SPLASH

Except for one leak in the Air Con inlet screen lid First Light hit the water without a hitch. The crew pulled us out of the lift pit and tied us up to the pier, giving us all the time we wanted to poke around and make sure everything was as it should be. After looking all around for leaks I held my breath and hit the start switch for the port side engine. Less than 2 seconds of cranking later is was rumbling along at idle, all gauges in the green. That seemed like a good sign so I hit the start button on the starboard side. Same result. How about them apples? 

After letting the engines run for a while I checked that they shifted as they should. That done, we tossed the lines holding us against the lift pit pier, I started playing with the shifters, and we eased forward with a slight wind off the starboard side. It has been months since I moved the boat so the first few seconds were a little tense. I didn't touch the throttles until we were out of the marina. Even then it was just off of idle to move us out to anchor in the middle of the river. We set the anchor. Actually we set it twice having misjudged the wind. With the hook securely buried in the bottom, I climbed down from the flybridge sure something was missing. Oh yeah, anchor snubber. Snubber installed and lines secured, we just sat for a while, the boat swinging gently in the breeze. But we couldn't sit there long as there were still things to check and do.

First on the list was dropping the Dink in the water to see if there was any chance its engine would run. We were in a bit of hurry last fall and I don't think we did any of the things one is supposed to do before parking an outboard for the season. Given that our experience with outboards hasn't been all that encouraging, I was expecting the worst. The routine for dropping the Dink into the water was carefully reviewed because getting it wrong could easily lead to fingers getting squished in places fingers shouldn't be. The Dink plopped into the water without a wince. Then came remembering the routine for dropping the outboard into the water with even more consideration to not mashing fingers. Again success. All that was left was to see if the thing would start.

If I had been forced to bet on the thing starting within the next hour or so, maybe more, my bet would have been, “no chance”. On about the fourth pull the little bugger  sputtered, coughed, and then settled into an easy idle. How ABOUT them apples? The Yamaha 9.9 HP 4-stroke may be my favorite engine at this particular moment, even if it is a bit bigger and heaver than I think necessary for a Dink pusher. I gathered up my life vest, slipped the kill switch lanyard over my wrist, took the rig for a short run around the boat, and almost tossed myself into the river. I had forgotten that the twisty throttle on an outboard works backwards from the one on a motorcycle. I have about ¼ of a million miles on motorcycles. I have maybe 100 miles in a Dink. But I managed to get back on First Light without getting wet.

All that was left to get going was the genset. What were the chances that thing would run? We were batting 1000 up to that point. My experience is that batting 1000 on a boat is even rarer that batting 1000 with, well, a bat. (Actually, I have no idea where “Batting 1000” came from. I assume it is a baseball thing.) With the electrical panel set for GEN rather than “SHORE” I took a deep breath and toggled the gen switch to “Start”. Two seconds of crank, a “chuff” and another second or two of crank and the generator settled into a quiet idle, water flowing easily out of the exhaust. A look at the gauge showed a solid 120 volts AC being available. HOW ABOUT THEM APPLES!

We will be sitting here for a few days, waiting out some weather and getting our living on a boat in the water habits polished up. We are now "off the grid". Electrical power use considerations, water on board, and a constant weather watch are part of the life. We even remembered to hang our "anchor ball". (Well, Deb did.)

Mostly we are simply basking in the fact that we are back on the boat in the water. The next big step will be motoring down the river and turning left. As soon as we do we will be in new territory as this is as far north as we had ever been in Kintala. The first time we left here we turned south to start our cruising adventure. This time we will turn north on the Great Loop route. A new adventure and the first leg toward home.

Just a small change in our view. What a difference a couple hundred yards makes...

Hanging in the slings while we paint the bottom under the jack stand pads.

I realized too late that I had left my coffee cup on the boat.

Disaster Averted

We are just a few days from our scheduled splash. The good news is we are making good progress. But it does come with a price. Most of our work days stretch out to nearly nine hours with very few breaks. A work schedule that is a little harder to pull off these days than it was a couple of dozen years ago.

