Steering Trouble and a Windstorm
The weather this past weekend was idyllic, for the season; cold but mostly sunny. No wind meant that the nights in the Kitsilano Anchorage on English Bay were peaceful, with very little rocking save the occasional wake from a passing powerboater. The forecast however called for strong gales on Monday and Tuesday, and we were out of water anyway, so we packed up Tie Fighter and set off to finally return to False Creek.
don't use non-stainless steel cables on a boat.
Miya took the helm, but it was hardly ten minutes before she called out that the wheel was sticking, and that she couldn't turn to the left. I thought it was just sticking, but when I came to try it myself, the wheel was definitely not moving. We quickly threw out an anchor, and I started taking apart the binnacle to see if I could spot the problem. It was immediately obvious when I pulled at one of the steel steering cables; it came up out of the channel easily, and after a few feet of rusty, oily cable came a frayed and broken end!
The ironic part - and I'm quickly learning that the Gods of the Sea are huuuuge fans of irony - was that not even three hours earlier, Miya had been reading my copy of the CYA Basic Cruising Skills manual, from a course I took a couple of years back. Reading the section on emergency equipment, she asked specifically:
"Drew, where do we keep the spare tiller?"
I answered:
"We don't have one, baby. There's no place to attach one, and besides, we have thick steel cables for steering, they shouldn't ever break..."
Now, you'd assume that something as important as steering - especially on a boat with no emergency tiller attachment - would be rigged with stainless steel cables… but if there's one thing the Gods of the Sea like better than irony, it's assumptions. As it turned out, the single exposed section of steering cable was rigged with 3/16ths stainless steel cable, but the rest - the parts impossible to inspect, routed through the walls in rigid conduit - were rigged with regular steel cable. Which, of course, had rusted completely through after a few(?) years of living in a wet conduit.
Darren with the new steering cable
My good friend Darren was in town on Sunday, on "vacation" from the island paradise in Malaysia where he runs a diving school, and so after a leisurely brunch we tackled the problem of routing the new stainless steering cables. We rented a large, industrial crimping tool and bought a bag of aluminum crimps, then settled in for the nightmare job of trying to thread the new cable into the old conduit. To our surprise and delight, the new cable went through the conduit without a hitch, and replacing the entire steering system (including a stopover to lubricate the turning blocks) took around two hours total.
The interesting part is that I think the steering system is actually the final, single system on the boat that I hadn't actually torn out yet. Every single system aboard has now had my hands in it, either by tearing each system out completely or just removing, cleaning and reinstalling. All of the water lines, all the hoses, the entire electrical system, the bilge pumps, the galley, the head, the lighting, the sailing instruments - everything! Only Maude (the big Yanmar diesel engine) looks more or less exactly like she did when I started, and if you've been reading this blog for a while you know that there's been a serious tonne of work done there as well.
leftover cable turned into spare rigging
Anyhow. The repairs went fine, and the steering is back to 100% again - even better, in fact, as now the turnbuckles turn a lot easier, and without a frayed steel cable scraping the inside of the conduit the steering wheel turns far smoother than before. We are extremely lucky that the cable snapped while we were only about 300m offshore, still in the Kitsilano Anchorage instead of out in the middle of the Georgia Straight like we were the weekend before - I'm honestly not sure how that would have gone.
For now, we're back in False Creek, and have already survived a November windstorm - though it wasn't even 40kn of wind, we only had out a single 'delta' anchor. The winds came up suddenly, jumping from a gentle 5kn breeze to a 30kn gale in under five minutes, and that was enough to cause us to drag anchor about 200m east, narrowly avoiding slamming into Erik's boat 'Solgangsvind'. We fired up the engine and tried to re-anchor several times, but dragged anchor each time, and on the third time dragging we came a little too close to 'Solgangsvind' again and drifted over Erik's anchor line. I had to quickly tie off our anchor line to a buoy and toss the whole thing overboard, because with his anchor line hooked we couldn't pull our anchor up without also pulling up his, and that would mean multiple boats drifting free in the 30kn winds - it could have been a real mess! With Miya at the helm we motored back west towards the Granville Bridge, searching for better anchor purchase.
