Almost to the water!

While I was in the Navy we had a saying, "Sailors belong on boats and boats belong at sea.". "Haze gray and underway." Lots of those fun little things. Anyway, last few trips to the boat have been quite epic and have got a huge number of things resolved. As noted in my previous post, the engine runs. We were quite thrilled with that. But I was having serious issues with the electrical systems. The engine ran, the charging circuit worked, that all seemed pretty straight forward. But only two of the lights worked below decks. No power to anything else. Loads of testing, reading schematics, trying to track down the issue without ripping the entire interior out of the boat. I had been using the PO's manual, which was driving me nuts as it was just a tiny bit different from what I was looking at in person. So I compared the paper manual he had, and the PDF version I had, had an awesome AH HA! moment when I finally noticed a small entry indicating the paper manual was for a sister boat, Sun Fizz, not a Gin Fizz. I my defense the paper manual is missing it's cover. Spent some quality time with my voltmeter and some faint PDF based wiring diagrams and noticed a tiny difference in the schematic to the reality of the wiring in front of me. A touch of back story, the boat is OLD, when it was built they were using four six volt batteries to make up the 12 VDC system for the boat. Split into separate 12 VDC circuits, one for starting, one for the house bank. The house circuit could be switched from 12 VDC to 6 VDC so the lighting had two levels, dim and dimmer. Somewhere in the boats past this was changed to be a straight 12 volt system. The electrical panel has a switch that shows 6 VDC and 12 VDC, logically I always left that switch in the 12 volt position, because those are the batteries I put in after all. Opps. Really the 12 volt side of the selector has no wire on it at all, yeah you got it, I just moved the switch to 6 volts and amazingly enough the boat now has lights and power to all it's lights and outlets. Sigh, weeks of hair tearing and concern for a freaking switch. I'll have to rewire that once I figure out what else has been changed incorrectly.

Other news, cleaned the bilges out. Betty was able to come down for the weekend which we spent scrubbing the nasty out of the bilge. I was a bit dismayed to find that the bilge pump is in an area that doesn't actually accumulate any water that happens to get in the bilge until it overflows the flooring. So that has to be resolved. The shower/head area deck turned out to be completely rotted out. Four buckets of old rotted plywood that was still wet and gunky.

So that is going to be fun to repair. The little black button in the middle there is some sort of drain that is connected to the main waste line that runs the grey water from both the shower and sink back to the well where the only bilge pump is sitting and is then pumped over the side. Yeah that whole arrangement needs to be resolved. I am thinking I can fill the area with two part expanding foam and then lay a chunk of ply over that with a cut out for the water to drain into a plastic bowl with a self actuated bilge pump. Or something like that. But the main bilge pump still works, as long as you bail the water into the box it is sitting in, so I got that going for me. 

Betty scrubbed the galley floor, more nasty. She ended up peeling the covering off the ply that was laid, so we are looking into something seriously cheap to put down over that. I pulled the wood slats off the bottom of the cockpit and scrubbed that mess out. 

The bottom is to be painted next week and she should go in the water the following week. Here is a picture of where we expect to be our new home to be parked for the next series of repairs. Pretty fancy don't you think?

A bit of a hike to the showers, but we need the exercise anyway. We certainly aren't going to be showering on the boat for a while. Other small things found while scrubbing. All the screws that hold the ledges that the flooring sits on have rusted away and all the little ledges are just slimy nasty, so those all need to be replaced. The dog house the engine sits under has been modified by PO and now needs to be modified back. Basically the dog house is also the stairs up to the cockpit. It fits tight to the galley cabinets on the starboard side, so is cut away on that side. On the port side however it runs straight back to the bulkhead next to the engine compartment and behind the nav. station. The dog house was built so that a smaller panel could be removed on the port side so you could tilt the entire stair assembly on end and move it into the salon area. Otherwise it is too wide to get it there and causes even more chaos in an already tiny space. 

I swear Betty and I are going to have some quite amazing adaptations to make. We are really rather messy folks. Not dirty mind you, but we do have serious issues with clutter. That clutter usually ends up getting piled into nice neat piles, then the piles get piles. Then they get placed somewhere to be gone through and filed. Where they languish for an indeterminate period of time. There just isn't room in this baby for that level of clutter tolerance. 

Did some shopping for stuffs though, have some gauges, a barometer, clock, tide clock, thermometer coming, a new fan, some more LED lights, and a few sundresses for the lady of the boat. 

And that is about it for this episode of this oldy boat, on a budget!

LA!

News from the right coast.

Headed out to the boat as the mechanic guys say they can look at the engine today. Pretty nice day, got an early start with one minor complication, water was out. So down to Starbucks we head, which nicely enough has an Autozone next door. Had to pick up another battery. Dropped Betty off at the house and sat in traffic all the way up 95 to 495. Finally lightened up about 30 miles from the boat.

Anyway complaints aside I emptied out the lazarette and looked at the tangle of wires and decided to replace the only remaining original battery. Used one of my winches to get the battery on board, stupid things weigh 12 tons. So +1 there the winch worked. Got the battery hooked up and amazingly enough the mechanic showed up, and I'll be damned if the engine didn't just turn over and kind of chug a bit on the stored fuel and water in the system. Diddled the plumbing from the engine to the through hull so that instead of the sea cooling the heat exchanger the water in the bucket did it instead. We are after all some 1/4 mile from the water. I learned that you don't ever just connect a hose directly to one of these engines, if you have an issue getting it started you can hydro-lock it. Then you are totally screwed. Rather than having a radiator like on car there is a cooling loop in the engine that takes seawater from outside the hull and runs it up to a heat exchanger that sits on the engine, after it takes the heat from the coolant, standard antifreeze, it is routed to the a box that the exhaust manifold is connected to which cools and "cleans" the exhaust. Then both the water and the cooled exhaust is ejected over the side from an above water through hull. It's all pretty simple, but the hoses are quite long. The pressure from the exhaust cycle forces the water out the hoses, but if there is no pressure the exhaust box will get filled with water which will back fill into the engine, and as water can't be compressed you now have a major repair on your hands Anyway to make this long story short, the engine cranked for a couple minutes then fired right up. I was so excited! Remember when we bought this boat I expected the engine to be a seized lump of useless cast iron. We ran it for 20-30 minutes to get it up to operating temp, engaged the transmission and spun the prop a little bit. Then looked for leaks, none, no extra water, no extra fuel, no oil pumping from unfindable cracks. Simply amazeballs. I am over the moon. Just saved a good 8 boat bucks there.

I'll have to figure out how to add video so you to can enjoy my unbelievably exciting engine sounds and watch the belts spinning, until then just make loud raspberry noises.

Other things we have done, Betty got a backrest completed.

I scared myself by starting to work on the electrical system:

I think we are going to spend the weekend there either this weekend or next, not sure. Betty has been working killer hours and needs a break.

Made my first trip to West Marine, yeah it's worse than Toys-R-Us for adults. 

That's it for this weeks scintillating installment of "This Oldy Boat". 

LA!