What's this? Pictures!

So I went back to the boat this morning to take care of a few things I meant to get to last night, and I not only took pictures, but I actually remembered to bring the camera home with me to upload them! Unfortunately, after all this build-up, they are rather underwhelming, but I'll share what I've got.


This first bunch is from the diesel starter system switch replacement. First is the new switch, a simple momentary push-button. Next is the rear of the engine panel, taken from inside the cockpit locker... the helm position is just outside there. The whole to the right is a blank position with the panel temporarily removed to give me more working space. Just to the left of it and slightly above is the other blank that I will use to mount the button. The blank hole is slightly larger than I need, so I made a small plate with a hole drilled out to the exact size, which will serve to hold the button in place (and recess it slightly, to avoid inadvertent contacts). There are two C-clamps holding the plate in place while the 4200 cures.

In case you were wondering that guage just below the switch hole is the tach. The previous owner told us the tachometer didn't work, but gave us a new one to replace it with... he never mentioned that all the wiring had been cut! Or maybe it hadn't been; some other work was done back there before I got my hands on it. Anyway, the loose wires from the engine are no where to be found in that locker, so I'll have to run them again all the way from the engine compartment. We've gotten pretty good at judging revs by sound, however, so there's no rush.


First here is the exterior of the panel, with the switch hole more clearly visible. The next is a broader view of the location of the panel in the cockpit. The original on/off/start key switch is on the lower right hand side. It was extremely vulnerable to getting stepped on by the helmsman. I installed a U-bolt next to it, primarily for the helmsman to clip his or her tether to, but also to help protect the key when it was in place, but it really wasn't close enough to do the trick.

I have to wait 48 hours for the 4200 to cure then all I will have to do is go back and fasten the switch in place.

This is the cockpit locker; it doesn't really have anything to do with anything except that somewhere down there, buried beneath an avalanche of gear, lies the all-important water pump compartment which has been the scene of so many of my recent travails. I finally finished that up this morning too, by putting in the last two mounting screws, but I forgot to take the picture while I had everything out of the locker and the compartment clearly exposed, and I sure didn't feel like hauling it all out again just to take a snapshot. Trust me, it's down there.


This is a shot of the anchor locker interior, where the bow nav light wire run is. They used to just dangle around loosely inside there, waiting to get caught on the anchor chain or something, so when I re-wired the pulpit I also secured them to the toe-rail bolts along the top of the compartment. As an added bonus, it should help keep them dry in a notoriously wet location.
Speaking of the pulpit, here it is, re-mounted proudly in its position of honor at the bow, and festooned gloriously with the re-wired navigation lights. I'm not super-happy with the connections but I am considering replacing the running lights with LED fixtures anyway, so as long as they last a few years I am okay with it.

All this would be considerably more impressive if I were one of those people who not only could remember the camera, but who also remembered to take pictures at each step of a project. I love people who do that. It's both interesting and easy to follow along, and provides an excellent guidebook for others who are attempting similar projects. Whether through general forgetfulness or simply a low opinion of my own efforts, however, I'm apparently not one of those people.

It also occured to me that we haven't shown anyone the boat in her new home at Shilshole since we moved in last spring. I leave you with a wide shot of Insegrevious in her slip on Q dock on a fine spring day. Here's hoping she spends more time out on the water than resting in her snazzy new digs!

It must be Memorial Day

You could just about walk across Puget Sound from deck to deck on all the boats out there.

As has become traditional with this blog, I offer you my apologies and protestations of sincerity regarding the continuing absence of up-to-date pictures. They're getting closer, though; the camera actually made it as far as the boat today... and there it sits. I'll pick it, and the pictures it contains, up within the next few days or so, I imagine.

Anyway, it was a beautiful day and we decided to take full advantage of it along with the hundreds of other boaters out for the three-day weekend. Mandy had to work in the morning, but that gave me a chance to get down to the marina and re-assemble the interior of the boat after all the spring projects I have recently detailed.

