As I mentioned on an earlier post, the seals on the backstay cylinder were leaking. of course after I had mucked with it it was worse, so I knew I had to rebuild the thing.

After taking the cylinder off the backstay, you have to dismantle it by removing the end cap. this is held in place by a small allen screw. The larger one holds the seal cylinder in place and also must be removed.




There is a tool available for taking off the end caps, but unfortunately I don't have it. Considering this is the sole hydraulic on my boat, it's not an investment I would make. I don't like that it scratched the finish and in retrospect I could have wrapped it with duct tape first.



The end cap just screws off.




First thing is to dig out what's left of the dust gasket (not much).




Because the gasket had crapped out long ago, salt and rain water had puddled in the unit, causing corrosion. fortunately, this surface doesn't actually contact anything so no real harm done.





With the cap off you can see the sealing cylinder. It's held in place by the hose fitting and the large allen screw.




This cylinder holds the seals for the actuation rod.




You have to remove the hose fitting before you can pull out the piston.




The piston seal. There was about 1/4" of oil in the bottom of the cylinder which isn't much after twenty years. It appears to be in good condition but might as well replace all the rubber parts while I'm at it. I was able to source parts from Coast Industrial (Navtec would have been waaay more expensive). About twenty dollars to reseal the unit.




The hose fitting has to be sealed with teflon tape or a liquid equivalent before reinstalling.




Once reassembled you pump up the ass end of the cylinder with a bike pump.




Good to go. twenty bucks later and it should last another twenty years.



I also decided to fix the engine alarm system. Turns out there were problems (of course). First of all the low oil pressure fitting was all corroded up and there was no contact with the spade fittings. Like I say in my book, friction-fit spade fittings have no place on a boat. the wires should be soldered to the fitting. The other thing I discovered was that a PO had replaced the alarm but installed it without paying attention to polarity. It will not work wired backwards, which is why it didn't go off when the engine overheated. People who don't know what they are doing should not work on their boats; that mistake could have cost me an engine and I would have been talking to lawyers.

Update on my previous post. Success! The engine runs at a nice cool 170 degrees now, at least 20 degrees cooler than it has been. I think the problems have been building for awhile now.

As I mentioned on an earlier post, while trolling a few weeks ago my aux engine overheated. Fortunately the engine was idling and it seemed like no damage was done. I went through the cooling system to try and find the source of the problem. given that it only overheated while idling and not during full throttle, i suspect something in the heat exchanger system. If it was in the fresh water (engine) circuit, the opposite  would be more likely - overheating at higher RPMs.

I made sure the raw water screen was clear and then checked that the raw water pump impeller hadn't lost an impeller. No problems were found.

I knew that this engine still had it's original thermostat, so although it was counter-intuitive to the symptoms, i decide to replace it anyway.

Replacement from Lordco. No way was i gonna pay Westerbeke prices. I brought in the old one and they were able to match it up. The original is a British Leyland part.

We had a meeting after our sunday gathering and several of us wrote letters to the Minister Rich Coleman decrying the planned cutbacks to poor and disabled children's summer camp. Within a few days the clawback was rescinded, a small victory for the voiceless and powerless of this province. Of course we have no idea how many letters and phone calls the Minister received, but I like to think our 15 or so letters was a big part of it. Certainly it was public pressure that brought the about-face. A small moment of justice and fair play as far as I'm concerned.

My buds and i recently ran off a new batch of hooch. As mentioned on an earlier post we bought a food-grade still and began making our own spirits. Not because of a latent alcoholism but to pull one over the feds, have fun, and join the ranks of our bootlegging forebearers. Not that we bootleg it, but the "spirit's" there.