We found a good hold just past Monk McQueen's restaurant, deploying a 35lbs CQR anchor and having that hold for an hour or so... but then suddenly the wind picked up again and we found ourselves dragging anchor east towards boats moored at the marina! I had Miya take the helm again, and with a panicked look in her eyes, trying to keep a 39' sailboat off the rocks in the dark with howling winds and driving rains lashing us, she kept the boat steady and pointed into the wind while I pulled up the anchor and attached a second anchor, a 25lbs 'fortress', to the end of the chain. This gave us a 25lbs anchor, 20' of heavy chain, a 35lbs anchor, another 20' of heavy chain and then a hundred feet of thick rope, which - after we set the anchor properly - held us solid for the rest of the night. Of course we still had the GPS anchor drag alarm set all night, but we were never woken up.
Anyhow - we're technically back in False Creek, but the boat is locked up solid while we're away in Oklahoma for the next couple of days so that Miya can run 26.2 miles in the Oklahoma marathon!
What I Did On My Summer Vacation – June Edition
It's been six months since I've updated my blog, and much has changed. So much, in fact, that the sheer amount of things I have to write about has been preventing me from writing at all! I've resigned myself to the fact that many of this summer's great adventure stories will have to remain untold, and that I will just have to tell the biggest story - and in the spirit of 'worth a thousand words', I think the story is best told as a series of photographs, with a descriptive paragraph for each. There are eighty-six photographs in total, and that's after having culled and cut and edited out well over half of them. Most of these photos are lower quality, all that remains from my iPhone's 'Facebook' application.
The short version: I planned to haul Tie Fighter out of the water for a two-week intensive repair and paintjob session, and those two weeks turned into a grueling sixty-five day slog, working ten or more hours per day in the hot sun with a total of five days off over more than two months. Fortunately the weather cooperated, if you count blisteringly hot sun as cooperation...
Without further ado, I present to you "What I Did On My Summer Vacation", the June edition. If you're reading this on Facebook, I strongly suggest you visit my main blog site (http://www.disengage.ca) for the original formatting.
Ernst at the helm
Given the ongoing problems with my engine overheating, I figured it was probably prudent to enlist some help with the travel from Kitsilano up to the boatyard that I'd be working in, Shelter Island Marina in Richmond, BC. They were chosen because they are the only boatyard in the lower mainland with a travelift capable of hauling out a boat the width of Tie Fighter!
towing Tie Fighter behind the Foulkeswagen
My friend John Foulkes offered to give me a tow up the Fraser River with his powerboat, and so Ernst and I sailed Tie Fighter out around UBC and to the river mouth, then attached a line to John's boat (the Foulkeswagen) and headed up the river. Aside from a near miss of the banks during a daring coffee-relay mission between the two vessels, the trip was peaceful and uneventful.
approaching the lift
I spent the night on the Shelter Island docks, then in the morning I motored up to the lifting dock...
travelift lifting Tie Fighter out of the water
...where I was lifted up...
out of the water
carrying Tie Fighter across the boatyard
...carried across the boatyard...
washdown guy in hazmat suit
...powerwashed, and...
- Tie Fighter blocked and ready for work
...finally set down gently on metal stands, ready to be worked on.
At this point I honestly did think that I'd only be out for a total of two weeks, but everyone who asked about it laughed when I told them my schedule and predictions of how long it would take. One guy, a fellow geek, actually recommended I take all my predictions regarding time and money to be spent, add a worst-case scenario, and then multiply it all by 'pi'. Strangely his predictions were the most accurate of anyone.
stuck centerboard, meet physics
The first task was to remove the centerboard, though of course it didn't want to come out. At some point, some previous owner hit some rocks and damaged the fiberglass bottom edge of the board - the wooden centerboard absorbed seawater and swelled up, causing it to stick in the centerboard trunk. Two days, a lot of rocking, some serious leverage provided by halyards and block-and-tackle, and a bottle of extra virgin olive oil later... she came out.
the centerboard finally out
Six hundred pounds of centerboard doesn't move around too easily! Ugh, three different layers of anti-fouling paint, old fiberglass, wood fibers and several years of marine growth - this piece of wood was foul. We drilled a bunch of drainage holes in the board and propped it up on wood blocks "for a few days". Little did we know, it would be there for almost two months.
