We trundled down to Astoria again this weekend with big plans to accomplish ‘stuff’. Seems like we always have big plans. I think the problem is that in our heads, things are very simple. Just do this, then this, and then THAT will happen and voila! Finis! Probably it’s a good thing that we have the simple minds of children in this way. We’ve accomplished a lot in our lives by being either ignorant or innocent or both.

In theory we should have been able to pick up the special piece of exhaust pipe we are allegedly having made and we should have been able, then, to install said piece, after which our mechanic could come back and get the engine aligned again. In addition, lest you forget, we’d left the top plate the compass rests on soaking in Kroil Penetrating Oil all week, hoping to get it to let go its death grip on the stainless steel pedestal guard.

That’s how much movement we needed to get out of that metal piece.

When we walked down to the boat, we noticed a very cute little wooden sailboat in the first guest slip. Adorable! And there was a nice looking Hunter docked just across from us. Usually we are the only sailboat on our dock.  We got to visit with the owners of both boats, sitting in the cockpit of our S/V Nameless One. It was a first for us, and reminded us why we are going to like being aboard more often once we are further along with the refit. Our cockpit is big enough for visitors, and that hard dodger protects everyone from the rain. Lovely! I admit to being just a wee bit envious of Tom and Mary on their big 1990’s Hunter, though. They spent their time relaxing in their cockpit while we worked on our growing list of projects. Oh well, we chose our poison. So be it.

This boat can be stored inside because the mast is hinged. It’s a really sweet boat!

Our best laid plans began to unravel when we went below and noticed that the special piece of wire, the one the exhaust system artiste was supposed to pick up so there could be a custom piece machined, was still on the table. Okay. So the person never followed through this week, in spite of Mike’s two phone calls. I could have been irritated by that, but I chose instead to be relieved.

Yes, that is correct. I was very relieved. Why? Because I’m still not convinced that the piece is going to solve the problem.  I’m not convinced that the loop is actually high enough for our boat. I could just see us getting the piece made, and then having the same issue because it wasn’t tall enough. Talk about nightmares. An anonymous reader commented on our post when we first found out that it was the exhaust loop that looked to be the problem and we took his/her comment seriously. The comment echoed my own concern that if the problem was that the loop was too low, then the higher the better and we do have plenty of room in the engine room. Thanks, anonymous, for giving voice to my worry that we still didn’t have it right and why.

So I emailed the owners of a sister ship to ours, S/V Black Swan, on the east coast. I asked them to email me a photo of their exhaust loop and low and behold theirs is mighty tall. It goes almost all the way to the ceiling of the engine room.  I know they have a different engine than ours, but their boat is the same, the cooling water exits their boat the same place ours does,  and their exhaust loop is much higher than the one we were supposed to be getting (not to mention it’s about 5 times higher than the ‘tall’ loop we bought from Beta Marine).

I’ve learned over the years that even though I don’t know as much about boat systems as Mike does, when I have a gut feeling about things, I should speak up. Sometimes I am wrong and I just need more information to understand correctly. But sometimes I am right and it’s better to know this before something goes wrong than for me to be saying, ‘Damn! I should have said something.’ after the fact. I hate when that happens.  I’m pretty sure that I’m in good company with many women who sail with men who know more than they do about boats. It’s pretty easy for us to keep our mouths shut. In fact, it’s much easier that way sometimes. But we have to learn to speak up, even if our questions might sometimes feel foolish.

See the gray shelf with the water heater on it? The piece would come up to that shelf. But you can see that we have plenty of room for it to be even taller. Is it possible for it to be too tall?

So I was relieved that this piece of wire was still on the counter and Mike and I talked about my concerns. Turns out he wasn’t so sure about it either after reading the helpful comments and after seeing the photo of Black Swan’s set up. So we’re thinking we will get someone who specializes in exhaust systems to consult with us about this. We just want a fourth pair of eyeballs to look at this thing because we love this engine with all of our wallet and want it to be right. If they look at it and agree that the piece of wire represents a shape and size that should solve the problem, then groovy. But if not, we will be glad we had another opinion before spending the money on this custom part.

So I’m not sure if this is a good thing, (because I don’t really need anything else that can keep me up at night), but last night I had trouble falling asleep because I was going over that exhaust system in my head and asking myself why we needed to pay someone to make something that it sounded like we might be able to make ourselves. That, my friends, is a slippery slope I’m not sure I want to go down yet. When I mentioned it to Mike this morning turns out he was thinking the same thing. It’s probably good to think that way, but it’s also good to know when your money is better spent paying someone to make something for you because it’s what they do all the time. I’m pretty sure this is one of those times. But we shall see.

So Mike turned his attention to that piece of seized up metal. After a lot of this:

Using heat in his little manly workshop. 

A ton of this:

This makes an ungodly noise.

