Category Archives: Sailboats

Meandering Through Mercury’s Winter

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An unusual sight around here.

What’s the saying? ‘Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat nor gloom of night…”  If you think that is the official motto of the Postal Service in this country, you would be wrong. That is the official motto of the owners of S/V Andromeda. That’s us. Except fot the heat part. There is none of that, so just substitute the word ‘sleet’ and you’ve got it. During Snowpocolypse 2014, we are truly in the proverbial ‘winter of our discontent’.  With Mercury firmly in retrograde, slowing everything down and putting all kinds of roadblocks in paths, I’m practicing my cat-like waiting and watching mentality when it comes to getting anything done. I understand that’s the lesson of Mercury retrograde periods. Introspection, patience, acceptance. I’m not good at some of those things, but I’m trying. So progress of any kind lately has been slow going, for sure.

And that includes posting to this blog. Because my computer has died. Again. Thanks, Mercury. I’ve decided to name my computer Lazerus because Mike has had to bring it back from the dead so many times. I wonder what that means I should be calling Mike. So I’m posting this from my little Asus netbook, and it’s slow going. Mercury retrograde is no time to be trying to get computers to work outside their comfort zone. I THINK I finally got Picasa to work but we’ll see. I know computers are supposed to make our lives easier and all that, but really, I could have mailed a roll of film and had it developed and mailed back in the amount of time it got me to get Picasa to work, and with a lot less cursing.  Plus, I wouldn’t have had to agree to allow Big Googly Brother to know where I am at all times and when I go to the bathroom and whether it was number one or number two before getting my photos. Google Plus. REALLY?   Why not just ask for my firstborn child? The Red Blooded American in me screams in protest at these instrusions into my privacy. Discontented, indeed.

These beautiful little Aussies from Gearhart Australian Shepherds brightened our day.

But, computers aside, there isn’t much to report on progress in the Andromeda arena. My prediction is that she will not be back into the water until the third week in March, anyway. We keep going down to Astoria, but it’s now more of a ritual and a feeling that we need to check on her than to actually get much done. This weekend we traveled down, deciding to spend the night in our friend’s ocean cabin in Long Beach rather than spend the night on Andromeda. That was a very wise decision as Snowpocolypse 2014 hit about 30 minutes after we got the heat turned on. We had a cozy evening in front of the gas fireplace, eating popcorn, watching movies, and relaxing. Mike braided my hair. That part was kind of pathetic, but fun.

Mike uses his laser vision to look for Andromeda on the far shore of the Columbia River.

You know how you can just tell when things are not going to work out as planned and you have to be flexible (code for ‘sailing’).  That’s what we were dealing with this weekend. First the snow. Then when we arrived at the boat yard, we had no automobile access to the yard. There was a fancy new security gate that we had to open with a special card; the kind we do not have; because no one has bothered to give us one. Who knew? I’m all for security at the boat yard, but somehow I kind of thought that since we are paying for the use of said yard, we’d, I don’t know, be IN THE LOOP when it comes to receiving things like key cards. The previous week we had no access to the bathrooms because they had changed the security codes and failed to tell us. If I didn’t have high self esteem I would think it was a personal affront. But I believe it’s just poor office practices

So we parked in the upper parking lot, climbed down the cement retaining wall into the boatyard (oh yeah, that security gate is REAL secure) and climbed up onto the boat to find that she was suffering from snow standing on the decks. Know this: you will know every leak in your boat when snow starts to melt on your deck. Ugh. Warm weather cannot come quickly enough for me so we can start getting some of these things fixed. With the temps hovering around 34 degrees, it was simply too cold to work effectively. Stainless steel ladders are very cold and slippery in that kind of weather. We went to the Columbia River Maritime Museum instead. An excellent and safer choice.

The front window exhibit at the museum. Yikes! Very dramatic to be sure.

If you’ve never been to that museum, it’s totally worth a trip to Astoria to go. It’s small enough to see in an afternoon, but the displays are very cool, even if disturbing. Of course, many of them are all about the ‘graveyard of the Pacific’, as they call the Columbia River Bar. I talk myself off the ledge about that by focusing on how many boats cross that bar safely every day, and knowing we’ll wait for the right window to try it. It’s all about the window of opportunity. Still, the Coast Guard averages more than one rescue per day per year in this area. They are busy folks.

All this stuff, much of which is unidentified still.

