Humpty dumpty goes back together

Notice the four shiny rebuilt injectors, the very shiny rebuilt fuel injection pump, the somewhat shiny starter with new solenoid and those two sexy red power cables.

We had two mysteries going on at once.  Somehow, something nasty was getting into the bilge and somehow diesel fuel was getting into the crankcase.   When we had an oil analysis done they said there was a high level of diesel fuel contamination in the crankcase.  Starting with the injectors and working back to the fuel pumps we found the source.  And by "we" I mean Bradley.

When he took off the fuel injector pump the bottom stud was loose. This was allowing diesel to escape and drip into the bilge.  This loose fitting also allowed diesel to get into the crankcase. While we had the fuel injection pump off we went ahead and had it rebuilt.  And a heli coil fixed the stripped bottom stud.  

     

New exhaust system

During the survey, Bob pointed out the rusting stainless steel exhaust in the starboard cockpit locker. It had been weeping for some time and the steel was starting to go.  He said:   "Stainless steel exhaust pipe elbow and riser (as seen from starboard lazarette) is badly rusted and requires close inspection and repair or replacement as required."

After consulting with a few people we decided to pull it out of the boat and see how much it would cost to fabricate a replacement. Earl from Destache Yacht Service disconnected the long stainless steel exhaust system and through a heroic effort was able to get it out of the boat.  Bradley then took it to Chingon CMF in San Diego for a quote.  Their price is $1940.58, a sizable chunk of the boat kitty... but it is stainless steel!

I had been trying to figure out how the exhaust system worked.  On Platypus the hot gas and coolant mixes in a big mixing elbow on the side of the engine. From there it goes to a big round bucket of a muffler then out through the transom.   On Traveler the exhaust and coolant are not combined near the engine.  The exhaust goes into the center of a jacketed stainless steel pipe and the coolant travels through the jacket.  This jacketed pipe runs all the way aft to the bottom of the starboard cockpit locker then does a 90 degree turn vertical topping out just short of the cockpit seat.  There the gas and liquid are mixed and dumped overboard via a sturdy rubber hose, thru hull, and valve.  Here is my crude drawing. Click on it for a larger view.....

Fix up the house, play a little music

We joined Chris, Bill, Amy, and Maya for the fourth of July at Kingston.

Then we went to work painting in between rain showers.

Meanwhile, back at home

Meanwhile, back at home here in Seattle we continue getting the house ready to sell. The yard landscaping is completely done and looks fantastic. I've pressure washed every inch of concrete and the outside walls of the house. And we've almost finished the exterior painting on the siding. Next I'll do the trim. The house has a new roof and gutters from last fall. So from the outside we are looking good. Inside is another matter. We need to paint but more importantly we need to get rid of all that stuff in all those rooms and cabinets and closets.

Moving from land to sea will be quite the challenge, but I think the purge will prove to be a wonderfully cathartic experience.

The garage sale prep has begun! We've got sticker and have begun tagging items with their prices. Our hope is to fill a couple of rooms with nothing but pre-priced garage sale items. Once we have everything identified we will schedule a Saturday and advertise on Craig's list. What was I thinking accumulating so much crap?

No this is not my stuff but sometimes if feels like this is what my yard looks like.

Engine work

Engine work is proceeding with me in Seattle.  The four injectors have been removed and taken to the shop to be rebuilt.  One of them was way out of adjustment.  The exhaust manifold is off as is the starter assembly.  The starter is being rebuilt also.  Brad's assistant Earl is upside down in the cockpit locker trying to snake the exhaust system out of the boat so we can take it to the fabricator to see how much it will cost to build a new stainless steel one.

This is a diesel injector...

Got a call from the Coast Guard.  It seems that my bilge accumulated some water from the packing gland on the prop shaft dripping and it finally got high enough so that the automatic bilge pump activated.  There must have been some spilled oil in the bilge because it put out a rainbow plume on the water that the Coasties were able to trace back to Traveler.  Coast Guard officer Ashley was very nice but firm in our conversations as we talked about what my next steps should be to prevent more rainbows in the water.  The bilge is now dry and we've got absorbent pads in place to see where the oil might be dripping from.

