Fixing Things – Riveted

On to Port Townsend (and another thing to fix)

Laura Domela — Tue, 09 Feb 2016 22:15:22 +0000

I got up this morning around 7 and turned the generator and the electric heat on and then got back in bed until things warmed up. With the extra Pendleton on the bed we were cozy all night…but it got down to 48 degrees F inside last night without the Wallas heater running as usual.

Bunch of seals coming into foggy Port Gamble Bay:

At 9am Kevin called Scan Marine in Seattle about our Wallas diesel heater. The guys at Scan Marine were SUPER helpful. They described to Kevin over the phone how to pull the bottom of the unit off and remove the glow plug. They said once we did that and verified that was the issue, to call them back and they'd overnight a new glow plug to us. (We ordered two so we'll have a spare.)

Kevin and I worked this one together. The positions one must achieve to work on boats is pretty crazy sometimes! The Wallas is inside this little vent in the wall beside the steps down to the front stateroom. Not a lot of room to maneuver (and with tools!!) in there:

Glow plug removed:

Glow plug. (It's the thing that lights the diesel fuel on fire, by getting red hot, to make the heat):

So once we had that all worked out and got a bunch of other "work" work done, we pulled anchor and headed for Port Townsend.

Exiting the entrance to Hood Canal:

The Olympics above the fog:

We could see more fog up ahead, so we made sure we had our radar going.

And pretty soon, bam!

But boy, when it cleared (mid-Marrowstone Island) it was just stunning.

Mount Baker:

Marrowstone Point:

We got our same slip at Point Hudson Marina that we usually do (Slip No. 2) with a great view of the Olympics to the south and Mount Baker and the cascades to the north. We walked into town to get a few things…the things we got included a bottle of champagne for tonight. Tonight is Night No. 300 aboard Airship since we bought her in September 2014, and we're right back where it all started, looking at those Ranger Tugs here in the marina from our Airstream that day. We plan to order pizza from (yum!) Waterfront Pizza for dinner and have a little pizza and champagne toast to all of the boating fun!

View from the back of Airship, as the sun is setting:

And then OMG this (no filter…this is straight from the camera):

We should get our overnighted parts from Scan Marine in the morning tomorrow, and then we'll decide whether to stay another night in Port Townsend, or head over to Deception Pass State Park a day earlier than we planned.

Here's today's track (about 19 nautical miles):

Airship at Dusk

Laura Domela — Tue, 09 Feb 2016 13:26:00 +0000

We took the dinghy out for a little more Torqueedo testing as the sun was setting last night in Port Gamble Bay. I have to say, I do prefer the ride when we're going full speed (which tonight was about 4.2 kts). The dinghy rides so much flatter on the surface with this lightweight outboard…it's great! I really don't think "gunning it" is in the spirit of Torqueedo ownership though, which is why we'll likely get a backup battery. Good news about the batteries: they take very little time to charge.

Oh and this: it seems our Wallas diesel furnace quit working late yesterday afternoon. This puts a bit of a cramp in our boating plans for the next couple days…booo. We went through all the troubleshooting steps in the manual and got to "glow plug error" which is the thing that lights the little bit of fuel as it comes to the heater so it can make heat (and the fix is "Take heater in for service.") So as long as the generator is running, we can have heat. But if we want quiet — no heat.

I Fixed It!

Laura Domela — Sun, 07 Feb 2016 22:16:33 +0000

Yeah I know, I'm the one who broke it in the first place, but I fixed it!

The other day in La Conner while approaching the fuel dock, I set myself up poorly. Not familiar with (or prepared for) the intricacies of the current in Swinomish Channel, I left our moorage at the marina and headed over to get fuel prior to heading the rest of the way to Seattle. I started to dock with the current (wrong) and was fumbling while trying to regroup and spin around to dock against the current (recommended) and I did the thing…the thing I never thought I'd ever do: I broke/sheared the shear pin in the stern thruster. Well crap. Somehow I must have flipped directions too fast and so there ya go. No more stern thruster. Good things: (1) I don't normally use the thrusters when docking, and (2) A lot of boats don't even have stern thrusters. Bad thing: I was going to have to fix it. Booo. (The bow and stern thrusters on Airship are through-hull, and they allow you to move the bow and stern sideways, for maneuvering in tight spaces.)

