I Need to Vent

Our time here in Beaufort, SC is coming to an end.

And it’s time, therefore, to run down the list of things we need to do to get ready to move the boat back to the north to the town of Cambridge, MD that we call “home port.”

The priority items on the list are those that will enable us to anchor out and avoid marinas wherever we can. At this time of year, we will be competing with hundreds of other boaters for space on the water and at the docks; and the relatively modest out-of-season fees we paid these fine establishments on our maiden voyage down here will no longer be so modest on our way back.

Ready, set. . .

So let’s see. Ah, two items in particular stand out.

One: finish the installation of a composting head so we don’t have to pump out the holding tank twice a week.

Out with the old.

Two: get our outboard motor fueled, oiled and running so we can give Honey the Golden Retriever a dinghy ride to a land-based potty break twice a day.

Yep. Everything about living on a boat, it seems, comes down in the end to managing biological waste.

The composting head is a project I got built and installed last week after more than a month here in Beaufort procrastinating on decisions regarding design and materials. (I’ve never been a quality maker of decisions.) So, while I’m on a roll, why not just finish that up by getting the head vented and supplied?

In with the new.

. . . stop.

Half an hour into reviewing my options, I remember why not. I can’t figure out how to vent this thing in a clean and elegant manner.

This was a question I knew I would have to address when I first started the project, the question I chose to ignore two weeks ago in order to release myself from “analysis paralysis” and start building the head cabinet, the question whose answer I thought would reveal itself in time after I had spent two weeks kicking it around in the back of my mind.

The question is this: How do I run a hose to act as an exhaust duct from the back of the head cabinet to a Solar-Powered Vent Fan (Yet To Be Acquired) that must be installed somewhere in the cabin top?

And now that this question’s time has arrived, I remember why I had put it off in the first place: There’s no concealed route by which to run the duct through the hidden parts of the boat; there’s no exposed route through the head compartment that won’t look permanently painful and clunky; and, once the run is done, there’s no obvious way to connect the duct to the Solar-Powered Vent Fan (Yet To Be Acquired).

But wait, there’s more

Then there’s the question of where the Solar-Powered Vent Fan (Yet To Be Acquired) should itself be located. That it must go somewhere through the cabin top is without question, since any other location dramatically increases the chance of water intrusion.

This would, in turn, require cutting a new hole through the cabin top. In this operation, I can expect to encounter the one-inch-thick sandwich of fiberglass and balsa wood that composes the cabin top’s exterior shell, and an interior ceiling comprising a half-inch-thick soft foam insulation (interrupted here and there by mounting battens) under a finish surface of precious vintage naugahyde.

Oh, goody, more new skills to pick up.

An easy way out?

On the other hand, Pam and I had considered avoiding that new hole in our boat by incorporating the Solar-Powered Vent Fan (Y.T.B.A.) into the head compartment’s dorade vent.

Our boat has two dorade vents, assemblies which are designed to introduce fresh air through a cabin top into the interior of a boat while discouraging the entry of water from seas or storms, and which are supposed to be completely closable when the seas or storms become too much for them to handle. I say “supposed to” because one of the vents is stuck closed, admitting no air, and the other is stuck open, blocking no excess water.

The one in the head compartment, the one I would have to modify to vent our composting head, is, of course, the one currently in the stuck-closed position.

Trouble on the inside.

So before I can figure out how to incorporate the S.P.V.F. (Y.T.B.A), I would have to figure out how to fix the concealed working portions of this vent, which means getting to them, which means removing the dorade’s top-mounted wood box, which means removing ten wood plugs covering up ten screws that hold it on to concealed battens that attach it to the cabin top, which means removing the metal-rail pulpit assembly whose legs are blocking the approach of a drill to two of those ten plugs, which means removing the through-bolts securing the pulpit to the cabin top, which means removing the naugahyde ceiling liner and foam insulation layer covering up the bolt ends, which means getting the ceiling liner’s zipper unstuck.

Trouble on the outside.

Yeaaahhhh, that’s not going to happen.

That first option, cutting a new hole through the cabin top, would be, by contrast, “considerably better,” in the sense, at least, of “considerably more direct.”

But I don’t know a thing about cutting through fiberglass-and-balsa sandwiches. And I don’t feel up to taking a crash course on the subject.

And, when it comes right down to it, either option would merely represent the opening round of a carpentry project that could keep us here another fourteen days. A project I am loathe even to start until we’ve acquired the — you know.

And we told the dockmaster we would be leaving in five.

No time like tomorrow

So I guess there’s only one thing left for now. I’ll kick the can (euphemism intended) down the road again, probably until we land in Cambridge a month or so for now. And we’ll see what living with an unvented composting head will be like. And by “be like,” I mean “smell like.”

And that there is some quality decision making.

But I do wonder what Pam will think of the decision.

Meanwhile, where did I put the manual for that outboard motor?

Mounting Satisfaction: Engine Mounts

Are boats objects of romance? Sure, they are. Just ask the characters played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in the movie Titanic, as they stand on the bow of the great, doomed ship, as Kate’s character makes like a bird in flight while Leonardo’s character embraces her from behind. In fact, since Leonardo’s character will

[SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!]

be dead by the end of the movie, that’s probably the best time to ask them.

But that doesn’t mean all the parts of every boat are filled with romance. Some parts are too grittily utilitarian to make any pretense of romance, as anyone who has ever rebuilt a marine head will tell you. And other parts, taken thoroughly for granted in their quiet, passive simplicity, fail to attract even the minimum level of attention required from their owners for their continued effectiveness.

Today, I discuss one of the most critical parts on any boat with an inboard engine: the humble, rarely considered engine mount.

Yes, that’s right. An engine mount is exactly what it sounds like. There’s no romance here.

