Lucky Strikes

This past weekend, 5-13, we went sailing.  I mean all weekend.  On Friday (the 13th!!!) we had our good friends, Anthony and Luzma, join us for a day-sail.  They showed up around 1130 with dishes of Peruvian food that Luzma had put together so we sat down for an early dinner.  We hadn't seen these guys since last October so there was a lot of catching up to do.  Around 1400 we cast off and headed out across the Bay, getting as far as R84A at the mouth of Eastern Bay.  The wind was out of the SE at 15 to 20 kts, beautiful day.  Anthony manned the helm for most of the way and we returned home by 1900.  Good company, easy chit-chat, nice day for a sail.

The next day, Saturday, started out with heavy overcast skies and temps in the 60's.  Cheri's nephew, Brian, and his wife, Katie, and their two year old daughter Kaitlyn joined us for a two day sail up to Osprey Point Marina in Rock Hall and back again.  There's a really nice B+B there as well as a 5 star restaurant.  Brian's parents had reserved a room for them at the B+B to celebrate their three year anniversary and we had volunteered to take care of Kaitlyn on the boat.  Yikes!

We got the boat loaded up and headed out around 1100 in the middle of a torrential downpour with lightning flashing overhead.  We had reservations for dinner at 1900 so we didn't really have time to wait it out.  The rain continued until we cleared G83A just outside of Herring Bay.  The sail up to Rock Hall took all of 7 hours with light winds out of the SE for most of the trip.  We pulled into Osprey Point Marina at 1810 with little time to spare in getting ready for dinner.  Cheri pushed our reservations back to 1945 so we'd all have a chance to get settled in.

Dinner was fantastic, a true gourmet delight.  We checked out the kids' room before turning in for the night.  They had two rooms overlooking the marina, a closet and a flushing toilet.  Pretty swank!  Back at the boat the three of us sat up and watched Finding Nemo.  For the rest of the weekend Kaitlyn was searching the Bay for Nemo.  The next morning, after a quick breakfast we headed out for the return trip to HHN.  Winds were 15 kts out of the SSE which gave us a challenge all the way home, requiring tacking all the way down the Bay.  The voyage started with our departure from Osprey Point.  Motoring out of Swan Creek I misread the channel markers and turned at the wrong place and ran aground.  Hitting the side of the dredged channel was like running into a brick wall, almost knocked Cheri overboard.  I backed down hard, dragged the keel out of the mud and continued down the creek like nothing had ever happened.  We ran down to GC#3 (green can #3) under power because the wind was right on our nose.  Once we turned out into the Bay we unfurled the sails and cruised out in light but steady winds at 5 to 6 knots.  Unable to pass straight under the Bay Bridge because the wind was blowing from directly behind it we began a series of tacking maneuvers that would last throughout most of the day.  We tacked four times approaching the Bay Bridge and probably six more times just trying to get down to Thomas Point Light.  Grrr.  Every time I tried to overcompensate to get us additional room to maneuver the wind would shift just enough to throw everything off and we'd end up having to tack again to clear an obstacle. There were about six tankers parked out in the mooring field outside of Annapolis and on our final tack around Thomas Point we were interrupted by four loud blasts from behind us.  One of the tankers was getting underway and we were directly in front of him.  We made a quick turn to port and circled around behind him before continuing on our way.

At this point the wind was still coming directly out of where we wanted to go and a quick glance at my watch revealed that we had wasted the better part of the day tacking all over the place.  It was 1700 and we were still about three hours from home as the crow flies.  We fired up the engine and headed for Herring Bay at 7 kts.  The weather was perfect, mid 70's, clear skies, and we had removed part of the cockpit enclosure to get some fresh air blowing through.  As the day wore on everyone stretched out and took a nap.  Well, everyone but the guy at the helm.

After we passed West River the wind shifted around to the SE and we were able to break out the sails and shut off the engine.  The wind picked up to about 25 kts and we were having a great sail home, heeled over and crashing into the waves.  That's what I'm talkin' about!  This was when I noticed a really humongous cumulonimbus cloud building up to the south of us and some pretty dark grey, almost blue/black, areas directly below it.  I woke everyone up and suggested we get the enclosure back in place because it looked like we might get some rain.  We were able to sail for about an hour more before finally giving in to the need to get home quickly and once again fired up the engine and put the sails away.  At this point it was about 1915.  We were still over an hour from our slip, it was getting pretty late, and the kids had a 90 minute drive home once we got in.