Since we last checked in with the blog, two things have been accomplished: First, we brought home all the various containters of screws, bolts, nuts, and assortments of pieces and parts stored hither and yon in Andromeda. We stashed them on the dining room table and I commenced to spending my evenings sorting them and organizing them. The screws and such were easy, if numerous, but the parts and pieces had us scratching our heads. Many things are unidenifiable, making us fearful of throwing them out, but not knowing if we really need them. Anyone know what these things are?

Huh?

We probably kept too much, but you never know when someone in an anchorage somewhere will need a plastic knob with a screw on one side or a piece of aluminum with three holes bored into it in random places. Some people might see these as trash. We see these as karma kitty material.

The other thing that happened is this:

A beautiful sight! New shaft!

Now we are waiting for the weather to warm up, for our propeller to get here, and for Mercury stop being apparently backwards. We can’t have that fiberglass repaired until the weather is a little warmer. Maybe by the time we get her back in the water our dock will be repaired and we can put her into a protected slip rather than at the commercial dock where she has been since the piling fell over. Until then, we meander through this winter and try our best to be contented.

 

The Beta has Landed

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The dirty little secret among sailors is that while all we talk about is sailing, what we all long for is an engine that can reliably get us into and out of marinas, anchorages and dicey situations. An engine helps us work our way around the crunchy bits of the watery world we want to explore.

Today we have that engine.

This is where having someone experienced in the art of lifting heavy objects comes in handy. Shawn had many tricks to make fitting the 49 inch tall engine and boom fit into the 39 inch tall opening under the dodger. He also sacrificed a shirt to keep the shiny red paint looking good.

The morning broke in Astoria clear, cold and with a wind blowing fierce out of the east. Shawn the diesel mechanic showed up with our engine for the second time in seven days but we were both determined to drop this puppy into Andromeda before the day was out.

The Port of Astoria has turned out to be a terrific place for the repower project. On a Sunday, the forklift had the key in the ignition and the boom was well built and ready for use.

The effort was not without its challenges. Shawn did the math and quickly concluded that the engine and boom height combined would not go between the top of the dodger and the cockpit coaming. His solution? Take off the oil pan and sump pickup. That gave us about eight additional inches of clearance, which was about a quarter of an inch more than we needed.

The Tricky Part

Our engine sans oil pan.

Once the engine was  under the dodger, we removed the cockpit sole and placed some blocking to allow us to set down the engine and set up our chain hoist.

An engine room with a view. The two by twelves above me were used to set the engine down while we got the chain hoist in place.

I love field engineering solutions to problems like this and it was great to work with a guy like Shawn who won’t be deterred by something trivial like no brakes on the forklift.

Once the engine was in the hole, Shawn re-installed the oil pan. That is a brand new, one ton chain hoist that Shawn is depending on.

The new rails required some modification. Shawn had to drill new holes to match the existing threaded inserts installed into the boat’s engine beds. Once that task was completed we were able to bolt down the new rails and lower the engine onto the rails.

Shawn tweaks the feet on the back of the engine. Until we get the new cutless bearing and prop shaft, this is all roughed in.

I think the engine is a little further back than either of us thought it would be, but the transmission dipstick and filler are pretty easy to access. The electrical control cable is just long enough to reach and connect to the engine without an extension and both the raw water and fuel lines are just a short jump from the starboard wall where the raw water strainer and fuel filters are located. There is also plenty of room in front of the engine to work tension belts or replace the raw water impeller. All in all we have great access to every part of the engine.

Shawn putting the finishing touches on the engine rail bolts. The old threads were pretty grungy and needed a little love from the impact driver.

We had Shawn’s tools packed and in his truck just as the sun was setting. He was happy to not be lugging a 600 pound engine up and down the Columbia river for another week. It had been a long day but finally, we have a new engine in Andromeda. We will disregard for a moment that it has no fuel, water, oil or battery. Those will come later.

It may seem trite to some that a big hunk of steel could be so important to the success of our cunning plan, but it is true. We are products of a culture that is in love with the power to just get up and go. Whether it is a 67 Mustang or 60 horse Beta, being able move under our own terms, on our own schedule, is important to us. Knowing that our new beta engine will be there for us around the crunchy bits will give us the false sense of security we need to really get in trouble.

