A New Engine

My experience with engines is that if you depend on them they fail you, but if it just doesn’t matter, they serve you. - Frank Wightman

Oh, the engine... decisions, decisions. And at long last, we have arrived at one! After a month of waffling, distracting side paths, and dead ends, we have a new Yanmar 3jh5e in the back of the truck. Holly and I both really, really wanted an electric option to work out, but several final nails finally sealed that coffin for good. First, of the two best electric options for our boat, one company has been under investigation for fraud and the other would not return our repeated calls and emails despite being located less than two hours away. What would we do when two months away? In addition, several very experienced ocean sailors warned us strongly away from electric currently being a viable option for cruising sailboats.

The decision on a new Yanmar was still very tough even after excluding electric propulsion. Our last engine was derived from a Perkins 4-108. These were/are great engines but based on 40 year old technology with parts that are becoming harder to find and expensive. Our next price point up from a rebuilt 4-108 was a rebuilt Yanmar 3jh series. By the time that we factored in all the actual costs, a rebuilt and brand new Yanmar differed by less than $2000. Thus, I finally swallowed hard, drove over to the dealer, and parted with several thousand of our hard earned freedom chips for our new, shiny “powerful gem”. Next step ... installation.

On the the domestic front, we have the interior cleaned up nicely and no longer smelling like a superfund site. Last week, we spent our first night aboard and enjoyed the continued bonding with Audacious. We worked the cobwebs out of the galley with a nice Oregon pink shrimp linguine and rocked to sleep with a golden moon rise over the channel. More to follow on the engine installation.

Scary Shaft Plug!

Audacious has returned to the water, and we are all much happier for this change. She has been afloat now without leaks for a few weeks but with a quite frightening home made plug over the shaft log. We have not been able to make up our minds on the re-power and decided to launch with this plug in place.

Radiator hose from Napa Auto Parts: $3

Hose clamps from Napa Auto Parts: $4

Wooden bung courtesy of USNA: free

Lost sleep over this crazy contraption keeping the Columbia River out: priceless

Before the launch, I took a high pressure, hot water spray gun to the interior of Audacious, and she looks like a new boat! The engine compartment was certainly sporting the most impressive new looks. (compare with the photo from the previous post)

The next major step is to decide on our power option and get this in place so that we can leave the slip! Currently, an electric motor is at the top of our list, but this is certainly a break from the traditional and squarely in the realm of unproven for cruisers. Before Audacious came along, we had actually given very serious thought to a far smaller boat and going engineless. The electric option has struck us both as a compromise. We know that we will have to accept a much shorter range but are thrilled with the improvements in lifestyle afforded by this choice... no more diesel/oil smell, leaks, noise, maintenance, etc. It is also very difficult to watch the happenings in the Gulf of Mexico and not make a conscious decision to start by changing our own consumption habits. Electric propulsion is actually not a new idea and has been applied to boats for well over a century. The key weakness is the battery system which can be thought of as the fuel tanks. Current technology still would leave us needing to invest several thousand dollars in a modest battery bank that under best care and conditions would only last 4-5 years. The prop would be changes from the folding max-prop to a fixed three blade prop capable of providing regenerative power while under sail. A nice perk of this system is the plug-and-play nature. As society develops new technology (fuel cells, etc), these can be interchanged. If needed in the future, we can also always add a temporary or permanent generator to augment recharging. Tough decisions!

We decided a few years ago on using a rigid tender capable of being rowed efficiently and had decided on the fatty knees. These are well built, beautiful little boats designed by Lyle Hess. Fortunately and unfortunately, fatty knees owners love their boats! It can be very difficult to find them used and are quite expensive new. We lucked out a few weeks ago by stumbling into one for sale in Port Townsend, Washington a few hours after being posted on Craig’s List. Well, we loved the excuse for a trip back to Port Townsend and can also say that we LOVE our new fatty knees as well! Holly, Penny, and I made a picnic trip a few miles up our local channel against a full Spring flood current last weekend without too much trouble at all. In keeping with the spirit of Audacious, Holly has dubbed the dinghy “Frolic” after one of the other past Navy 44’s (all of these names were supposed to be traits of the ideal midshipman.... how the times must have changed since Frolic!)

The Boatyard Blues

I’ve read of this phenomenon on many occasions but have just now had the pleasure

of coming to know the boatyard blues personally on our first boat. For months, I have been making plans based on the survey of exactly what would need attention in the

yard. At this point, I must digress to others on the nature of plans:

Everyone has a plan - until they get punched in the face. - Mike Tyson

No plan survives contact with the enemy. - Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke

Ok, ok... so yes, the plans did evolve substantially during the past three weeks on the hard, and to be fair, this is not a bad thing when you relax and learn to accept change:

Those who plan do better than those who do not plan even though they rarely stick to their plan. - Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. - Benjamin Franklin

Initially, work was to include servicing the seacocks (valves which allow you to close the hoses going through the hull under water), max-prop, and stuffing box (allows the prop shaft to spin but keeps water out) as well as attending to a few possible problem areas on the hull. Simple enough, right? The seacocks are old Wilcox-Crittenden bronze juggernauts which have drain holes where grease gun zercs can be fitted for servicing. Problem is... the zercs had been left in and the far more noble bronze seacocks have caused them to corrode to tiny, rusty nubs. Hmmm.... what to do now? This problem has yet to be solved, but the seacocks all close and are in good condition themselves.