Here is a picture of the Coast Guard rushing to my boat slip at Driscoll Mission Bay.

Dennis E. Hadley RIP

Dennis Hadley, former skipper of the 42 ft. cutter Traveler died today June 29 2011 at his home in San Marcos California.  Dennis and his wife Joan lived aboard for 15 years and cruised 4 of those years in Mexico.  Dennis and his brother brought the boat back to San Diego in December of 2009 bashing up the coast from Mazatlan .

Here's a quote from Dennis, "Hanging on a hook in Chacala, or sitting on the bow in a 30 kt. blow in Bara De Navida is something you just don’t put out of your mind when you come back to the states. It’s something you can explain, you have to live it to appreciate it to it’s fullest. We have Traveler on the market for sale, and yet I don’t think that’s what I really what to do. I want to come back down to Mexico and hang out in some bay and think about all those other people in the states that have to work every day and can’t go cruising because of whatever."

Lisa's Birthday

San Diego - June trip

My fifth trip down now and I’m cashing in air miles with Alaska Airlines. Alaska has a great non-stop from Seattle to San Diego that takes only 2.5 hours. Got in late, rented the car, picked up the bottle of rum, and found the boat. Saturday morning the jets woke me and I cleaned up the boat while waiting on Brad to come by with my new charging system.  He did and we pulled out the old sweaty batteries, acid dripping down the sides and on my pants and on the deck and on the dock….

I cleaned out the battery boxes and Brad removed twenty pounds of wiring and assorted regulators.  Then off we went to West Marine to trade those eight nasty wet cell batteries for two big 8D 245 Amp/Hour AGM house batteries.  By then end of the day Brad had me back on a 12 volt system powering the house circuit.  Sunday I cleaned the boat of all the shore grime from sitting on the hard for a week. 

Monday Brad brought me a Group 27 AGM starter battery and he spent hours rewiring and installing an automatic charge relay, an alternator regulator, a battery/solar monitor, and a solar regulator.  This now is a simple system that has smart charging from solar panels, alternator, or shore power.  Whether from the sun, the diesel, or shore, the incoming current will charge the batteries in three stages:  bulk phase for rapid charging with constant current, absorption phase for topping the batteries off to 95%, and float phase to hold the batteries at full charge without overcharging.  I’ve got enough coming in from the solar panels to keep the house bank and starter battery charged.  All this with running the refrigerator, some lights, music, and some navigation gear.  Can’t wait to try it all out.  One of the unknowns here is the auto-pilot. I’m not sure how much it will draw on extended trips. Everyone says you should have a wind vane steering system.. but I digress.

My charging system consists of the following:

(5) 2.5-amp solar panels

Blue Sky Solar Boost 25 amp charge controller

Heart 1200 watt inverter

Blue Sky IPN ProRemote charge controller and battery monitoring system

Balmar ARS-5 Voltage Regulator

Slue Sea Automatic Charging relay – Isolates house loads from engine cranking

ProMariner 2 bank, 20 amp battery charger

Two -8D 245 Amp/Hour AGM house batteries

One Group 27 – 92 Amp/Hour AGM starter battery

On this trip I also cleaned up the dinghy and mounted my Tohatsu 8 HP outboard that I had shipped via Fed Ex from Seattle to Mission Bay.  When I opened the cover on the old Nissan outboard that came with the dinghy I saw the carburetor was totally rusted out.  There was still gas in the tank, gas in the carb.  The engine is probably useless after being exposed to the salt for all this time.

Next trip we attack the engine.  I need to replace the rusted exhaust and the exhaust manifold gasket.  But the engine itself might need rebuilding or replacing.  I’ve having an oil analysis done and can only hope for the best. 

We won’t even think about those teak decks yet… Cosmetic, right?

I need a new battery for the epirb.  Must put together a laptop with navigation, AIS, GPS.  Get the radio licensed. And I’m sure 18 other important items.  There is so much stuff to think about!

