Lazy Jacks

We're installing a new set of lazy jacks that is independent of the stackpack. We saw the Port Townsend Rigging Lazy Jack system at the Seattle Boat Show, and decided to try it. First step was to mount two cheek blocks on the mast about 25' up. We're just now starting to feel comfortable going aloft, but going aloft with tools and doing precision drilling and tapping is another story. Luckily, with Geralyn on travel, my friend Matt agreed to help. Here are some pictures of drilling, tapping and mounting cheek blocks for our new lazy jack system. The first picture is a template we made to mount the cheek blocks exactly 15 degrees off center.

Fall Chinook Salmon

We have neglected our blog a little, and here's why - it's fall Chinook salmon season on the Columbia River.  We have put in some hours with a line in the water. Geralyn caught this one. It was delicious!

Tides Marine Strong Track

Our old Tides Marine Strong Track was looking quite tired, so we ordered a replacement. The company has all their orders on file, so if you give them your track number, they can pull up your order and provide any assistance or replacement. Tides Marine has really impressed us with quality and customer service. This is our new track.

Naked Bliss

We removed the sails in preparation for removing the sailtrack and bending on new sails. Removing the sail was a little involved because the stackpack and lazy jacks were all integrated. We like the stackpack concept, but we're not sure about it being sown to the sail. We may go back to a stackpack someday now that we have options. Bliss really looks strange without sails.

Portlight Film

Our forward berth portlights are clear, so they don't provide much privacy. There's also no way to shut out the sun in the morning and we didn't want to use curtains. We looked into some very expensive magnetic panels that go over the portlight, but decided to try a cheaper option for now. This film is made by Gila and it provides privacy, UV protection, and shuts direct light out. It also comes off pretty easily with a soapy solution. We're pretty happy with it so far. We like being able to see out of the portlights, so we probably won't do all of them, only selected ones throughout the boat.

Engine Maintenance

We have a Yanmar 4JH3E 50HP diesel. The manual calls for oil change every 150 hours. We knew the previous owner had changed the oil right before selling the boat at 460 hours.Our engine just passed 620 hours, so we decided it was time to change the oil. Rather than try to drain the oil out of the drain at the bottom of the engine, we used a manual oil pump inserted into the dipstick hole and sucked all the oil out (6 Qts). This is much easier than trying to fit something under the engine and prevent spillage everywhere. We took advantage and replaced the oil filter, which should be replaced every 300 hours. While the lubrication system was drained, we decided to try and fix another problem that we have been having with our oil pressure gauge. If we've been motoring for a while, the oil pressure gauge will slowly dip into the red. The first time, it happened on the way to Portland from Seattle, which was unnerving. After checking the oil, and playing with the throttle, we decided it was either a oil pressure sender problem or a wiring harness problem. The oil pressure sender reads the oil pressure at the engine crankcase and sends a signal to the gauge in the control panel in the cockpit. We bought a new oil pressure sender and replaced the old one. During our test motor yesterday, the pressure read correctly over an hour of motoring. Success! I'm glad it's not the wiring harness. We also replaced the secondary engine fuel filter. It needs to be replaced every 300 hours, so we will replace it next time the oil filter gets replaced. Since we had the engine compartment open, we also decided to replace the water pump impeller. There was nothing wrong with it, but with it's age unknown, we decided to replace it anyway. After careful inspection, we decided the old one was still in good condition, so we put it back in the spares kit in case of an impeller failure. An interesting note: When we purchased the boat, the spares inventory showed two secondary fuel filters. While doing spares inventory, we noticed one of the fuel filters was the wrong type for any application on board. So while we thought we had two spares on board, we really only had one.

New Oil Pressure Sender

Windlass Maintenance

Our Lighthouse 1501 anchor windlass should be serviced every three years. Last weekend, we intended to service the clutches and the motor, but we spent a whole day just trying to remove the clutches from the shaft. Everything was rusted together. We sprayed PB Blaster and let it sit, then came back with the rubber mallet and coaxed all the pieces apart. While trying to remove a rusted keyway from the shaft, the key got loose and bounced off the deck and into the water. We thought of going after it, but decided to write the manufacturer for the part. A few days later, they sent a new keyway free of charge!

Rusty Emergency Tiller

Our emergency tiller is quite rusty. I found a local outfit to completely strip and clean for $30. I'll have them strip, clean and prep for painting, so I can paint myself.

New Dodger & Bimini

Dodger and Bimini Before

Dodger & Bimini In Progress

Anchor Alarm

Our Furuno chart plotter has an anchor watch feature that you can set in the cockpit and at the nav station independently of each other. What's nice is that it draws a diameter of the limit you set. That way, you don't have to guess what to set it to. Our first night at anchor, we set .010nm (60ft). The anchor alarm went off in the middle of the night and we woke up, flashed the spotlight and tried to determine if we were dragging. The location indicator for the boat was hovering near the edge of our swing radius. After deciding that we were not dragging, and that our swing radius was set too small, we decided to set the anchor watch to .020nm (121 ft). Below are our anchor alarm circles for 2 different nights. The red marks inside the circle are our tracks from swinging at anchor.

Tomato and Mozzarella Fans

On our way back to Hayden Island, Geralyn made this beautiful and delicious lunch. It's a recipe from a Jaques Pepin cookbook that we like; Fast Food My Way.

