Can this get any worse? Or how I spent my Earth Day

 Still at LMC. Still floating. It's been a down week, not doing much really, reading books, eating. Well not much eating. Need to go restock. Worked on the generator, it was having overheating issues. Found the drive belt very loose. As the belt was loose and had been ground down to half it's usual width I replaced it. Found the impeller, which is on the back side of the cooling water pump and very nearly inaccessible, and managed to inspect that as well. It was in excellent condition. Then spent a good 1 1/2 hours putting it back together. For some reason this has a non geometrical shape. It's four tiny screws and a cover! So it took a while, tiny screws in a very small space. Pretty normal for boat work. But the engine space is a suite of rooms compared to the generator space. Ran it didn't see any water leaks, or other issues so wrestled the shroud back on to it. We have been having some unusually overcast days down here and the solar panels were not keeping up with the usage, and the powers that be have assigned us a space that is very far from the single pedestal that you can plug into, and no extension cords are forthcoming. So I needed to run the generator to charge the batteries as well as make some hot water for showers. Showers are a lovely thing down here in the land of stinky pits. After a while the divers, who had been working on the boat in the well next to me and wanted to know if I had any known leaks? I looked at the water and there was quite a sheen, nice oil slick going on. I do not have any leaks that I was aware of, particularly fuel or oil for that matter. I shut off the generator and stuck my head under the boat. The compartment drain for the generator hole had a nice ooze of oil coming out of it. That is certainly not good. Wrestled the shroud back out of the hole and saw oil in the compartment, not a lot of it, but there shouldn't have been any. Got some diapers, manufactured towel things that only absorb oil and oil products, and started soaking up the mess. Looked at the dipstick on the generator and saw it was down maybe a pint. :(

So that pint went into the river. The divers called their hazmat guys and soon had a couple booms to contain and soak up the free floating oil. All in all not as bad as it could have been. I did a postmortem on the generator and as near as I can tell I popped the valve cover gasket on it. Another major system on the boat that has failed. The booms stayed in place till this morning and the oil had either dispersed or been soaked up by the booms. Happy Earth Day Momma Earth. That little incident went on the bill, another $1500. :(

I had been on the schedule for a Thursday, April 22nd, haul out, however I was extended. This place is full to the brim and there is no room in the inn. Anyway I have a new one for Monday @ 10:30, hopefully then I can get this show on the road again. Really I just need two engines so I can station keep at the bridges and sails that hold onto the masts. Food storage, usual. Then I can go. I've been stuck here for about a month now. Not what I expected.

I thought about fixing the transmission then calling it quits and listing it for sale, but I really need to get it out of here first. 

So that's it for this episode of this Old Busted Boat.

This is getting stupid

 Hello and welcome to the very occasional updates from my continuing adventures in trying to escape Florida. I'm still in LMC, using their incredibly terrible WIFI, while floating this time. When last we chatted I was stuck on the hard and very annoyed. Well this time I'm stuck on a floating dock, still very annoyed. We got to move exactly 20 feet. We always seem to get the 7:30 time slot for hauls, which I guess is because this is an unscheduled effort. Hard to schedule break downs. 

We got our transmission rebuilt and reinstalled, a little easier than the disassembly process. I got some straps and hung the engine from a 2x4 we "found" and chopped to size. Same old same old as far as parts go, I ordered a new ring gasket to seal the ocean out of the boat on Monday. Most sailors say that it's the best place for the ocean to be, and I agree. Anyway the site said they had them in stock, so I paid extra for 2 day shipping, otherwise it's 5-7 days. I needed the parts for a Saturday rebuild, so Friday I wandered over to the chandlers shop, the fine folks that charge you $10.00 a package to accept and sort your mail. No part. Called the place, went sort of like this:

Website moron, "Oh we sent you an email letting you know it was back ordered."

Me, "Your website said you had it in stock for immediate delivery. And I don't have an email."

Website moron, "Oh we're so sorry, we can't be held responsible for errors on our website! You know computer errors."

Me, frostily, "When can expect my parts?"

Website moron, "I'll have to call you back with that once I reach my warehouse sales people. Is this a good number?" 

Eventually an email arrived in my spam folder assuring me that they should have them back in stock by Wednesday-Friday latest and would then happily ship them, 2 day. It's currently the next Friday, FEDEX says it was delivered Wednesday, there is no parts for Steal Breeze at the chandlers office. I am about to rage quit this entire enterprise.

I examined the ring gasket we took out, it seems to be OK. only has the beginnings of a crack about 1" long and really just a scratch in the thickest part of the gasket. With zero other option I reused it. Which just means this fall I need to do this entire operation yet again. Go figure.