We've run off a few batches of wine which produced an interesting fruity result. You couldn't call it brandy, which it technically was, but enjoyable nonetheless and had an alcohol content of somewhere near 50%. It's expensive using wine though, so we made this last batch a sugar mash. 20 lbs of sugar and "turbo yeast" gives a final alcohol content of about 20%, which is a lot stronger than any wine and costs less than 20 bucks. We then ran the mash through our still set as a reflux column  (the wine went through it set up as a pot still which maxes out at about 60% alcohol and allows lots of flavour to pass through), which gives an ethanol concentration of 95%. Pure fuel, that. I tried a bit as it came off the still and it was so warm that it literally evaporated off the tongue (after stripping off the skin). My friend swigged a mouthful and spewed it all over everyone. You cannot drink it at that strength.
The idea is to cut it back to about 40% with water and add extracts to flavour it. For that 20 bucks of sugar and yeast we got a gallon of ethanol after the heads and tails were discarded (the bad stuff that makes you blind or sick). That's about ten bottles of spirits once mixed down with water and flavoured. I bought cherry brandy, gin, grand marnier and spiced rum extracts, and they are very good.

Some people might be appalled by the idea of running off your own spirits but the only reasons that you can make homemade wine and beer but not spirits is because of the strength of the liquor lobby, and that nobody has demanded the laws be updated (laws which date back to the prohibition era). Distilling is very simple, and as for the potential health issues, every distiller knows that you throw off the first and last part of the batch because this contains the toxins. You can also get very sick by leaving potato salad out, and yet making potato salad's not illegal.


I'm seriously thinking of taking off to Barkley Sound next week. I would be going alone as Tracy has to work. It would do me good to get away I think, and I'm craving the West Coast and the open ocean. I need to get Satan put back together and still want to replace that seal from the backstay cylinder, just because. This would be my first cruise alone.

I've been neglecting this blog lately but that's what happens when you have a life besides an online one! Watched an awesome sailing movie the other day - morning light. Sure it's easy to critique a movie about spoiled rich kids sailing on a racing yacht but that's like shooting chickadees off the birdfeeder. Suffice it to say the cinematography was fantastic and the sailing was, well, sailing. I loved it. Very few movies made about sailing and i've seen 'em  too many times (none of 'em were actually all that great).
I'm a great Patrick O'Brian fan and yet i couldn't get through master and commander last night; the writing was too awful - that which wasn't stolen from the book that is. I have all 20(?) of his Aubrey/Maturin novels, and i'm reading them through a second time. He was a fantastic writer.

I'm doing a  ton of writing myself,a nd have started my first non-fiction book aside from the marine books i wanna write (first one almost half done but it's the illustrations that take forever; the writing would have been done a long time ago but i want to illustrate as i go along, not write and illustrate later. maybe that's not a good idea.

The nonfiction book is more a philosophical/lifestyle book rather than a how-to book. A compilation of knowledge obtained after almost 50 years of the searching, experimenting and testing that comes with living alternative lifestyles.

Lots of irons in the fire. The boat engine is apart waiting for me to install a new thermostat, ream out the heat exchanger, and wire the damn alarm so it actually works when the oil pressure falls off or the engine overheats. I really hope we didn't damage anything when i overheated it last time. good thing we were only idling.

oh yeah, and there's this:



 one of those "maybe not such a good idea" moments.

The timing is impeccable considering my last post, and validates my arguments in a very gross way. I read in this morning's paper that the BC Liberals are clawing back the one little benefit that kids on welfare have always been able to look forward to - summer camp.

BC has the highest child poverty rate in the country, and has done so for almost a decade despite enormous economic growth in the province. These children have grossly underfunded food, shelter, healthcare and clothing, yet those in power have now decided that given the government's budget shortfall that they will take back the only thing these children could look forward to once a year-summer camp.
The deplorable conditions this kids live in is unimaginable, especially considering that Canada is one of the richest countries in the world. And yet the government seems to think that it is moral to deal with a fiscal problem by clawing back benefits from the province's poorest kids.
There is no way this can be fiscally or morally justified. BC is staring down a price tag for a big party -the olympics - to the tune of a couple billion dollars, but this is where they look to save money? I wonder what those in power would say to welfare recipients who blow a massive load of money they don't have on a party they cannot afford and then take money from their already-deprived kids to try and balance the account?

If the province is in deficit (it is) than how about raising taxes to the top 10% of earners a couple of percentage points? Surely they should pay rather than kids on welfare, especially since many of them will benefit handsomely from the coming olympics.

