Category: modifications

My friend Graham finished what was to have been a quick glance at my outboard motor. It is an old 9.9 HP 2-stroke with an extra long shaft (25″). My concern was the play in the gear train from the motor to the propeller.

“No problem, completely normal”

But then I had the bright idea he might fix my rusting-out remote throttle cable (based on a bicycle shifter!) and perhaps add a remote shifter and shutoff so I could come into port without having to have one arm down in the smoky engine well.

Its always gratifying and dangerous to turn Graham loose! The remotes got built…using marine, lubricant-enclosed cables… and he went on to investigate what had trapped water and pushed out the lower wall of the drive, as well as the source of exhaust building up in the engine well.

Turns out there are 3 exhaust outlets on this motor: one through the prop, one just above the prop under water, and one up near the top, above the water. When the outboard is truly out-board this third port is no big deal, but when it is fully enclosed it makes the engine well an enclosed trap for exhaust…no wonder I had to devise an external air input to the motor.

Then, attacking the lower unit, he discovered there is a compartment that takes on sea water through a small port which was TOTALLY full of barnacles, mussles, and crud. It had trapped water over the winter, accounting for the burst housing, and had built up to where shifting was difficult. Being Graham, with his skills he repaired the broken housing, taking 4 hours to complete the aluminum welding back to the point where there was sound metal…something about hairline cracks indicating deterioration.

“Good as new”

So now it is back and I can use it with peace of mind.

— In dwforum@yahoogroups.com, Dean Herring wrote:

Thanks Jackie—yep spending 200-400 hours with a boat…building her is better than actually sailing for me. I’ve come to grips with that now and started to enjoy the process—it’s actually a chess game to build and epoxy everything in the right sequence … Dean

Reading Dean’s comment it struck me that I am not rushing to get my boat in the water either…it has been ‘finished’ for several decades but every Fall I start a list of improvements which usually cannot be completed until it gets warm enough in the Spring (actually here it is almost Summer before that happens) for paint and epoxy to set/dry. I find I have been revelling in carefully and slowly doing the following modifications:

1. Mounting the new speed and depth transducers including a wood block to allow ropes to slide past the latter where it pokes about 1″ below the hull near the front (where it can give a slight advance warning as you approach a shallow spot)
2. Cutting and fastening wood strips to hold the new solar panels on top of the cabin
3. Cutting and fastening reinforcements for the bow-roller assembly I built several years ago which split when the boat anchors slipped and it weathered a hurricane sidewise (that also led to slide pins to hold the side hatch covers down)
4. Cutting and fastening a 4″ x 10″ tapered block which will take the new remote shifter/throttle controls being built for my outboard
5. Painting everything: white decks, green sides and red bottom paint
6. Replacing the corroding lifeline wires
7. Replacing the wind gauge and sensors with a cheap wireless speed unit and a Davis wind vane
8. Hopefully replacing the backstay with two cables so there is redundancy on all 4 sides of the mast.

 Why am I listing all this? both to show that a year when “there isn’t much to do” is not really that, and to show to myself that I am really enjoying this, taken one step at a time. I just ralized I am enjoying the process and will feel empty when it is done. I must have done 15 small batches of epoxy along the way, taken several days at painting, and always planning…planning…planning. You’re right: BUILDING…IS BETTER THAN ACTUALLY SAILING.

 

The boat is still in the yard…awaiting completion of painting projects as well as the departure of a family of young starlings that began life in my radar reflector at the top of my (horizontal) mast…I definitely have to cover the access hole in the ‘bottom’ before next year. Also, planting the garden has had an urgency with the very short season we have here.

Along the way I dropped off my outboard motor, an elderly 9.9 horsepower 2-stroke with an extra long shaft, on the doorstep of my machinist friend, Graham Jones in Brooklyn. He rebuilt part of the boat trailer last year and I wanted to have him tell me if the rotational play in the propeller was a sign of lower-unit gear wear (it wasn’t). While the motor was there I had the ‘brilliant’ idea to have him link in a remote throttle and gear shift. I don’t know the outcome of all this yet, but I fear for the declining health of the elderly motor. The lower housing split out one winter…best guess is that water got trapped down there by blocked intake screens and the winter freeze expanded it to break out the aluminum housing. It didn’t affect the oil reservoir and I filled the crack with thickened Epoxy, which seemed to fix it…and it has worked fine for two seasons.

My big fear is loss of reliability…true, the motor has always started by the third pull and has never given the slightest evidence of coming trouble, but in the background of my mind still hovers the fear of complete and sudden failure, leaving me to run the boat entirely by sail. Admittedly sail-alone is a very seamanly thing to do, but experience has shown me situations where the wind and tide are against you and there is little room to tack…moments to swallow pride and turn on the ‘iron sail’ as I think it is called. Efforts to come aside the wharf or pick up a mooring by sail alone have not been pretty to see, especially single-handed.