Once we were in Seattle tucked in at Bell Harbor, we did a little investigating. The stern thruster is in the hull, back behind the drive shaft and PSS seal (remember those things?) and the access is from a hatch inside the back cupboard, underneath the microwave. Before removing the microwave, I stuck my head down the foremost hatch and with the flashlight, ascertained what model of thruster we had: Side Power SE40/125. Also, right on the thruster itself there was a label that said:

That what I thought I remembered from poking around down there when we first bought the boat. Sweet! So out came the microwave, some bowls, the alcohol, and out came the tools.

Looking into the hatch after I'd removed the thruster motor (it's heavy):

This might give you a feel for the workspace:

Unfortunately but not surprisingly, we found that the previous owners of the boat (*cough cough* the dealer) had at some point used the spare and never replaced it. Awwww, fail! This is where it's supposed to be:

Broken shear pin. No spare.

So we started calling around. Fisheries Supply: special order only. Fisheries gave us a list of places to try and we started calling down the list: nope, nope, nope, nope. Our friend Sam (who was working the boat show) went up to the Side Power booth to see if they had any. They did not, but they suggested we call CSR Marine over at Shilshole Marina. We called them, and woohoo! They had one, and said for $20 it could be ours. (Shear pins are normally about 4 bucks, and CSR Marine did not usually sell to the public, but whatever, it would mean we could fix the thruster and put the salon back together today.)

New shear pin, installed:

Me, re-installing the thruster motor and the reconnecting the power to it:

Ta Da!!

(I wasn't going to buy a spare for $20, but we've got one ordered and we'll be sure to put it where it belongs for, um, next time?)

Indian Cove on Shaw Island

Laura Domela — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 22:15:47 +0000

This morning we worked for several hours and then finished up a couple of boat projects we started the other day. Boat projects completed are: (1) Secure LED rope lights behind valances in salon (2) fix master stateroom dimmer on LED lights (3) replace bezel on under settee cabinet with new one so Tiffani and I don't cut ourselves on it ever again (4) sand the edge of same under settee cabinet so door will open and close without sticking OMG that was so annoying for so long (5) procure new raw water impeller for Onan generator and replace the old one (which as it turns out, really needed replacing, see photo below), (6) come up with better solution for closet storage (7) install XBox, and (8) get a new lightbulb for the engine room light fixture.

Happy with our progress, and noticing that the wind had died down considerably since yesterday (which was gusting to 47 kts!), we decided to head out! We're now over at Indian Cove at the south end of Shaw Island. We anchored and then set out a couple of crab traps, and now I'm about to start prepping dinner. Tomorrow we're having an early Thanksgiving dinner at the Coho Restaurant in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. They're doing a chef's tasting menu that sounds delicious and low key and should be quite nice.

There was still some chop as we crossed Rosario Strait, but it's calmed down quite a bit now and though it's definitely chilly out, it's still so pretty.

We hope everyone has a lovely holiday weekend!

I just looked out the salon window and the moon is huge and full and yellow/orange and making the coolest reflection on the water. It's so much prettier and dramatic here in person viewing it with my eyeballs, but it's a bit surprising at all that I can get a photo of this decent from a swinging boat, floating in the water:

p.s. Here's a photo of the new raw water impeller for the generator (on the left) and the old one (and all of its pieces) on the right. Fun stuff!

Another Mesmerizing Maintenance Mystery!

Laura Domela — Sun, 06 Sep 2015 00:57:23 +0000

The other day, our macerator pump stopped macerating. (This is the thing that empties your waste tank.) If you can't empty your waste tank, you'll soon no longer have a working head (toilet). This is not a good situation to be in, obviously.

I wish we could say that the first thing we checked was the ground wire on the electrical panel and that it was loose and we tightened it and everything started working as it should…

But it didn't happen that way.

It started innocently enough. We could hear the pump running, as always, but this time the tank level wasn't going down. We thought maybe it just needed a little longer, so we ran it for 15 minutes or so and still no joy. Since it was running but not pumping anything, our guess was that it was not getting primed. Usually, this happens because one of the one-way duck valves leading into or out of the pump is clogged.

Oh yay!

So Kevin climbed down into the lazarette (involving an intense set of yoga moves) to get into a position where he could begin to remove the raw sewage hoses from both ends of the macerator pump. Some serious contortionism is required to get into this position in the first place…add the need to use tools and avoid spilling raw sewage, and you've got yourself some drama right there!

Kevin removed both duck valves, carried them topside, cleaned them completely and made sure they were working correctly. Oddly, they looked just fine. He then reinstalled the valves, hooked the raw sewage hoses back to the pump, flipped the switch to try it again.