Applied physics

The primary purpose of a boat’s inboard engine is to impart rotation to a propeller shaft to which it is connected through an intervening gearbox. At its specified maximum speed of 3,400 RPM, Meander’s twenty-five-year-old Yanmar diesel engine will turn our prop shaft through about 1,600 revolutions per minute, or about 26 times per second.

The shaft in turn will impart its rotation to the propeller at its aft end. The propeller in turn will exert a force on the water surrounding it, and the water will exert an equal and opposite force on the propeller. And those forces will push the boat through the water.

This image of how an engine moves a boat with respect to water is one with which most of us are familiar. But we are not, I suspect, usually conscious of a rather obvious assumption we’ve necessarily smuggled into that image: that the engine itself is not moving with respect to the boat.

It is here at this point in our happy oblivion that the engine mounts sit, sublimely (and subliminally) completing the picture. It is through these mounts that the forces generated by the propeller’s rotation are transferred to the boat, coaxing it finally into motion.

Two of Meander’s new engine mounts in situ.

Really, it just makes me want to burst into song.

Oh, the Prop is connected to the. . . Prop Shaft! And the Prop Shaft connected to the. . . Gearbox! And the Gearbox connected to the. . . Engine! And the Engine connected to the. . . Engine Mounts!

And the Engine Mounts are connected, finally, to the hull of the boat.

Okay, it’s not as catchy as “the Legbone connected to the Kneebone.”  But the physics behind it is incontrovertible.

Engine mount anatomy and function

Meander has four engine mounts. Each one consists of a threaded stud welded to a specially formed metal top plate, which in turn is bonded (either by advanced adhesives or by arcane magic—our manual did not say) to isolators of rubber-like elastomer material, which in turn are bonded to a specially formed bottom plate into whose ends slotted holes have been machined.

Sort of like this.

This design allows Meander’s mounts to provide three essential services.

• Their bolted connections to the hull, as noted above, provide the means through which the motive forces developed at the propeller are applied to the rest of the boat.
• Their slotted holes and threaded studs allow mechanics who know what they’re doing to align the engine, gearbox and prop shaft correctly with the stern tube through which the shaft exits the boat.
• Their elastomeric components dampen the engine’s vibrations and keep them from being passed through to the hull.

With respect to this last item, engine mounts are not all the same. Rather, the amount of dampening and isolation a mount will deliver depends on how stiff its rubber isolators are. On Meander’s mounts, the isolators’ stiffness ratings are indicated by a number molded into their sides. Higher numbers indicate greater stiffness.

And the engines these mounts dampen and isolate are not all the same, either. Some engines, like Meander’s, require four mounts of equal stiffness. Others, however, may require two isolators with one stiffness rating on one side of the engine, and two with another stiffness rating on the other side.

So having the right mounts is important. Mounts that are too soft will not dampen the engine’s vibration sufficiently, while those that are too stiff will allow too much vibration into the hull.

But there’s no reason for you to make that mistake on your boat, because the engine mount spec that is just right for its engine can easily be obtained if you just know where to look.

I myself have no idea where that is.

For my part, I found all this stuff out from Mack, our knowledgeable ABYC-certified Master Marine Technician here at the Deltaville Yachting Center. Mack observed that although Meander’s specs called for mounts rated “100,” the mounts on which her engine was actually sitting were rated “200.” (I have no idea what these numbers specifically mean to engineers. But I’m sure they’re not just making this stuff up). Then Mac had to explain to me the significance of what he observed.

From my experience, I infer that your own knowledgeable marine technician would be a good source of this kind of information.

For the moment, however, just be aware that if you someday decide to replace your boat’s mounts without having paid sufficient attention just now, you might end up with isolators that are either too soft or too stiff for your boat’s requirements.

Engine mount replacement

Meanwhile, over at the Ocean Navigator website, author Harry Hungate  challenges us in his engine mount replacement article to fight that happy oblivion creeping over our own engine mount awareness by changing them every five to six years, whether we think they need it or not.

Simple as these parts are, they yet transmit large forces and absorb constant vibration in order to do what they do. As a result, their studs and plates are subject to fatigue, robbing them of their strength, and their rubber isolators can delaminate. This kind of damage is not readily visible. Mounts that look fine externally may in fact be in trouble, and the failure that is coming upon them will likely be catastrophic rather than progressive.

Other signs that it’s time for a change, however, are easier to spot. Hungate advises replacing mounts contaminated by seawater, engine oil and coolant, noting that the first substance will rust metal parts and that the other two will cause deterioration and delamination of the elastomeric blocks. If you see rust or peeling paint, corrosion is already underway.

Excessive engine vibration is also implicated in engine mount failure. Sometimes the vibration is a direct result of already failed mounts. At other times, vibrations emanating from another cause, such as a misaligned shaft, will accelerate the fatiguing of bolts and studs, bringing failure on sooner.

So stay out in front with your engine mount replacements. As with all your other maintenance items, choosing your own time and place for this work will be more convenient and less expensive than having a sudden failure choose them for you.

And having just watched as Meander’s engine mounts were replaced here in Deltaville, VA, I can tell you that it is not a difficult operation. All one needs is a set of new mounts, a set of combination wrenches readily available in any hardware store, and, to lift the engine off the old mounts, one of these handy-dandy cherry pickers.

Bigger than a breadbox.

If I could buy a used cherry picker, I would consider doing this job myself in the future. But I’m not sure I could get it stowed in our quarter berth.

Maybe if we cleared some other stuff out.

When engine mounts go bad

Having established the role the mounts play in ensuring an engine is not moving with respect to the boat, let’s consider what could happen when they, for all practical purposes, go missing. And let’s do it with a true story Mack the Master Marine Technician shared with us.

The story began with a couple who were motoring several miles offshore one day in their sailboat when its propeller hit something that wedged and stuck, stopping it cold and simultaneously punching a small hole through their hull.