So just for information purposes I began a search on EBay for a replacement motor. New ones (extra long shaft, 4-stroke, 9.9) cost upwards of $2500, so I looked to see if old ones like mine show up for sale. I found a few currently bid at a few hundred dollars, but I have developed this doubt about prices on EBay–any time I have found an attractive price for something I want and placed a bid, the price seems to have kept on mysteriously and immediately jumping up. Either there is a concealed reserve bid mechanism or someone else has an automatic price raising tool until the price gets to a limit they have set; after all, why bid higher than necessary to get the object? All I know is the price keeps on being just above my bid  to the point where I don’t want to pay the price of finding out how high it would go; at the end the bid stops a price that is higher than retail list price. Every time a price looks too good to be true, it is. All that is to say there is an illusion of low-priced used motors out there, but I cannot attest to the reality.

The weather here on PEI has begun to think Spring at last and that means it is often warm enough to have Epoxy set before the next day. I included my ‘to do list’ in the post What to do in cold weather, and now I am finally getting to it.

The first projects were to do with the below-water parts. I ground off paint around the various holes that should not be there. I find an angle-grinder is the best tool. Unlike a sander, it takes off anything. The trick is not to go too far (I almost always use ear and eye protection) since it will take off paint, fiberglass, Epoxy, and wood with no regard for my intentions.

I decided to replace the depth transducer and remove the original non-functioning depth and speed (paddle-wheel) sensors at the same time. The secret to installing these new sensors below the waterline is to drill the holes and Epoxy coat them inside and out before installing the sensor. (Incidentally, it is a good idea when setting screws into the deck to put them in, remove them, coat them with epoxy, and then re-set them–that gives a waterproof seal against the wood so the hole does not become an inlet for water to degrade the wood. I KNOW this but I know this because I removed some screws and discovered some wet beginning.) I now use silicone for the actual sensor installations. Be pre-coating the edges of the wood, any water that might later get in could not get into the plywood and cause eventual rot. Continue reading “Epoxy takes many steps”

 

Cut for repair

As I said recently, there is no hurry getting the boat into the water. The water is cold and all the Spring projects shout for attention. Still, I have a set of pre launch projects for the boat. The first is hull repair. The trailer rebuild last Summer was about 4″ too narrow and the guide posts crushed the bottom of the outer hulls (its a trimaran).

A few days ago I started by cutting out the damaged bottom plywood about 6″ up and covering the span between bulkheads (about 24″). I had known the hull cover is thin but It was surprising to actually see that the sheathing is 3/8″ plywood with glass only on the outside (but Epoxy coating over everything both inside and out). This boat would not do for the Arctic North since the ice would probably puncture it quickly. Still, in more temperate waters it has lasted 16 years.

Repair of plywood/epoxy/glass hulls is much simpler than fiberglass-only hulls. Having cut away enough of the damaged hull to reach side-to-side and lap over the bulkheads, I will replace the V-shaped frame piece on the bottom edge, and Epoxy on some plywood strips on the inside tops of the cutout area to support the top edge. With support now on all edges of the cutout and the Epoxy having set, I will Epoxy the panels (pre-coated on the inside) against the supports and use a few (drywall) screws to hold hold them in place. Once the Epoxy has set, pull the screws, do a bit of smoothing with an angle grinder, and I can Epoxy a fiber-glass layer on over the raw wood. I do want to add a drain plug on each side in case water gets into the hulls in the Winter (somehow the snow plies up on deck and runs up over the lip of the access hatches in the Spring thaw). The final steps are to smooth the glass/epoxy and paint the outside. Since the damaged area is below the water line, it will be bottom paint. Since the repair will be under water, aesthetics are not very important and a perfectly smooth surface is irrelevant. I might add another coat of Epoxy on the inside for good measure since the repair areas are accessible through the hatches. The entire process will take a couple days due to the set times but is not actually much working time. It would have been impossible in the Winter since the set times would have been much longer.

Did I mention another delay may be a bird having already nested and laid eggs in the radar reflector on the top of the (presently horizontal) mast? Oh well, it will give me time to really get the boat in prime condition.

About five years ago I got into radar reflectors for sailboats. the result is in an article I have on Duckworks, with additional details two years later in another article. I encourage you to look at them for many of the details…they are relatively easily made from aluminum roof flashing and pop rivets at low cost AND ARE FAR BETTER AT REFLECTING THAN ANY OF THE SMALL REFLECTORS MARKETED FOR SMALL BOATS. In short, size matters, and no passive technology can get around that.

Finished reflector on mast top

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The reflector is quite rigid with just thin flashing because of the angles. It is basically two sets of quadrahedral reflectors spaced inside each other, and gives excellent reflection over a wide horizontal circle. The two reflectors fill in for each other around the circle.

I strongly recommend building one for your boat if you are likely to be out where there is significant commercial traffic or where there are large cruisers with radar. It is also reassuring in fog, althought boats without radar would not “see” you.

It is too cold at home to really get going on the new season’s boat modifications. Every year I make a list of the things to do before the spring/summer launch. Here in Eastern Canada the cold season, while not as intense, is much longer lasting than in the US. Aside from cold feet and scraping snow off, the big problem is the curing of epoxy. I always get the “fast” hardener, but that simply means at 50F or 60F it takes 4 hours instead of two days to set (as best I can tell, even at temperatures around 40F, it eventually sets, but that slows work down. Using heat lamps or fitting the 26′ long x 15′ wide x 12′ high trimaran into a shelter is difficult and, in any case the extra labor is easily avoided by simply waiting for warmer weather. Continue reading “What to do in cold weather”