Drip... Drip...

Brrrrp...

"What was that," Jane asked.
"I think the water pump just ran," I said.  "It was probably just on the verge, and a little leak back caused it to cycle," I said, hopefully.

15 minutes later...  Brrrrrp...

"OK, no one is using water and the pump just cycled twice.  Either we have a leak somewhere, or the pump is failing."

Hoping for the best case scenario (meaning I would not have to replace the pump...), I started at the bow and checked for water running aft in the bilge.  I didn't find any until I got to the last floor panel.  Yup, there it was:  drip, drip, drip.

Great!  It's not the pump!

But where was it coming from?  Best bet: a cracked fitting.  But where?  I could sort of see the general area where it was coming from, but serious boat surgery would be required to access that area.

Now those of you that don't own boats might be surprised to hear that there are quite a few places on boats that are either inaccessible or nearly so.  Boats are more like modern cars than those from the 50's and 60's.

So.  I began unloading and disassembling the flooring in the cabinet opposite the refer.

Getting access to the area...

I have been in this area before, but not as fully as this job was going to require.  Yes, I could now see the water actually dripping.  But the source was still hidden up inside that rectangular opening down at the bottom of the area, where the gray water lines are going. 

Deep dark hole...

Gotcha!

I stuck my phone down in there and took a blind picture - yup!  Got it!  I even caught a falling drop of water in the air!  See how the left hand fitting is cracked?  That's where the water was coming from.  The fitting on the bottom of the tee is cracked too, but strangely not yet leaking.  Both of them need to be changed.  (The fitting on the right had already been replaced - it had a price written on it.)

I should point out that this space is at the aft end of the engine, and that when I finally got up the courage to dive into the job, standing on the engine mounting bunks, my shoulders were about level with the floor in front of the refer.  Deep.  And narrow - only a little wider than my shoulders.  And filled with hard things that hurt when bumping or kneeling on them.  In the end, I ended up kneeling on the engine bunks, straddling the shaft, and putting my legs back (fwd, actually) alongside the engine to get low enough to work in the opening.  Barely.

Once in position, and with good planning having the correct tools at hand, the job didn't take too long.  The hardest part was tolerating the pain in my shins and knees, knowing that it would all be over soon.  Voluntary bruising, the price to be paid.

These are the bad guys

When it was all done, I awarded myself with a beer in the cockpit, while waiting for the pump to cycle.  Hours later, it still hasn't.

Drip... Drip...

Corrosion, Corrosion

For a boat on salt water, corrosion is an omnipresent demon.

Even inside.  This is the spout on our galley sink which is piped to a saltwater foot pump. And to the cooling water discharge from our 12V refrigeration system, meaning that it has saltwater flowing out of it whenever the refrigeration compressor is running, as a telltail. Look closely at the inside of the right-hand bend... yup, the aluminum has corroded thru. I don't understand this... aluminum is supposed to be reasonably proof against saltwater.  The pipe is clamped to the sink in a plastic fixture, and is connected below the sink via vinyl tubing...  ruling out galvanic corrosion.  The entire refrigeration system is 12V, so stray 110V current cannot be an issue.  The compressor is powered by an external motor thru a V-belt. 

But.

The motor and compressor are mounted on the same metal plate, and there are some pressure switches to control the motor mounted on the compressor.

Is that enough to cause stray current corrosion, tho there is no direct connection between the refrigeration unit and the aluminum tubing except via the saltwater itself?

Or is the corrosion simply the result of flowing saltwater washing away the protective oxide layer on the inside of the aluminum tubing?  I am very interested in what the net.wisdom has to say about this...

Regardless, this is the second spout that I have installed there, and they have gotten ridiculously expensive.  I am not planning to buy a third one.

Two pieces of 7/16" stainless tubing

Instead, I bought some thin-gauge 316 stainless tubing from Online Metals.  Now, if you've ever attempted to bend tubing, and especially thin-gauge tubing, you know that it requires special tooling to prevent kinking.  The tooling constrains the tube so that it can't collapse and kink while it is being distorted.  I looked up what a tubing bender for 7/16" tubing costs on the Interwebs, and Oh. My. Gosh.

OK, a Plan B is needed.

It is also possible to prevent collapse/kinking if the tubing is filled solidly with something incompressible.  Apparently some people have used ice (fill with water; freeze), but I was concerned that I'd never get the tubing bent before the ice started to melt.  This is where Wood's metal comes in.