The new button starter worked like a charm and the Yanmar fired right up. I managed to catch all the rigging oddities (jibsheets were led through the bow pulpit for some reason... there is always something messed up on the first outing of the year) before we left the dock and there was a nice breeze coming out of the north, so we didn't actually run the engine that long. We got outside the breakwater and raised sail off Golden Gardens and had a brisk run on a beam reach across the Port Madison. Conditions were great; we made 5-6 knots in the 10-15 knot breeze but the water was flat and relatively calm. Bright sunshine reflected off the crisp white sails and kept us warm even in the wind.

The wind got fluky once we got into Port Madison and we baubled around there for an hour or so tacking our way back out in the shifts. Then it was another beam reach back the Shilshole.

The only downside was all the other traffic, particularly close to the marina. No close calls or even any annoyances, really, but we had to pay more attention to where we were going and what we were doing than I would have preferred for a truly relaxing day.

We were only out for about three hours total but it was actually just about right for our first outing of the season. A nice shakedown, everything worked as it was supposed to and performance was good.

I didn't get a chance to properly mount the start button, but I did scrub the deck down after we got back... a task long overdue, particularly after the winter at Shilshole: the marina is adjacent to a heavily traveled set of train tracks and a layer of black grim accumulates much faster than when we were moored on Lake Union. I managed to knock loose the GPS antenna while I was scrubbing but it was a temporary mount in the first place--I wanted to get a sense of how it would work in that location, and I am happy enough with it that I will put in a more permanent fixture now.

There were actually a lot of things that didn't get done today, but I'm so happy that everything else that has been done is working so well that I didn't mind much. I'll get back to it sometime this week as long as the weather holds out.

After finishing up with the outstanding systems projects, I need to take a serious look at stowage. After sinking last year, we've made a serious move toward storing important items in dryboxes and dry bags, which is going to change our lading plans... to store the same volume of stuff will require more space with it in dryboxes and bags, so I'll have to re-arrange things substantially. Also, the items damaged and discarded have freed up spots in lockers that were previously carefully arranged in an intricate 3D jigsaw puzzle that depended on every particular piece of equipment in its particular place. While on balance this is a good thing (many of the items lost were inherited with the boat and of questionable value... an old car charger, random buckets of wiring, petrified tubes of sealants) and gives us more room, it also means the puzzles have to be assembled again to fit the new stuff. I'll probably need to buy some more containers of various sizes to fill in the voids.

So that's the next big thing, I imagine, but at least it's more of a brain teaser than a physical job, and I don't have to wait for good weather to do it.

No pictures, but some success

And the camera was sitting right there next to the door when I left the house, too. Sorry. Maybe next time.

After buying the wrong fittings three times I finally got the freshwater pump installed and operating yesterday. With the proper connections everything was quite easy; the pump, a Shurflo, fit right on the pad where the old Par was at (although I had to drill new mounting holes to match the base) and with right-angle adapters the hoses fit snugly. When I powered the circuit up, the pump kicked right in and pressurized the system with no leaks or complaints.

This allowed me to finally check out the hot water heater as well, which had a loose fitting but otherwise worked normally.

While I had the cockpit locker cleared out (and while I was wedged inside it, as the pump compartment is beneath it) I took the opportunity to clean it and the pump compartment out a bit. In a car, house, or other land-based domicile, you can sweep stuff off the table or dash or practically any surface and eventually by force of gravity and the assistance of winds, vacuums, brooms, etc, the debris will eventually make its way off or out of the conveyance or establishment. Not so in a boat. The hull keeps junk inside as effectively as it keeps water out, so every speck of dust, dropped screw, wood splinter, hair ball (not mine, obviously), washer, or candy wrapper ends up in the lowest bit of whatever compartment it dropped in. The cockpit locker itself was fairly clean but I wiped it out anyway; the pump compartment, beneath it, was full of slimy garbage which I mucked out as best I was able then scrubbed down to the extent that I could reach. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than when I started.

