Fixing the boat part II

 Key Largo, Sunny 68, windy

I've got that enormously annoying Beach Boys song running on continuous loop in my head. Frustrating. I mean it's a great song and all, but after a billion repetitions, nothing survives that...

We got into the yard a few days ago. After a difficult night out in the offing the yard owner called me on the phone and talked me down his hand cut channel. Just two poles used as range markers, basically line up the two poles and chug up his channel. As if. The poles are white, and the dock behind them is also white. Huge fun that. Anyway I managed to make it in, even in the crosswind without grounding. Score! We sat for quite a while as another smaller mono-hull was in the slings getting a nice pressure washing. I kind of think if boats were sentient it would be akin to having a long hot needle shower, scrub off all the gunk and get the skin nice and shiny. That took a while, then the lift slowly moved it to it's new location and the crew started blocking it. Little did I know the yard crew also took off for lunch. Come on guys! You could have told us so we knew we also could take off for the same. And a few beers. But a few hours later we hand walked the boat into the well, the straps went under, using the drawings provided in the owners manual. Important to have the slings in the right place. I've got transducers, sail drives and rudders under there, plus the hull is slightly rounded. Don't want the beastie to fall out of the slings, that would be very bad. However nothing bad happens, just a normal lift of 16,800 pounds. Junk and some sort of stinging red algae gets washed away, then we settle into our cradle for a bit of tear apart. We started the process at 11:00 or so and walked away around 5:30. It's island time here folks. Most of the time it is just to hot to move quickly. Unfortunately my instant inspection of the sail drives show the water inlet holes are clear.

So as I have noted I have some issue on the starboard (right) side with overheating, something with the raw water loop. Raw water is sea water that floods into the sail drive through 6 smallish holes, three per side. This cools the drive shaft and then because it is below the water line and there is a nifty hole in the top it is collected and sent to the impeller, which imparts a bit of pressure. This lifts it to the heat exchanger, that works like the radiator in your engine taking the heat from the coolant and then is ejected into the exhaust knuckle, cooling the hot exhaust gasses, which then mix in a canister which in turn is then ejected overboard. It really is a pretty simple set up that allows the use of heavy duty rubber hoses rather than the solid metal of a car exhaust. Usually this is a pretty easy fix, most of the time the the impeller, a small rubber wheel with fins that pressurizes and pumps the raw water, has lost some of it's fins and is not providing the right amount of water to the heat exchanger. That is easy to resolve and doesn't require a haul out. I have 5 replacements on board. However, simple this isn't. But there is no oil in the coolant, and no coolant in the oil, so I didn't blow a head gasket. I only have one of those on board. That is a major plus. So the only thing to do is take each piece of the loop out, inspect and replace until a problem is found. 

I feel bad for John as this is his stateroom and it is torn up once again. This time his bed is in the head and tools are scattered all over the place. When we bought the boat I was semi pleased with the tools the owner had left behind. However trying to actually accomplish anything with a plastic tub of rusty beat up tools is very time consuming. I had of course brought my trusty tool bag with me, however Volvo-Penta's are metric and all I have is American Standard. So after fighting with my tools, and taking three times as long to do anything I give up in frustration and call a Lyft to take me for a jaunt down to the auto parts store, then CVS for meds. 

Guy shows up and off we go. I try telling him what I need to do, however he speaks as little English as I do Spanish. He totally understands "Advanced Auto Parts", plus this key is very narrow, so we can point and chatter as it comes up. We literally walk from one side to the other here on a daily basis, takes like 15 minutes. We race into the store and load up on tools, wrenches, sockets, etc. And hope he is still there when we get back out. He is! Score! On to CVS while he is telling me stuff I don't understand, I got to get better at this communication thing. Anyway after spending way more than I wanted to on drugs to keep my lungs doing lung stuff we get back to the yard. Ok this is so much easier. I think I see ya nodding off over there, so the long and short of it is that after taking each piece apart we find nothing. This is not good. Everything I have done so far could have been done while bobbing about at anchor. I do not want to take the sail drive out of the boat and disassemble. I'm looking around for something else to take apart and look at the inlet valve from the drive and start the laborious task of taking that apart. It's just a little valve with an elbow on top, but it is of course in a difficult place to get tools into much less turn them. Take that apart and finally! There is a small piece of something hard jammed in the elbow. A good twenty minutes later I've managed to wiggle it out of the elbow and figure it stopped a good 50% of the water flow into the system. This is in keeping with the decreased water flow we noted as well as the obvious overheating. Thankfully I could not have removed this part had we not been on land. PHEW!

I am so happy. Obviously not thrilled with a unscheduled lift, but hey, it's part and parcel of boat life. Now we start replacing the stuff. None of this is particularly difficult, just the usual issues with clearances and what not anyone who has ever worked on an engine will tell you about. It's just that knees are old, my previous lifestyles exertion was on par with drifting plankton and I'm doing hours of engine space squats. My butt, if it doesn't fall off, will look fabulous! However with the way I'm dragging it around it'll probably have scrape marks on it as well.

 Boats are wonderfully engineered ventilation machines, when swinging at anchor most of the time you are faced directly into the wind and all the hatches are designed to act as wind scoops. However in the yard you point where ever the lift drops you. So it's hot and stuffy down there. Cramped, just the usual stuff. We are waiting for parts and can then complete the rebuild. I have also got a bit of an electrical issue on the port side. Seems that engine is not producing power out of the alternator. This is not a make or break thing, the starboard engine also has the same alternator and regulator, plus as I've replaced the start battery on the generator we can run that for charging the house batteries. And the starboard engine also produces hot water! And a nice warm rinse off after a sweaty day sailing is always nice. As I do not want to unpickle the water maker and only carry 100 gallons of water showers are a very quick thing.

We are currently room hopping at the hotel I mentioned previously. The people here have been very nice, friendly and very helpful. Frankly trying to live on a boat that is not in the water is pretty darn uncomfortable. Can't run the generator, or the engines, and of course no air conditioning. Which frankly I'm learning to live with out. But having the staterooms torn apart while fixing this bit or that makes it a bit of a challenge. So yeah we're glamping. Having a flush toilet and unlimited hot water has it's advantages. Beats the porta-potty and garden hose in the yard.

Winds today were from the northeast, 20 - 25 knots. Which is of course the direction we want to travel in, so hanging here in the yard is pretty sweet, much better than bashing into the wind and waves endlessly tacking while making little forward progress. Catamarans are not known for being able to sail close to the wind, so tacking back and forth is the only way to make progress, but it is slow, I mean even slower than our normal cruising speed. If you want to know what sailing on one of these wind machines is like, go out to your car, start it and put in in drive, then just idle your way to where ever you want to go. It is a very slow process. Of course until you get close to stuff that is hard. Then it's slow but inevitable. Not much in the way of brakes on these things. 

That's it for todays thrilling update, thanks for reading, comments are enabled if you should so choose.