Never Fails

 This past week has been very cold with sub-freezing highs and single digit lows.  Most daytime temperatures have been in the teens.  Yeah, pretty cold for our part of the country.  Normally this is not a big deal since we only have to deal with it when running between the boat and the car.  This being our final cold winter for many years to come we thought it would be no big deal.

 We've had our diesel heater for four winters now.  I calculated that amounts to about 9300 hours of usage with only minor maintenance such as replacing the glow plug and diffuser every year and the fuel pump once.  That's pretty good.  It's not an inexpensive way to heat your boat but it does keep it comfortable and it is fairly reliable.

This past weekend that reliability thing caught up to us.  I guess with 9300 hours I should have been expecting something.  Just as the temperatures dropped into the teens our heater no longer could keep up and temperatures inside dropped into the 60's even though the thermostat was set for 70.  At first I thought it was just because it was extremely cold outside.  Then I discovered strange sounds coming from the heater.  At first it sounded like a baseball card in your bicycles spokes.  It progressively got worse and developed into vibrations with the heater cutting out, usually in the middle of the night. 

After a few days of this  I climbed down into the cockpit locker and did some maintenance on the heater.  I was pretty sure the problem was in the blower that supplies fresh air for the combustion process as well as the recirculated air that gets reheated.  The error codes displayed on the controller included #32, "blower motor short circuit".  The troubleshooting manual (click here) suggests a blockage in the fan.  I removed the input air duct and vacuumed it out.  I also used a paint brush and the vacuum to clean the fan blades.  I was kinda disappointed not to find any large dust bunnies in there.  As I was putting things back together I discovered the output air duct had popped off and was hanging down about a quarter inch, allowing cold air to be sucked in.  Yes!  That would explain why the heater couldn't keep up.  Not.

I fired up the heater and it seemed to run very nicely for a while but after a few hours it started making noises again and eventually stopped running.  It never seems to fail....bad things happen at the worst possible time.  At this point our weather had really deteriorated with a major snowstorm predicted for that night.  Temperatures were supposed to go below zero at some point too.  Inside the boat we'd be waking up to temperatures in the high 40's and 50's and that was because we were running two electric heaters to keep it from going any lower.

The next day I removed the heater and brought it down below for some major surgery.  After pulling off the intake hood I spun the fan.  It was locked up and after it broke loose I could feel resistance when I turned it.  OK, this is definitely the problem.  To remove the blower assembly I had to first remove the upper jacket shell and shell holder.  The manual says the blower isn't serviceable and is simply replaced as a whole unit.  The cost of this thing is about $700 so I wanted to play with it, break it down as much as I could.  I can see why it isn't serviceable.  Once you get down to the motor you still have the whole combustion side of the blower attached and it doesn't break down much beyond that.

I tried buying my replacement parts from the local distributor but they were closed because of the snowstorm that had blown through the night before.  I ended up going on-line and buying my parts from Lubrication Specialists (click here) located in Greenfield, Indiana.  I've bought parts from these guys before and their prices are excellent and delivery is speedy.  This time I asked for overnight delivery which added $86 to the bill.  Well worth it considering the temperature on the boat this morning was 49 degrees.  I also ordered a new injector and two new diffuser screens.

The parts arrived the next day at 1100, delivered to the marina office.  When I went to pick it up I climbed the stairs to the second floor office and from there I could look out across the Chesapeake Bay.  From up there I was able to see all the way across to the Eastern Shore and into the mouth of the Choptank River.  The Bay was frozen solid all the way across except for the shipping channel.  This is the first time I've seen this but it's not that uncommon.  Sharps Island Light at the Choptank River entrance has an interesting history (click here) of being damaged by ice on the Bay.

Although this could be considered a major repair for this thing the actual job itself is not difficult.  Once I had the parts unpacked it only took me about an hour to reassemble the unit and I took my time, cleaning as I went.  The Espar heater is really well built with a tight, compact design.  Parts fit together well and the only drawback for me was the need to invest in a set of star drivers.  This was the first time I've had to remove the cover and do major surgery but now that's it's done I'll have no fear if I ever have to go back in again.  There are few serviceable parts and all components are pretty easily accessible.

Once I had it back together and reinstalled in the cockpit locker it fired up on the second try and has run well ever since.  Just in time too because the weather went from bad to worse with temperatures dropping even further for the next three days.  Yikes!  That was close.

Strut Your Stuff

Did some interesting work this past weekend.  Even managed to take care of a few things other than the radio.

But we did start with the SSB radio.  I read an article on Latitude 38 (click here) called the Idiot's Guide to Marine SSB.  There's lots of good information about licensing, range and frequency and more but down towards the bottom is a section on testing reception and transmission.  I've been able to pick up signals from as far away as Miami and they came through pretty clear.  I don't know how the transmission is though, how clear my signal is at the other end.  The best way is to have someone to receive your transmission at a prearranged time and frequency.  We don't have that yet so we'll settle for plan B right now.  You can get a pretty good idea of signal strength just by holding the mike up to your mouth and saying "four" loud, long and drawn out.  I did this and pegged the power meter and never saw the SWR warning which would indicate transmitted signal bleeding back into the radio.

We got the GPS info fed to the SSB and VHF radios via the NMEA 2000 backbone.  It's actually getting the GPS info directly from the multi-function display out in the cockpit.  This provides an accurate Latitude/Longitude position of our boat which is displayed on the control head along with Zulu time.  This information is nice to have ready access to for emergency situations such as our second day out on our voyage to Bermuda.  We encountered a deafening explosion in our close vicinity and broadcasted our position to anyone listening.  Our immediate concern was that the Navy might be doing some practice fire and we did not want to be an unintentional target.  The Coast Guard responded right away and asked for our position.  To have it displayed right at the radio is a huge time saver and prevents mistakes.  They sent out a helicopter and with accurate information they flew right down our side.  Never did find out what the explosion was though.