Martin Island

We found this cool little anchorage called Martin Slough, on the north side of the Columbia. The approach is a little shallow, but no problem at this time of the year, with the river near flood stage. There were a few boats in the anchorage already, so we picked a spot we thought was far away from the other boats, but once we had let out our anchor chain, we thought our swing radius was too close to a trawler. We didn't want to worry about it, so we raised the anchor and dropped it again about 100 ft back. This time, we landed pretty close to shore, but after monitoring our swing, decided it would be ok. Our Furuno chart plotter has an anchor watch feature that you can set in the cockpit and at the nav station independently of each other. During the evening, we set both so we could hear the alarm in either the cockpit or in the cabin. At night, we set the anchor watch at the nav station only, to conserve amps. We also have a handheld Garmin GPS that has an anchor watch, so if we are worried about dragging anchor, we can set the handheld anchor alarm in the forward berth as well. Depth was 30ft, so we let out 200ft of scope (almost 7:1).

Martin Island

Broken ATN Spinnaker Sock Block

A couple of weeks ago, we had a try at the cruising spinnaker. The conditions were perfect with light NW winds. Our cruising spinnaker comes in this ATN spinnaker sock, which no one onboard was familiar with. We have flown traditional spinnakers before, with a turtle, topping lift, downhaul and sheets, but never a spinnaker with a sock before.We connected the spinnaker halyard to the head of the sail/sock. Then, we hoisted the sock with the sail in it. We connected the tackline to the bow roller since it is forward of the bow pulpit. We had attached two blocks at the stern, to control both sheets and ran the lazy sheet in front of the headstay. We hoisted the sock halfway up, and started to run into some resistance, so we lowered the sock and tried hoisting again. This time we noticed some fuzzy bits flying out of the top of the sock. We all agreed that this was probably not a good thing, so we lowered the sock on deck. There is a block at the top of the sock that has a loop running through it. Apparently, the line that is used to hoist the sock, must not be cleated or secured tightly (which is exactly what I did). This made the line come out of the block and start to chafe on the frame of the block. I contacted ATN and they sent me a replacement, which has already been installed. We tested raising the sock at the dock and it went up no problem. We'll have to try using the cruising spinnaker again soon!

Sailing & Fishing

Ram Ball Joint - done!

The ball joint that joins the autopilot hydraulic arm to the tiller arm was so corroded, that I couldn't pull the clevis pin out. I ended up using a puller and a hacksaw to get the pin out (previous post). Since Simrad makes the hydraulic linear drive, the ball joint is kind of a special part (metric). I found a company that sold me the ball joint, and another company in the UK that sold me the metric (12mm) stainless steel clevis pin to fit inside the ball joint. I was a little worried about buying something from overseas, but fortunately Boneham Metal Products have great customer service and the UK Royal Mail rocks! Six days later I received the clevis pin. Last night I put the pin in. It was a tight fit as there is no wiggle room inside the ball joint, but it worked.

Water Heater Leak

We have an 11 gallon Isotemp 40 water heater onboard. The heater works off AC power when the boat is connected to shore power. When the boat is not on AC power, the water heater works off the engine hot water return. The engine hot water is at 130 degrees, so through a thermo-mixing valve, we get more than 11 gallons of hot water for doing dishes or taking showers.

A while back, we noticed one of the fittings to the water heater had sprung a small leak. The liquid coming out of the fitting was pink. The engine coolant is pink, so we found out the leak was at the fitting for engine hot water return. We didn't want to be without hot water for the weekend, and the leak wasn't too bad, so we put an absorbent pad under the fitting, to monitor. After this weekend, we decided to make this project a priority since a coolant leak could make the engine overheat. It was hard to tell where exactly the leak was coming from, but after we took the fitting off and cleaned the area, we identified the source of the leak. The coolant was leaking out of the threaded connection from the heater to the hose. We put a small plastic container under the fitting, and disconnected the hose from the heater. A little coolant came out and spilled into the container. We cleaned up the threads on the heater side (stainless steel) and the hose connector (brass), then applied thread sealant to both. The heater manufacturer called for Loctite 577 or Bondline thread sealant, but we couldn't find them. We found high strength Loctite and Medium strength Permatex though. After a quick consultation with Geralyn's sister in Iowa, Pam, we decided to use the medium strength over concerns that the high strength thread sealant would create too strong a seal and damage the heater if we ever had to take it apart again. The thread sealant takes 20 minutes to set and 24 hours to cure, so later on this week, we will top up with coolant to replace what we lost when we took the fitting off. Then, with the heater exposed, we are going to crank up the engine at the dock and look for leaks.
Before


Before

During

During

After

Anchor Chain Depth Marks

Usually, folks will mark their anchor chain so they know how much chain has gone out. This is helpful for calculating scope. Scope is the length of anchor line relative to the distance from your boat's deck to the sea bottom. Geralyn and I usually do 3:1 for lunch or fishing and 7:1 or more for overnight anchoring. We've noticed our anchor has marks on it, but never knew the system that was used. This past week, we took all the chain onto the dock and documented the previous owner system for marking the anchor chain. We like the system, so we won't change it, just touch it up a bit so the marks can be seen more clearly. We keep a copy of the system posted in the cockpit and the bottom of the anchor locker door.

Here is the system:

w = white
y = yellow
g = green
o = orange

30 ft = W
60 ft = WW
90 ft = WWW
120 ft = Y
150 ft = YY
180 ft = YYY
210 ft = G
240 ft = GG
270 ft = GGG
300 ft = O
330 ft = OO
360 ft = OOO
390 ft = Long O

w = one white mark
ww = two white marks
www = three white marks

Primary Anchor - 35lb Delta G4 5/16 chain

Secondary Anchor - Fortress. 135 ft rope. 15 ft chain.