Changing the oil

Here is  a picture of me changing the oil on my Yanmar engine.

Yes you saw it right but it didn't start out this way. My goal for the day was to change the oil, diesel, water and filters on the engine. I bought a hand pump to change the oil and here it is in action.

 The idea is that you stick the black hose down the dipstick hole and pump out the oil. Well after pumping intensively for 40 minutes I had pumped only about a pint of oil and I was exhausted. The problem was that the rubber hose was too flimsy and kept getting blocked up. So following my tried and proven mantra, of not giving up and instead going shopping I headed for our local Napa.  OK so i had checked on the internet and there were lots of good reviews for these things.

Well let me tell you..........changing the oil was a cake walk with  this gadget. All I had to do was stick the stiff plastic tube down the dipstick hole and give it a little pump. It was all done  in 20 minutes. From now on  there will be no more crawling under the car for me. I can change the oil on the car with it without much effort. The big downside for me is the shear size of the thing. I really do not have the room for it on the boat.
While I was there I also did the easy task of changing the oil filter.

The  next thing I had to do was to transfer all the diesel over from one tank to the other.

So here am I running the nice looking, albeit old diesel out of the starboard tank into a yellow can.

And pouring  it into the port tank. The diesel has two filters, the first being a Racor filter.

Looks not too bad on the outside but take a look inside.

Nasty!!!!
There is also a fuel filter on the motor that I changed.

And lastly  I need to have a look at the  sea water strainer.

Inside is where it counts.

Hard to believe how any water could come through there at all.
These are the little motor mounts that are on my list for tomorrow.

And here is my dinner courtesy of Wally World.

New Cushions and engine

Just one photo today of the finished cushions in the main cabin.

I know, I know, they still have got plastic over them but I will take it off when I go cruising full time. The color turned out great and makes the cabin feel warm and inviting. The remaining ones for the V-berth are supposed to be finished next week and then I am getting some outside sewing done this time in green. I did discover a Bimini in a cupboard that I promptly put up over the cockpit to keep it cool. It doesn't quite fit right so I will have to mess with it a bit.
The big news of the day was that I got my engine going. My neighbor with a similar engine was having work done on his Yanmar by  www.alsmobilemarineservice.com, so Al came over afterwards and got it going. The starter I ordered from amazon did not work very well and after fluffing around with jumper cables and dead batteries, I took the battery out of my car and finally after trying for about 10 minutes the engine started. We only ran it for about 20 seconds because I didn't have the water run to it for cooling. Now I have to change the oil, change the oil filter, change the 2 fuel filters and run new diesel. I am not sure what to do with the old fuel but I plan on emptying all of one tank into the other until I decide and  buying new diesel for the empty one. On Friday, Al will be back and we will run the engine with water hooked up and check the propeller shaft and other things. I also have 4 motor mounts ($600!) to install. Phew!

Propane leak and more rigging

After my propane scare yesterday I vowed to make it my top priority today. After using the stove to make my morning cup of Joe, I prepared a spray bottle of dish washing liquid and sprayed it on all the gas connections. Right off the bat I discovered the main culprit on the regulator.

If you look closely you will see all the bubbles. I carried on looking at the solenoid next, which I had tucked away below decks and even though I could not locate any bubbles, I could smell propane. At this point I decided that a total redesign of the system was in order. I set out to move the solenoid inside the propane locker so that any leaked gas would go overboard. I made my daily shopping trip at lunchtime and picked up a new regulator from Home Depot. Here is my new setup which is a little bit tight.

You should be able to see the solenoid at the bottom of the locker in between the 2 aluminum gas tanks. And here you can see the hose and wiring entering the locker above the caprail.

Now there are no propane connections in the boat except at the stove and I checked them and they seem to be OK. I did do another drop down leak test and it doesn't leak anymore however this test is so easy to do so I will put it on my honey do list on an ongoing basis.
Next I wanted to replace the boomkin stays, one of which you can see in the next photo on the port side.

They have special fittings on either end called Norseman fittings which allow for the replacement of the rigging wire. The fittings look terrible at first sight however the rust is only skin deep and easy to take off as you  can see in the next photo with the polished one on the right.

 So here is the starboard one just about ready to go with the old turnbuckle in the center.

I say nearly ready to go because I have to get some 3M 4200 to squirt inside the fittings.
My water tanks and genoa track didn't arrive today thank goodness, otherwise I would have been itching to get started on these new projects.............Not that I haven't got a million things to do on my list already but the problem is prioritizing all the things I have to do. Like, rigging and getting the boat dry have got to be the top priority. Engine work is pretty important too but it is hard to ignore all the cosmetic stuff like caprails. They sorely need painting but it will just have to wait.  Oh and while I think of  it, I stopped by at the Yanmar dealer today and ordered new motor mounts along with an impeller and thermostat to pick up tomorrow. Fun, fun, fun!

