A hunk of metal

The propeller on Kintala is a chunk of solid metal; no moving parts. "How hard can it be to get another
one", you ask? Ah Grasshopper, grab a coldie to wash this one down.

So the propeller guru called the shop guru who called us. The propeller guru had our order for a new propeller and was pretty sure we had messed up somewhere. In a display of customer service kind of astounding given my experience in the marine industry, he was reluctant to spend our money for us until the shop guru checked it out. So the shop guru called us and started asking questions. As it turns out we had absolutely messed up ... by ordering the propeller listed in the Tartan spec sheet! What was I thinking?

In an effort to sort out the confusion the shop guru asked that we send him some pictures of the failing hunk of metal that had been our old prop. We were deep into a discussion about Walter V-drives and Hurth Transmissions, blowed up drive trains and shaft alignments, when the conversation took a strange turn. Did we want an "elephant ear" prop or a "sailor" prop? I, being the neophyte boat propeller buyer / installer that I am, had absolutely no clue what we were talking about. Would that be an African elephant ear as opposed to an Asian one? And, given that it is a propeller for a sailboat, what else would it be but a "sailor" prop? Is there a non-sailor propeller intended for use on sailboats out there somewhere? While this bit of strangeness buzzed over our cellphone connection the pictures showed up in his email.

"What kind of propeller is that? I've never seen one that looked like that before, is it a European prop?"

European prop? There are European elephants I never heard about? This boat has never been out of American waters, where would it find a European prop? It also seems that European props go on metric shafts, which would be a huge puzzle. I may be a sailboat propeller neophyte but I do know how to read a micrometer. When I replaced the shaft coupler to the V-drive the shaft measured 1 inch, the size of the coupler I ordered and installed. Unless Kintala has a shaft sized US on one end and metric on another ... (so paranoid am I of this boat that I actually put a mic to the the prop end, it was an inch). If it is a European prop it is tapered for a metric shaft. There should be no way to jam a metric taper on a US shaft except ... might that explain why it took a 7 ton puller to get that thing off? Probably not since the old prop has 16 X 12 X 1 clearly stamped into it. More to the point, if the East Coast sailboat repair guru hasn't a clue as to what has been hanging on the end of my prop shaft, what chance is there I have have a clue?

What I do know is that no one seems to know exactly what is going on with the working end of our drive train. Instead of a nice shiny new propeller, when Kintala gets east she will be met by various puzzled gurus. Instead of going in the water she will hang in the hoist until the gurus are puzzled no longer. Then they will help us spend our money and order the correct thing ... or things ... or multiple things (insert you favorite mechanic's nightmare here) needed to make our Tartan safe for blue water.

All I needed was a new prop. How hard could that be?

A thing of beauty

Bad Juju

S/V Gail Force is sitting up on the hard, a bulkhead half chopped away to allow access to a leaking fuel tank. S/Vs Miss My Money and Paradise both suffered meltdowns in the electrical systems at, it is assumed, roughly the same time. Friend Steve was seen walking up the dock toting the alternator from Island Time, hoping he had found the source of the short that is killing his batteries. There is some bad juju haunting our dock.

And Kintala? Well, it was a fantastic weekend on Kintala. We left the dock Friday afternoon to spend the night in our favorite cove. A full moon rose off the bow just as a fire red sun set off the stern. A perfect night on the hook. Saturday we had a great sail back to the dock to wait and see what the Midwest weather had in mind. While there we reinstalled the wayward staysail winch. When the weather concerns abated we sailed away again, back to our favorite spot to raft up for the night with Paradise and Quicksilver. Come Sunday we decided to just stay put and do some work on the hook. A few hours later we had fixed a minor glitch with the roller furler on Paradise and re-bedded the port with the worst leak on Kintala. Miss My Money dropped by for a visit, and a good time was had by all. Come night we had the cove to ourselves once again. Rain was expected at some point but the storms went a different way. Perfect night #3, the longest we have ever stayed out on Kintala.