I performed a similar clean up beneath the prop shaft and transmission casing by reaching in from the cockpit locker. A lot of small debris was down there, which is bad news when you are out bouncing around... the wrong sized chunk of wood or machine screw getting tossed into the steering mechanism or the shaft seal at the wrong time could cause tremendous and dangerous problems.

I had wanted to inspect the shaft seal anyway, and did so as best I was able. That sort of thing almost has to be done at night to be conducted adequately; the contrast between the sun and the dark engineering spaces doesn't let you see very well even with a flashlight on a sunny day. We've been accumulating a small amount of water in the bilge over time and my thinking was that it was coming from the shaft seal. This is a dripless seal but it's possible for the mechanism to come loose and start allowing small amounts of water in. Feeling around beneath it, however, I didn't find any signs of water intrusion. Same story around the engine raw water intake through-hull and in fact everywhere beneath the shaft and transmission--I felt only the usual minimal slime of lubricants. This, at least in theory, rules out a leak source anywhere abaft the engine, since any incoming water would have to run down that path to get to the bilge.

This puts me right back at square one for leak tracing. I'll have to set up more comprehensive traps for drips and such to see if I can figure out where it's coming from. That, at least, will be easier now with everything cleaned up a bit.

The wooden rail that holds the board separating the cockpit locker from the engine compartment was starting to split. I didn't have wood glue or the right size clamps aboard to fix it (and my head and shoulders were too broad to get in and do a good glue job anyway) but I slapped some Marine Goop in it and hope that will suffice as a temporary repair.

Got a look at the steering gear and below-decks portion fo the autopilot, which all looked fine. Sprayed some lubricant on the steering quadrant and cables as is my habit in the spring, but as with the PSS inspection, I really need to get back in there after dark sometime to get a good look at things.

I wired up the push-button starter to replace the key-based ignition system and it works just fine; I have to fabricate a mount in the instrument cluster and find a protective cover for the button now. I still haven't installed an "on/off" switch or secondary start button below decks... need to figure out more how that three-way switch works first.

Also got the radar working properly again. It turned out the "no data" message I was getting before was the result of a bad contact between the cable and the plotter. I tested all the circuits in the radome via the cable and they came out with normal readings, so I took a look at the plug more carefully. It turned out there was a small plastic burr in the connector locking mechanism which was hanging up and preventing the cable from making a complete connection when plugged in. I shaved that off with my pocket knife and the connector slid right on and the radar came up normally. Of all the Raymarine systems aboard, I only have the autoplilot left to test, but I need a day on the water to do so.

All in all, things seem to be coming together nicely. I think that covers my major "must-have" projects for the season; the transmission, should it need replaced, will form a whole constellation of troubles in and of itself, but I still hold out hope that simply having cleaned it out, it will work more easily for the next year at least. The exhaust elbow may still need to come out, but that looks pretty straightforward. And I shall likely assign leak tracing to Mandy, who is more methodical with that sort of thing that I am by nature.

A little bit of clean-up in the cabin and we're ready to go for the year!

Tiresome spring projects

Although I have said there is far less to be done on the boat this year than most years, that doesn't mean I am off the hook entirely. Since it was so nice out today, and it's a Friday, I headed over to Shilshole to see if I could make some progress on a few of my outstanding projects.

I also know I keep saying that I will take pictures when I do these things so that it makes more sense to look at; but I forgot the camera again today. I'll have to go back sometime and do a marathon photo updating session to cover everything I've done (although, unless I go back and disassemble some things, you won't get any of those neat step-by-step "in progress" shots that other people seem to manage so effortlessly).