So my splash day was Tuesday. We were completely ready. Got up early, wandered down to the yard, topped off the water tank. We had already provisioned Monday. Figured we could go three or four days and my next scheduled stop with stores was only 2 days away. As if...

Tuesday morning was like almost every day down here, humid as all get out, expected sunny, slight breeze, mid 80's swarming no see 'ems. Terrible sailing weather as there is just no wind, but I was going to motor anyway. Got in the lift, headed for the well, no issues, as there just aren't doing this process. The guys here are very knowledgeable and the only concern is where my underwater protrusions are, and obviously we can see them on land. The whole process takes about an hour. I figured I could still make the ICW on the rising tide, even though I have to wait till 9:00 when the bridges will open, rush hour for all the land lubbers after all. 

Got dropped in the well, Started the engines looking for leaks and what not. Huh, got a bit of spray coming from the bottom of the port engine raw water impeller, the one we tore apart, looks like I set a hose clamp to low, we use two stainless hose clamps for redundancies sake, and the bottom one was way to low and I managed to miss the end of the steel connector for the raw water pump and crunched a hole in it. Really not much of an issue. The ring gasket is not weeping, everything else looks good. Put the engine in forward, YA! Propulsion, did the same to the starboard engine, the one we haven't touched. Same result. All is fine in my world. The lift operator finishes lowering the straps to the bottom and I nudge the engines into reverse to clear the well, figure I'll tie up for a couple minutes, trim my raw water hose and re-clamp it and then be off north! Weee! Yeah, no.

Slide the throttles into reverse and immediately notice I'm twisting again, port is working, starboard, not so much. Huh? Gave it a bit more throttle Suddenly hear a huge BANG! and the starboard prop starts doing prop stuff. HUH? Get it straightened back out and slide out into River Bend. Back into forward, same, turning to starboard. Huge BANG and the starboard prop starts turning. This is not good. I can not afford to snap the only drive shaft left in the world, so I yell at the guys that I'm coming in to the floater next to the well. They grab lines, and pretty much tow me in and tie me up. I start calling folks to help diagnose my new issue. Spent the rest of Tuesday feeling sorry for myself, and getting very annoyed, Wednesday was spent taking stuff off, trying this, that and the other and we all agree it's my clutch. As you can imagine I am royally pissed at this point. Start making calls for parts, yeah, ended back at the Volvo distributor, I can say that they know my number now. They send me an exploded diagram of every engine they ever made and I find my needed parts. Volvo is very, very proud of their cone clutch. So yet another boat buck and change for parts. 

During my pity party Tuesday I went to fix my raw water leak. Pretty simple. Slice off about an inch of the inlet hose, jam it back on and make sure both clams are in the correct place. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy. Like my luck runs that way. Started old port side up and water is getting sprayed out of the weep holes behind the pump. It's about 1/2 the amount of water as previously, so I at least got the hose part done right. But the seals behind the raw water pump, that keep the water in the circuit have failed. If it isn't one thing it's yet another. Ordered some more parts. Parts arrive Thursday while we are scrubbing the yard garbage off the boat. While we were sitting there on the hard the boats on both sides of us were being sanded and repainted. Bottoms mostly. Black dust on everything. Plus greasy foot prints, bird poop, just the usual. I was up on the cockpit cover cleaning the solar panels and the rest and noticed my drains, well they were not, you know draining. Spent a few hours taking that system apart and cleaning out some sort of algae or mold or some god awful gunk out of about 1/2 of it. This is supposed to be the vaunted fresh water recovery system. Basically when you are way out and it rains you can let the first 10-15 minutes run through the system to wash off the gunk from the cockpit cover, salt and whatnot, then stick it in the fresh water tank and conserve it. I wouldn't recommend using this current system. Yuck! While there is a filter at the end before it goes into the tank, I shudder to think what this would taste like. And frankly it's very difficult to clean out the fresh water tank once it's been salted with biologicals. I gave up on that after a good couple hours. The entire system of pipes will need to be replaced, just can't get them clean. 

Have been doing research about fixing the transmission while still in the water, loads of googling. Very little in the way of results. Figure how hard could it be? Take the top off, remove the split ring holding the whole thing together, pull the bearing out, replace the cone clutch, bolt it all back together. Yeah, no. Volvo in their engineers infinite wisdom have created a perfect trap. The split ring in nestled in a washer with a groove in it so as to trap those parts together. Much more researching, come to find out there is a way to get this done. As long as you have access to a welder, steel, and a bending machine thing. The final contraption then has to be welded to the main shaft then you can compress the washer down 1/2" to fish the split ring out, then you know just cut it off and grind it down. Yeah I have no access to that. Volvo suggests placing the entire transmission in a press and doing it that way. Which requires taking the entire sail drive leg out of the boat. Exactly what we struggled with last week. I swear to god I'm going to burn this thing to the water line. Spent the rest of the day making various adjustments and diddling with the linkages in a vain attempt to get the stupid thing to work. Not my day for cobbling crap together. 