This morning we sailed back to the dock on perfect winds, 10 to 15 with an occasional puff to 20. Kintala was dancing downwind on just her head sail at 6 knots, steady in the following swell. All told we sailed 20 plus miles and spent more than 4 hours under sail. Along the way we discovered that Kintala really sails well on just a head sail. We flew the main only once all weekend. And so for nearly 4 days we pretended like we had made it, working on the hook, coving out, sailing off the anchor, almost like our land lines had really been tossed. It was grand.

But then it came time to roll up the sail and head for the marina. We motored in, figuring to pull head first into the dock, hook a bow line on a cleat and use reverse to pull us back up against the pier. It is a technique taught us by Friend Joel (boat handler extraordinaire even if he is younger than some of my socks) when the wind is from the wrong direction to back in. And it worked perfectly right up until the last gentle nudge of reverse to see us home.

Line handlers all claimed I hit something with the prop. But what I heard at the helm was the sickening clatter of heavy metal battering other heavy metal. A quick shift to neutral quieted the din but clearly Kintala had come up with some new way to abuse my good intentions. Nearly half a century of bending wrenches ... I know the sound of "broke" when I hear it.

Truth to tell I just couldn't bring myself to look at the carnage right away. Instead we straightened up the deck, washed down the anchor chain (marking it with zip ties - like we should have done a year ago) and cleaned the caked mud off the foredeck. (Those who set the hook in sand should count their blessings every day!) Eventually though, I had to take a deep breath and go see how badly we were injured ... this time. Lying in the engine pan, under the V-drive, that's where the bolts and washers were found. The prop shaft

had torqued itself right off the V-drive. Resigned to disaster I donned mask and fins, jumped in the water, and felt my way to the prop fearing the worst. But from what I could feel there was nothing fouled on the shaft and the wheel itself is unbent, unbroken, and unbashed. It even turned freely in its bearings. (Carlyle water is opaque on the best of days and under the boat it was black as night. Cold too, nothing like free diving in water too dark to see and too cold to hold one's breath for long. Never let it be said my boat will pass on any chance to make me miserable.)

Best guess is that two of the bolts rattled their way free, leaving the last to be guillotined when I shifted into reverse. Why such a thing would happen is yet to be determined. The coupling was secured with the hardware provided by Walter machine, properly torqued with steel lock washers installed. The shaft was lined up and there hasn't been a hint of vibration right up until the thing let go. At this point I'm thinking bad juju makes about as much sense as anything else.

So, though skeptic I might be of all things even remotely related to spook-ism, I am starting to wonder if we should hire some voodoo doctor to dance up and down the dock, shake some beads, whisp some incense, and mutter a few incantations to drive the evil gremlin spirits away.

Wrenching, sweating, and swearing don't seem to be working.

Rant

After several months of slogging through various dark corners of the marine industry we finally gathered up all of the parts needed to try and reassemble the drive train in the Tartan. The tranny, all new and shiny, bell housing fixed, painted and bolted up, the custom-machined drive coupling gleaming like a big, fat jewel of steel, and the V-drive - after uncounted discussions with Walter Machine trying to convince them that their drive actually was mounted in a Tartan 42 with a Westerbeke engine and a Hurth transmission - dressed in dark blue paint and ready for service. Finally...progress!!!

Ahh...hold on there Ace.

The V-drive we pulled from the boat and sent to Walter Machine had 4 studs sticking out of the heavy end. The drive we got from Walter Machine? No studs. No holes. In fact one of the places where there should be holes sports the data plate. (Yes; I should have noticed it sooner. I plead being up to my belt buckle in alligators for missing this little detail.)

So I spent the weekend bolting it all together anyway and hung it on the back of the engine. My plan is to align the prop shaft / engine assembly so I can lay out exactly where me needs to locate the non-existent studs, then figure on installing them myself. For I know what Walter Machine's story is going to be. There were no studs in the units they manufactured. Studs, big beefy brackets, and two extra engine mounts, are a spooged together service bulletin fix for Tartan's hanging so much "stuff" that far off the back of the engine in the first place. "Stuff" which proved too much weight for the cast aluminum bell housing. How "spooged" is this fix? The extra engine mounts are hung up-side-down, supposedly working in tension and not compression. I'm not thinking that is such a good way to use mounts, so part of my efforts are going to be trying a redo on the brackets so the mounts can sit down-side-down. It is best to think of it as just another part of what has become the project of my life.