As usual, I got about half way through about three different projects, halted on each of them by lack of some particular part or tool close to hand. I had intended to get the bow nav lights all wired up, pull out and dissassemble/fix the water pump or failing any obvious fix to replace it with our new spare, and to either wire up or at least scope out the wiring territory for the ignition system, which I am replacing with a two-station push-button setup to replace the key/lock switch that has gone out. I figured if I had time I would tidy up a bit, organize my electrical tools and supplies into one of the new dryboxes, take a gander at the PSS shaft seal to identify or rule it out conclusively as the source of the stern leak, and try to troubleshoot the radar (which turned up a "no signal" error when I fired it up late last month).

I got the nav lights done.

That took longer than I had hoped mostly because I was working up on the pointy end trying not to drop anything overboard. In my haste to remove the busted pulpit last year, I cut and pulled out the wiring running through it to the bow lights. Mandy and I re-installed the fixed pulpit a couple of weeks ago (with a good deal of pushing and pulling to get it bent back into shape, and the liberal application of 5200 to keep it that way!) and Mandy had done the time-consuming work of threading new wiring through the tubes again, but now it all had to be hooked up.

To avoid a situation where I would have to cut the wires to remove the pulpit again, I used fully insulated male/female disconnects, which I can unplug from inside the anchor locker if the pulpit has to come off in the future. I used heat shrink tubing to seal them up (it gets pretty wet in there) and then taped them for a belt and suspenders approach. I also zip-tied the wiring up out of the way along the toe-rail bolts, as previously it had simply been dangling around waiting for a length of anchor chain to rip it up.

I managed not to drop anything valuable in the water, and checked to make sure the lights worked when I flipped the switch: success!

I then went back and cleared out the starboard cockpit locker, which is necessary in order to fit myself into a space where I can get at the water pump or the backside of the engine control panel. Normally those are Mandy jobs since she fits much more tidily! But most of the stuff in there needed a good airing out anyway.

I first disconnected the ignition switch and made sure I knew which wires did what... still a little fuzzy on the "On" position but I at least isolated the wires I need for the push-button starter. Looks like the start button I got will fit handily into one of the available blanks on the panel! I may get a different one, however, with a built-in guard cover, as this might be a little too easy to bump into. Either way, I got stalled at this point because I didn't have any disconnects of the appropriate wire guage. I also needed to leverage myself out of the pit to trace the engine-side wiring, to install a switch in the system inside the boat, to prevent anyone from wandering by and starting her up from the cockpit. It's a laborious process to unfold myself from the cockpit locker, so I decided to just move on with the water pump.

Checking the old pump, it looked like the motor was probably shot, so I unmounted it to install the new one. Got all the wiring sorted out (had all the appropriate connectors this time!) and made sure the new used pump we picked up worked (it did) and then yanked the output hose to connect it. No dice... the old pump is a Jabsco with slip-on flange connectors, while the new one is a Shurflo with screw-on fittings (proprietary, from the looks of it). I hooked everything back up to the old malfunctioning pump, because the water tank is above the level of the pump and is perfectly happy to gravity drain itself dry, flooding the interior in the process.

So; shopping list now consists of 12 guage disconnects and Shurflo hose adapters.

I sorted out some of the electrical gear as I had planned but it got depressing pretty fast as I realized how much I needed to replace... a lot of corrosion was evident (which is why I got the dry box for the stuff this time around) and what was good enough to keep didn't take up too much space in the new box.

Didn't get to the radar at all. Not looking forward to it, as that could be expensive. It's brand new though, may be covered under warranty, or it may just be a bad connection somewhere.

Oh, and I discovered a split in the holding tank vent line, right where it joins the thru-hull in the cockpit locker... that made my stay in the confined space even more enjoyable than I had been expecting! I'll probably just tape it up, as I'm not sure there is enough slack to cut and re-secure it, and more splices=more potential leaks in the future. It's not as if it carries sewage itself, at any rate.

All this the day before the opening day of boating season. Unfortunately, it's supposed to rain. I usually go down and watch the races in the Montlake Cut, but I think tomorrow I'll be paying for playing hooky today by working instead.