We'd gotten about halfway across Herring Bay when some fairly large rain drops began to pelt the boat.  We were headed straight for Herrington Harbour South which we always do when coming in because they have a really huge white tent set up in the marina that you can see from a hundred miles away.  Now though, as I watched that tent it disappeared behind a wall of rain.  Not two minutes later we were blasted by this tremendous force of wind that came screaming through the bare rigging and spun the boat 90 degrees in a matter of seconds.  There were bolts of lightning hitting all around us (I saw four strike the water) and I couldn't help but think about that 59' tall aluminum mast sticking up in front of us.  I suggested to Cheri that she might get the fire extinguishers out, make 'em handy just in case.  By now the rain was coming down so hard we couldn't see anything beyond the boat and the wind was still howling.  The last thing I saw before the rain hit was the #1 marker out at the entrance to the Bay so I knew vaguely where we were.  I didn't want to drift in too close to shore and we had shallow water on three sides of us so I eyeballed the compass and steered around for 090 to get us headed towards that #1 marker and deeper water.  I kept the engine at 2000 rpm's which was enough to make some headway against the wind and felt like we'd be OK as long as we didn't get hit by lightning.  Said my prayers for help with that.

After a few minutes (seemed like an eternity) the rain slackened and the wind died down.  The sun peaked out from under the clouds just as it began to settle down behind the trees on the western shore.  To the south of us was another wall of rain approaching so I decided to take the break in weather and head for home.  I set our course for R2 where we make our turn for Herrington Harbour North.  As the rain started up again I asked Brian and Cheri to search ahead for the channel marker.  Brian was the first to see it and pointed the way home.  We motored home on a compass course and passed through the harbor entrance just as the marker lights came on.  It was pretty near dark by the time we got into the slip.

The whole weekend was really great.  We visited with some friends we hadn't seen in a while.  We really enjoyed our time with Brian and Katie.  We got to play with Kaitlyn.  I think what'll really mark this trip though is that incredible storm at the end of the day.  Wow!

Done With Pride

Last weekend, 4-30-11, we picked up the hatch screens from Glebe Creek.  These are teak framed screens and they're just beautiful.  Really nice work.  The guy who makes them works out of his home in Edgewater, Maryland.  Interesting guy.  Cheri wanted to take his picture for the blog and he was really, really against it.  She asked if she could take a shot of just his hands with the screens and he wouldn't go for that either.  Dude must be on the FBI's Most Wanted List or something.  Aside from being quirky, he does really nice work.  He even lent me a special drill bit for doing the hinge screws.  Putting them up only took about two hours for all eight screens.  Easy peazy lemon squeezy.  I told Cheri that out of all our projects so far this one had the highest satisfaction quotient.  For the cost of the screens we got easy installation and added value to the boat.  The extra teak in the overhead adds warmth and a rich wood look.  I like 'em!  Plus, they keep the flies out.  What more could you ask for?

We ordered the doors for the companionway but they won't be in for about four weeks.  They're being made in Texas by Zarcor.  I don't expect the installation to be too tough on these either and they'll add security and value.  We're excited about this one.

We also ordered a wind generator and that's on it's way, should be here in about a week.  I spent some time researching this one since there's a handfull of similar products out there.  Several stood out among the rest.  Superwind (click here) was my first choice.  They're made in Germany and the build quality is at the top of the heap.  They are the Mercedes Benz of wind generators.  Unfortunately, the price is also similar to a Mercedes Benz so I ended up going with my second choice, the AIR-X (click here).  We got a package deal on the generator, a mast and a controller.  Pretty much everything we need to install it.  I also ordered an extra set of carbon fiber blades that are tuned to reduce noise by 50%.  Wind generators are notorious for being noisy so I thought this might be a good investment.  It's also a good idea to have the extra blades in case a flying fish decides to make sushi.  I hear that's not unusual.  So, we're taking a major step towards being self sufficient, energy-wise.  Now all I need is some time to get this thing installed.

Right now I'm working on putting the engine back together.  This was one of those "total snowball" kinda jobs.  It started out as just replacing some hoses, then advanced to removing the heat exchanger to get it cleaned.  When I realized the heat exchanger was totally corroded into one solid, useless mass I decided to replace the entire housing/core assembly.  I bought a shop manual and ordered a new heat exchanger (cha ching).  While I was waiting for the new parts to come in I went ahead and started taking apart the old housing.  How bad could it be, only has twelve bolts?  My new shop manual turned out to be useless for this because it's 99% about rebuilding the engine and only has one paragraph about the cooling system with no info on how to take that apart.  I quickly realized that to get the heat exchanger out the alternator and it's bracket had to be removed at the front of the engine and the turbo charger and exhaust taken off at the back.  I guess the next step was to rebuild the entire engine but I decided to keep things simple this weekend.