This is Wood's metal - it is a eutectic alloy of 50% bismuth, 26.7% lead, 13.3% tin, and 10% cadmium by weight.  It melts at 158°F

I just happened to have some. 

Wood's metal foundry

For a foundry, I purpose-bought a can of tomato paste (69¢), and froze the tomato paste, retaining the can - just the right size.  I put it in a pan with some water and brought the water to a boil - 212°F, or about 50° of superheat.  I then poured the molten metal into the tubing (I had previously blocked one end of the tubing by pushing it into a wine cork - we seem to have plenty of these).  I then immediately plunged the filled tubing into a container of cold water - I had read that quenching creates a fine crystal structure in the Wood's metal, making it more ductile (read: easier to bend).

OK, now to bend.  I created a bending jig and lag-bolted it to a 4x4 in our shed:

Homemade bending jig

Yup, it bent just fine - no kinking, no collapse.

Recovering the Wood's metal

All that remained was to reheat the bent tubing in another boiling water bath to remelt the Wood's metal and pour it out.

And since our galley sink has two of these spouts (one for salt water and one for fresh water, foot-pumped from the tanks), I made another spout.  Gotta be symmetrical, don't you know.

Done
(Clever camera angle conceals dirty dishes in the sink)

A little boat yoga, and the galley sink looks better than it ever has!

Corrosion, Corrosion

Uh oh...

As a part of our annual engine maintenance tasks (new zinc in the heat exchanger, new oil, new oil filter), everything gets a general inspection/lookover.  Behind the engine, in a nearly inaccessible space, is the exhaust hose and the waterlift muffler.  Note the white salt deposit on the outside of the exhaust hose...  Close inspection reveals that the hose is bubbled up at that spot.

So what's happening?  The hose has failed.  Ply separation has allowed the seawater in the exhaust to penetrate the hose, all the way to the outside.  And since the hose is reinforced with steel wire, that has undoubtedly turned to rust.

It looks like I have some boat yoga in my future...

Uh oh...

Bed-making yoga

Sleeping bags for bedding

Last nite, when we got back to Eolian after a long Christmas absence, neither Jane nor I felt up to tackling making the bed (OK, let's be frank - it's my job and I didn't feel up to it).  So my understanding wife and I sacked out in sleeping bags on the bare mattress. 

But there is no avoiding my tasks.  Today I must make the bed.  And because I enjoy it so much I am going to invite you along to help.

Get on those yoga clothes - you're going to need them.

The berth in the master cabin on Eolian accepts queen-sized bedding.  But with a twist.  All normal beds are rectangular, of course.  But not ours.  The bottom corners are chopped off because the hull turns in.  Oh yeah, and the bottom three feet or so are under the ledge formed by the aft deck lazarettes, above.  This last little detail just adds spice to the task, don't you think?  And it is the reason for the yoga togs we're wearing.

Clear the field

The first order of business?  Clear the field.  Get the sleeping bags back into their stuff sacks and stored where they normally go - into the storage compartments under the mattress.

Next on the agenda:  The bottom sheet.  You will note that we will be making the bed... while sitting on the bed!  No walking around the outside, grasshopper.  This just adds to the fun!

Loose

We use fitted sheets on Eolian, but that doesn't take you very far.  First, the mattress is thinner than a "normal" mattress, and then there are those cut-off corners...  How to make the sheet fit tightly (nobody likes loose sheets)?  Here, I've done the first bit of yoga and gotten the sheet into place.  And no, it isn't tight.  At all.  And you might also notice that I am working around the ex-electric blanket.  It is still attached to its umbilical, which runs under the mattress.  So I have to shove it over to one side, arrange the sheet, and then shove it over to the other side and arrange the sheet again.  All for an electric blanket that doesn't work.

Garters - the answer to a man's dream

So how do we make the sheet tight?  When we first moved aboard, Jane was discussing this very problem with a sales clerk at Fred Meyer (Jane is bold that way).  Amazingly, the clerk told Jane that other customers had found these garters to be the very thing to solve the problem.  Isn't it great living in a maritime community?

Streeeeetch

Tight.

What we do is pull up the corners of the mattress, stretch the garters across the corners of the sheet, under the mattress.  Then you just tuck the extra material in under the garter.  I'm sorry that this and the next couple of pictures came out blurry because I rushed the camera.  But I'm not going to take apart the bed to get better ones. 

By doing this, the sheet is so tight that when you let the mattress go back down after applying the last garter, it does so kind of reluctantly.  And the sheet is tight as a drum.  All thanks to a knowledgeable sales clerk in Fred Meyer

OK, take a sip of beer.  You were drinking a beer weren't you?  The hardest part is done.