It is an example of the points i made in the earlier post:

• The arrogance of those in power - if you're poor it's your fault and so you are undeserving. I'm wealthy because of my merits.
• The complacency and  lack of compassion towards those who are weak- people act more or less in what they see as their OWN interest.
• The more people have, the more they want. Although the wealthy in this province are VERY wealthy, the government not only protects their wealth, they spend billions of tax dollars helping them accumulate more (olympics), even if it means clawing back summer camp form poor kids.
• Throughout history the wealthy and powerful have fed upon, destroyed, used, and blamed the poor. How can this be seen in any other light? If BC was poor, of course we couldn't afford summer camp for these kids. But if we can afford a half billion dollar convention centre, a 2 billion dollar party, we can afford summer camp for massively underprivileged kids.

I've started a facebook group about this. I'm also gonna start a letter writing campaign.

after having this article recommended to me, i was unsure how to respond. my first impression was "yeah...so?" much of what he writes is patently obvious; it takes little research and thought to arrive at these conclusions. but then i remember that most people do little of either, or else we wouldn't be where we find ourselves now. As broadbent points out, the right relies on simple, vacuous statements rather than careful arguments or facts, and yet with these they managed to reverse much of a 1/2 century of social progress.

arguments aside, one only has to lift their eyes from their own selfish concerns to have the truth confirmed. I came to adulthood at the beginning of this process and so i knew what it was like at the pinnacle and see how far things have declined. how far we, as a civilisation, have allowed others to reduce us.

I'm a thoughtful person. i spent ten years in university just for the hell of it, simply because i wanted to know. i spend hours a day reading and researching. i've written four novels. i've had 8 careers. i've been around almost 1/2 a century myself. i like to think i'm pretty well placed to look, examine, think, and make my own decisions and assertions based on much more than what sounds good or what i was taught by my parents and society.

after all this i've come to the following conclusions regarding human nature:

• everyone is afraid, more or less.
• passivity is the default because it's easiest and safest.
• most people are motivated - and greatly limited - by shame.
• people act more or less in what they see as their own interest.
• power and wealth make people believe in their own deservedness and the essential failings of others.
• the more people have, the more they want.
• the more rigid the paradigm the more it becomes part of a person's identity and the more vigorously they will defend it.
• throughout history the wealthy and powerful have fed upon, destroyed, used, and blamed the poor. the last 100 years is an enormous exception, and in many ways pits philosophy, an ideal, against human nature.
• power operates in it's own self-interest.
• the decline in political participation is due to primarily to the fact that we have become distracted, spoiled, and self-absorbed. People are motivated to vote when they have been through war, plague, or famine.

if this seems cynical, it isn't meant to be. there is a reason why all religions teach how we must guard against our instinctive natures, because they are not the best parts of ourselves. our ideals and our minds allow us to move beyond our primitive basics. we are learning how much human behaviour is genetic, and how much of our natures have arisen in prehistorical, evolutionary contexts. Mind was the last to evolve in the animal homo sapiens.

how all this relates to the essay in question is that those of us who believe in dignity for all persons, help for the unfortunate, and compassion for the weak and dispossessed are fighting against our very natures as human beings. and ultimately why we see the social degradation that has come about in the last 30 years. if we were naturally compassionate, caring, and understanding creatures history would look very different. so would the present. it is our ideals only that have elevated us above the level of barbarism, and we have allowed their corruption by those with a very narrow self interest.

 


 

i recently stumbled upon this story linked to a twitter post:

dailypress.com
Isle of Wight
Reserve ships pose environmental hazard
By Allison T. Williams
247-4535
June 9, 2009

ISLE OF WIGHT – Potential environmental hazards posed by the James River Reserve Fleet are spurring a third locality to ask Congress to remove the decaying hulks from the river.

The Isle of Wight Board of Supervisors is poised to approve a resolution on Thursday urging the federal government to remove the 24 remaining obsolete ships that have been moored in the James River, near Fort Eustis, for decades.



James City County and Newport News passed similar resolutions earlier this year. Other localities that could be impacted by environmental damage from the fleet, including Suffolk and Hampton, are also being asked to consider adopting a similar resolution.

The government has estimated that the ghost fleet holds about 7.7 million gallons of oil and fuel, slightly less than the Exxon Valdez spilled off the coast of Alaska in 1989. Local officials worry the fuels stored on the ships could leak and cause significant environmental damage to the James River and surrounding waterways, according to the resolution.