Deb and I have literally decades of practice working together on projects. She has learned to put up with my (sometimes) impatient responses to projects not going well. I have learned to listen to her suggestions as to how to make a project go better. (Whenever possible work with someone who is smarter than you!) The jobs that are the most fun, for me anyway, are the ones where we have to make stuff up as we go. Replacing the engine room (it really is more like a hole) cameras with ones that will (hopefully) work this time around was just such a project. The system we used was designed to go on trucks, making it easier for the driver to put the rig wherever he or she needs it to be. Making it work in a trawler engine room took a bit of creativity. We had to cut a notch into one of the camera fixtures to make the wiring work. Running electrical cables through any kind of boat always seems to need some creative thinking, particularly when it comes to making it “happy” wiring. And, given that no boat I have ever owned or worked on came with any kind of wiring diagram, figuring out the best and easiest way to get power to the system is always an adventure. In this case we decided to power the camera system off of the same breaker that powers the lower helm chart plotter.

Here's a photo of the display screen at night with the infrared feature.  Cam #1 and Cam #4 are the

dripless seals and shafts, Cam #3 is the engine room forward end to monitor the belts, and Cam #2

is the forward facing camera for the forward deck and view off the bow.

One nice thing about many modern systems is just how little power they need. Even with three cameras, a screen, and the small chart plotter powered up, there is no chance of overloading the breaker other than a short in a wire. But, even saying that, each of the systems is fused separately after the breaker. Sometimes the belt and suspenders approach is just the comfortable way to go. (Update: after getting everything working we decided to remove the old chart plotter since it has been replaced with iPads. Should have done that before wiring in the cameras.)

Jobs that are not so much fun are just those that require grinding, seemingly endless, and near mindless work. Prepping and painting the bottom and running gear are good examples. Buffing and waxing the hull is another. I've got enough miles on me now that jobs like those are just an endless marathon grind. But they have to be done, so grind on. Another type of job is one where the access is so bad that there is no avoiding contortions, strained joints, and complaining muscles. On First Light changing the filtered water faucet in the galley is just such a job. It may be a few days before my wrist and shoulders recover from that effort.

The left image shows looking up behind the sink, a space of about 4". The arrow points to the fitting for the drinking water faucet that had to be replaced. the right image shows the space from the cupboard door, a space about 10" across. It requires removing the filter assy and laying on your right side and doing all the work with one hand.

The task for today was going over the engine room with a fine-toothed comb, changing engine zincs, checking fluid levels, general cleaning and poking around looking for potential problems. With that done, all the necessary items needing done to splash would be complete. All we got when pulling the zinc on the port engine was the brass mounting part. The zinc part had broken off in the heat exchanger. Pop the cover off the end of the exchanger and there was the missing part. Problem solved. The starboard side behaved itself. The zincs were barely used, making me kind of happy. Not sure what the average life time for those zincs might be, something we will have to figure out as we go.

Then I moved on to the generator. The first thing I noticed when removing the sound deadening panels was the smell of fuel. Lots and lots of fuel. The entire catch basin under the generator was awash in the stuff. It is a shallow basin but we still squeezed about a gallon of fuel into the bucket. Had we splashed, motored out to the anchorage, and tried to start the genset...boom.

After cleaning out the mess, I started looking for the leak. It had to be on the non-pressure side of the fuel pump. And, as it turned out, it was right at the inlet to the fuel pump. Both clamps were loose. But why? Well, the clamps were loose because the water hose from the thru-hull to the water pump was too long. With the front sound dampening panel installed that hose was smashed hard against the fuel pump inlet hose right at the pump, kinking the hose and putting pressure on the clamps. I'm not exactly sure why the generator ran at all. It was also the kind of potential flaw that isn't readily apparent. I know I had that panel off at least once to replace the generator alternator during last year's attempt to get to St. Louis. I didn't notice anything amiss when putting the panel back on. But while sitting there trying to figure out the leak? The problem was painfully and embarrassingly obvious.

