"…Every boat possesses an imaginary black box, a sort of bank account in which points are kept. In times of emergency, when there is nothing more to be done in the way of sensible seamanship, the points from your black box can buy your way out of trouble. You have no control over how the points are spent, of course; they withdraw themselves when the time is appropriate. You do have control over how the points get into the box: you earn them. For every seamanlike act you perform, you get a point in the black box. 

 

No matter how good your seamanship, there are times when there is nothing left to do but batten down the hatches and pray. If you have a credit balance of points in the box, you'll be all right. People will say you're lucky, of course. They'll say a benign fate let you get away with it. But we know better. That luck was earned, maybe over quite a long period."

John Vigor, Good Old Boat  

 

When we bought Take Two, one of the first things we did was go through all her gear.  It was an impressive array of mostly useless junk.  At the time we merely noted the existence of her emergency tillers.  These are intended to give direct control of the rudders in case the steering system fails, and are a must-have for any well-equipped offshore boat.

 

Eventually, at a much later date, we pulled those tillers out and test-fit them.  Our impression was that they were pretty much, um… pathetic.  They didn’t have the strength or leverage to apply adequate torque to the rudders.  Any situation that could knock out our hydraulic steering would eat those tillers for lunch.

 

Vigor’s Black Box Theory amounts to Karma.  Everyone knows that if you carry an umbrella it won’t rain.  With that in mind, we decided to build new emergency tillers.  

 

Take Two’s rudder posts are solid 1.5” round stainless rod with machined 1.25” square heads.  At OnlineMetals.com we got some 1.5” square tube to fit over the heads and extend the posts up to deck level.  Ben welded tees onto the top of these extensions, and we got a 48” piece of 1.25” square tube to slide into the tee for a tiller handle.  For added strength we cut some collars from 3” square tube and tack welded them over the bottom of the rudder post extensions to prevent the tube from splitting under load.

 

These are our new emergency tillers.  May we never need them.

 

 

 

Update 1/24/14

 

In the aftermath of the abandonment of the Alpha 42 "Be Good Too", and the ensuing questions about sizing for catamaran rudder posts, I feel compelled to add a bit more information about ours.  I stated above that our rudder posts are 1.5" rod, which is what I see at the top of the tube, and to which are attached the steering quadrant and tiller arms for the hydraulic cylinders.  What didn't seem important to mention at the time is that where the posts exit the bottom of the tubes and enter the rudders, they are 60mm (or 2-3/8").  

 

I feel that the 1.5" at the top is more than sufficient for the torque loads that the steering system can reasonably supply (or endure).  I could perhaps wish for more than 60mm diameter where the posts span between the rudder and the hull, and where any bending force would be felt, but the rudders are not thick enough to support anything larger.  We do have heavy rudder stops to prevent the rudders from deflecting more than 30 degrees, which should keep them from developing excessive side loads.

 

We dropped the rudders several years ago during a steering system refurb, but the boat wasn't blocked high enough to get them out completely, so I've never seen what the joint between these two diameters looks like.  If I had to guess, I'd bet that the 1.5" runs the entire length from the top of the tube to the bottom of the rudder, and the 60mm section I see betwen the hull and the rudder is a sleeve to reinforce it at that point. 

 

Of course, you never know the condition of the welds inside the rudder.  The strongest post in the world isn't going to help if the rudder itself just spins around it or falls off.  As in most things, we take comfort that we have another one.

 

I’ve been struggling to learn guitar for a long time.  

 

I had the regular boyhood daydreams of electric guitars, leather pants, and bleached blonde women.  Then later in life I imagined myself swinging in a hammock, sipping an umbrella drink, and strumming Jimmy Buffet songs.  The only difference between these two unrealities being that the second time around I had a wife who thought I was in desperate need of a hobby.  Tanya bought me a very nice acoustic guitar for a birthday gift, and it has been a source of mutual frustration ever since.

 

Aaron was bit by the guitar bug early.  We raise our kids on the classics, and Aaron has developed a real appreciation for classic rock.  He wanted to play guitar, electric of course, before he knew anything about bleached pants and leather women.  Stubborn purists that we are, we bought him an acoustic instead and signed him up for lessons, promising that if he stuck to his lessons, the electric would come.  You can probably guess what happened.  The lessons were boring and tedious, interest waned, and then we had two acoustic guitars and three intensely frustrated people.

 

Years pass and I bump into a colleague in the Atlanta airport.  He has an electric guitar on his back and a discussion ensues.  He always wanted to play guitar, and now his kid wants to play guitar, but it’s so hard.  Have I heard of Rocksmith?  No?  Rocksmith is fundamentally a game, but with a real guitar and the intention that you actually learn to play.  It works because it’s fun.