So the long and the short of it is I'm trying to get scheduled for another lift, 3rd in three months, forth if you count the aborted one from last week, so I can split the stupid transmission and take it over to Yacht and Diesels and have Tom rebuild it for me. I have the parts, shouldn't be more than another boat buck. Plus yard time, hotel, and food. I'm seriously pissed that a good chunk of our provisions are going to rot in the fridge. Can't live in the boat while it's on the hard. So yet another week in Florida. Supposed to rain this weekend. I'll be sitting here. I think tonight is another bourbon night.

As always comments are open should you so choose. Stay tuned for the further adventures of the never ending Florida trap.

Can the dream survive this? Even more fixing of the boat!

 So last time I left you we were in Key Largo, fixing the raw water loop. I was able to complete that and only made one error. The holes on the heat exchanger go DOWN not up. Anyway I was able to resolve that with out having to lift the boat out again.

Previously I had noted the channel leading to the lift was narrow, and not a lot of markers. So the inevitable occurred, I grounded. Really did it this time. Managed to try to back myself out of the mud and just got stuck deeper. Had to call TowBoatUS again to get me off. They responded in a few hours and drug me out of the muck. Then finally we were off! A wonderful day, nice north breeze, 4 foot waves, with 2 feet of chop, so they would all line up occasionally and we would get a 6 footer out of the deal. Not really a bad day, till the wind kept freshening and the waves kept building, and they are all coming from directly behind me. We were headed to the nearest inlet, into Boca Raton Lake. Got to play with the giant container ships going past the Port of Miami, about 5 miles off shore. They stayed well away and never really got close to us at all. With wind and wave, and a nice boost from the Gulf Steam we were hitting some 10 knots when we would surf down a wave front, but for the most part we chugged along at 8 knots. No sails up, I was in a hurry trying to make a schedule. Only saw one other boat out there, and he was just flying along on engine power. 

The only real worrisome part was making the inlet to Boca Raton Lake. Had to turn 90 degrees to wind and weather and puddle in cross ways to everything. That was a bit disconcerting, but I had faith in the boat as well as the autopilot. As we got nearer the inlet though it got a bit hairier. Not really sure how much they dredge these entrances and there are rocks piled on either side of the inlet, scary. Breaking waves coming across the beach area, more scary! So we got bounced around quite a lot till we made it across the bar and into the inlet. I was pretty happy I didn't end up surfing sideways down the breaking waves.

The time for the much dreaded first bascule bridge. I was having quite a bit of issue controlling the boat, wind behind, tide out going and was just fighting everything. Didn't seem to have much engine control either. Got sideways in the channel and just dropped anchor to give me some time to get it together and call the bridge. My information was the bridge was on a every half hour opening schedule. When things finally quit being scary I was able to call them for the next opening, which was on demand, so I asked, they raised, I upped anchor and got my first look at Boca Raton Lake. Place was jammed with boats and people. The edges of this lake are rather deep, but the center is full of spoil, rocks, sand, concrete, whatever. The center was shallow enough people were standing is less than waist deep water, drinking and playing with their kids. The deepest area was stuffed full of boats, and I'm still having issues controlling the boat. Pulled into one area, just to close to other boats, so I ended up heading to the southwestern most edge, right off the channel and dropping 125' of chain in 4 feet of water. Winds were up the 20 knots sustained and 30 knot gusts. Couldn't find a dinghy dock as we just settled down for a semi calm night. Well we would have had I taken the correct precaution of closing the side hatches prior to setting out in the morning. So the beds ended up a bit damp. Took that all apart and slept in the salon that night. John just moved into the spare room. 

Next morning we just upped anchor and headed to the next bridge, opens every 1/2 hour. Got there a bit early and worked on station keeping. I'm going to have to learn this skill if I'm headed up the ICW after all. Again really having issues controlling the boat. This is all very low speed stuff so it's all engine control and no rudder work. It finally dawns on me that I am having more than not being able to steer the new boat issues. I get past that particular bridge and try at the next, same issues. I happen to be at a wide spot in the road so to speak and drop anchor. Figure I lost a propeller or something. So I dig out my dive gear, drop in the water and peek under the hull, no both props are there. The port side is folded, the starboard side is spread out. SO I try just the port engine, forward, reverse, huh no prop wash. Did the same to starboard and yeah, loads of wash and boat moves. Ok this is bad. Called TowboatUS again and started the long process of finding a yard with a lift to get me out of the water. Had to get towed all the way back to Fort Lauderdale at a charming place called LMC. Says they are the largest yard in the USA. Well they are certainly more expensive than any place I've used as of yet.