A life that has seen a bunch of projects. I have done million dollar repairs on airplanes, rebuilt wrecks back into flying machines, remodeled houses, resurrected dead motorcycles; there was always some understanding of what was going to be involved. None, until now, ever exploded in my face as has this boat. So bad has Kintala become that I have given up looking for an "end date." My life is flying during the week so I can buy the stuff I need to work on the boat on the weekend. When will it be done? When will I do something else with my life besides work and then work on a boat? When will we take to big water or even get this thing back out on the lake? Not a clue.  In fact don't even ask me to think about it. What's next is the studs, the mounts, the cooling system, the shaft seal, oil leaks, the...the...the. If I can get Kintala to the Fourth of July Raft Up under her own power I will take that as a major victory. (I give it about a 50/50 chance.) Then it will be the dodger, the wind vane, the solar panels, the...the...the.

When we started The Retirement Project I never suspected it would grow into a cautionary tale, but it has.  Many people are fascinated by our plan to live on a boat and explore at our whim.  Many wonder if they shouldn't try to do it as well. If they ask, I tell them all the same thing.

If one has been smitten by the idea of living lighter, being less of a burden to our little planet; if one chafes in equal amounts at the demands of corporate overlords and the harassment of bureaucratic busy-bodies; if one has been on the open ocean in the dark watches of the night and the heart desires nothing more than to be there again; if the wind and the sea and the caress of Mother Ocean tug at the very soul; if one finds modern Western culture to be incessantly childish and a crushing bore, and if one thinks of a good day as being equal parts sweat dripping off one's nose and blood flowing from skinned knuckles; then by all means find a boat, a willing partner, and take the shot.

If not, buy some clubs, take up golf, and never go near a sailboat at any time for any reason lest one be lost to the songs of Peisinoe.

You will thank me later.

This just in...

...the re-manufactured drive coupling rests inside the worked-over bell housing, with both mounted firmly (and apparently squarely) on the V-drive! How about them apples?
This isn't to say we are in deep water yet. Fittings must be located to plumb the V-drive into the cooling system, said cooling system which is now mostly disassembled for the water heater mod. In addition all of these various bits and pieces have to be bolted back together. A big sigh of relief will echo out of the boat when the bell housing / V-drive is hanging on the back of the tranny. That end of the bell housing doesn't show any evidence of being damaged, but it is a pretty close fit, so...

...once that is on all that remains is to align the engine / tranny / bell housing / V-drive (all sitting on 6 brand new engine mounts) with the prop shaft, install the starter, hook up wires and tubes and hoses and such, take a deep breath, hit the starter button...

...and fix all the things that pop up.

It could be worse. I was supposed to do a photo flight Tuesday morning, piloting the camera ship to take some areal pictures of the world's only remaining Monosport; a 1920's once upon a time air-race dominator. A friend put more than a year into rebuilding the thing from a box of parts. A fast taxi a few days ago uncovered a serious design fluke with the landing gear. Rework led up to a first flight a day or so later - which was cut short by falling oil pressure and a few other niggles. Come Tuesday morning and we may have discovered why there is only one of these things left in the world. Just minutes after take-off the builder / test pilot experienced a case of aileron reversal that (fortunately) he was able to fly though to get back on the ground. (I have more than a little experience with antique airplanes and have flown though some evil handling characteristics of my own, which is why I now fly the camera ship. We don't build 'em like we used to, and there are lots of good reasons why.)

A year plus of solid work to resurrect an airplane that, as it turns out, is best left in the hangar.

At least Kintala still floats.

(Aileron reversal - for those who are curious - is when a pilot moves the flight controls expecting the airplane to roll one way, and it rolls the other way instead. It is a nasty gremlin that lurks in the dark reaches of aerodynamics. Mention it at a gathering of aviators or aeronautical engineers and a heated debate well surly break out as to the cause, though the cause matters not to the pilot in such straights. All he knows is that the airplane is trying very hard to commit suicide and there are scant seconds available to dissuade it from doing so.)