The too long hose is highlighted. Remove, cut shorter, reinstall. Fixed.

The original reason for uncovering the generator was to change its zinc. That one turned out to be nearly completely gone. It was last changed when the engine zincs were, so it clearly has a much shorter service life. When I first put a wrench on the zinc the entire heat exchanger moved. That certainly didn't seem right. The parts manual shows three clamp mounts holding the exchanger in place. Ours had one secured on the inboard end. The middle one appears to be completely unreachable with the generator mounted the way it is in the boat. The outboard one is barely accessible. I know the mechanic who last installed the exchanger and he is way too good to have only mounted the thing with a clamp at one end. But getting to the outboard end bolt, while not impossible, is really, really, (really) tough. My guess is he didn't get quite enough torque on that one and it simply shook loose. Putting in a new bolt and lock nut and getting as much torque on it as I could took two socket wrenches, two different length extensions, one half inch six point socket, one half inch crow's foot socket, a sharp corner of the generator gouging a hole in my side, and an angle on my right wrist that I will be paying for for the next couple of days. But the heat exchanger is secure, the zinc is new, the fuel leak is fixed, and we avoided a BOOM. Which all makes for a pretty good day. Still, time spent on the generator meant some of the other routine stuff remains to be done down in the engine hole.

Then, just because it is a boat, at the very end of the day the water pump (which has been working just fine since we put some water on the boat a couple of days ago) just stopped working. So, tomorrow's first job is to get the water system going again. Just days to splash and we are still adding things to the bottom of the list.

All day, every day, working on the boat.

After one longish day and one short day of driving we pulled up as near as we could to First Light with a van stuffed full of stuff. The boat is buried pretty deep in a collection of boats on the hard so it took a while to hump all the stuff from van to boat. After that the “shower curtain” went up over the fly bridge.

We were pleased to find that First Light had weathered the winter pretty well. The deck was mess of course, but the interior was dry and mold-free. There was no evidence of water leaks and the batteries were fully charged. All good news. And, missing grandkids aside, it felt good to be back in our home not yet in the water.

I believe there is a saying that applies to everyone who plans to splash a boat sitting on the hard. “All day, every day, working on the boat.” And so, with the exception of weather bringing a halt to progress, that is our current life. It rained all night last night and is supposed to rain all day today. Which is why I am writing and not working on the boat. Which is also why I'm probably going to this music store this afternoon that Deb found the other day.

We did have an interior job planned for the rain days, that of installing a camera system to replace the ones in the engine room that turned out to be unreliable and definitely not worth the money spent. In addition, the new system includes fore and aft cameras with infrared capabilities all displayed on a dedicated screen mounted at the lower helm. We picked the lower helm because there is really good visibility from the flying bridge. Night travel will likely be done from the lower helm when the infrared capabilities would really help. As for keeping an eye on the engine room someone does a visual of the cabin every hour or so when underway, a good time to look at the engine room camera. Yes, it would be perfect to have those images always in view at both helms, but we have to have money left over to put gas in this thing.

Unfortunately, when we opened the box, we discovered that pieces of the kit were missing and the wiring harness was damaged. I guess Boeing isn't the only company with quality assurance problems. So that project is on hold until some kind of arrangement is made for a replacement kit.

Outside work has gone surprisingly well. It was an all day task but the boat is clean. Bottom paint was a two day task, now completed. The running gear is sanded clean and waiting for a dry day to paint. All new zincs are installed. And, yes, the boot stripe needs painted.

Still to go is teak work, buff and polish, a careful inspection of the engine room including anodes and fluid levels and a general systems review, some of which can't be done until we splash. Once in the water we will drop the dink and see if the outboard is willing. We haven't scheduled any time for outboard repairs, but I will not be surprised if a day or two...or three, goes by while we sit just out in the river trying to make everything work.

All day, every day, working on the boat...but there's still time to enjoy the sunset.