Now when a propeller is suddenly stopped, its engine, being a not-terribly-intelligent machine, will not notice. It will just keep working to send that spinning action down the prop shaft, trying to turn the prop. But since the stopped propeller cannot be turned, it will send an equal and opposite reaction back up the prop shaft, the result of which is to try to turn the engine.

You know, the one that is attached to the hull through the engine mounts.

In a smaller pleasure boat of fiberglass construction, the engine mounts are usually so attached by no more than eight bolts. And when a suddenly stopped propeller suddenly tries to turn the boat’s engine, it is around these eight bolts that all the engine’s mighty force is suddenly concentrated.

Now for all I know, there may well be fiberglass hulls in the world that can withstand this sudden concentration of force.

This couple’s hull was not one of them.

And so, Mack continued, this couple’s mounts were ripped from their hull, and their engine did a few revolutions of its own in the engine compartment.

In turn, those revolutions tore off the engine’s fuel line, flooding the compartment with diesel. They also tore off the wires between the alternator and the boat’s battery bank, disabling the electrical system and putting the automatic bilge pump, the one trying to contend with the water pouring in through the aforementioned small hole, out of operation.

And so the couple spent the next 36 hours issuing Mayday calls on their handheld VHF radio while working their manual bilge pump to keep the water from rising above waist level.

Mack’s story ended better than it might have. The couple were eventually located by a Coast Guard helicopter that dropped some self-powered bilge pumps. This allowed them to turn their attention from pumping out the boat to sailing it until they were close enough to shore to get towing assistance. In the end, they got out with no worse than mild hypothermia, a repair bill that probably exceeded what I’m currently looking at for Meander’s latest round of repairs by a factor of ten, and, if they are at all wired like me, a firm resolve to sell the damned boat and take up chess.

That couple, incidentally, cannot be faulted. Hitting something that can completely disable your boat in ten seconds is the dumbest of luck, and dumb luck can inflict itself on anyone.

But the story does put a point on the unquestionable importance of the lowly engine mount.

Mounting stress

“But Mike, boats being such objects of romance and all, whatever made you decide to write instead about the unquestionable importance of the lowly engine mount?” Glad you asked.

As it happens, Meander’s mounts had been on my mind ever since our marine survey, during which our surveyor, Frank, had noticed those visible symptoms of rust and peeling paint on the aft one to starboard. And our recent installation of a new cutless bearing here in Deltaville required us to pull and reinstall the prop shaft, which, in turn, required its realignment with the engine. And performing such an alignment over a questionable engine mount made no sense to me.

So, with Meander on the hard and getting related work done, all signs pointed to our getting that aft starboard mount replaced.

However, I’m a completist who likes all the members of any given set to be shiny and new and evenly matched all at the same time. Also, I’m made of money, as I’m sure we all are.

So, considering the price of $135 per mount excluding labor, and presenting the exhortations in Harry Hungate’s article to Pam, I argued, “Why stop at one?”

And we didn’t. We instead had all four replaced. And by the time all four were replaced, we were very glad we decided to replace all four.

Because when Mack and his workmate Tony were hooking up the chains that would lift Meander’s engine, the forward mount to starboard—not the horribly rusty aft mount previously identified, but rather the mildly rusty yet otherwise apparently quite solid forward mount—looked like this.

Yeah, you’ve seen this before.

And after they lifted the engine about an eighth of an inch (three millimeters), the mount looked like this.

But you didn’t see it like this. And, at first, neither did we.

What we see here is a shear failure in the mount’s threaded stud. The years of constant vibration Harry Hungate had warned about had indeed parted the metal through about 95% of its sectional area, leaving the threaded stud hanging—shall I say it?—by a thread. (Sorry, but you had to know it was coming.)

Here at the end of its life, it had taken only the slight lifting of the engine to complete the break. And I, for one, am pleased as punch that the lifting was induced by a cherry picker on a clear day in a boatyard rather than by a fifteen-foot wave in a gale at sea.

Mounting satisfaction

And that, in the end, is why I‘ve gone on for 2,400 words about engine mounts. To celebrate.

First, to celebrate the vindication of our choice to spend the money on them.

But more importantly, to celebrate all the grave consequences we believe we’ve sidestepped by our choice to spend the time on them.

And the broken mount once again helps put our extended stay in Deltaville into a light we can live with. Because we certainly took a bullet three weeks ago when our latest troubles with Meander forced us to pull her out. But as we consider how our time here has revealed so much of what she was hiding, we are all the more grateful that so many other bullets have whizzed harmlessly by.

Not So Fast: More Engine Trouble

One week ago, I wrote a post about a starter circuit repair I performed on Meander.

I noted how I was mercifully equipped to do this by the collective wisdom of others who know much more about, oh, everything than I do. And I concluded by expressing the gratefulness I felt at my improbable success, at least “until the next mountain-in-a-molehill arises.”

And so I could hang onto that feeling for a fleeting moment, I prudently avoided getting into the fact that I had already seen the top of that molehill looming on the horizon.

Because even as I put the piece to bed by clicking the “publish” button, I was smelling diesel fumes coming from the galley.

Avoidable

While we were negotiating for Meander three months ago, we had a marine survey done—the boat equivalent of a home inspection. And while our surveyor did disclaim that his services did not extend to a thorough inspection of every component of the engine, he was yet conscientious enough to point out those irregularities that were clearly observable by anyone who knew what he or she looking at.

And one of the irregularities the surveyor observed was a pronounced wetness around the fuel pump, indicating a leak. And, of course, the smell of diesel.

Primed suspect.

After the survey, we continued our negotiation by requesting that the previous owners correct a select few of the many mostly minor items it had uncovered. And according to Pam, having the leak at the fuel pump fixed is one of the items we requested.

At least, it was one of the items she requested. However, it was me who had been doing the negotiating.

“Well, you did ask the sellers to fix that leak, didn’t you?”