(click here for the ICOM M504 VHF Radio Manual) One thing about this GPS connection.  I had thought I could use both the NMEA 0183 input and output from the VHF radio (SSB only has 0183 input) for use with DSC, digital selective calling.  This is kinda like making a private call over the radio because it uses MMSI numbers (Maritime Mobile Service Identity, assigned by the FCC and USCG, click here) and digital coding.  When you're traveling in a group of boats you can program each MMSI number into your radio and assign it a "group" name (manual page 15 thru 48).  You can then make "group" calls that are only received by those boats.  The MMSI number is also used in emergency situations and provides the USCG with pre-programmed information about your boat and it's location.  Both of our radios have DSC capability but I've since found that the way I have the system set up I can't get the incoming NMEA 0183 info fed into the system and displayed on the chart plotter.  Our local pros at MSC told me not to worry about it, that the few boats they've set up with that capability never actually use it.  We'll still be able to do the "group" thing, just won't be able to see the other boats displayed unless we hit them with radar or if they have AIS.  Since both radios have the capability I decided not to use it on the SSB.  That requires setting up another antenna and I think we already have enough crap hanging off our boat.  It would be redundant to the VHF radio anyway.

I finally got started on the cabinet project in the aft stateroom.  I assembled the face frames, doors and hinges.  Everything seems to be of a pretty nice quality and the color of the wood, honey maple, is a pretty close match to the teak, just a shade lighter.  The doors are larger than I expected so I had to remove the fiddle that runs across the front of the shelf.  This will be cut down to work with the cabinets and still help to tie the cabinets in with the rest of the boats woodwork.  The hinges are a nice quality and have a spring-loaded closing action.  The face frame is milled on the backside to accept 1/2" cabinet sides and tops in an 1/8" deep recess.  That'll make assembly a little easier.  The biggest problem I have working on these cabinets is unloading all the junk we have stashed in the aft stateroom.  It all gets moved out into the main salon and forward stateroom so the boat is in a complete uproar while I'm working back there.  At the end of the weekend it all goes back again.  Hopefully these cabinets will help reduce some of that clutter.  Life on a boat.

Another project I took care of (actually finished) this weekend was replacing the gas spring struts on our bunk and the lift-up mirror in the forward head.  The one in the head was a direct replacement, cost about $30 and took two minutes to install.  Our bunk was a different story.  The mattress sits on a hinged platform that lifts to reveal multiple levels of storage underneath.  We store all kinds of stuff down there and need access all the time.  When we first got the boat it had a foam mattress and two 80 lb struts to lift the bed.  We replaced the foam with an inner coil mattress and the struts still helped but it took an effort to raise.  We added a memory foam topper and that just made things worse.  We finally got rid of the inner coil mattress and replaced it with a 12" Latex foam mattress.  Now the struts were way out of their league.  Lifting that sucka was a real workout and to hold it up we used a length of wooden hangar rod that we borrowed from someones closet.  I finally got around to replacing the struts and having never worked with these before it was a real learning experience.  The originals had the part # marked on the tube so I looked it up on the internet.  Made by Attwood they have an 8" range, 20" extended length and are rated at 80 lbs lifting force each.  Attwood makes stronger ones with the same length and range, up to 120 lbs.  I was hoping to find something that would use the same brackets to keep things easy but I wanted more force than 120 lbs.  I did another search using the range and extended length and found some rated at 180 lbs.  That's more like what I was thinking.  There's a way to measure the amount of force you need which involves a floor scale but I tried it and couldn't do it safely because of the weight and location.  So I was just kinda guessing what I needed based on the amount of struggle with the old struts.

The only problem with the bigger struts was that they have a bigger ball mount and would require a different bracket.  When I looked up the brackets available for it I found them all to be way too big.  It would have really hogged a lot of space beneath the bunk.  I took another look at the brackets I had and decided I could modify them to work.  I went ahead and ordered the struts along with spring clips (?) and the bigger ball mounts.

When I received everything I found the new ball mounts were threaded studs as apposed to the old ones which were smaller and pressed in.  I filed off the backside of the old ones and popped them out and then drilled and tapped the bracket for 5/16"-13 threads.  The tube-end of the struts mounts flush to the storage area wall so I had to cut the stud down flush to get it to fit.  The rod-end sticks out in the air so I mounted a nut and lock washer to keep things tight.  I had never worked with the clips though and had to do a search on YouTube (click here) to figure it out.  Once you see how it's done it looks so simple but when I pulled the parts out of the bag I could not figure it out and there were no directions in the kit.  Those two little holes in the ball housing are almost invisible.  Once everything was mounted I tried lifting the bed.  Very little effort to get it started and it slowly rose up to it's limit.  Closing was a breeze.  I had Cheri give it a try and she could also do it with little effort.  Excellent!

So we're still making progress on things but the time is flying by.  I need to get the cabinet finished and get to work on that water maker.  We also have a new mainsail scheduled to arrive this month as well as a new life raft which will need mounting somewhere.  Oh yeah, plus two more solar panels and the railing around the cockpit.  Yikes!  Now I'm feeling stressed.  36 days to go until I leave my job and just two weeks or so after that we take off for the Bahamas.