed and the battery mounts glued to the hull. After laying a few layers of heavy cloth over them to more firmly tab them to the hull, it was time to fashion the actual battery “tray”: a heavy plywood base containing stiffeners and spacers to ensure the batteries would be held solidly in place yet still have positive air circulation for cooling and venting. I’m using AGM batteries, so off-gassing of hydrogen is minimal to non-existent in routine circumstances, but it always pays to be careful and ensure the batteries stay as cool and well vented as possible. So let’s take a look at the tray construction.

I started by careful measurements and shaping a piece of plywood to roughly the right dimensions. I noticed that despite my efforts, I had apparently laid a couple blocks a few inches off of the targeted spacing, so that had to be accounted for. The tray has cutouts for webbing straps to hold the batteries down. The cutouts double as drains to prevent any errant water from pooling up underneath the batteries.

After a few thick coats of epoxy, the tray looks great and is well sealed. From this point forward, any holes drilled in the tray or the mounting blocks were sealed with epoxy before bolting. Note the addition of battery spacers, stiffeners, and glass-reinforced endcaps in the finished tray, shown here during a test fit of the batteries:

And batteries finally installed and strapped in place:

Great! The batteries are solidly in place, now its time to replace the cut cabin sole stringers. I obtained some very nice white oak boards and the shop was able to plane them to the precise dimensions, saving me a lot of trouble. Some quick work with my excellent Bosch palm router (many thanks to Bob @ Boat Bits for this and several other extremely worthwhile tool recommendations) put a nice bullnose edge on them, and I trimmed them just a wee bit oversize to allow for the slight compression that the original stringers were under. I had noticed while cutting them initially that the compression force was just enough to make the gap approximately two millimeters shorter than it had originally been, and by making the ends ever so slightly wedge-shaped I was able to effectively jam them that distance back apart. In order to ensure the joint’s integrity under tension forces I went one step further and “keyed” the ends of the oak pieces. By drilling a heavy stainless lag screw into the original stringers, I was able to drive the oak onto and over the bolt heads. The wood joints were glued with epoxy, and I filled the “keyholes” with thickened epoxy. The new stringers are now both adhesively joined as well as mechanically pinned into place with the bolts. Given that the stringers do not appear to be attached to the cabin sole particularly well, I think even this may have been overkill for something that is not integral to the hull structure, but better safe than sorry. Another engineer on the dock took a look at it and generally agrees that it is “adequately supported”!

In any rate, since I was all sticky with the epoxy I wasn’t really able to get any pictures of the process here, but the end result was pretty nice:

At this point, the new batteries are properly installed and cabled, the stringers are replaced, and with the exception of a little bit of additional maintenance I want to do to the boat’s plumbing and electrical, I am ready to reinstall the cabin sole. Next up: Just before the motor installation, we’ll be getting to some of the electrical bits while we have easy access. Stay tuned!

_________ /) __________

Electric Re-power Progress Update 2

nospam@example.com (Daniel) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:44:15 +0000

The electric re-powering continues apace, with another major step completed this past weekend: the removal of the existing upper diesel tank to make room for the batteries. Incidentally, this tank used to be the primary water tank for the boat - and I wish it still was, since I wouldn’t remove it if so!

The tank was ensconced under the cabin sole, so the first step was to drill out the bungs, remove the screws, and pry up the center of the cabin sole to access the tankage:

As you can see, the tank is pretty firmly held in place by several significant fiberglass straps and is trapped further by the floor stringers. Fortunately in my case, the fiberglass straps were all on the top of the tank, and the floor stringers are not integral to the hull structure, so I can cut and replace the straps and stringers without much problem.

Cutting the fiberglass straps and the end cap loose was probably the hardest and most annoying part of the process. It took nearly 3 hours of various contortions, hand saws, power tools, and other devices to get through the tough fiberglass in a safe manner without damaging the hull. With no welded on lifting tabs or other help, we threaded a soft shackle through the eyes on the access/inspection port and lifted the tank in that manner. Fortunately the access port was strong enough - I was not concerned about the shackle as it has close to 3000 lb breaking strength!

