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.