Not a pretty sight

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It seemed that the stars were aligning to finally drop our new Beta Marine engine into Andromeda. I hit Astoria at eight in the morning this past Sunday and found our mechanic, Shawn Thur,  tenderly beating the crap out of our propeller while tightening the bolts on his prop puller. Earlier, I had attempted to remove the prop with a large gear puller but succeeded only in bending the bolts on the puller. The prop is in fine condition and will be sent to Sheffield’s for cleaning and conditioning.

Now that’s a prop puller. Shawn is somewhere behind the rudder.

Finally, with the application of some heat, the prop came off the shaft and we proceeded to remove the shaft. Since we had a clear shot in the engine room, it was easy enough to pull the shaft out from inside. The shaft is about seven feet long and was clearly poorly aligned with the transmission. There was a noticeable bow to the shaft.

Warning! Graphic Images of Boat Carnage Follow!

With the prop out of the way, we could now examine the cutless bearing. I wasn’t too surprised that it was worn and that some of the rubber was actually coming away from the bronze tube. Getting the cutless bearing out of what appeared to be a continuous, six foot stern tube proved to be impossible. Our first indication of trouble was when we put a pipe wrench to the tube and the metal crumpled with very slight pressure.

That pink area is the where the zinc has been removed by galvanic corrosion over the decades. The chunks came off with just a light application of torque. This is a classic example of dezincification. That area was where the stainless steel set screw was placed.

Here is a close up of the tube taken with Melissa’s fancy camera. A great example of dezincification for future reference.

 

With any boat nearing 40 years of age, you have to learn how the boat was built by deduction of the facts before you. At this point, it looked like the stern tube ran continuously from the carrier bearing but, oddly, we could turn the tube exposed outside the boat without seeing the tube turn inside the boat! That meant that a coupling does exist somewhere and we could not see it. Not only that, we could turn the external piece only so far and then it would bind up. Two guys hanging off of a four foot pipe wrench would not budge it. Clearly, we were running out of options. the cutless bearing had to come out. The dezinced stern tube had to come off.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Shawn thought that cutting off part off the stern tube would allow us to grab and remove the cutlass bearing.

With the end of the stern tube cut off, the cutless bearing still would not budge. Now we were getting into a scary place: cutting into the fiberglass so that we could expose the tube and see what the heck was going on in there. The following photos may not be suitable for young children or owners of old boats.

Shawn makes the first cut into the fiberglass. What mysteries will be revealed?

The first cut into the fiberglass finds that it is indeed all glass. no structural members to worry about. Look at the now exposed cutlass bearing. It seems a little pinkish to me which may mean it has never been replaced.

Now it becomes clear. The cutlass bearing was installed in a bronze nipple that threads onto the sterntube. The whole assembly was then glassed in.

While I am not thrilled with the extra effort and destruction required to remove the bearing and nipple, I am not terribly surprised either. The work to repair this damage will be a few hours and we will fair it as pretty as ever. The glassed area is about 4 inches by 6 inches.

The offending nipple and cutless bearing. Shawn thinks this is a fairly standard piece and should be easy to replace.

From the photo above, it might be hard to detect but this piece has a small taper to it. When we attempted to un-thread this from the stern tube, the thicker part hit the glass hull and then it would bind up.

So, armed with the old shaft, cutlass bearing and bronze nipple, shawn will head to Sheffields Marine Propeller to get parts. Of course, this forestalled the actual installation of the engine. But let us cast a last, longing glance upon this thing of beauty.

It was hard to see this drive away without dropping it into the boat. Note that we opted for the hi-rise exhaust elbow.

I like the easy control panel connector you see below the air filter housing. All engine connections are on the starboard side of the engine.

It is going to be a little awkward to get to the oil and fuel filters on the starboard side. There will be plenty of room around the engine though.

Sheffields fabricated these beautiful new rails for the engine. Sorry for the blinding whiteness of our engine room.

Shawn did drop off the engine rails and since we did not install the engine, I had the opportunity to prime and paint them.

I also received the new control panel and cable. That prompted me to remove the old Control panel and cable. I will have to enlarge the current opening to fit in the new panel so another trip with all of my implements of destruction will be in order.

The new panel above with the old panel below.

I anticipate another go this weekend. Shawn isn’t too keen on lugging around the engine in the back of his truck and I would like to have the engine in place so that I can start to place the raw water strainers, fuel filters and control cables. We still haven’t figured out exactly how best to approach dropping the engine into the room but you can be sure I will have photos.