A direct question deserves a direct answer.

“Yes, absolutely, there’s no question that I did. And there’s no question that the sellers gave the fuel pump job to their mechanic. So the only possible explanation is that he didn’t do the job very well, except for the second possible explanation in which they didn’t give the job to him after all, because when I revisited the boat to check the completed work out, I don’t remember them showing me the fuel pump, although they should definitely have done that because I definitely asked for it, and I should have made them show it to me. Or maybe I shouldn’t have, because, now that I think of it, I’m pretty sure I had prepared a list of the items I was supposed to check that day, and I don’t think a fuel pump fix was on the list, so the third possible explanation, I think, is that I might not have, you know, asked for it. I don’t remember now if I did or not. But now that I think of it, even if I did remember not asking, I wouldn’t have to say so anyway, ‘cause I’m an American, darn it, and the Fifth Amendment says I don’t have to testify against myself. So there.”

A direct question doesn’t always get a direct answer.

Moving on from that helpful exchange, we proceeded to investigate the source of the smell yesterday. I pulled off the cover separating the galley from the engine compartment. I reached for the “diaper” placed under the engine to capture nasty dripping petrochemicals before they can escape into U.S. waterways. And when I pulled it out, its nominally white finish was almost completely altered by pink stains.

Pink: a lovely color, really, anywhere except under a diesel engine.

And when I reached up to the fuel pump and the fuel filter, I found each of their bottoms wet, and the hose between them absolutely soaked.

Thanks to that little chat Pam had earlier had with me, at least I knew where to look.

Live to Fight Another Day

In my experience, if you give most do-it-yourselfers a choice between an electrical job and a plumbing job, they will choose the electrical job almost every time.

Makes sense to me. Electrical failures, at their worst, can kill you. But plumbing failures can get your stuff wet.

I reflected on this as I considered the leak in front of me in the light of my recent starter circuit victory. That operation had been like every electrical home repair I had undertaken in two previous houses, requiring nothing more than snipping some wires and attaching them to other wires. (Granted, accomplishing the not-getting-killed part of such operations does require knowing what to snip and what to attach.)

In contrast, this job would require removing fluid-filled hoses. And clamps. And gaskets. And replacing—what? Any of them? All of them?

Add to this the problems I foresaw in confronting an entity as alien to me as anything Sigourney Weaver faced in those movies. The potential to spill another pint of diesel into the bilge, or to leave an air bubble in a fuel line, or to have an invader’s spawn implanted in my body cavity for the duration of a slow and painful gestation period that would ultimately result in my untimely and grisly death—each of these awful possibilities crossed my mind.

And so we opted instead to call a boatyard not far from our marina, and were told that they could see us right away. All we had to do was to cast off from our slip, motor around the corner, arrive in the vicinity of their service dock, and call them from the water so they could come out to catch our lines.

Of course, anyone who read the recent story of our best laid plans to get some anchoring practice in will see where this is going. Once again, we never got out of the marina.

Déjà vu all over again

Witness, if you will, the heroic power of one man facing an electrical modification alone, relying solely on his own tools, his own wits, and detailed step-by-step instructions consecutively given by no fewer than four other people.

OK, so no one is going to be offering me the lead in any Lone Wolf and Cub movies anytime soon. But if a light bulb on the set goes out, perhaps I’ll be on the call list to fix it. Because this time, when we turned Meander’s ignition key and pressed her start button, her starter robustly kicked in once again and coaxed her engine immediately into life.

And so we went about casting off our lines. First, the port bow line. Then, the port stern line. Then, the starboard stern line.

And then, with three lines off, the engine suddenly slowed. And then wheezed. And then died.

Yeah? Well, I hate you, too.

Starboard stern line back on. Port stern line back on. Port bow line back on. And another call to the boatyard, this time to find out if they made house calls.

They did. At 11:00 AM, the yard’s office manager told us their mobile Boat Fixing Person would be over right after lunch. Then at 1:30 PM, the office manager called to say the Boat Fixing Person was delayed on another job, but would be over before the end of the day.

And so we spent the rest of the day hunkered down in our cabin, engine compartment and companionway open, trying to stay warm against dropping afternoon temperatures, waiting for the Boat Fixing Person. Who, ultimately, never showed up.

That other job must have been a doozy.

What happens next?

No harm, no foul; just a little frustration. We’ll call again this morning and lobby the office manager to be moved to the top of the list.

When the Boat Fixing Person arrives, he or she will find the starter operating quite nicely due to my previous electrical triumph, thank you very much. And after listening to our vivid description of yesterday’s failure, he or she will tell us, “Sounds like you ran out of gas.”

Then we’ll show him or her the fuel pump leak we had fixed three months ago. Or had asked to have fixed. Or had forgotten to ask to have fixed.

And we’ll watch and learn as the problem is taken care of and the invoice proffered.

And once again, I’m going to reach for that grateful streak I know I have buried in me somewhere. Since boarding Meander two months ago, we’ve put more than twenty hours and eighty nautical miles on this engine. And these things that might have happened to us on the water–first the starter failure, now the fuel pump leak–keep happening instead in the safety of the slip.

But in the ninety-eight parts per hundred that make up the rest of my temperament, I am filling up instead with dread. Because the conventional wisdom tells us that these things happen in threes.

And I’m not eager to find out what will happen with this hunk of iron next.

A Decidedly Unhelpful Primer on Sailboat Starter Circuit Repair

Last week, I wrote about how our plans to go anchoring were frustrated by our suddenly revealed inability to go motoring.

Yesterday, I did stuff to the starter circuit of my sailboat that got the motor running again.

Out of sheer gratefulness for having had everything I needed to do handed to me as if on a silver platter, I feel a need to share the love.

I have therefore prepared, as suggested by the post’s title, this Decidedly Unhelpful Primer on Sailboat Starter Circuit Repair.