Nothing.

Now the pump wouldn't even run. He figured he must have accidentally unplugged an electrical connection or something, so back down into the lazarette he went. He checked all the electrical connections, and then checked that power was being applied to the pump when it was turned on. Power, check! The volt meter said 14.2 volts…because we were under way. (Did we mention we were under way when all this was happening? Oh sorry, forgot that part.) So 14 volts is being applied to the motor but the motor is not running. Bad sign.

Next theory: Maybe we overheated the motor while running it for 15 minutes and it's got a thermal cutoff. Usually if a motor has a thermal cutoff, it resets itself automatically after it cools down. So we waited for half an hour. The motor is now cold. We try again.

Nothing.

Maybe we burned the motor up? Kevin read in some online boating forums that sometimes these motors can be fixed by cleaning the brushes, so Kevin went back down into the lazarette, removed the pump, then removed the motor from the pump to see if the motor itself worked when power was applied directly to it.

Nope.

Okay, time to get serious. Next, he disassembled the entire pump and motor assembly, cleaned the commutator and brushes (see first photo, above), and oddly, everything looked fine. He reassembled the whole thing, and tried it again.

Nothing.

Looks like we must have ourselves a dead macerator pump. Once we arrived in Prince Rupert, we headed over to Sea-Sport Outboard Marina Service & Clothing, picked up a different kind of macerator pump (a Jabsco Self-Priming pump, because they didn't have our brand, a Whale Marine "Gulper"), then walked a few more blocks up to Saanich Heating & Plumbing to get a bunch of clamps and adaptors so we could plumb the new, different pump into the place of our existing pump, and returned to Airship to start the Pump Replacement Project.

Step 1: Attach the correct connector to the wires on the new pump.
Step 2: Plug it in.
Step 3: Flip the switch.

Nothing. Wait, what???

Step 4: Unplug it and check voltage at the connector. Yep, 12.8 volts.
Step 5: Plug it back in.

Nothing. Could the brand new pump be bad??

On a whim, we tried plugging the new pump into a completely different circuit (the one for the raw water washdown). We flipped the switch and the pump started right up.

At this point it gets really weird, because remember, our pump was running (just not pumping) before.

Just for kicks, we plugged the old pump into the new circuit, and guess what? The old pump worked fine too! Could we miraculously have developed a wiring problem, right when our pump was having a mechanical issue?

We checked the voltage on the circuit when the pump was plugged in and the voltage showed almost zero. What this means in electrical terms is that the circuit is not completely broken, but somewhere in the wiring between the battery and the pump, something has high resistance. The most likely suspect would be one of those little in-line fuses, which could of course be hidden anywhere in the wiring of the boat. Kevin meticulously followed the wire from the batteries through the electrical panel, behind and underneath access panels, through the engine compartment, up to the switch that turns the macerator on and off. Then, he followed the wire all the way from there (through the entire boat) back to the lazarette.

Nothing.

He followed the positive wire everywhere he could find to follow it (checking the resistance with a multimeter), and it all looked fine. (He checked the positive wire because that's where any fuse, switch, or other thing that might have failed if the circuit overheated would be located.)

That only left two choices. Either he'd missed something in following the journey of the power wire through the entire boat, or…is there any way it could possibly be the ground wire??

Having something wrong with the ground wire is super unlikely, because it just runs from each device (the pump, in this case) straight to a big metal bar inside the electrical panel where all the ground wires from the entire boat are connected together.

Just on the "maybe we'll win the lottery" off-chance, he plugged the power wire from the pump, together with the ground wire from another circuit. The pump started right up.

Unbelievable.

That only left one thing to check. We opened up the DC electrical panel, found the big metal bar with about 52 wires running to it from every circuit on the boat, looked through all of them until we found that one that was labeled "macerator pump" and guess what?

The screw was loose.

We turned the screw half a turn to tighten it, went out and plugged everything back together, and the (old) pump worked perfectly. Not just perfectly, it ran about 4x faster than we'd ever heard it run before. So apparently, this screw had been loose for a long time and our pump was always just barely running. (Because of the loose screw, the voltage would be lower, so the pump wouldn't be getting as much power, or if things jiggled wrong, it would have no power at all. On a boat, things jiggle!)

Now, two days later, after several more yoga sessions in the lazarette, a bunch more grunting with hose clamps and raw sewage lines, wiring, zip ties, and crimped connectors, everything is back together and working better than ever.

At least this mystery was a solvable one!