Now I’m about out of money and need to concentrate on getting this house fixed up and sold.  With Connie working full time and me working full time we don’t seem to make enough progress.  But we will push onward and with luck will be able to leave this fall.  Or maybe we will have to keep the boat in Ensenada for the winter and stay in Seattle and work through another cold miserable winter. 

No matter what, we have to move the boat to Ensenada September 10 -14 before the state of California slaps a use tax on us. 

San Diego - May trip

The next trip down my brother Bernie met me at the airport after flying in from Nashville.  We rented a car and made our home on the boat for a week.

We ordered and installed a new water pump and Bernie rebuilt the old one for a spare.  We had the alternator rebuilt and tested our spare alternator too. The tachometer was not reporting so we feared that we had no battery charging off the alternator. The list of repairs was growing. I had Paul from Fleming marine come out and he found two leaks in the refrigeration system and got our freezer and frige working for us.  Cold beer on the way! 

We had an appointment with a diesel fuel tank cleaning guy down in Shelter Island so we took the boat out from Mission Bay in the early morning into very dense fog and headed south down the coast looking for the entrance to San Diego Bay.  I had my first scary navigation as I used radar, a handheld GPS, a paper chart, and the depth sounder to feel my way down the coast.  The wrapped some kelp around the prop shaft in about 50 foot of water so I stopped the boat and reversed the engine to clear it.  Then we tried to stay about a mile off the coast in 100 foot of water to avoid more kelp beds.  Entering the bay just next to Point Loma, still in a dense fog, dodging large ships we saw on the radar, I hoped we were in the right place.  Then the fog cleared and I saw Point Loma looming up on our port and buoys Green 7 and Red 8 just ahead…spot on! 

We met with the fuel guy there at Harbor Island and he inspected and cleaned the two 65 gallon fuel tanks. We did not find the fuel crossover hose. He also cleaned the bilge for us. Then we filled up with 100 gallons of diesel at $5.00 per gallon.  On the way back up the coast we noticed the bilge filling up so we ran the bilge pump a couple of times.  Then later, at the dock, popping open a beer I checked the bilge again and it was way high and looked oily.  So I started ripping up floor boards and as I got further and further back toward the stern I saw a river of red liquid running forward.  Back at the stern I could hear a hissing sound. Finally I pushed a bunch of wires out of the way and did see the fuel crossover hose at the bottom front of the two fuel tanks and it was pissing a strong stream of diesel into the bilge.  That was the missing hose we couldn’t find and it was pouring my 500 dollars of diesel into a bilge that could not possibly hold all of it.

It was 5:00 PM and the yard was closing.  My brother came whistling down the dock thinking he’d done his day and was headed for the Crown Royal.  When he saw me jumping around frantically he came aboard, went to the stern, got down on all fours and found that leak.  Then he shoved his hand down, found the leak and stuck his finger in the dike just like a good dutch boy.  He said, “I’ll hold it til you figure out what we’re going to do about it.”

I got through to the receptionist at the Driscoll yard office and she got the last guy in the yard to agree to bring the travel lift around and haul us out. Otherwise we stood the chance of spilling diesel fuel into the water and risking a huge fine.  I took her to the lift and we hauled her out just as the diesel was almost reaching the engine pan.  We used bungs to hold a pressure pad on the hose and that slowed down the stream somewhat.  Now at least if we had to pump overboard, the fuel would go into the yard containment system instead of the bay.

We got the fuel tank cleaning guy (who we were not too pleased with for not finding the crossover hose in the first place) on the phone and he showed up at 8:30 PM with a truck and a pump and two 55 gallon drums. We emptied all the fuel into the two barrels. The boat stunk so I got a hotel room and collapsed. Bernie crawled into the vee, shut the door and opened the windows and crashed.  What a day!

With the boat out of the water we went ahead and got the fuel crossover line replaced and started on the bottom work.  I popped some blisters on the bottom (big mistake because I kinda got carried away) then contracted with the yard to fill them with fiberglass.  When Ovidio (our fiberglass repair man) drilled into the bottom of the the rudder and skeg, water started dripping out.  Quite a bit of saturation there.