One of the first major projects was to repair a "tiny, little 6-inch spot of rot" in one of the port ama bulkheads. Of course, we quickly learned that as soon as you can spot any rot, there's a lot more that you can't see... and the project turned into a bulkhead, support beams, an inside panel and several feet of decking!
DR tracing out a new bulkhead
My close friend Dan Ross spent a large portion of the summer out in the boatyard with me, helping to repair the boat. His work ethic and good humour kept me both motivated and sane through the long, hot days on the asphalt.
- DR fitting the replacement bulkhead
- port ama hatch rebuilt, awaiting fiberglass
- Miya on the starboard bow
During this time I also had other friends visiting and helping quite often - here's a pic of my lovely girlfriend Miya working on the starboard bow. At first we tried to remove the old anti-skid paint with sandpaper and then with an angle grinder, but the sheer amount of work to do so was staggering. In the end, we found that methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) was the answer - the anti-skid paint dissolved under the solvent!
- Miya, Teak and DR pulling up the mast
We also removed the mast and rigging, both so that I could inspect and upgrade the mast head equipment and so that we could get access to the centerboard trunk, the largest and most complicated rot problem of all...
- the mast on the ground
- lots of rot in the mast step!
Above you see the mast step, which essentially collapsed as soon as I applied a little pressure to it. I'm very fortunate that it never collapsed on me while I was at sail, though I'm pretty sure that I would have had problems if I'd left this project for another year.
- the rain cover built and installed
As the Canada Day weekend approached, bringing June to a close, the weather forecast showed a prediction of rain. With a quick run to Home Depot for lumber and a tarp, we built a rain cover over the worksite - which had the side effect of giving us some much-needed shade on what would prove to be the hottest days of the summer.
And so ended the month of June. I'll try to add the subsequent posts, with the photos from July and August in a timely fashion, but my world seems to be accelerating currently, so no promises. 
A Quick One
Well, I made it out of False Creek. I can't exactly say I made it unscathed, as I managed to somehow burn out (part of) my exhaust system again - but at least I'm out, and out of the immediate danger of being towed away and impounded by the VPD. Instead, now I am broken down at anchor about 300m due west of the Maritime Museum, bobbing around in the wake of every ship that enters or leaves False Creek, and potentially in danger should the weather turn foul. Tomorrow I will be picking up a few replacement parts that will help get me up and running again and over to a slightly more comfortable spot.
completely unrelated: Friday morning I was woken up by yet *another* hovercraft. how awesome is this photo!?
I think I actually know what's going on now. At some point, X minutes after pushing the engine hard, the cooling water ceases to flow into the exhaust and the superheated exhaust burns a hole in the tubes. There are a pair of thermostats that redirect the water flow from the exhaust manifold and into the main engine block once they heat up, though the water should then flow into the exhaust manifold and out the exhaust. I now suspect that the engine block has become fouled with calcium scale, and now water no longer flows through it. Fixing this will likely require a heavy-duty descaling solution, or perhaps straight-up muriatic acid. It's a touchy procedure, but there is hope - I may have finally sorted out a way to barter myself some time with a proper diesel mechanic!
More soon. I simply have too much work to do to write proper, long blog posts right now.
UPDATE: Swapped in an edited version of the hovercraft shot, with levels and curves tweaked by Jason Sims. Nice one!