Then more fire until it was almost red hot, then dashing cold water on it, then more whanging, he finally got this:

Free at last.

That’s 100$ saved. I love it. Really, all other seized metal on this boat should be on notice. Mike WILL have his way with you. He will not give up. You WILL do as he says. He beat the transmission into submission, he wheedled the propeller into letting go, and he will beat the pants off of you, too, so you may as well put your hands up now.

He cleaned the piece up with the dremel, then I had the easy job of painting it to look new. He used Flitz to clean up the stainless steel guard and I was surprised as how well it looked. We’ll do a photo when everything is put back together.

By the time the metal gave up the ghost, Mike was looking pretty green around the gills and, feeling his forehead with my medically accurate mother’s hand, I noticed he had a fever. He was feeling pretty awful and took to his bunk early.

Today, he felt no better and, in addition, it was pouring cold rain and the occasional hail; not exactly the kind of weather a sick person needs to be working in. Or anyone, really.  Just say ‘no’ to working in hail.  We puttered around inside the boat doing nothing, then decided to call it a weekend and hit the road so he could get home and to bed. Sometimes you just have to listen to the body and give it what it wants.

We seriously need a break from this 3 hour drive to Astoria every weekend and this week we’ll get one. Mike’s sister is coming for a visit, Andrew is coming home for the weekend, and we are going to step away from the boat issues for a few days and catch our breath. We are more than ready to have this boat up in Foss Harbor Marina where we can work on her more often, and just hang out on her more often. But she has to be able to safely make the trip up the Washington Coast for that to happen. So onward to Astoria until this engine and transmission refit is finished.

Mike used this stuff to clean up the stainless steel pedestal guard and it worked really nicely.

I got a message on our Facebook page this week from a new reader who wanted me to send her a link to the first post on our blog so she could read all the way through from the beginning. I obliged, gladly, and then realized just how many blog posts we have on this thing. Using the time honored technique called “counting” I became overwhelmed after reaching the 100 mark. So there are well over 100 posts. I am either verbose or dedicated. You be the judge.  Some days I can’t tell which. This week we went over 100,300 page views, which I consider amazing. On a good day, we get over 200 views and on a sterling day, we get over 400. The record for the best day is 720 views. Mike holds that record due completely to luck and the fact that I had to work. (See below)

Mike’s turn at the wheel. Sometimes we miss this boat.

I have never gone back and read the entire blog myself, so what the heck? Why not? I discovered that the first year was filled with fun and our excitement about the plan was palpable. The second year I found pretty boring, and the blog posts reflected how frustrated we were with the the process of selling Moonrise, falling in love with Flying Gull (which, according to the Coast Guard website, has a new owner), and looking for the right boat for us. The third year starts about the time we found our current boat, the Olympic Adventure 47, “Nameless One”. Thank God year two is history. I’m surprised anyone kept reading through that dry spell that on reflection seems filled with almost adolescent angst. Sheesh.

As I read through the posts, one thing that really stood out is that people who don’t know us would think our lives are filled with drama. Kind of like TV news, blogs make the world seem like a much less mundane place that it is in actuality. I assure you that we are pretty boring stuff when it comes to day to day existence. But boring stuff doesn’t sell newspapers, you know? Still, reading through some parts of the history deposited here make us sound very much like people who live on the raw organic edge. Rolling On Floor Laughing Out Loud.

In honor of my having nothing better to do with my time, I thought I would occasionally throw in a ‘Best of Little Cunning Plan’ post with links to some of what I think are the best posts from previous years; posts I actually enjoy reading and that don’t make me cringe in awkward embarrassment. These are the ones that either made me laugh out loud, or made me want to cry all over again.

Tony Allport, hammer in one hand, ice pick and chalk in another.  He surveyed three boats for us this year.

Photo Tribute to Moonrise -The boat that started it all. And for those who are newer readers, our fears about being boatless turned out to be groundless. That never happened.

Hope Springs Eternal – An appropriate post for anyone who is anxious for the future to be the now.

Michael’s Pretty Good Day – The single highest page count ever; the 720 view day. I’d like to say I’ve forgiven Mike for being alone on the boat that day, but that would be a lie. He owes me big time. Still.

And finally, these two posts about being two gringos who travel to La Paz without a boat. Seriously, why would we ever do that?

Mexico A Go-Go   and

Baja Buena

Enjoy our checkered past.

S/V “Nameless One’ for now. Here’s to finding the right name and having some honest to goodness sailing adventures.

Well, I can say this: after last weekend’s triple play smack down, it was hard for this weekend to be anything but better. And it WAS better. The good news is we GET TO KEEP OUR ENGINE! Oh happy day! You can believe that we are ecstatic that the engine is fine, that we don’t have to haul out again, that all the work we’ve accomplished in the last few months won’t have to be done over again. Although I would not say that it was exactly a ‘blessing’ to have to hit another boat during a docking, I would say that it is a good thing the transmission lever was giving us enough trouble to cause us to turn around and go back because had we not come back to the dock when we did, we would have had much worse problems.