Tools

• A cell phone.
• A brother who happens to be an excellent diesel mechanic.
• A wife who happens to be an excellent researcher.
• Access to the internet.
• An online article from a well-informed stranger who had a problem similar to yours and desired to share the expertise acquired in solving it with other boat owners.
• Pencil and paper.
• Various electrical connectors and crimping tools inherited from the previous sailboat owner.
• A mom-and-pop marine supply store with a helpful owner.
• A credit card.
• A little over $40.00 in miscellaneous crap suggested by your brother, your wife, the well-informed stranger in the online article, and the marine supply shop owner.
• A handful of F-bombs.

Preparation

• Using the cell phone, call your brother on a Sunday afternoon. If you’re lucky, he’s hanging around the house today and will pick up on the first try.
• Whine and moan to him about how you’re getting absolutely no response from your sailboat’s engine when you turn the ignition key.
• Pay attention closely when he says, “Sounds electrical. I’d check the circuit between the ignition key and the starter.” (This step is essential.)
• On Sunday evening, casually mention to your wife that your brother thinks your engine problem is in the circuit between the ignition key and the starter.
• Go shortly thereafter to bed, expecting to call a local mechanic in the morning.
• Get up the next morning.
• Whine and moan to your wife about how expensive it is going to be to have the boat towed to a boatyard for repair by a competent local mechanic.
• Pay attention closely when she says, “Actually, I followed up on your brother’s comment last night by doing a little browsing, and I found a Tartan 3500 owner who seems to describe what we’re facing exactly, right down to the ‘B-style’ control panel with the ignition key.” (This step is essential.)
• Using your internet access, retrieve the article she emailed you.
• Read the article.
• Say to yourself, “Hey. . . that fix looks like something I can do.”
• Using the pencil and paper, make a shopping list of all the miscellaneous crap you’ll need to make the suggested repair.
• Inventory the various electrical connectors and crimping tools the previous sailboat owner left you.
• In coordination with the results of the inventory, reduce your shopping list to only those things you, uh, actually have to buy.
• Walk the list a mile and a half to the mom-and-pop marine supply store.
• Assist the store’s helpful owner in reviewing every one of the twenty-four spools of tinned marine wire he’s got sitting on a shelf in no particular order, looking for a label that says 10 AWG.
• Point out that the 20-amp fuse holder assembly he’s holding out to you probably isn’t large enough, electrically speaking, to accommodate the 30-amp fuse you need.
• Gratefully accept a properly sized fuse holder assembly from his hand.
• Collect the rest of the miscellaneous crap you’ll need and bring it to the counter, where the kindly and elderly service counter lady will literally handwrite the receipt, itemizing each item you’re buying on a pressure-sensitive two-ply form with the store’s name pre-printed at the top just like it was 1989.
• Using your credit card, pay the lady.
• Lug your newly purchased miscellaneous crap a mile and a half back to the boat.

Execution

• Using the various electrical connectors and crimping tools inherited from the previous sailboat owner, try to connect the newly purchased wire to the newly purchased fuse holder assembly.
• Throw the fuse holder assembly into the trash after damaging it irreversibly. Apply the first F-bomb.
• Calm yourself.
• In consideration of another three-mile round trip to the marine supply store for another fuse holder assembly, and having no guarantee that you’re even on the right track with this whole repair approach in the first place, resolve to continue without a fuse for now, noting that if you can just get the damned engine started, you can go back and put it in later.
• Install terminal connectors on the remaining wire ends.
• COMPLETELY DISABLE THE ENGINE’S DC ELECTRICAL SYSTEM BY DISCONNECTING THE ENGINE BATTERY AND TURNING OFF THE ENGINE MASTER SWITCH.
• Try to put a wire on one terminal of the starter.
• Watch an unexpected shower of sparks fall into the bilge as you inadvertently touch the wrench to another terminal.
• COMPLETELY DISABLE THE BOAT’S OTHER DC SYSTEM BY DISCONNECTING THE TWO HOUSE BATTERIES AND TURNING OFF THE HOUSE MASTER SWITCH.
• And, reflecting on how obvious you just made it that you don’t really have any idea how all this stuff is actually wired together, turn off the AC master switch as well.
• Also, remind yourself of the location of the nearest fire extinguisher.
• Continue to add wires to various terminals on the ignition key assembly and the starter. Apply one F-bomb for each nut dropped into the bilge and for each moment in which you say, “How am I going to get a wrench on that?”
• When all connections are made, reconnect all the batteries.

Testing

• Test the repair by turning the ignition switch. Hear nothing.
• Press the starter button. Hear nothing.
• Empty out your remaining cache of F-bombs as rapidly and loudly as possible. Stew for several moments over your unrewarded effort and your waste of time and money.
• Lament to your wife, sotto voce, that you hate diesel engines and the electrical systems that start them, and that you want to sell the boat and go live in a condo where you pay a nice monthly maintenance fee to let someone else put up with all this crap.
• Pay attention closely when she says, “Did you remember to turn the engine and house master switches back on?” (This step is really, really essential.)

Retesting

• Test the repair by turning the ignition switch. Hear the happy high-pitched sound of the audible oil pressure alarm scraping its way across your eardrums.
• Press the starter button. Hear the engine turn over and putt-putter into life. (Gasoline engines roar into life. Diesels putt-putter.)
• Think to yourself, “Wow, that was easy.”
• Remember you don’t have the intake seacock for the engine’s raw water system open. So turn off the damned engine before you overheat it, for crying out loud.

Reflection

It seems so improbable to me. A brother who makes a smart suggestion, a wife who knows what to do with that suggestion, a stranger who enjoys sharing what he’s learned about an activity he loves, and a store owner willing to follow me around for twenty minutes finding all the right parts.