The resolution notes there have been several minor leaks since 1998, creating cleanup costs totaling about $2 million. The U.S. Maritime Administration, in 2002, estimated removing the obsolete fleet would cost about $177 million.

"I think we need to move those ships out of there as soon as possible," said James Brown, chairman of the Isle of Board of Supervisors.

Brown recalled how the river was unfishable for years after the chemical Kepone was found in the James River in the 1970s.



The government is making progress in trimming down the James River Reserve Fleet, said Susan Clark, public affairs director for the U.S. Maritime Administration. The most recent ship to leave, the Milwaukee, an oiler built in 1969, was sold for scrap metal to a company in Chesapeake in February.

The agency has removed 78 ships from the fleet since 2001. Although most were sold for scrap metal, other have been cleaned and sunk off the Florida coast to help rebuild reefs,
Clark said.

The government announced Monday that it has sold another ship from the ghost fleet for scrap-metal recycling.

The Suribachi was sold to a company in Texas for $20,001. The ship is tentatively to leave the fleet on July 2.

Other than the recent hulk aground in Sooke basin, I've never run into abandoned vessels. I've seen a few very large x-tugs, trawlers etc and they are always owned by someone. the Sooke example was owned until the owner realised the ship was doomed and better to just disappear and let someone else clean it up.

it seems like such a waste to abandon these vessels. i understand it is completely uneconomical to make them seaworthy again, but as floating homes and liveaboards wouldn't they be suitable? Why does this region have so many abandoned vessels while we in BC don't have the same problem? In my experience people seem to want to extend the usefull lives of large vessels long past the point where they are safe for anything beyond a place to live. i would love it to get my hands on a major vessel to use as a liveaboard.

We are back from our trip through the Gulf Islands. It's so pretty in there and the sailing was superb -many times we hit 8.5 knots beating upwind. with just 4 men aboard we could push fainleog hard and see what she would do. even at a 30 degree heel she seemed very happy, although at that point the weather helm became excessive (wheel hard over) and we had to dump the main and tighten the boom vang and backstay adjuster to help her trim.

There's such a terror of heeling for some people and it's so irrational. Gusts of 20 knots with full main and 130 genoa caused a great deal of griping; In a stronger wind we simply would not have been able to prevent her from rounding up. it seems like 30 degrees is the most she will do and allow helm control. Overpowered she would automatically lose power; she's not going over.
I've tried to explain this to my darling wife but it still doesn't aliviate her anxiety. And it's not like she will come with me while we do these acrobatics and learn that she is safe. The smooth power of Fainleog racing along in such situations is actually quite soothing -she is strong and stable.

I enjoyed learning that she needs a reef in at most 20 knots -not from a real "safety" perspective, but from a control one. We've been taught that reefing early is about safety, as if too much sail out will lead to catastrophe ( i think this is part of tracy's anxiety). I have no idea what would happen if we had a full suit out in gale force winds, but she sure as hell wouldn't sail. her ears would be in the water sure enough, but only for a moment as the weather helm would be unstoppably huge and she would immediatly round right up.

It would be interesting to learn the balance between heeling (weather helm) and efficiency. The more sail out the more power you have, but at some point the forces trying to round you up become so strong you have to have your rudder hard across the vessel's flow of water, and that is a loss of power.  Someone has told me that 18 degrees of heel is the maximum you should aim for but i think that's too conservative. you will be losing more power with diminished mainsail to maintain that, compared to any losses provided by the rudder; at that point there is almost no weather helm.

it's going to be a fun summer.

i've been slack about keeping this blog updated because life has been so chaotic and busy lately. Most recently I decided to repair my hydraulic backstay before the hose burst and we spilled a bunch of oil into the environment.

This is what the hose looked like and it's been that way for a long time. Somebody actually wrapped it with tape to help slow the leaking!
 
The backstay adjuster panel. rather old but it works. parts are NLA of course...




Getting all those screws out was a lot of work! The drum is the hydraulic fluid reservoir.




I've seen better hydraulic hoses...