Next issue was the stuffing box which was seized together so bad that no amount of PB Blaster or heat from a torch could cause it to budge in-situ. I have to wonder when this was last serviced at all as the log book from the mids on summer cruise mention the bilge filling with water every two days! Water had clearly been spraying all over the engine compartment from the stuffing box as well. Solution: out comes the whole shaft thus freeing the stuffing box.

I also decided to go ahead and pull the engine as well since a re-power or at least serious repairs are due. This has my head spinning with options. New diesels are astronomically expensive (as is everything involving boats), and I never want to see Audacious again filled with so much oil, grease, and carbon soot. Holly and I have been giving some serious thought to re-powering with an electric system. There are major pros and cons which need to be pondered for the next several weeks/months while other tasks are completed.

Audacious Arrives

Over two weeks late and on the eve of our first international vacation in years, Audacious rolled into town and in a terribly stubborn show of force became stuck on the truck less than two hundred yards from the marina travel lift. This incident also blocked off access to the marina for the next few hours while a tow truck pulled Audacious and the big rig she was riding piggy back off the slope they were high-centered on. Ugh. After a brief tour of our new boat, Holly and I had to leave her back in the hands of the delivery company and marina to figure out a solution for launching while we were away. (Once again, squarely violating my hard earned lesson to let no one touch your boat in your absence, unless you enjoy spending vast sums of money on often shoddy work). Well, what could we do but trust and go enjoy our time off? Welcome to boat ownership.

Packing Up

UNTIL NOW! (reader must have read previous post for dramatic effect) Do you want to know what it takes to ship a 44 foot boat cross country by truck?

No you don’t.

We’ve enlisted a rigger to take down the mast & rigging (the pulpits, stanchions, wheel, and radar post all had to go as well), a trucker who specializes in sailboat trucking and who will pull permits in every state he crosses, a petroleum tank sanitizer (to clean the bilge and whose price doubled when he saw the gunk in the bottom), the coast guard to get her documented (she has been considered a US Navy combatant vessel up to this point), and boat yards on both ends to deliver & receive her.

I’m tired just writing about it. And then, of course, they all have to be timed perfectly, so one doesn’t slow down the others. So we anxiously await her arrival. Like expectant parents, the due date is set (And then gets delayed with unexpected expenses and delays. That’s kind of like child birth, right?). For the moment, we're planning on April 19th.

The Background

Our decade long planning phase was cut short by a frenzied week-long boat buying experience. Ralph Naranjo, Chap’s sailing coach at the Naval Academy, called us up a few days before our Thanksgiving break to tell us that 3 of the Navy 44 fleet of sailboats were on a little known government auction website. Only those really in the know were to be watching the auction, as it had not been publicized heavily. The starting bid? $12,100. For a 44 foot long offshore racing boat, decked to the nines, looking like something out of a Ralph Lauren Catalogue, and originally purchased for $380,000! It was made clear to us that we would be disowned if we didn’t put into the bidding process.

After years of abuse from rounds of summer plebes learning to sail, Audacious, Alert, and Swift were looking a little less than their names but still in very good condition. What rounds out the story of this purchase is that Chap had sailed on these very boats as a midshipman, which not only solidified the relationship, but also allowed us to purchase it “sight-unseen.” (we had photos and a surveyor check them out, of course)

So this is how it went: Call from Naranjo, anxious hesitation from us (no money & no plans to buy for another year, plus she was too big!). We determined Audacious, the first auction to close by 15 minutes of the others, was the best of the three…it had teak flooring interior and was stick built, vs. drop in fiberglass interior, plus it had all of its parts (more on that later). It was the boat from which the entire fleet was modeled. We watched the bidding slowly move up. We put in our bids, played psychological warfare with the other participants in online bidding. It came down to the wire and shot up about $10,000 in the last 20 minutes. With 2 other boats trailing in price of about $15,000, the other bidders got off of our tail and we landed her for $41,600…The better boat for about $5,000 LESS than the other 2!

Then we had to deal with the government. Totally inflexible, but also inefficient…and on holiday to boot! We had 48 hours to secure financing and submit payment. Banks don’t really like to do this. To top it all off, Chap was in the process of securing a new job and we were about to move to a new city.

With financing secured, we finished our holiday, and prepared to leisurely move our new family member to a new home. That is, until, our surveyor reported theft to the tune of about $7,000. We’re not sure exactly what happened…all we know is that one of the other boats was missing a marine head and a winch in the auction photos, which, coincidentally, were now missing from our boat. The Naval police were called in, a private detective was interviewed, and then the Navy decided to sweep it under the rug, placate us, and replace the parts, citing common part-sharing, or mis-labeling of the auction photos…which was just fine with us!

Our surveyor was a dream come true and facilitated everything we needed for a total cost of $1,100. We tried to force more money on him, but he wouldn’t take it. John Howell came on recommendation in Annapolis, and was worth his weight in Gold as he watched over our boat and used his connections at the Navy boat yard to get the missing parts replaced, get us the sails we needed, and send her on her way to Bert Jabin’s Boat yard.

And there she sat for 4 ½ months. Alone. In the cold. And, facing the worst winter weather the East coast has seen in years. No protection, no visitors.