To no credit of my own, it turns out that I came to this engine problem of mine armed as much with the right people as with the right tools and materials. And as a result, I, no diesel mechanic, spent just a few hours of my own time and less than fifty dollars on an engine repair I expected to cost us several hundred.

I am not worthy. (And if the boat should burn to the ground next week due to what fire investigators find was a faulty exercise in engine wiring, we will then know precisely how worthy I’m not.)

But just now, just for a little while until the next mountain-in-a-molehill arises, I am indeed grateful.

The Best Laid Plans

Earlier this week, Pam and I laid out a plan to do something yesterday that neither of us has tried in three years.

What we planned to do was motor from our marina to a spot across the Choptank River where our chart said so. This is a chart abbreviation indicating a soft “seabed,” as publisher NOAA has officially so designated, or a soft “bottom,” as most sailors and cruisers would say around the family dinner table.

While trying to educate myself with respect to the types of seabed materials one typically finds wherever charts say so, I typed in the Google search term “so soft bottom,” and quickly found myself looking at a line of women’s underwear. I guess I should have known better, since this was just after I tried to search on another chart term, “sy sticky bottom,” and found myself confronted with one particular thing that apparently afflicts the wrong end of rabbits and many, many other things considerably less suitable than that for discussion around the family dinner table.

This is why Pam does the research in our household.

Anyway, earlier this week, Pam and I laid out a plan to do something yesterday yadda yadda yadda. What we had planned to do was to motor from our marina to a spot across the river, throw down an anchor and watch Meander not move.

Why Practice Anchoring?

Anchoring is an essential skill for cruisers because it enables them to park in anchorages instead of marinas, which, in turn, helps them save money. And who doesn’t like money?

Meander’s two plow-style bow anchors by CQR. The manufacturer chose those three otherwise arbitrary letters for their resemblance, taken rapidly together, to the word “secure.”

But more importantly, the ability to anchor also gives cruisers more options for dodging storms that catch them on the open water. Many anchorages provide shelter from at least some storms. And one that can do so even from the howling winds and four-story waves of a hurricane, is called, appropriately enough, a “hurricane hole.”

In contrast, almost any marina operating under the conditions offered by a hurricane would be called “millions of dollars in boat insurance claims waiting to happen.”

That kind of anchorage, had we been able to get to one, would have been our first choice to ride out the hazards Joaquin could have placed on our doorstep last week. But once there, we would have had to be able to, uh, anchor. And we haven’t accumulated anything like enough experience with that skill to take that chance. So we stayed in our marina instead, and got lucky.

Better the devil you know, you know?

Anyway, earlier this week, Pam and I yadda yadda yadda, motor from marina, spot across river, throw down anchor, watch Meander not move.

We never got out of the marina.

Why We Didn’t Practice Anchoring

Meander’s Danforth anchor off the stern. You know, I’d really like to try it someday.

Because when Pam turned the ignition key as we had turned it a dozen times before, we got the usual audible oil pressure alarm that indicates “power on,” a sound that is prerequisite to pressing the engine’s start button to crank it into life. But when she pressed the start button as we had pressed it a dozen times before, she got. . . nothing.

Pam then checked every lever and switch that routinely plays a part in this heretofore routine engine starting operation. And after trying again, and failing again, and trying once more, and failing once more, Pam finally gave up and handed the ignition key to me.

And when I turned it as we had turned it a dozen times plus three before, I indeed got a different result.

For me, not even the audible oil pressure alarm would come on.

Change of Plans

Earlier this week, Pam and I yadda yadda yadda. But what we actually ended up doing yesterday was to create, through a carefully considered strategy of desperate improvisation, our first-ever diesel engine troubleshooting plan.

Operating under my personal conviction that the engine’s complete lack of interest in starting had electrical roots, and armed with several sources of arcane information written by one half dozen diesel experts and accumulated by us over our several years’ ascent to this latest challenge in our cruising life, we decided to trace Meander’s electrical systems:

• From the engine battery, of which there is one.
• From the house batteries, of which there are two.
• To the engine control panel, of which there is one.
• Through the boat’s intervening wires, cables, and switches, of which there is some seemingly endless number, a number which, while in all probability finite, would nonetheless still require me to employ exponential notation to pack it onto the space offered by a page of standard office letterhead.

And so I spent much of yesterday afternoon suspended through Meander’s companionway, half-upside-down, with my head in her engine compartment.

Not the bottom we originally planned.

After using a multimeter to verify that all three of the batteries in the adjacent locker to port were carrying a full charge, I got down to it. I traced visible conductors with my eyes. I traced blind ones with my fingertips, feeling my way along and hoping not to find anything shocking. I pushed and pulled on lone wires and on wires in bundles, trying to see where they ran to. I determined where this cable that disappears up into this dark crevice on this side of the boat reappears behind some completely unrelated tangle of stuff on that side of the boat. And I pulled out the multimeter again–twice–to verify that the wires I knew should be carrying the juice to the engine control panel were, to all appearances, doing no such thing.

And at the end of the day, I had enough hard data to arrive at the following working conclusions.

[THIS SPACE AVAILABLE – CALL FOR RATES]

Change of Plans, Revisited

Late last night, Pam and I laid out a plan to abandon our first-ever troubleshooting plan on our boat’s diesel engine and instead call a qualified marine mechanic in the morning. After all, one can spend either time or money; and when the first option is clearly getting one nowhere, the second becomes necessary and inevitable.

And once we’re up and running again, we’re going to motor out of this marina to a point across the river and throw down an anchor. Because I have a feeling we’re going to have to spend an awful lot of time hereafter in anchorages to be able to pay for what’s about to happen next.

Abandon Ship: Hijinks (and High Water) in the Holding Tank

You may have read recently that my wife and I moved out of our yet-to-become-beloved Meander five nights after moving in.