There was some oily seepage on the cylinder which means the seals need replacing. But I'm going cruising so that will wait a little longer.




Installing the new hose.



The old hose was just sealed with a wad of caulk where it passed through the transom. not good enough. I installed a proper fitting.



The old oil was pretty ugly so we replaced it with new. we pumped the adjuster until the oil came out the new hose, attached it to the cylinder, and pumped it up several times to bleed it. Works great.

Noticed this AM that the cylinder was indeed seeping. Add it to the list.

We left on a 5 day cruise through the gulf islands, and ended up with an overheating engine. If you throttle up the engine it runs at proper temp but during idle it overheated and puked out a lot of coolant.

Fact: temp alarm does not work
Fact: insufficient cooling at low rpms points to raw water pump. Probably a busted impeller vane. Just rebuilt it but you can't trust new parts. I also discovered that the new fuel level sensor I installed a year ago has crapped out.
Fact: "rad cap" leaking coolant. had an old spare that i put on but need a new one.
Fact: it never ends.

Still enjoying the cruising. I would have enjoyed a trip to Barkley Sound much more than (another) Gulf Island cruise, but hosting noobs from out east and want it to be easy and fun for them.

This is the kind of thing that is so upsetting to me; how people take such unnecessary risks on the water, and the ignorant behaviour of too many boaters who's horsepower exceeds by many factors their sense or decency.

12 kayakers were crossing between trial island and oak bay when they were swamped by a stinkpot's wave. 5 of them ended up in the water. of course the stinkpotter never noticed (they never do, do they?). In a situation like this there should be charges as 5 people could have lost their lives because of the inattention and carelessness of that skipper. I wonder if he even saw them; I guess we should be lucky that he didn't cut them down. They were in the water for an hour before the Trial Island lighthouse keeper spotted them and called the coast guard.

The other issue is what were these kayakers doing there in the first place?  It's a particularily dangerous area -Enterprise Channel - and even in a 17,000 lb 36' boat I enter it cautiously. You can get very strong rips, currents and boils in there. Maybe they tried crossing in slack water, but what were they gonna do after they got across, poke around and explore? And after that? According to the news reports they weren't very experienced. Of course learning how to use any watercraft requires taking some risks (this is how we develop experience after all), and especially so for fragile craft like kayaks.

But it sounds like that was a pretty big leap for this group, especially as they didn't seem to know how to do an in-the-water recovery. I've taken courses and you should be able to get back into your kayak after a dump, especially when there are 7 others still in boats to help. Yet these people bobbed around in that freezing water for an hour. Worst of all nobody seemed to have a portable waterproof VHF with them. You can pick these up for less than 75 bucks these days! It would have allowed them to call for help instead of waiting for someone to notice them.
We almost had 5 deaths off the waterfront this weekend, and it could have been prevented by a more careful stinkpot skipper and better planning by these kayakers. It almost seems like people forget to respect the sea anymore, seeing it as just one more novel playground.

On another note, this is exactly why decommisioning and automation of lighthouses is such a bad idea. These lives were likely saved because we had eyes on Trial Island. How many other souls are still with us because of these men and women watching out for us in their lonely redoubts? Three cheers for the Trial Island lightkeeper.

The Variety Club Boat for Hope was a great hit yesterday. over 200 disabled kids were able to dress up as pirates, arm themselves with water weapons and stalk through victoria's harbour. It was a hoot for the kids, their parents, and the boats and crews to be totally ridiculous for a day.
They had set up 5 "treasure stations" at the undersea gardens, the wharf street docks, the Canadian navy "Wolf", the fireboat, and the greybeard anchored out in the outer harbour. Visiting these stations we were greated with candy, toys, and water cannons. the kids were thrilled.

We made three tours through that harbour, myself, my good friend Sheldon and his kids Amy and Ben, and Tracy for the first round.

It all went off without a hitch. it was a bit cool with the sun of the last week proving reluctant, but at least there was no rain.

At the end of the day they hosted the skippers and crews with a fantastic buffet and a silent auction. I would do this again in a heartbeat.

at the end of it all we heard a pan pan on the VHF from a 26' boston whaler taking on water and an engine fire. two aboard. i was surprised that it was reported as a pan pan not a mayday.