Useless Settee Meat

If you haven't read Tim's previous post, read that first so you can get the whole picture.  He spent the weekend thrashing on Kintala, I spent the weekend wrapped up in a heavy wool blanket on the port settee with chills, a pounding sinus headache, and a streppy-feeling throat, sipping on copious amounts of lemon and honey tea.  It was every bit of effort I could muster to make it the 4 feet into the head to deal with the copious amounts of lemon and honey tea.  I did manage to grab the camera on the way to and from the settee and try to take a couple pics of the whole process, so I guess I wasn't completely useless.

Not even one crumb of rubber left here...

Wanna take a guess as to whether these are the original engine mounts????

Brand new mounts courtesy of Torreson Marine and their ultra-efficient shipping department.

Lots of rubber here...

The aft starboard mount was pretty accessible

Not so much on the port side...

The forward port side was infinitely more challenging.

It took an impact hammer for the forward starboard mount.

A massive thrashing

Many, many moons ago my second job in aviation was as a mechanic in Beech's experimental hangar.  One of the crew had been at Beech since WWII, starting as a teenager building control surfaces for fighter planes; Kato.  I don't know if that was a first or last name - it was the only name anyone ever used - it was what his I.D. badge said - and one wag insisted that he had seen one of his paychecks and it was made out to "Kato" as well.  Anyway, he was the best sheet metal mechanic and aircraft systems man I have ever seen.  (You couldn't get him to touch an engine - Kato figured engine work was for grease monkeys.)  We were working on an air conditioning system in a King Air, pulling a vacuum on it to see if it was leaking.  The pressure wasn't falling fast enough for me; I wanted to start taking things apart to find the leaks.

"Son," intoned Kato from his seat by the service cart, "you gotta look at the good side 'till your sure you can't do that no more."  Kato knew that pulling vacuum on a new system could take a while as the water vapor was pulled from hundreds of feet of tubing that had been open to the humid, mid-western summer air.  He was teaching me not to jump to the worst conclusion until there was no other choice.

I put a major thrashing on Kintala this weekend.  (A pleasant change from having her put one on me.)  After a little less than two days her engine is sitting snug on 4 brand new engine mounts.  A job that turned out much harder than it sounds.  Over the years I picked up a lot of tricks when it comes to fixing things. This last weekend I was down to my last one for disassembling corroded parts.  The forward starboard mount was frozen solid in the engine case, one false move could easily lead to a cracked case and a near terminal injury for both bank account and cruising plans.  I ended up splitting the bottom (and utterly frozen) nut off the stud with an air chisel, then taking to the top nut with a 3/8s impact driver, jack-screwing the stud the wrong way (up instead of down) just enough to break it loose.  Then I hammered it down and jack-screwed it back up a few more times; and finally worked it out of the engine.  Heat and lots of penetrating oil were included in the recipe, and all of this accomplished in the few inches available with the engine hanging from a chain-fall supported by the boom, the boat rolling in wind guests to 20+ knots.  (Air tools and portable compressor supplied by Schmidty - who I'm going to write in for President of these United States; though he is way too smart to take the job.)

Mostly I got it done by taking one deliberate step after another, looking at the good side and not facing the worst until it actually happened.  Which it never did.  It was a close call though.  A slip of an air chisel or a hammer blow falling in the wrong place?  Had it been the forward port mount that was frozen there would have been no choice but to pull the engine out of the boat for access.  (Another major setback though not as bad as punching a hole through the case.) 

Instead, what I had feared would be at least a two-weekend-endless-thrash (that had several opportunities to turn into a total disaster) turned out to be a two day job-now-out-of-the-way.  I'm also going to keep reminding myself to look at the good side until I'm sure I can't do that no more.  The mounts are done.  There is no reason to think installing the tranny will be anything but routine.  We haven't decided what to do with the V-drive yet, replace or overhaul.  Either one will have to wait a while until we pry a spot open in the budget, but there is no reason to assume that will prove impossible either.  The big question is still the coupler - and for now I'm going to assume we will figure that one out as well.  We are still walking right along the edge of the cliff here, but it does no good to keep looking over to see how far the fall.

p.s.  If I ever hit the lottery I'm still going to buy me a NEW boat.  I know they come from the factory screwed up; but at least the screwed up parts won't be frozen together by 30 years of corrosion.