If not, you can find the full report here. The fact that a sailboat is not a house can make the job of stowing one’s earthly possessions on one quite a challenge, and I noted that several days of this tedious activity on our new boat accounted for half the reason we abandoned it.

This post is about the other half of the reason.

But first, I should let you in on yet another way in which a sailboat is not a house.

Houses, or at least most modern American ones, have permanent sanitary drain lines connecting their toilet fixtures to off-site disposal facilities of seemingly infinite capacity—usually municipal sewage treatment systems or, somewhat less endless, septic fields.

In contrast, Meander’s head is connected to a “holding tank” with a very specifically defined capacity of twelve gallons. (For anyone living in any part of the world that is not, you know, the United States, that’s about 45 liters.)

And Meander’s holding tank is located just forward of the head, where its inspection port penetrates the top of the V-berth in the bow of the boat. And this is the berth that serves as our bedroom. Lucky us.

(One way, incidentally, in which houses and sailboats are similar: The owners of both tend to disguise references to anything associated with the end products of human digestion in coy euphemism. Powder room, water closet, loo. . . head. Septic field. . . holding tank. And if you ask a plumbing engineer what it is that the holding tank holds, he’ll say, “Effluent.”)

Having established all this, I should also mention that the first thing we did on the Tuesday afternoon we moved aboard was, for obvious reasons, to get the head up and running.
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Just a quick aside here: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that a toilet can account for up to 27% of the 400 gallons a day the Average American Family of Four puts down the drain.

Running a few calcuations to adjust these figures for a family of one (what with Pam having established between us long ago that she has never been in a restroom in her life and our golden retriever, Honey, not yet trained to balance herself on the loo) would not be extraordinarily difficult. And if you were faced with a holding tank not much bigger than the fuel tank on a compact car, it would have occurred to you, an extraordinarily intelligent reader of the type of fine blogging literature most excellently exemplified by this post, to start doing this math immediately.

Therefore, I suspect, you will ask why it didn’t occur to me, a reasonably intelligent author of the type of fine blogging literature of which this post is such an excellent exemplar, to ask the following question until Friday night.

“I wonder how long will it take us to fill the holding tank?”

That was an error.

The next error was, “I’ll figure it out in the morning.”

And as I go on to report that my third error came Saturday morning with one more trip to the facilities, you, my extraordinarily intelligent reader, can already see where all this is “headed.”

What’s that smell coming off the Chesapeake? Bay Bridge patrons want to know.

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Water on the floor. Water in our bedding. Water in our cushions. Pick up the cushions, and more water rolls across the top of the V-berth. And  onto the floor again.

When Coleridge’s ancient mariner observed, “Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink,” I’m pretty sure he was thinking about the ocean’s high salinity rather than what we were facing.

Having cleaned out restrooms as a busboy in my youth, I am somewhat inured to such things. Distasteful to deal with, sure. But not impossible.

My wife, however, spent part of her youth studying history, and so missed developing such a strong stomach.

On the other hand, she did spend the other part working the service counter in an auto parts store, where she often had to deal with sh*t of a different kind. That’s gotta count for something.

So I wasn’t really surprised when Pam insisted that she be the one, her qualms notwithstanding, to work the forward part of the boat–something about toughening herself up, I guess. Rather, I gallantly decided to express my complete confidence in her by letting her dive in by herself.

She first removed the soaking wet bedding and stuffed it into a plastic bag. Then she passed the soaking wet cushions aft to me for removal to the open air of the cockpit. Then she mopped up the mess on the V-berth and the floor with rags and paper towels. Then she passed our recently stowed clothing aft so I could again get it into the cockpit before it began to absorb odors we did not want to wear.

And when she was done, she turned to me and said, “That’s it. We’ve had enough. Let’s get ourselves to a motel for a few days, use a real toilet, take a real shower, and rest.”

And I replied, “But sweetheart, I’m feeling fine. And isn’t a motel expensive? And shouldn’t you be using a hand sanitizer before trying to hug me?”
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So after I ducked the soaked and stinking rag she threw at my head, we showed Meander our backs and retreated to a roadside motel about twenty miles from our marina for a few nights. On top of our ever-lengthening stowage battles, that holding tank spill was the next straw.

That’s right, the next straw. My fielding errors do not necessarily mean we’ve lost the ball game. And to misappropriate one of Tom Hanks’ great moments in A League of Their Own, “There is no last straw in cruising.”

So we’ll be back.

But I’ve got to learn to ask faster questions.

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photo credit: Electricity on the Chesapeake via photopin (license)

All Aboard, Almost. . . Stowage on our First Sailboat

So goodbye, life as we’ve known it. And hello, Meander.

Meander, our new sailboat, is a 1990 Pacific Seacraft 34. And one reason a Pacific Seacraft 34 appeared on our shopping list is the model’s reputation as a good performance cruiser.

By design, performance cruisers take a middle road between two extremes. Under sail, their performance splits the difference between light, speedy, tippy, living-on-the-edge racing craft on one hand, and, on the other hand, stout, solid cruisers that will right themselves in every storm and never go anywhere very fast.

Likewise, in terms of daily life aboard, their aim is ease without excess. Meander’s designer captures this nicely when he tells us that “the 34’s interior provides a neat functional arrangement with efficient quarters for the cook, for the navigator and for all who demand comfortable living as well as excellent sailing.”

That statement will get no argument from me. But to fully embrace it, Pam and I, as wannabe-former landlubbers, will have to subscribe to a new idea of “comfortable living.” Because when our stuff was finally moved aboard Meander and we started stowing it, she quickly showed us what she isn’t.

To put a point on it, she is not a house.

If sailboats could sail uphill, this would make our first-ever stowage exercise on our first-ever sailboat an uphill battle.

A sailboat is not a house.

How is a sailboat not a house? Let me count the ways.

SIZE

What could possibly incline a guy to collect comic books, anyway?

