It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him. J.R.R. Tolkien I've become very fond of the word 'contraption' while sitting in the engine compartment, hunched over, with the grease all over me. I've been tracing wires and tubes for what seems like forever. There are at least 5 isolated systems in any marine diesel engine. Not one of them is all that exciting, but together, they are capable of an amazing thing: freedom. The original plan for this year was to motor up to Chattanooga, Tennessee for hurricane season back in May/June. Hurricane season ends later this month, so we're about 5 months behind schedule. And keep in mind this is the most recent schedule of about half a dozen in the last 18 months. I have yet to meet a self-imposed deadline. The trip from New Orleans to Chattanooga, as it turns out, is a little over 700 nautical miles and about a 19 day trip. This does not make for an ideal maiden voyage. In fact, it's likely foolhardy (which does sound like a pirate word, right?). I feel like a solid 100 hours of testing of the motor and steerage would be necessary for a trip like that. So that's what we're going to do: Test, test, and test some more. Essentially, the original plan was a good one so we're just going to do it next year instead of this year. This was a little disappointing at first, but then I remembered: I didn't move onto this contraption to be in a hurry.

Boat Refit Archives - The Sea Shanti

Q: Your Transmission: A 100lb Problem

Here's something I could have gone my whole life without knowing: The transmission on a 1974 Perkins diesel engine has a "breather" that prevents pressure from building up and blowing out the front gasket. But I do know that now and there's really only one way I would: It happened. A little $0.11 nut was missing, so I replaced it. This allowed a $16.00 valve to fail, building up pressure and blowing out a gasket where the transmission attaches to the engine. This means I have to pull out the 100lb transmission from a very small space to a slightly less small space to replace that gasket. The thing about pulling out the transmission is, once you do, you may as well replace everything on it that could make you have to pull it out again any time soon. This includes replacing several gaskets and the dozen or so clutch plates. I give myself a potential failure rate on this project of well over 70%, but hey, that's never stopped me before. I'll give it a shot and worst case is I replace the gaskets causing the problem and deal with the rest of it later. So break out the JuJu bags and send some good stuff my way. So, to summarize, an 11 cent nut has led to a $250 transmission rebuild. I'll let you know how it went when it's all over.

Q: Under the Engine Bilge

Under the engine is an isolated part of the bilge. There's a pipe that runs from the forward cabin to the aft cabin where the primary bilge pump is. I didn't understand why this was important until I thought about it a while. The engine can leak oil, diesel, and any number of other corrosive fluids which would be good to be isolated from the rest of the bilge. It also protects the bilge pump(s) which aren't designed to pump anything but water. Not to mention pumping crap into whatever body of water we're in just isn't good. It's in about the kind of shape you'd expect it to be in. But the interesting thing is that it's so, so difficult to get to being right under the engine. There's very little clearance fore and aft and the engine mounts are on either side. I managed to get some pictures but still haven't figured out how I'm going to get this cleaned up. There were some absorbent pads in there and it's hard to tell if anything is leaking. So I need to get it cleaned to see if anything is leaking. It looks like the yard drilled a hole in the engine mount to let water drain from the Port side. That would have been necessary since termite nests and other debris had blocked the opening where water could drain into the bilge. That has been corrected so I can plug that hole and that should keep anything from getting into the compartment while I clean and paint it. I did manage to get that pipe mostly cleaned out so water flows fore and aft under the engine without blockage, and it doesn't appear to be compromised since when rain water gets under the engine and I manually pump out the bilge, the water stays in this compartment. So that's good news. More on this when I figure this whole thing out completely.

Q: The Center Cabin Seating Area

There was a bench on either side of the center pilot house that I suspected might have some termites. The center pilot house sits above the engine midships. The seating was in pretty bad shape so I thought I'd check it out and see how much needs to be removed. One of the seats had the LPG (propane tank like a gas grill) under it and wouldn't you know it, there was a bit of termite nest (top left in the picture) but not so bad... Yeah, well, I have a well established way to deal with this kind of situation. Spray them with TalStar and then: [embed]https://youtu.be/NYseLq517y0[/embed]

Q: A Little Spring Cleaning

I stopped in one of the big-box hardware stores and rented a small electric pressure washer to do some cleaning on the top-side. It isn't exactly clear how long the boat has been sitting here but the best guess is around 5 years. And it has an awning but it has only been over the boat for a year or two. And it does drop little bits of rust on the topside - meh. So the big surprise was the way the teak trim came back to life: The whole main deck was cleaned as well, but the only thing more boring than doing it, would be looking at the pictures.