Stress
I started to write a blog post on Friday morning, but by Saturday evening the still-open browser window - the blog editor page with just the word "Stress" written in the title box - had become its own succinct review of the events of those two days. I won't bore you with the details, but the main point is that after some fast talking, the VPD granted me another couple of days to get my engine going. I spent most of the weekend working on her, and as of now I am reasonably confident (though knocking wood) that she is working well enough to get me the heck out of Dodge.
A quick highlight reel - in the past three days, I:
- bicycled over forty kilometers and rowed over eight kilometers in total,
- borrowed a truck and drove to Bellingham and back for engine parts,
- had my oil filter spring a leak, leaving me with a couple of liters of used engine oil in my bilge,
- spent over $700 on a new exhaust system, and assembled and installed it,
- ate six cans of sardines and probably over a pound of sliced ham,
- drank most of a bottle of Sailor Jerry, and
- went out dancing. Twice.
Tomorrow morning I try once more to escape the Creek. My first destination will be Kitsilano.
Engine Battle: TKO!
I may not be warm, but at least I have an engine that starts.
Ok seriously, it's fracking cold out here. The past few days the temperature has dropped further and further, and as I write this it is 6pm, pitch dark outside and -6°C. I know some of you are reading this from the Prairies or the Maritimes, where the ambient temperature has been hovering around -20°C, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that you also have furnaces and insulation and such. Tie Fighter is made of 3/8" marine-grade plywood over cedar stringers, with an R-value of... god, I have no idea. Not enough, anyway. It's COLD.
click to view larger - can you spot the outline of the (heated) cabin vs. the outline of the (unheated) closet?
I've had some questions posed about insulating the boat, and the short answer is: I'm still researching. One school of thought says that the only way to insulate a wooden boat is to use foam rubber, and bond the foam directly to the wood, being careful not to leave any air gaps between the wood and the foam. The reasoning is that if you leave air gaps, you're inviting condensation, which to wood means mildew or eventually rot.
The other school says that you should never bond anything to the wood, because that makes it much more difficult to notice problems, and a helluva mess to work with. They say to rather allow it to breathe and stack insulation over top that can have air forced in behind it via fans or blowers, so that the condensation can dry up on its own.
What am I going to do? I have no idea. I'm still soliciting opinions from various liveaboard forums and fellow False Creek denizens. For now, I'm toughing it out and burning several different forms of fossil fuels at the same time trying to stay warm. When I woke up this morning I had to break up the ice in the sink dishes before I could make breakfast.
Cold aside, I HAVE A WORKING ENGINE AGAIN! The diesel engine theory class paid off in spades, and I was able to diagnose the problem, correct the situation, and get Maude started. This was a huge boost to my confidence and self-esteem, especially given the nature of the problem and my previous (complete lack of) experience with engines.
To recap; Maude had started to lose power at some point during my last run up to fill my water tanks. The change was gradual but immediately noticible; the engine dropped in power without my touching the throttle, which is up there with "sounds different" or "emitting smoke" or "smells funny" on the diesel engine scale of uh-ohs. Not quite 'explosion', but definitely not good.
The most immediate difference between my response to this problem after having completed the diesel theory class vs. my response before the diesel class is that I now have any response at all other than ignoring the problem and hoping that it will resolve itself. Carrie once said to me "I don't deal with little problems anymore. Little problems either go away on their own, or they become big problems. I deal with big problems.". I took this somewhat to heart, but I have come to realize that that philosophy can only apply to some aspects of life; in other situations - diesel engines being a noteworthy example - it's best to deal with little problems immediately and with extreme prejudice. Don't just solve problems, smash them out of existence with the largest hammer you can find.
the fuel lift pump, source of my woes
Maude had started to lose power, and I ignored it. The next time I tried to go for water, Maude died about four minutes into the voyage. Fortunately the incoming tide pushed me directly back over my anchoring spot, or I would have had to radio the Coast Guard for assistance. Attempting to restart her seemed to work intermittently, she'd start but die as soon as I applied any throttle, which is exactly the behavior one would expect from water in the fuel lines. The answer there would be to drain the water from the fuel lines, bleed the lines of any newly-introduced air, and then restart the engine - bearing in mind that the "bleed the lines" portion of that answer is an eleven-step procedure requiring three different sizes of wrench.