According to CNN, houses built in America last year had an average size approaching 2,600 square feet.

In contrast, an educated guess at Meander’s total living area might go as high as 250 square feet. This includes a 50-square-foot outdoor patio, known as the “cockpit,” in which the helmsperson mans her helm and the watchperson keeps his watch. It also includes the 8-square-foot bathroom known as the “head.”

With so little space to stow the essentials, it’s probably a good thing I never developed the inclination to compile the world’s largest collection of comic books.

SIZE (AGAIN)

House generally come with closets. The newer yours is, the more it probably has. And you may even have one or two closets big enough to walk in.

They ought to have a name for that kind of closet.

In contrast, sailboats have “lockers,” which are much more like cabinets than closets. And Meander’s largest locker is not large enough to fit one working woman’s wardrobe, much less the world-class comic book collection I don’t own.

SHAPE

Of course, there are exceptions.

Houses are generally filled with oblong spaces constructed of flat walls and floors, all meeting at right angles.

Along with being structurally obvious, this is a helpful arrangement both for showing off that suite of brightly colored sectional furniture you impulse-bought at last year’s Levitz clearance sale and, more to my purpose here, for storing rectangular boxes of all sizes.

In contrast, Meander is not square. In fact, she’s sort of boat-shaped.

And this shape reveals itself in many of her lockers, the depths and dimensions of whose various arcs and angles taper along their entire lengths.

This makes stowing the rectangular boxes in which we brought our things a bad bet. Rather, the things must be pulled out and custom-fit, one item at a time, both against each other and against her curvy bottom. (Fortunately, I’m a big fan of curvy bottoms.)

DRYNESS

Houses. . . well, let’s just say that if any of your home’s closets feature routinely occurring humidity and occasional standing water, you need to talk with a home inspector and a contractor. Fast.

In contrast, some of Meander’s largest storage areas are open to her bilge, which, being the lowest point inside the boat, is the place all the water that enters her ends up. Only a few items are suited to withstand the constant moisture in these spaces. Paper files, clothing, institutional-sized tubs of Ovaltine and my as-yet-non-existent comic book collection are not good candidates.

UTILITIES

Come on, you know you still love it.

The utilities in a house are, largely, a completely concealed affair. Electrical and plumbing lines are buried in walls and a sink cabinet or two, with an occasional section of heat pipe appearing along a baseboard or in a corner.

And where they do show themselves, these lines are generally made of rigid materials not easily disturbed by an occasional brush with that sectional furniture you’re now beginning to regret.

In contrast, Meander’s utilities and special systems are partially exposed. In her lockers. A few of them feature a wide array of thin wires that serve her electronic navigational instruments, and that could get torn out if some heavy object were to be thrown against them in a seaway.

Others hide seacocks, special fittings that penetrate the hull below the waterline to take in seawater for special purposes such as engine cooling or let out waste water from sinks, drains and other fixtures. Each seacock is attached to a hose leading to or from its service location, and each features a valve that can be shut off if its hose were to fail—or if some heavy object someone was dumb enough to stow near it were to shift into it and pop that hose loose.

Needless to say, we want to be able to reach any seacock on Meander in a hurry. So whatever goes in around or on top of one had better be light and easy to move.

PURPOSE-BUILT COMPLICATIONS

Of course, sailboats are filled with gadgets for which homes with foundations have no counterpart at all.

For instance, Meander is equipped with an autopilot. This is an electromechanical assembly that will self-steer a pre-selected course while the helmsperson catches his beauty nap in the cockpit for ten minutes or goes below to attempt contortionist maneuvers in the 8-square-foot head for forty.

This system receives its course-holding inputs from an electronic compass. Unlike the compass that sits on a binnacle in the cockpit under the helmsperson’s watchful eye, this one does not require interpretration by a human being to do its job. So on Meander, ours is set in a partition between two amply sized lockers located near the kitchen area known as the “galley.”

OK, the baked beans are next to the compass. Now, south to Greenland.

But, entirely like the cockpit compass (and every other compass on the planet), an autopilot compass is a magnetic instrument. And to do its job, the polar magnetic fields it reads must be clear and undistorted by local influences.

On the downside, this means that those two lockers so convenient to the galley are completely lost to us for the storage of anything enclosed in metal—such as a can of baked beans.

On the upside, these lockers are natural candidates for my pending collection of. . . well, you know.

Sailboat stowage in summary.

In theory, we can capture all these observations in, I think, two broad principles that govern stowage on a sailboat the size of Meander.

1. You can’t have everything.
2. You can’t stow just anything anywhere.

In practice, these means that at the end of our fourth day of getting stowed aboard our new boat, we were still:

• Unpacking our boxes.
• Breaking down our boxes.
• Disposing of our boxes.
• Evaluating our lockers.
• Cursing our lockers.
• Evaluating our contents.
• Reducing our contents.
• Fitting our contents.
• Removing our contents.
• Relocating our contents elsewhere.
• Refitting our contents.

And, finally, resisting the urge to throw half our contents overboard.

And at the end of last Saturday, Meander’s interior still looked like this.

All aboard. Almost.

And that’s one half of why we have retreated, after five nights on the boat, to the relative order of the motel from where I’m writing this. (The other half deserves its own post.)

No matter. Once we’ve rested up a bit, we’re going back. And we’re going to keep at this until we are finally and completely aboard our “comfortable living” Meander. Because while we don’t ever expect her to be a house, we do certainly expect her to become a home.

Preferably, one filled with lots of comic books to pass what I understand will be some very long night watches.

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PHOTO CREDITS

Female fan: 147 via photopin (license).

Yurt interior: In the Ger via photopin (license).

Sectional furniture: Burton-Dixie Sofa via photopin (license).

Icebergs: Ilulissat Iceberg textures, Greenland via photopin (license).

Meander interior: Mike Webster.