The good news first.
The new engine is in the boat. The crane arrived Friday morning and gently placed all 1100 pounds of new Perkins engine in the boat. The new engine is the same model as the old one, a truly new engine, part of the factory inventory of Perkins engine at the time it went out of business. One would expect that this engine is a mirror image of the old one, but as any boat owner knows, it doesn’t pay to have expectations.
The boat is in the water. We splashed in mid-afternoon on Friday and the towboat folks delivered us back to the dock nearby. There are still parts and pieces to be attached to the engine and a few issues to resolve before anyone tries to turn it on. Still, we remain hopeful that everything will be done sometime Tuesday.
Now, the bad news.
The last task to be done before the boat was put back in the water was the attachment of the zinc at the propeller. Larry keeps a supply of them aboard, and he took one out of his stock for this purpose. He has never had any problem with the fit in the past, but this time the zinc did not fit. The discrepancy in the dimensions is so small that it certainly looks as if it should work, but it doesn’t.
The diesel mechanic thought he knew where one could be bought that would fit, so Larry dutifully went there and bought one. However, when the mechanic tried to use it, this one did not fit either.
In other words, this is a very normal boat project. The tiniest thing, the thing you would assume could not possibly be a problem, is a problem.
In order to get the boat in the water, the mechanic had the zinc machined to a slightly smaller dimension. He was able to fit the zinc, and we were able to put the boat back in the water.
It seems almost as if all is well, but there is this nagging concern – if neither of the zincs purchased, supposedly to the same dimensions that have worked on this boat for 25 years, will work, what happens in the future? The big question is: What changed?
Tomorrow the diesel mechanic will be back, and he and Larry will work together. I hope that when the day is over, we know the answers to all our questions. I could use some more good news!
This post is part 8 of 8. If you have missed previous posts, you might want to scroll down and read them first.
Our reason for making this passage was our need for a good diesel mechanic to help us get our engine going again. We were very fortunate that the marina where the towboat captain left us had such a person. He worked with Larry for several days, and they finally concluded that the best course of action was to replace the engine.
Replacement was not a simple choice. New engine. Rebuilt engine. Rebuild our engine. Same model. Different model. What to do?
Perkins made the engine that could not be repaired, and Perkins went out of business several years ago. We could not hope, therefore, to contact Perkins and obtain a new engine. A new model built by some other company would have a different footprint, and might require a lot of other new parts. It would almost certainly weigh less than our engine, which was built 25 years ago. Development of diesel engines has included a conscious effort to reduce the weight, but we were concerned that the difference might change the way our boat moved.
To rebuild our engine or to buy a rebuilt Perkins of the same model was one option. We quickly concluded that we did not want to spend the time that might be required to rebuild ours. We mulled the issues associated with buying one already rebuilt.
Then Larry discovered some good news. He found a company that had bought all the engines Perkins had in inventory at the time they went out of business. This company had in stock a brand new engine exactly like the one we have. Its footprint would be identical to ours. It would be new instead of rebuilt. And the price was right.
It seemed simple enough to order this engine, and it was. That was the simple part. Then the fun began.
The vendor for the engine did not want to accept a credit card for the purchase of the engine, even though our credit card had plenty of credit to cover the cost. The vendor insisted on either a wire transfer or a cashier’s check in payment. Larry put the cash to cover the purchase in his bank account.
From that point forward it was a square dance with a lot of do-si-do. Our bank refused to do a wire transfer unless Larry appeared in person at a branch, but they have no branches in Florida. A bank just a block from the marina was perfectly willing to make a wire transfer if Larry opened an account with them, and they would accept a debit card to withdraw that money from his faraway bank to fund the new local account, but Larry had no debit card. I had a debit card, but I didn’t have the money. When we got past those hurdles, we found that the local bank would take any amount of money withdrawn on my debit card, but the faraway bank would not permit all the money to be withdrawn on a single day. It was a wild ride, a lot like crossing the Gulf Stream, but in the end, the wire transfer reached the vendor and the vendor promised to ship the engine.
We arrived in Florida the morning of Friday, April 30. Today is Tuesday, May 18. We are well into our third week since arriving with the purpose of solving our diesel engine problem. Last Friday, the new engine was delivered to the marine service company that will remove our old engine and install the new one. We know it is here, because we stopped by to see it for ourselves yesterday. Yesterday our boat was hauled out of the water and set up on jacks in the boatyard where there is room for a crane to come alongside to do the heavy lifting. Today the diesel mechanic is due to start working with us. By this time next week, we should have a new engine and be ready for some new adventures. Whew!
