Oct. 19, 2005

I spent the last two weeks doing pretty much the same as the ones before that, working on the boat. After the short shakedown with Steve, I had some engine leaks to take care of; oil, antifreeze and fuel. I got these fixed and installed a standpipe with a siphon break in the cooling water line and an expansion tank for the cooling water. The engine on Bella Vita sits completly below the waterline. Without the standpipe, water can flow through the seacock and raw water pump and into the exhaust pipe and into the engine whenever the engine was not running. This would generally be very slow but enough to destroy the engine. I hadn't thought of this before and noticed it when the muffler kept leaking after the engine was stopped. Once I realized what was happening, I would simply close the seacock whenever we stopped the engine and we were able to continue using the engine. Sometimes being lucky is as good as being smart.

The US boatshow took place this month, the first weekend was the sailboat show and then the power boat show the following weekend. The sailboat show was the largest in the US with about 250 boats in the water and another 250 on shore. There was also a couple hundred vendors selling anything related to boats. I found a reasonably good deal on a life raft and it was delivered here to Gibson Island. Installing it took about a day by the time I removed the headliner, got the raft cradle bolted to the deck and reinstalled the headliner.

The other item I bought at the show was a Packless Shaft Seal or PSS. This is a device that replaces the normal packing on the propeller shaft with a carbon disc that seals against a stainless steel washer. Normaly the shaft packing is cooled by water going through it which means there is always a slow drip of water into the bilge. The PSS is cooled by water at the seal but it doesn't require any dripping through it, thus you can still have a dry bilge. Since installing one requires removing the current seal, there is nothing to stop the water from flowing into the bilge while the new one is being installed. The instructions were pretty clear that the installation should be done with the boat out of the water but I really wanted to avoid another haulout. Bella Vita has a solid plastic cutlass bearing instead of the rubber bearing with large open grooves in it so I figured the amount of water going past it in to the bilge would be small and I could change the seal while still in the water. Not being real confident of this, I made sure I started the operation in the morning while the boat yard guys were there in case I needed a quick pullout. Knowing that there would be water flowing into the bilge while I was working, I got all my tools and parts ready so I could minimize the water intake while I was working. Things went well while I removed to shaft coupling and I was feeling pretty smug about avoiding the haulout. But then I loosened the old seal mounting and a torrent of water poured into the bilge! This was certainly not what I expected so I shoved the old seal back into place and almost stopped the flow. A few minutes of pumping and pondering and I decided that the water that was now in the bilge was what was in the shaft log and did not represent that steady state flow with the seal removed. Bella Vita has a 3 inch shaft log that's about 4 feet long and holds a lot of water. After pumping out the bilge, I decided to try again. Of course, by now the log was full again and I was greeted by another torrent of seawater. Since I sort of expected that I didn't panic and was able to pump it out faster that it was coming in. The flow did settle down some although still much faster than I expected. This required a regrouping so the old seal assembly was shoved back into place. After re-reading the instructions, ignoring the part about doing this out of the water, I decided that I was ready to go. Off came the old seal, accompanied by another torrent of seawater and more pumping, and on went the new seal. Installing the new seal was pretty straight-forward and I soon had stopped the flow of seawater and still had a nice smug feeling. I still had to get the shaft coupling back on which would require moving the shaft back to provide clearance to start the coupling onto the shaft. There was not much room between the coupling and the seal even though I had the shaft lengthened by 3 inches to provide room for the new seal. Sliding the shaft back and compressing the bellows on the seal went well and the coupling was soon about two inches onto the shaft. Unfortunatly, it had to go on about 4 inches and the last two were very tight. More pondering and I realized that I had a problem. The seal was in place and no water was coming in but I could not drive the coupling on. Because the carbon seal surface is so brittle, I wanted to make sure I didn't crack it while driving on the coupling. Heating the coupling helped and it was only about 1.5 inches from home but that was as far as I could get it. About then the smug feeling disappeared and it dawned on me that I had to pull the boat. Then I would be able to slide the shaft forward so the coupling would be against the transmission and drive the shaft forward into the coupling. Since the inflow of seawater was stemmed, I made arragements to pull the boat the next morning. All went well once the boat was out of the water and in about an hour I had the coupling installed, bolted to its mate, the seal adjusted and everything ready to go back into the water. A final check of the engine to shaft alignment and the installation was complete. The seal has been working well and the bilge remains dry.

I have done a lot of work since the last outing so I am planning on heading out tomorrow for several days to check out the new stuff, except for the life raft, and make sure there the previously repaired items are OK. I don't expect to go far but it will be nice to get out and relax for a few days.

Oct. 23, 2005

I made it out to the Chesapeake for a few days. Didn't really do a lot of sailing but had a chance to checkout more of the boat's systems. I installed the reefing lines on the main and checked out the three reef points. Everything seems OK but some of the lines need replaced. I also set a couple of the three staysails. Like the reefing, they work OK but need some work.

The weather did not cooperate. It was cold, rainy and windy. The wind is a good thing except when your anchored at the end of a 10 mile fetch. The seas never got all that big but the waves were very close together and it felt like the bow was going up and down at least 8 ft. It was quite a ride when I was at the bow! This went on all night. I was up a few times to check the anchor and I was uncomfortable with the bridle. It is made of double braid polyester and pretty short so it had nearly zero strecth. It was starting to chafe so I replaced it in the middle of the night with a "storm" bridle. This one is made of 1" nylon with the proper splices and hardware and is about 15 feet long. The previous owner made it for a hurricane he went through here on Gibson Island. I don't know if I needed it or not but I sure felt more comfortable with it out. The 60# Delta held well.

It was a cold rainy until Sun until I was almost back in. I was in the Magothy River getting close to the boat yard when the sun came out and the wind dropped. It was so nice that I pulled over and dropped the anchor. I was only a few hundred yards from the boatyard but all I could see was the tops of a few masts. I spent a few hours relaxing and cleaning up the boat before heading in.

Oct. 29, 2005