New Caprail and a drop down propane test

Today I focused on installing a 12 foot section of caprail that was broken in tropical storm Beryl. It has taken me ages to do this project because I was not sure whether I wanted to replace all of the caprail or just the  parts that needed  it. The old caprail was mahogany so I bought some from Woodcraft and in the end it was not that big of a deal.

I did the missing section in 2 parts to allow for expansion and laid the boards out and used a pencil to outline the bulwark pattern on the underside of each board. Measure 7 times, cut once!

Cutting out the pattern with a jigsaw was a cinch.

So the first one went in smoothly.

I used recessed 2" stainless steel screws to anchor the caprail on the bulwark.

And there  above is the second piece down .................all ready for the genoa track which is due to arrive from Westsail Parts tomorrow. Actually, come to think of it, I have to seal it first. There are more sections of caprail to do, fore and aft and this wee project has given me confidence to tackle these, when I get a chance.
While I was outside, here are my new belaying pins in my old teak pin rail. Not too bad for my first ever attempt at using a lathe. Looks incongruous with 40 year old teak against new mahogany.

Just for kicks and giggles, I tried cutting some spare rigging wire I had on board with my bolt cutters. Not anything like easy to do. I think in an emergency, I shall first reach for a hack saw.

Have a look at the pin in the middle of the next photo. It is called a clevis pin. It holds the boom onto the mast, and as such is a critical part on the boat. Anyway, after the rigging project, I could not find it for the life of me so I had to order a new one (and a second as a backup) for $45.......not cheap.

I bought this plastic base to go in the bottom of my kitchen sink to improve it's looks. Even barkeeper's friend wasn't enough to make it look presentable. 

I used some Velcro to put some family photos up on the wall to give it that lived in feel.

I bought a propane pressure gauge from home Depot to install on my tank to do a drop down test.

So you can imagine my horror after installing it to find the pressure dropping down to empty only 3 minutes after turning off the gas at the tank. All day I was worried  sick about it, conjuring up all sorts of burned charcoal scenarios. I drove to the store tonight and bought some dish-washing liquid to spray on all the joints to locate the cause of the leak. However I never got to use it. I decided to use the stove for my dinner and when I did the leak down test once more there was no leak!!!!!! Weird. I am not sure of the reason. It could be that it is a lot cooler now or it could be that the teflon tape has expanded under pressure..........I do not know. All I know is that I will continue doing these drop down tests until I am convinced that it is safe. Phew!
For my dinner tonight I splashed out and bought some halibut.

It was delicious.

Wiring and new yanmar starter

Well I am back at the boat or another 2 weeks to work on her. I am pleased that after 3 months she has remained quite dry inside. However despite all that work I did on the port caprail, there was still a slight leak under it.

NASTY!!!!! So I will have to track it down when I get a chance.
I made a mistake last year in buying a wally world 12v outlet with USB connections that ended up short circuiting and blowing a fuse.

In replacing it I decided to get a circuit breaker panel because there is not much protection in the boat's wiring. I took down a "oil discharge warning" so I will probably be jailed for life and fined a gazillion dollars.

I cut away the half inch ply backing board with a very useful jigsaw.

And mounted the panel.

As well I used these fused wires to make the hot connections.

On the battery I replaced my 30 Amp fuses and promptly blew another one while working on the next project. Grrrrrrr!

The next project was replacing the Yanmar starter.

I got stuck on one of the connections so had to run up to Home Depot. While i was there I stopped in at Target and bought some frozen veggies, a can of Northern beans, yogurt and some raspberries for my dinner. It is really late but I am determined to walk a little before I shower and head to bed.

Coffee, WeFax, Rugged Laptop, GPS, Music, Cameras and more.....

Lately I have been finalizing my boating technology requirements and this weekend I played around with a couple of projects. I had it in my mind to try a little experiment with one of those new silicone products that are all the rage at the moment in the kitchen. I popped down to our local Target store and found a $5 funnel that collapses.

And you can see where this is going, no doubt with the coffee filter beside it. I was afraid that it would be too flimsy to hold the water or water would run out too fast but in the end it worked perfectly. So this was the result of my little jaunt.

A delicious cup of Joe....................folds down flat, takes up no space, sticks in the cup because it is terraced and couldn't be simpler. I used to use an Aeropress which I thought, could not be beat as far as taste went but this little contraption is up there with the best. The disadvantage with just about every coffee maker on a boat is the boat's movement. Like juggling 9 tennis balls while skipping on one leg. This one holds like superglue.
Also I did a spot of shopping on flea bay and picked up a used rugged notebook for $490. There are a plethora of used Panasonic Tough-books out there with a 13.3" screen on the market probably from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but i liked the larger 14" screen of the Dell.