After cutting into the soft part of the rudder and giving it lots of thought we agreed that Ovidio would 
take the rudder down to glass, do some patching, then wrap it with more glass. We also had the skeg reinforced.   Damn!  That was an expensive fix.  We had the bottom painted and put on new zincs of course. 

Brad Destache came by to look at the electrical charging system and we enjoyed tearing into the various boat electrical systems and talking to him about upgrading them into the current decade. Traveler had two battery banks of four (six volt) batteries each. The batteries were off-gassing madly.  Brad left to go prepare a quotation for me to look at later.  I then got on a plane and returned to Seattle leaving Bernie to finish up in the yard and see the boat put back into the water.

The next week when they splashed the boat Bernie had the yard mechanic Joe aboard.  Once in the water they cranked up the engine but no water was coming out of the exhaust.  So Bernie looked down in the engine compartment and found the water intake thru hull valve closed.  He opened it and sure enough we had coolant.  Someone dockside hollared out that they could see water being pumped out now from the bilge pump exit so Bernie went down again and this time found that the water pump hose had popped off the pump because someone had forgotten the hose clamp.  Simple enough to fix.  However, the bilge pump kept pumping.  This time the water was found coming in around the new packing gland that I had installed the week before.  I had not tightened it down enough so it was steadily pouring a stream into the bilge. Joe and Bernie tightened that and slowed it to a drip.

Somehow they got the vessel to the slip there at the marina and we arranged for Joe to keep an eye on the boat after Bernie left so we wouldn't have to worry so much about it sinking at the dock.  So there she sat, with a new fresh hull, rudder, skeg.  New water pump, new thru hull valves, rebuilt alternator and a cabinet full of red wine just waiting for my next trip. 

San Diego - April Trip

Now that we own the old tub it is time to start fixing her up.  Connie and I flew down to San Diego from Seattle for a week of scrubbing and sorting. We got in late, rented a car and immediately bought a bottle of rum. San Diego has plenty of all night liquor stores, especially on Sports Arena Boulevard on the way to Mission Bay.  Tom had brought the boat from Harbor Island up to Mission Bay the week before. What a nice guy!  He left early and so had fog all the way.  So now the boat was waiting for us at Driscoll Mission Bay, a place I’d never seen before. 

Rum in hand, we dialed up the address into the iPhone and navigated at 1:00 in the morning to Mission Bay.  We found the side door to the yard and tried the key that they’d mailed to me and Voila! We were in.  Anticipation:  walking a strange dock in the dark looking for a boat we last saw a month ago.  Looking for our new home.

We found the slip, and the boat, all locked up tight.  I’d brought a flashlight so we could see while we set about dialing in the combination…. And it didn’t work.  Did I write down the wrong lock combination?  When all else failed we sat on the back deck and opened the rum.  I fired up my laptop and started going through various documents stored on my jump drive until I found the correct combination.  Then we were in.

Into our new home for a week, we broke out the clean sheets we’d brought and the sleeping bags and cleared the aft berth.  All snug in our new home we slept till the early morning jets leaving Lindbergh Field woke us at 6:30 AM.

With gusto we attacked various portions of the boat.  We started with the galley and the aft cabin, thinking that’s where we’d be using the most.  All the bedding and curtains came out.  Some went to the laundry, some to the dumpster.  We emptied the galley storage and washed or dumpstered what we found there.  Then we scrubbed every surface, all drawers, ceiling, walls, floors, everything. Whew!

We ended the trip with a visit to the Bali Hai where we sampled their famous Mai Tai and got a little tipsy.  San Diego, what a great place.

Then throughout the week we worked our way from stem to stern poking our way into every cubbie and finding an amazing amount of stuff.  We found replacement parts galore, tools, wire, cable, line, and every kind of nautical gizmo you could think of.  All seeming to be about 20 years old.

We went sailing a couple of times and really enjoyed that.  The ocean seemed so big!  But the boat was solid and we were very happy.  The alternator didn’t seem to be charging and there was oil in the bilge but we called the previous owner and he gave us some clues.