Here’s hoping for more views like this soon.

If we’d stayed out longer we would have quickly lost all the rest of the bolts on our shaft coupling. The locking washers, sold to our mechanic by the local marine store, completely failed. There was no way to predict this failure. They were stainless steel lock washers and should have worked. Let that be a caution to all of you using this type of lock washer in a critical area. Check them frequently. Why did they fail? Who knows? Maybe cheap steel. PROBABLY cheap steel.  And they failed magnificently. They were almost completely flat so the vibration of the engine worked the bolts loose easily. Had they all fallen out while we were under way, we would have had a true emergency.

So this weekend, after a week of worry, we met our mechanic down at the boat on Saturday to attend to this problem of water in the oil in our new baby Beta. We knew, because of Tate and Dani at Sundowner Sails Again, that we’d have to do several oil changes to remove all the water from our engine.  What we didn’t yet know was what had caused the trouble to begin with.

It’s not supposed to look like that. I apologize for any heart palpitations this photo may cause sailboat owners.

Shawn began by draining the engine completely and then filling it with 1/2 oil, 1/2 diesel.  Mike, acting as the wrench monkey, turned the engine over a few times to move the solution through. This was drained and a solution of 1/3 diesel and 2/3 oil was run through the same way.  He then did two complete oil changes the usual way, running the engine for about 30 minutes between each one. Then today, on Easter Sunday, Mike did another oil change and ran the engine for another 30 minutes.  She starts right up and runs like a dream. After running the engine today, the oil looked like new oil. Whew! Dodged that bullet! To be double dog sure, we’ll be doing another 2 oil changes next weekend. Can’t be too careful with this baby.

This short video shows the engine running and how Shawn rigged it so that the water would exit the exhaust system rather than get back into the engine. [vsw id=”1QiAbBFtZnE” source=”youtube” width=”425″ height=”344″ autoplay=”no”]

So what caused this water problem? The engine never hydro-locked. In fact it ran really well the whole time, pushing the boat at a cool 9.5 knots without even breaking a sweat. Well here’s the lesson for anyone who is installing a new engine in an old boat: You can install the engine exactly to the specs in the manual, you can order the tall exhaust elbow because you want to be extra careful and learn from others, but if your exhaust hose is long, and if it rises above the highest level of the exhaust elbow, you’re going to get back flow. And if you have a large amount of water in the hose, the pressure might be enough to backflow past that exhaust elbow, even if you DID get the higher one from Beta to avoid just this kind of problem.  So basically just because you follow directions doesn’t mean you are safe and don’t you forget it!

Nicely wrapped high rise exhaust elbow from Beta Marine. Didn’t do us a bit of good.

When Shawn originally went down to the boat to figure out the problem, he checked the exhaust elbow first thing and it was completely dry. This led him to believe something might be amiss inside the engine, requiring us to have the actual engine repaired. Our operating assumption this week was based on this finding, hence the fear we would be back on the hard during sailing season. However, when he went down to the boat yesterday, after it had been sitting all week being tossed around a bit by wind and waves, he found water in the exhaust. This caused him to look more critically at why that might be.

The exhaust hose from the engine runs out the back of the engine room,  under the sole of the aft cabin, then rises along the hull under the berth before dipping down a bit to the exhaust pipe on the starboard side of the boat. It’s almost impossible to ascertain with any precision where the top of the hose is in relation to the top of the exhaust elbow in the engine room. So even while Mike painstakingly ordered, and paid for, the extra tall exhaust elbow from Beta Marine, and even while he and Shawn measured the required distance above the water line to be sure the installation was correct, that did not guarantee this problem would not occur. We’ll be sure to remember that when we do our next engine installation. Right. Pardon me while I run screaming.

Coming from the muffler and running along the hull, then up and under the berth before going out of the boat.

So what’s the solution? Well if you own a sailboat you’ve probably already determined that the solution is to have a part especially made for this. Oh yes, we will have a ‘custom’ boat for sure. Shawn got a piece of spring steel (because we have no wire hangers on board) and crafted the shape of a new exhaust elbow which will be made just for this boat. No other boat will have one like it! Isn’t that exciting? No it is not. But it is a relief to know that it’s not quite as expensive as it all sounds. This elbow will go really, really high. Frankly, I’d be happier if it went all the way to the ceiling of the engine room, but Shawn thinks this will fix the problem so what do I know?

Mike is holding the steel wire shaped like our soon-to-be made exhaust elbow.