It's screen is Daylight view-able, although you wouldn't guess by looking at the photo. Waterproof, drop proof, and it is reasonably new and fast enough to take Windows 7. Love it, love it, love it. One thing though that I did not count on, was the keyboard. The waterproof rubber layer makes it terrible to do any decent typing on so I have resorted to a USB one. One prerequisite that I wanted in choosing a computer, was to get a microphone jack for my weather program. Most of the new computers coming out these days have a single headphone/mic combo jack but I wanted a dedicated mic for the JVComm32 program that takes the Short Wave radio signal broadcast by NOAA, and converts it into a weather pattern. 

I use a short wave radio made by Sangean to generate the signal that goes from the earphone plug on the radio into the mic jack of the computer. I have to run the computer just on battery power so that there is no interference from the power adapter. 

Failing that if I don't have enough juice in the computer battery, I have to record the signal on a solid state recorder and play it back later into the computer. Here is my beaut Cowan mp3 player that stores all of my music (not my main music source but really good for redundancy) and is also does a bang up job as a voice recorder.

I started out getting weather using a Sony 7600 short wave radio with my tablet running the app "HF Weather Fax" and I finally got some reasonable results after hours of fluffing around.

My situation here is in a valley, 500 miles from the broadcasting site and to give you an idea, local broadcast TV reception here is awful. I found though, if I ran a small antenna, turned off all fluorescent lighting in the house along with those wall wart power adapters I could get a readable picture. I was still not satisfied though so I ponied up the extra $'s for a Sangean short wave radio which has a manual dial for getting a more precise match for the signal. Over a long distance, the frequency changes a small amount so it is important to be able to alter it slightly which you can do better on the Sangean. I run the JVComm32 program and first enter the frequency on the radio that the signal is broadcast at. Then I manually adjust the radio tuning knob so that the signal coming into the software is optimal on the chart being produced. One other thing that I was happy about was that now I could view the weather map on a reasonably large 14" display compared to my little 7" Nexus tablet. Initially I had intended to go the serious SSB route and buy an Icom m802 ssb marine radio system, but what put me off was a bunch of things mainly just finding all this technology a bit too much. All this computer stuff is complicated enough but it seems to me that the $5,000 setup with SSB m802 with pactor modem, backstay antenna and counterpoise ground for email is one bridge too far. A visit to the local Ham Radio outlet confirmed that a bunch of experts couldn't even get a decent signal from NOAA. If I can't understand it and it is very complicated then it is not for me. Perfect Pitch is a boat I met just recently that got stuck in Florida because of problems with their Icom SSB setup and ended up cancelling their offshore plans. Right now I like the simplicity of the Delome InReach Satellite communicator for sending daily messages from anywhere in the world but hold that thought. Technology changes means there might be a new kid on the block tomorrow. 

I also loaded OpenCPN on the Laptop which is a navigation program and configured a USB puck to pick up the real time latitude/longitude location. Here is the Globalstat $35 USB puck that I use to feed my position into the navigation program.

Thinking that it would also be possible to use the puck with Google Earth, I ordered a week long free trial of the GE Pro version to try it out only to find that it was not compatible. Never fear.......when the chips are down, go shopping! I turned to craigslist and picked up a Garmin GPSmap 60 locally for $55 which works great on GE and shows your location real-time. 

Waterproof, rugged and pretty good for a backup but I have yet to find out how to store way-points, download maps and set an anchor alarm on it if I can at all. The GPS seems to do a lot of complicated things that will keep me occupied over the next few weeks, climbing that steep learning curve!  It does not have color, so battery life is pretty good however I picked up a battery charger at Costco which will take my shares in Duracell plummeting.

Lets see what else? Oh while I was on GE I printed out a bunch of 60 odd maps with a latitude/longitude grid on them so that daily I can plot my position manually just in case I lose all my boat's electronics.

I actually had a lot of trouble picking up a white pen for marking the map but I found some eventually at an art store.

 I did buy another small computer, again for redundancy through the local Staples store for $300.

It is only has a 10" screen and comes with 10.4 Ubuntu. Incredible battery life and is great for Skype. It has a 300 Gb hard drive which is plenty on which to store my videos created using OpenShot video editor. I splashed out during the week and bought 10 piano pieces for $10 from JewelBeat to use as background music for my videos that I intend to upload to YouTube. I also can run the navigation program OpenCPN on this Ubuntu computer. Redundancy is king! As well I use the Asus to store my music collection and use the inbuilt Bluetooth to play it on my JBL Charge.

And lastly I have taken all these photos with a fancy new Nikon waterproof camera that I have been playing with, trying to get the hang of.

Most of the functionality is pretty intuitive, however I have not been able to connect it to WiFi which is simply a minor irritation. It just has a 4 X zoom but it is so easy to carry around in your pocket and I have my superb Canon 40SX for those moon shots. It does take HD movies and I tried out the wind noise reduction and found I could take movies up to about 10 knots (18 kph for you infidels) without wind noise so that means I will only be able to take videos going down wind. Up wind sailing videos will have to be behind the dodger. One thing that I have been wanting to do is time lapse photography and I finally found the solution in an app on my Nexus called Droid Timelapse. So watch this space!