Now apply the top sheet.  Tuck those bottom corners in all the way - otherwise a covers-stealing spouse might be able to sneak away your sheet.

Repeat with the ex-electric blanket.  I have blamed the inverter for the demise of several electric blankets on Eolian, but really, I think it is the folding and jamming that occurs at those bottom corners that causes them to fail.


And now, finally, the comforter.  (Tuck those corners in!)  Place the pillows carefully, but cheerfully on the bed to give a picture of planned casualness.

And, now you may finish that beer.  Boat yoga and beer are natural partners.

Bed-making yoga

Yoga

What is yoga?

When you get right down to it, yoga is an activity which puts the body into positions or poses that stretch muscles and tendons.  Muscles and tendons that probably would not have been otherwise so stressed in the course of any normal daily life.  And yet despite the pain, millions of people seek it out and join in.

Because the public craves novelty, several variations on the yoga theme have been created (I believe the latest is hot yoga, which is yoga with the addition of sweat, but I could be behind the times), and have been quite successful at drawing adherents from the vanilla yoga pool, and dollars from the participants pockets.

I spent Monday developing a new yoga variant:  boat yoga.  This will surely be the next craze.  Being a kind of yoga, it of course involves contorting the body into positions that stretch muscles and tendons uncomfortably.  But this novel form of yoga also adds:

• Physical constraints.  No longer are you free to roam about your yoga mat.  In fact, no yoga mat is allowed.  Instead, you must contort your body to fit within spaces which were designed by experts to maximize discomfort (yoga adherents call this "Good").
• A form of aromatherapy is also included.  While you are enjoying the feeling of having your body twisted and distorted, you are presented with a dizzying array of scents designed to maximize the experience:
• Hot oil
• Stale diesel
• Head hose
• Acid fumes
• Foul bilge water
• Heat.  Boat Yoga is derived from Hot Yoga, and therefore is performed in a warm environment.  But there is an additional twist:  some of the physical constraints mentioned above are actually heated to the point that they may cause burns if your skin comes in contact with them.  This increases the tension and the intensity of the experience.
• Oil.  But there is no place for wimpy baby oil here.  Boat Yoga disciples boldly anoint themselves with used crankcase oil,  fresh from the bowels of diesel engines, which are conveniently placed nearby for this purpose.
• Weight training.  Unlike vanilla yoga which is pretty much a passive activity, advanced Boat Yoga provides the opportunity for doing weight lifting "reps" while in pose.  Heavy objects are conveniently placed in the Boat Yoga environment for the use of practitioners.  How many reps can you do with a group 31 battery while holding the "Downward facing oil filter removal" pose?

I think it'll catch on in a big way.   You know you crave that wonderful "burn" that Boat Yoga can give you.  New sessions are being formed right now.  Why not sign up today!

Oh, I failed to mention this very important part of the regimen:  The concluding exercise of each Boat Yoga session involves the ceremonial consumption of a cold beer.  This shocks the now-heated and stressed body into dumping accumulated toxins and poisons.  Advanced practitioners may be able to increase this to two, or for experts, three beers. 

---

(While doing the development work for this new yoga regime on Monday, I coincidentally got the oil changed in the main engine,  oil changed in the genset, replaced the oil filter on the genset, and topped up the electrolyte in the batteries.)

Yoga

Project: Heat Pump Permanent Wiring Yoga

There... over there on the right hand side of the picture, near the bottom... See that grey power cord snaking out of the compartment under the dinette seating? That has been our "permanent power wiring" for the heat pump since we installed it last winter.

Now, it is a proven Law Of Nature that the incentive for completing a project is proportional to the amount of the project remaining. Thus, you can approach project completion, but it is difficult to actually get there. This is one of those items. I have been "temporarily" supplying power to the heat pump by plugging it in to a convenient outlet, for a year.

In order to properly wire the heat pump, it needed to have its own breaker in the power panel. And a decision had to be made as to whether to supply the heat pump thru the inverter, or direct from the mains. And since the wiring for the water heater had a PO splice in it and was conveniently nearby, it needed to be replaced too.