So – our passage home began with the question: what could possibly go wrong? In fact, just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Still, by the grace of God, we are home safe in the USA and our old engine will soon be replaced with a brand new engine that ought to be good for another 25 years. So—even though everything went wrong, everything is now going right.
Anybody want to go sailing with us?
November 21, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
What would cruising be if there were no surprises?
We woke up on the morning of November 20 at Buck Island Harbor. It was very early, as are all our days on this jaunt. We wanted to get across Albemarle Sound and past the Alligator River. Our first act every morning now is to turn on the engine so we can run the inverter for grinding and brewing coffee. (The generator is another story for another day. Be sure you have redundancy in all critical systems, and be sure that the cruising gremlins will strain your ability to provide enough layers of same.) Larry turned on the fuel pump, and then tried to turn on the engine, and that was the great moment of truth. The truth was that the engine was not going to start.
Before I tell you about the engine, I’ll tell you about my own redundant backups. When I was employed, I was a database administrator. If you think that system administrators are anal about backups, dba’s are moreso. In fact, as a dba, no matter what the system administrator told me about his/her backups, I always managed to find some way to make a backup of my own that I could rely on when the system backups failed to meet my needs. And that happened way too often.
Now that I am retired, I am as avid about protecting my morning coffee as I ever was about assuring database backups. We have had too many issues with electrical systems and diesel engines and so forth for me to think that I can safely rely on an electric coffee grinder and an electric coffeemaker. When I bought food for our journey, I bought one pound of ground coffee and stashed it for this moment.
It all goes back to motorcycle days. When we were first married we used to travel on a motorcycle and camp out. We made coffee by boiling water and throwing in some ground coffee. After the coffee had five minutes or so to brew, we dipped it out carefully and it was quite good coffee. So on this delightful morning when our engine refused to start, we did not have to do without coffee. I hauled out my stash and made what Larry calls “cowboy coffee.” We drank our coffee while Larry mulled over the situation. I assure you that the fact that we were able to have coffee anyway made the whole day work better.
Larry spent about five hours with wrenches, screwdrivers and few choice words working on the engine. The day before we had casually said to each other that if something happened that made it necessary, we could always dinghy back to Coinjock; it was only six miles. However, as Larry was fighting with the demons of diesel, the winds were ramping up in excess of 20 knots. It was no day for a six-mile dinghy ride. If no real solution could be crafted, then something had to be jury-rigged. The engine must be compelled, willy-nilly, to run.
Two bad things had happened. First, Larry discovered that the fuel line was blocked. When he attempted to run fuel through the filter, hardly any came through. Task #1 was to clear that fuel line. And wouldn’t you know that the one item that could possibly do that task was buried in the most inaccessible space in the boat? It was in a box of assorted remnants of electrical cable, all stuffed at the bottom of the locker under the locker behind the forward settee. When we stored that box way down there, we said that there would be no need for wiring any time soon. Ha! The cruising gremlins giggled all morning as we pulled out boxes and bags and paraphernalia that had been piled and stuffed on top of the box we needed. Our boat is none too tidy on its best day, and this was not by any means its best day, unless you mean the best WORST day. It was a frightful mess, but Larry found a piece of cable that was just the right size to push through the fuel line and unclog it.
That done, he encountered task #2: fix or replace the fuel pump. Even with the fuel line clear, the fuel pump was not moving fuel. This was a much more serious problem. We could not go to Coinjock for parts and pieces, and who knew if anybody there would have what we needed anyway? However, Larry soon realized that we had exactly what we needed, exactly where we did not need it to be. The generator is a diesel engine, and its fuel filter was not needed, because the generator was not being used (another story, as I told you earlier). He scavenged the fuel pump from the generator and installed it on the auxiliary engine, and voila`. We had power in the power zone.
The cruising gremlins are always working had to keep us from having any fun, but we ignore their agenda. We have our own: just keep trucking, or rather, just keep cruising.