After about a 9 hour tow we arrived in the yard, place was closed, it's Friday night. Not great. Had to up my personal liability insurance to $1,000,000.00 so they would allow me access to their amenities. Got tied to the dock, put the wet sheets out on the lubber lines and settled in for an uneventful weekend. 

Monday while juggling way to many things, trying to find parts, worrying about a mechanic, I didn't put my wallet all the way into my front pocket. My wallet is a combo iPhone holder/wallet. Yes dumped it right in the water getting on the boat. The dive supervisor was nice enough to suit up and dive for it, and did actually retrieve it from it's watery grave, however my venerable iPhone 7 didn't remain waterproof and died. The diver refused payment, which was incredibly nice of him, as he stated "I did this just last month!". So I now have a nice new iPhone that lives in my pocket with Velcro over it. 

They pulled me out of the water Wednesday morning, first opening in their lift schedule, meanwhile I spent Monday and Tuesday looking for a mechanic to help me diagnose the problems. Really got tired of hearing, "Nope we don't work on those." I have a Volvo Penta engine, transmission and sail drive leg. MD 2030 B engine, 102SD drive leg, and a M22? transmission. You'd think I had hand built these things with the help I was getting. I finally called the Volvo Distributor and they said they would send out a tech to look. They wanted to bill me 4 hours, which would have run me over $1,000.00. This includes travel time. However the tech was on site, told his boss he was just going to peek at it and there would be no charge. Nice guy! The diagnosis was that with water in the oil the shifter was unable to move the clutch cones though the complete cycle and so was slipping. Ok, how to fix? Pretty simple, just tear the bottom out of the drive leg, replace the seals, and put it all back together again. Really after it was done it wasn't to hard, just a problem of sourcing parts. Each of the seals is like $45 and from the drawing I saw came in a set of two. Well no they don't. I do have to have two, but they are not sold together. I got one from the distributor and ended up meeting some nameless guy in a parking lot in west Palm Beach for a clandestine parts exchange on a Sunday afternoon. Weird. 

Anyway the tear down and rebuild, once I had the parts, and this skips over the billions of phone calls to various places try to track them down, was actually fairly simple. One of the mechanics that works at the yard helped with pressing a part that was jammed on the prop shaft, and generally was a pretty decent guy.

Monday rolls around and we are topped up with water, and ready to drop back in the river. I let the lift guy know I needed to test my port side engine before he dropped the straps off me and off we went. Long story short, yeah that didn't fix anything. No propeller spin, no wash, no move. Back onto the hard we go. I don't want to start the whole complaining of expenses for this sort of thing, because we signed up for this, and I knew everything about boating is not cheap. But honestly I'm burning $300.00 a day, $180.00 for the boat sitting and $120.00 for the hotel room as we aren't allowed to stay on the boat while it's out of the water, plus food, transportation, and parts. 

So obviously I'm having an issue with the transmission. I took the top off of it and started poking around and trying to turn things and the main shaft that takes the power from the engine and links it to the drive leg just kind of comes out in my hand. Well this is not good. Look at the bottom of it and it's twisted off. Snapped, with a nice spiral crack running up through the hardened metal for one of the many bearings in there. 

Well this is bad. First I need to find the part, then I need to fix the part, and this is way out of the scope of the manuals on the boat. My son in law came down Saturday to help take the thing apart, and frankly I couldn't have done it with out him. We located a guy that does rebuilds and he thought he might have one, in fact he was sure he did, just had to remember which shelf it was on. We drove over to his place Sunday after we finally managed to get the transmission out of the boat. 

                                                    

That's a car way back there for scale. Well he didn't have the correct one, I'll spare you the huge amount of searching and phone calls, but Volvo doesn't stock the busted shaft, it's been out of production so long the used ones are about gone and the one new replacement transmission, next version by 2, is in Sweden and costs about $12,000.00, when all is said and shipped. Includes an adapter plate! Woo. However my rebuild guy, owner of the pile, has a friend, who has an entire transmission, so the shaft is the same and he is getting it overnighted to him for delivery tomorrow. Says I'll have my rebuilt transmission Friday. I have a scheduled lift appointment at 7:30 AM Tuesday. Next opening isn't for another week.

Had to leave the boat this morning as the catamaran next to us is having epoxy coating applied, the fumes are deadly, and caused my lungs to go into immediate halt mode. Thank goodness for rescue inhalers.

I really had no idea this could be so difficult. Finding parts, getting competent mechanics, finding a yard with a lift wide enough. I mean if anything is going to destroy this dream Betty and I have had, it's going to be this. 

As always comments are open should you wish to avail yourself. Thanks for reading!