But first: power thru the inverter or not? Although the inverter can power the heat pump (I tried it), we would never do that - the battery load is unsustainable. So then, why would I choose to power it thru the inverter, as that was the final decision? The reasoning went like this:

• We have significant 12V loads on Eolian, even when plugged into shore power. Most notably refrigeration
• Significant 12V loads mean that the battery charger will be needed frequently, and will need to deliver significant power - not just a trickle charge.
• In turn, this means the battery charger will require significant amounts of power.
• The battery charger is actually part of the inverter, a perfect convergence of function
• Our Heart inverter has a "power sharing" function. That is, you can program the inverter/charger to use a maximum amount of 110V power to supply its loads (including the integrated battery charger). If the need increases beyond the power sharing setting, the amount of power available to the battery charger is reduced.
• Loads which are not supplied thru the inverter are unknown to it. Our water heater is wired direct to the mains, and draws about 10 amps. Therefore the inverter has been programmed to take no more than 20 amps for its needs, to avoid exceeding our 30 amp total load maximum.
• If I were to have powered the heat pump direct, I would have had to reduce the load sharing setting to 5 amps, since the heat pump draws 12 amps ( the load sharing is in 5 amp increments - there is no 8 amp setting)
• 5 amps is not a reasonable amount of power to share amongst the battery charger and all the power outlets on board.
• By powering the heat pump thru the inverter, I can leave the power sharing setting at 20 amps. If the heat pump is running, there will be a maximum of 8 amps available to the battery charger - not enough to run refrigeration, so at least part of the refrigeration load will come out of the batteries. But as soon as the heat pump shuts off, the battery charger wants the full 20 amps to replenish the batteries.

This was a good decision - it works well. In fact, by running for a year with our "temporary" setup, we were already running thru the inverter, since the outlets are powered that way. We have had a successful one-year trial.

Now for implementation. The under-seating compartments all had to be completely emptied. The heat pump is in the compartment behind the teak-surrounded white grill (far right), the water heater is in the next compartment to the left (with the solid teak door), and the power panel is below the nav station desktop (accessible only thru the small opening, awkwardly oriented the wrong way).

Stringing the wire was not difficult, nor was terminating it at the water heater and the heat pump (other than the joy of wedging my body into those small spaces to do the work). Most of the effort was spent with my head and shoulders down in that small opening in the nav station, reconfiguring the breakers and wiring behind the panel. Jane got a particularly unflattering picture of me, immersed in the work...

So, we have accomplished the impossible: we have reached the asymptote - the project is complete!

Yoga? Who needs it?

Project: Heat Pump Permanent Wiring Yoga

Hot Diesel

No, this is not about some kind of exotic and weird fitness training.

Bear with me.

When we first brought the boat down to Seattle, and I moved aboard, it was winter. The boat had two full water tanks, so I didn't see the need to deal with water issues right away.

Eventually, however, the inevitable happened. In the middle of a shower, getting ready for work, I sucked air from the port water tank. Naked and slippery with soapy water, I slithered out to the galley, pulled up the floorboard, and re-valved the water supply to the starboard tank. I'll bet people living on shore don't have to do that too often. I got to work that day on time in spite of it.

As time wore on, I realized that the water in the starboard tank had a funny smell to it. Eventually I decided that it probably would be a good idea to use up that water for non-cooking issues (I was living as a bachelor - that did not signify much of a change).

Diesel floats on water. I'm just sayin'. (cue ominous music)

Once again, the inevitable happened, and again while I was in the shower, getting ready for work, not yet quite awake. Except this time, instead of air, the last thing out of the shower head was a gush of hot diesel. I stood there, dumbfounded, red liquid dripping off of me. I had just showered in hot diesel fuel! And, now, there was no more water in the tank. And of course, I had not refilled the port tank either. So there was no way to even rinse it off, let alone wash. I'm real sure people living on shore don't have this happen. OK, now what? It was either towel off and go to work, or towel off, get sort of dressed, go outside, find a hose and refill one of the tanks, and then re-shower. I have to confess that living on a boat had become a little discouraging for me at that point.

Well, I had started in this job only a few weeks earlier, so I was not ready to show up late for work. So instead, I showed up reeking of diesel. (Eleven and a half years later, I still wonder if that was the right call, but I do still have the job). Thankfully, none of my co-workers lit a match near me.

Apparently, the Previous Owner had stuck the fuel hose in the wrong deck port and pumped in a few bucks worth. What to do? His call: Ignore it and let the next owner deal with it.

Eventually I got all the diesel out of the tank and the plumbing thru use of 2-3 bottles of dishwasher liquid, but there was a long time during which I couldn't cook with or drink water from aboard, since it all had to pass thru the contaminated plumbing. It made for good dishwashing and showering tho.

"Hot diesel yoga" does have a certain ring to it...

Hot Diesel