Once the tank was cut free as best as we could determine, my friend Ed and I hauled on a 4:1 tackle slung to the main boom and our combined weight easily popped the tank free after a few tugs. After that, the tank could be lifted with a firm grip and one hand. We cut the first few stringers as well in the hope that we could get enough angle on the tank to avoid cutting the rest:

Sadly, we needed to remove all of the stringers thanks to dimensional constraints. Ed shows off his “fierce” look here, as we prepare the hoisting strap:

After freeing the tank from the stringers and fiberglass, she lifted neatly out of the companionway.

We used the main boom as a crane and swung the tank over to the finger dock.

A quick cleaning made a big difference in the sludge and dust left behind (pardon the blurriness):

But then I went and ground down the hull so I could mount the battery tray, and made an even bigger mess:

After cleaning again, I was able to glass the mounting blocks to the hull:

I used 404 high density adhesive filler to help bond the mahogany blocks to the hull. There’s a nice 1/4” fillet on the top edge and a finger fillet along each side and the bottom. Having ground the hull side down to bare glass, there should be plenty of mechanical “keying” between the two surfaces for a good solid grip, and I’ll further distribute the load and reinforce the bond by tabbing the blocks to the hull with several layers of glass. After sanding/filing them down to a nice level surface, I”ll seal their surface with thickened epoxy, and then bolt down a plywood plate to form a base for the batteries. The batteries will be strapped to the plate, and will then be effectively an integral part of the hull, allowing them to remain stable and secure in the event of a knockdown or worse.

The reason I’m bolting the plate down rather than further glassing the plate in place is that I want to be able to remove the plate in the future for access to the diesel tank stored below it. I’m keeping that smaller (40 gal) tank in place in the event that I wish to add a genset, diesel heater or galley stove at some point in the future. 5/16” lag screws into an epoxied matrix in the wood should hold the batteries in place just fine, even upside down.

In the future I may also get a poly tank for water storage (probably about 40 gallons or so) to fit up forwards of the batteries.

Stay tuned…

_______ /) ____________

Big News - Repowering with an Electric Motor

nospam@example.com (Daniel) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:15:43 +0000

Wow friends, have the weeks flown by! Now that I’ve put a huge amount of effort into the boat recently, I have something to announce: I’m repowering Aletheia with an electric motor instead of another diesel! Yes, we’re “going green” with our propulsion. I could write a diatribe on why (and, probably, will do at some point in the future). But this post is mostly to introduce the idea, talk about the how, and give you a little bit of an update on what kind of progress has been made and what will be about to happen.

First, the idea in general: after the incident with the “Perkebeke” (my old Westerbeke 40 / Perkins 4-108 engine) I mentioned a few weeks ago, I did a cost analysis of both repowering as well as repairing and maintaining the existing engine a few years into the future. Since I’ve always sworn that if I ever were to repower, I would go with an electric motor, I took a good hard look at those options as well. It turned out that repowering with an electric motor would be about break even with the immediate cost of repair and a huge gain on forward maintenance. Add to that my inherent unhappiness with the diesel (leaky, smelly, noisy, and generally a huge pain in my ass) and the choice became dead clear. So I called up Scott at Electric Yacht, who was exceptionally helpful and knowledgeable. I’ll talk more about why I chose EY in the future, but let’s just say that its my belief that they have both the currently most practical solutions for boaters as well as a very fair price and superb support.

After placing the order for their 180ibl motor, I listed the Perkebeke on Craigslist, where a number of individuals contacted me within a day or two - who knew these engines were so desired? I was able to sell the old engine and my offshore spares kit as a set - saving me the hassle of individually parting them out and saving the buyer a nice chunk of change for my convenience. All in all, it was roughly an even swap for the electric motor setup. When you factor what I’d already budgeted for more spares for offshore, even the batteries were a break even. And that puts me ahead of the unanticipated repair cost already. Triple win.

Pulling the old engine was dead simple: we towed the boat over to the hoist that the smaller J/24’s use for getting in and out of the water, lowered the hook down the companionway hatch, a few bolts later and a little swearing, and out she popped.