One question we are batting around has to do with the laws of physics in this system.  The exhaust elbow connection is 50mm on this engine. This is connected to the existing muffler, which is a 60mm connection. Since we had two brand new Vetus mufflers, we decided to use one of those, right? No problem there. But the exhaust hose coming out the back of the muffler and traveling to the tailpipe is also 60mm, which means it holds a greater volume of water than the 50mm exhaust elbow on the engine side of the system.  My question for the physics teachers out there is this: is this greater volume of water, especially given the long run and steep incline up the hull of this exhaust hose, likely to overwhelm the system? A bigger hose and longer run means more water building up in the system before it actually leaves the boat via the exhaust pipe. Maybe this doesn’t make any difference. But I’d like to be sure of it. Of course, our new exhaust elbow that reaches to the sky should be able to handle this. But we want this system as bullet proof as possible, so the question needs asking. I foresee deep discussions with the mechanic about this.

The engine finally filled with clean oil, we turned our attention to the transmission. To fix the issue with the transmission cables, Mike had ordered a new system from Edson, the manufacturer of the steering pedestal. The new system has a groovy piece that actually holds both cables in place so they can’t get all jammed up against things in the pedestal. This should fix our ability to move either forward or reverse as the situation requires.

Old vs.new.

I got to help with this project! Reading the directions on how to install the thing made it sound pretty difficult and Mike was dreading the frustration that seemed his destiny. So we thought up a better way.  Mike hung a string over the steering wheel shaft and down into the engine room. He then attached the string to the clevis of each cable and attached the cables to the cable retainer. The retainer has a bolt that comes through a hole Mike had to drill in the pedestal. The issue was going to be getting that bolt situated in the hole.

You can see the little hole Mike drilled for the bolt just there below the spoke on the wheel.

I pulled on the string, pulling the cables and retainer up into the pedestal. Mike watched from below and when I got the thing positioned just so, he used a long, thin piece of teak to just lightly nudge the bolt home. A slight shove from the teak and ‘Bob’s your uncle’! The bolt came through the hole and I had it capped off with the nut in a twinkle. No frustration, no drama.

Next we had to attach the shift levers to each clevis. A little trial and error helped us decide which hole was best, but the nut beneath the clevis on the throttle cable kept snagging on lip inside the pedestal no matter what adjustments we made. Mike’s contribution to the solution for this was to remove the nut, as he said it was redundant, unnecessary.  That made the rubbing a little better but I couldn’t leave it like that, knowing that metal was going to rub on metal and eventually that was going to cause problems. I took a round metal file and filed off some material in that area, just enough to give a hair more clearance for the cable. That’s all it took and the cables were both free to move as they needed to without rubbing up against the chain or the inside of the pedestal.

Nice and tidy! These clearances are so small you can barely see them.

Next we began to put the pedestal guard back on and here’s where we hit a snag. You knew things were going along too easy, didn’t you? The housing for the new control system is actually about an inch higher than the old one. That gives us a little more room inside the pedestal, which is good. But it also means that the top plate that the compass rests on is now too high off the floor of the cockpit. So when we put the top plate on and screw it down, the legs of the pedestal guard hang loose rather than going into their nice housing like good children.

Here’s the difference in size. Just enough to make it difficult.

Whanging on it didn’t do much good.

Those feet just barely touch their receivers.

So this is our first world problem for this week: how to raise that top plate because we do not want to buy a whole new pedestal guard. We’ve already tried banging on it. We squirted it with Kroil Penetrating Oil, and Mike got out his butane torch. But he can’t afford to use too much heat because there are electrical wires running inside the thing. We buttoned it up and left it for next weekend. We’re trying to avoid having him take the wires out, because he’s already hooked up the radio and that’s just, well, it’s just a kick in the pants to have to cut a perfectly done installation. So we’ll see if whanging on it will help next weekend. I mean, what else are we going to do at the dock?

In other news this weekend, I fixed the hole in the cockpit enclosure. Recall Mike put his foot through it during the docking fiasco. I stitched the zipper, and repaired the tears with sail tape. It isn’t pretty, but I don’t care. We’ll have to have a new one before we go on the long trip anyway. It will do.

And you may have noticed that we are referring to ‘the boat’ rather than calling her by name. That’s because at the end of last weekend we did the de-naming ceremony. We did it properly, all solemn and prayerful and dedicated our last beer to the gods of the sea. I don’t know if I wanted a clean slate after that weekend or what, but I wanted this done so we did it. Now we are struggling to name her. But at least she is not working under a false identity. Hoping we would come up with a name this week, I bought two bottles of nice champagne for the honors but we’re still working on it. I thought Easter Sunday would be the perfect day for a christening. I was to be thwarted in that. Oh well. We’re ready with the champagne whenever.

Our sacrifice to the gods. I hope they appreciated it.

We leave you with a photo of a boat we saw at the boat yard today. File this under ‘you think WE have problems?’.  It puts everything in perspective.

She’s really kind of cute, although I’m not sure what she is.

But this:

Ouch.