Needless to say, I was unsuccessful with the bleeding of the lines. For the life of me, I could not seem to get the air out of the lines; I must have pushed that little fuel lift pump lever tens of thousands of times, blistering and scraping my hands in the process. Nothing seemed to work!
Fortunately I had signed up weeks before for the Cooper Boating 'Advanced Diesel Theory' class, and so I went to class and paid close attention, asking so many questions that I'm sure the teacher is glad to be rid of me. Each week I returned from class with fresh resolve and a new set of hints, and spent a few hours poking at the engine trying to figure out what part of the bleeding process I was doing wrong. Each week I was unsuccessful.
After five straight weeks trying to perform the relatively simple process of bleeding the lines, I decided that I was doing it right and that there must be something actually wrong with the process. I decided to take each part in turn and track out the problem, just like I'd do with a computer issue. Eventually this led me to a conclusion: the fuel lift pump just wasn't lifting fuel.
source of the problems, click for closeup
Long story short, I pulled the fuel lift pump off the engine and disassembled it on my kitchen table. I found that the input valve assembly was clogged in the 'open' position with a motley assortment of plastic scraps, gelled diesel and hair(?!), which I removed. This was clearly a result of the stock fuel filter having been removed by a previous mechanic and a third-party fuel filter installed instead, after the fuel lift pump instead of before it. I cleaned up the pump, tested and reinstalled it, changing the location of the fuel filter along the way - but still I had no fuel flow!
Finally, after putting together a bit of critical information from the instructor along with a tidbit from the guys at Stem to Stern, I realized that the copper washers in the banjo bolts connecting the fuel lift pump to the fuel lines must be letting air into the lines. I replaced the copper washers, tightened up the banjo bolts, and suddenly fuel began to flow. I performed the rest of the air-bleed procedure, cranked the engine, and low and behold Maude shuddered to life.
Anyhow. I have an engine again, though I haven't yet installed the secondary fuel filter I purchased, nor replaced the belts, nor replaced the exhaust tank. I have yet to change the oil, either in the engine block or in the transmission. I haven't even begun to reroute the cooling system, changing it over from raw seawater to antifreeze - but all of these projects will come. I have a working engine, and with a little luck I can keep it that way. I am no longer afraid of Maude. The engine is no longer a black box.
Just to add to the stress of the bitter cold, the police have just motored past in their 'R.G. McBeath' policeboat, which is the one they use to enforce the anchoring bylaws - they didn't stop by to chat, but they're weaving in around the anchored boats, making their presence known. I don't have any idea what is going to happen to those of us squatting here in False Creek. I suspect we'll all be kicked out prior to the Olympics, but I don't have any good ideas on where to go after that - there really aren't any other good, sheltered anchorages around Vancouver. The hard winter might shortly become much, much harder.
Recent Posts
- Delicious Ham
- La Paz, At Last!
- San Diego, Round Two
- San Diego
- San Francisco
- Coos Bay, Oregon
- Weather Window!
- Neah Bay
- Anchor Musings
- Adventure Time!
- RIP Schaltwerk
- And Just Like That
- Bicycles
- Electrical System Complete!
- Photoblog: What’s Up?
Twitter Feed
- mux: I think Pelican™ cases can be used as a pretty accurate metric of how awesome your life is. currently we have four large cases on the boat. May 18, 2012
- mux: tomorrow marks one month in the boatyard, with a few days left to go. today marks the second day in a row that has ended with a sunburn. May 18, 2012
- mux: multiple blisters... from power tools. not sure if this is a new personal best or new personal low. the new swing-keel is taking shape. May 13, 2012
Blogs I Like
Other Cruisers' Blogs
- Miya's blog
- s/v Celestial
- s/v Deep Playa
- s/v Eagle
- s/v Estrallita 5.10b
- s/v Nyon
- s/v Resolution
- s/v Rikki-Tikki-Tavi