The old engine, recently freed from the boat. She should have a long and prosperous life as the prime mover for a water taxi company in New Orleans!

Once the boat was emancipated from the engine, I took it upon myself to rid the bilge of 33 years of slime, grease, and nasty seaborne organisms that had populated its depths.

The old, nasty bilge - AFTER a couple hard scrubs with TSP!

The process took 3 entire days of cleaning, rinsing, vacuuming, sanding and stripping, acetone washes, and more, in a seemingly never-ending procession of getting the majority of the bilge down to bare, prepped fiberglass. Finally I felt it would hold a new coating, so I put 5 coats of epoxy in the lower half, and coated the upper half with a one-part polyurethane topsides coating for durability and easy cleaning. I should note that before you intend to recoat oily, dirty, slimy fiberglass, not only should you wash the oily slime off (which will take quite a lot of effort and some serious cleaners) but you should still dewax, sand, wash, rinse, dewax, and solvent clean the surface again - preferably a few times, just in case the oil and nasty junk has penetrated surface cracks. Without the benefit of bilge pumps to keep the bilge dry (since they kind of have to be gone and out of the way to clean and paint anyways) I used an ordinary shop wet/dry vac to slurp up the soapy rinsewater. Naturally I did NOT dump it overboard!!

There’s a bit of a color difference between the tinted epoxy and the shiny topsides paint, but the extra immersion resistance of the epoxy is worth a slight cosmetic difference - and besides, its a bilge!

The end result is really satisfying, especially after such hard work:

Finally! A clean, shiny, and most importantly, visible bilge - makes it so much easier to both find things you drop, and know when its time to clean again!

I’m now just waiting for the motor to arrive to begin the next phase: electrical prep and mounting the engine to the prop shaft. Stay tuned for more in this exciting transition!

______/)_______

Quick update...

nospam@example.com (Daniel) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 21:42:51 +0000

I know. Another couple weeks without an update! Tragic!

Fortunately, I am not in any way slacking on the productivity end of things here, just the writing about the productivity. And of course interspersed with all the productivity has been a great deal of sailing - racing, anchoring out, dock parties, you name it. I have some very very big news coming up (which if you’ve been reading my Twitter feed, over there on the right, you already have a hint of). Also, I have been twiddling with some geek-tastic microcontrollers and, thanks to the great folks at Blue Sky Energy, created a fantastic little datalogger for the IPN network that they use on their MPPT solar charge controllers, such as the SB3024iL. I’ll spare you the geeky details, but lets just say that the device reads the digital data from the controller directly and logs it to a standard Micro SD card, the contents of which I can then generate pretty charts like the one right above. Yep, that’s an actual “day in the life” of my boat’s electrical draw. Well, one “Solar Day”, I’ve left off the pretty consistent and boring nighttime slow drop of the battery voltage, but you get the point. I plan to turn this gizmo into an even more useful tool for boat power tracking and analysis: stay tuned!

I’ve also installed perhaps one of the coolest tools a boat data geek could like: a Brookhouse iMux Wi-Fi enabled NMEA multiplexer. Let me just say: this thing is the best NMEA multiplexer I’ve ever seen, and that’s even before I get to the WiFi part. If you have NMEA data on your boat, you should absolutely get one of these. More details later, but ‘nuff said.

BTW: Major hat tip to Bob Wise and Steve Roberts for the idea and initial encouragement on this project, and a special thanks also to Rick Cullen at Blue Sky for the superb help with interfacing to their gear - they have a fantastic datalogger of their own for those of you who want a pre-made solution. Of course, I have to do things the DIY way more often than not…

I have some news forthcoming on the engine situation: while this will certainly be some extra work and expense, I have a strong feeling that it will be one of those “for the better” type situations in the end, and speaking of work, I have a lot of it to get to before I get to tell you about the more exciting aspects of this new project. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned!

_______ /) ________

3 successes and a low blow...

nospam@example.com (Daniel) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 02:02:46 +0000

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.

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

____ /) _____