My parts came in and man-oh-man are they ever nice.  The end caps are all brass as well as a few of the fittings.  It came completely assembled so all I had to do was paint it and put it in.  Simple.  I masked off the brass pieces and set up a paint booth in, uhm, the back of my car.  I needed some place to block the wind.  Shhh.  Don't tell Cheri.  I set up a paint box, draped a tarp over the rear hatch-back door and primed the housing with zinc chromate, this really ugly yellowish green primer used for aluminum.  It took three coats to get good coverage.  I then hit it with three coats of "official" Yanmar grey which is kind of a metallic silvery grey and gives it a nice finish.  With the brass pieces showing it looks pretty slick....for a heat exchanger.

I spent the entire weekend working on this.  I replaced almost all the hoses on the engine and in doing this found four broken hose clamps.  Yikes!  I've never encountered this before and I've been playing with engines for 30 years.  Somebody musta really cranked on those poor little hose clamps.  I went through and replaced all the old ones with some heavy duty ($) ones at West Marine.  I also went over the engine and really cleaned it up, got rid of any rust, corrosion and dirt.  Repainted about half the engine with the rest of my "official" Yanmar grey.  Once I got the heat exchanger bolted in I realized it was missing one hose barb.  I guess I was supposed to grab the one from the old casting but it was totally corroded in place.  I ended up making one from a brass pipe nipple with the threads cut off from one end.  Better than new!

So, I got everything bolted up and was getting the alternator bolted back in place when I found two broken wires, both black "grounds".  I had to get out the schematic to find out what they were for and discovered that one of them was for the tachometer.  This is where the music reaches a crescendo, clouds part and the sun shines through.  Over the last few months I had been having trouble with our tach not reading correctly, kinda erratic and sometimes not at all.  It all makes sense now.  This broken wire has got to be the culprit.  I reattached the wires and finished bolting down the alternator.

I'm feeling fairly excited at this point because I've been working on this thing non-stop since breakfast and it's now 2030.  It's a good chance that I've found the problem with the tach in addition to all the work on the engine.  I give it the once-over and find a bag with some bolts and washers.  Spare parts?  I don't think so.  Looking around I find that I had forgotten to finish bolting down the turbo all the way, only had two bolts holding it on.  This is what happens when you stretch out a job over three days.  Got that taken care of so now I'm pretty sure I've got it all back together.  I mixed up a gallon of coolant, 50/50 mix of anti-freeze with demineralized water, and put that in the fresh water side of the heat exchanger.  I'm now ready to fire this baby up.

I asked my neighbor, Gayle, to give me a hand so I could watch for water leaks and other problems while he starts the engine from up in the cockpit.  He turns the key and hits the start button and nothing happens.  Huh?  Checked to make sure it's in neutral and tried again.  Nothing.  We got a multi-meter out and started checking voltages.  When he hit the start button we had 13.2 volts on one side of the starter relay but not the other.  Gayle is pointing out the circuit to me on the schematic and I see the coil for the relay.  Pow! It was like I got hit with a brick!  I instantly realized the problem was caused by that little relay coil not being grounded because I had just painted the bracket that holds it to the side of the engine.  No metal-to-metal contact for the ground.  I removed the bracket, scraped off some paint where the bolt goes through and bolted it back up.  Gayle goes up and turns the key, hits the start button and the engine starts right up.  Woohooo!  It took about 15 seconds for the raw water to pump through the engine and dump out the exhaust (it's supposed to do that) because I had drained the engine dry to replace the hoses and install a new impeller.  I looked everything over while the engine idled and there were zero leaks, no problems at all.  I was amazed!  I mean, I removed a lot of stuff, heat exchanger, hoses, turbo, alternator, exhaust.  It all looked good.  What a relief.  And just in time too.  This was Sunday night, I was exhausted and had to go to work the next day.  We have plans to go sailing next weekend so this was really my last shot at getting this pig fixed.

While I was running back and forth between the boat and the car on Saturday I noticed something pretty cool just outside the breakwater at the entrance to our harbor.  There sat a beautiful wooden topsail schooner.  She's named "The Pride of Baltimore" and is a replica of an 1812 privateer.  She had been running down the Bay under full sail and ran aground right outside of our harbor.  She was moving along at a pretty good clip and came to an abrupt halt, pretty much like she slammed on the brakes.  I'll bet that knocked their wigs loose!  The crew quickly dropped her sails, all but the mainsail and sat there for two hours waiting for the tide to turn.  Finally she floated free and ran off under power with her tail between her legs.  How embarrassing.  It's hard to figure what really happened but it's my guess that somebody wasn't watching the charts.  Either they thought they were somewhere else, maybe entering West River, or they just plain weren't paying attention.  I guess it doesn't matter who you are.  If you sail on the Chesapeake Bay, sooner or later you're gonna run aground.