Aboard No Boundaries
July 19, 2009
When I was a child, I loved fairy tales, whether told in poetry or prose. Often when a situation developed in a bad direction, the storyteller would say things like, “Alas, poor Jack was doomed,” or “Alack, there was no hope.” That is how we feel after our attempt to repair the clew of our genoa.
The Sailrite sewing machine we purchased as part of our preparation to cruise is advertised with language suited to the Unsinkable Molly Brown. You would almost expect it to walk on water. We thought it would enable us to fix any sail problem that beset us as we cruised. We wanted to be as self-sufficient as possible, and we considered this sewing machine to be a key element in our bag of tricks.
Sadly, even Sailrite has its limitations.
When I undertook to mend the binding on the sail’s edge, my biggest challenge was simply to keep the fabric moving. Every few stitches I needed to drag that big sail forward again. Such exercise will keep you out of the gym, I can tell you. However, as far as the sewing machine was concerned, it was a trivial challenge. It stitched along merrily with never a shudder.
When I undertook to repair a binding on the foot of the sail with several layers of cloth that encased the leech line, that too, proved no big challenge for this sewing machine. I used double-sided seam tape to hold the layers in place, and the machine easily managed all those layers.
However, when it came time to make the most important repair, the replacement of the frayed webbing at the clew, the sewing machine hit a wall.
The machine has many wonderful features to enable it to work with layers and stiffness and so forth. I could completely disengage the presser foot and force it up another fraction of an inch in order to get the stiffened clew with its reinforcements under the needle. I could then re-engage the pressure and set a tight tension that would hold the stitching. I could not do any of this alone, because I could not hold the weight and the stiffness by myself and still crank the machine. The powerful hand crank that comes with a Sailrite is a really wonderful accessory, because it gives us the flexibility to use the machine when no electric power is available, but in this situation, using the hand crank allowed more control as well. Sewing one stitch at a time, stopping after every stitch to be sure I was getting the desired result, was crucial in this challenging work.
Still, despite Larry’s help, and with his eagle eye on things, I was defeated in my effort to make this repair.
Before I asked him for help, I carefully placed my first strip of webbing and maneuvered all the pieces into the right place, gamely tried to roll that clew up to travel under the machine arm, and stitched carefully. On my third stitch, the bobbin popped out of the chase. I asked Larry to help me start over, and once everything was back in place, we pulled out the piece that covers the bobbin so Larry could see what was happening. I stitched one stitch, and all was well. I stitched one more stitch. Still good. Then I took the needle down again, and the bobbin popped out, preventing the needle from moving any further. Larry popped the bobbin back in. I stitched two more stitches before the bobbin popped out again.
It was time to ask for help. I called the Sailrite number, expecting to get someone who would tell me that I needed to make some small adjustment I had missed. Instead, after listening to my tail of woe, the support tech, actually the manager of the Annapolis store, told me I had hit the limit of the machine. It does a lot of things very well, but repair of the clew with its stiffened reinforcements covered with layers of cloth and webbing were simply beyond the capabilities of the machine. The behavior I observed was the machine telling me that it could not do what I had asked of it.
This was very discouraging news. Quantum Sails has a loft in Newport, and that is actually where we obtained the webbing I was using. Their sail maker had given me tips and advice that helped me to plan my work. But sadly, alas and alack, I could not complete my project. We could have engaged their services to make the repair instead of buying the webbing from them. At this point, it was obvious we had to go back and engage their services after all.
Larry and I shook our heads and mourned. I picked up my tools and supplies. Larry brought the machine below and put the sail away. I felt completely exhausted, as if I had run a long race, and I asked myself why I was so tired. Then I realized that it was the spiritual depletion due to my disappointment. I was thrilled and happy when I was working on my project, because I thought I could save us a lot of time and money. I didn’t like to discover that there was a limit to what I could do with that sewing machine. I really wanted it to be the equal of the huge sewing machine I saw in Quantum’s loft. Reality is sometimes extremely unpleasant. When hopes are dashed, it may be a spiritual wound, but it has physical consequences. I felt as tired as I felt after our 50-hour passage.
No point crying, however. I can sing “alas and alack” as long as I like, and it won’t change anything. Time to get moving. Time to do what it takes and go forward. As the Bible says, we must gird up our loins and hie ourselves to Quantum tomorrow. We already know that their production schedule is about over, so we devoutly hope to squeeze our order into the early part of their repair work. Enough of “alas and alack.” Time to move on.