 

I was intrigued and so picked up a copy of Rocksmith and a red Stratocaster.  Oh man, is that ever fun.  And the kids are into it.  For the last three days, that red Strat has hardly had a break.  Such a workout, in fact, that we’ve already worn out a set of strings.

 

I’ve realized that electric is better than acoustic for learning.  It’s smaller and less prone to damage.  The strings don’t have to be pressed as hard, so it’s not as painful.  It’s quieter when unamplified, and even amplified can be plugged into headphones.  And it’s more fun.  Rocksmith can work with an acoustic, but really, why would you want to?

 

Why are we talking about learning guitar?  Isn’t this a sailing blog?  Not really, but I’ll give you a sailing analogy anyway:  

• To be great at either, and I mean truly excellent, it must be learned as a child.  A late-learner is never going to sail like Jimmy Spithill or wail like Jimi Hendrix.  
• The fundamentals are not that important.  Jimi played a right-handed guitar upside-down after all, and there have been well-documented cases of compete newbies sailing all the way around the world.  
• Modern tools go a long way toward replacing ancient knowledge.  Learning to read sheet music is akin to learning proper navigation.  While I would never suggest that either is unimportant, they do create a barrier to entry that isn’t really necessary for basic recreational enjoyment.  Rocksmith is for guitar what GPS is for boating.

Only time will tell how well the whole thing works out, but it’s looking good so far.  Rock on.

 

 

 

If any other kid had dared Eli and Aaron to jump off the dock I might have intervened.  But coming from Preston on Jalapeño it was somehow okay.

 

 

 

 

 

Go Jalapeño!

We’re back in the water.  Third time was the charm.  New seals were ordered on Day 25, installed Day 26, and we were launched at 10am on Day 27.  This time without any leaks.  Looking back, Day 27 was the end of our last painfully long haulout.

 

With the seals replaced we can say without exception that everything in the engine rooms is new.  That feels good.  I could have saved myself a bunch of time, money, and stress if I’d just planned to replace the seals from the beginning.

 

But now that’s over and the engines feel fantastic.  Four cylinders, freshly straightened shafts, new motor mounts, and a good alignment make such a big difference over the old engines.  Ben wouldn’t let me run them hard, but I did talk him into a quick sprint to the turning basin and back.  He wants the boat to settle for a few days so he can fine-tune the alignment before we really break them in.  But I was dying to know two things:  can we get the full RPMs, and can we get hull speed?  

 

The initial answer to both questions is “no”, which has me a little bit miffed.  Being able to get full RPMs is the primary measure that engine manufacturers use to determine if an installation is “healthy”.   But there’s still hope.  The new cutless bearings will loosen up over time and allow the shafts to spin more freely, and maybe the break-in process will help.  We’re only about 500 RPM short.  There’s also a chance that our throttle cable is just a tad too long and we’re not actually getting to full throttle.

 

For speed, I think we’re about a knot-and-a-half below where the calculators say we should be.  We were hoping for 9, but are only getting about 7.5.  The difference is probably some combination of the RPM issue, the down-angle of our shafts, and the fact that Max-Props are more about sailing efficiency than motoring performance.  Taking all that into account, we’re probably faster than we should be, maybe because of our sweet underwater shape or because the scale on Billy’s Travel Lift says we’re heavier than we really are.

 

In any event, its way better than it used to be, and we’re happy to be back in the water.

There comes a point in every haulout when we just want it to be over.  We hoped for Day 21.  We planned for Day 22.  We stretched for Day 23.  We prayed for Day 24.  But none of it was meant to be.  Now it’s looking like Day 26 or 27.

 

I thought we were ready on Day 23.  I paid the overtime to launch on a Saturday, but when Billy put the boat in the water, we had bad leaks from the shaft seals.  

 

Most boats seal their shafts with a stuffing box that drips a little all the time.  We prefer a dry bilge and have Lasdrop “dripless” seals.  The irony of a “dripless” seal is that if it leaks at all, you’re completely screwed because it probably can’t be fixed in the water.

 

Billy pulled the boat back out and I spent Saturday evening communicating with Lasdrop and trying short-term remedies.  You gotta love a company when you can get the president on the phone at 8:30 on a Saturday night.

 

My short-term solution was to polish the surfaces of the seal with some 400 grit sandpaper.  I had high hopes for this and called Billy at 10am Sunday morning to give launching another try.  

 

No dice.  Billy put the boat in the water, but the seals still leaked and we had to pull her back out again.  

 

Now we need to go for the long-term solution and replace the seals entirely.  The company has more remedies, but I’m not messing around.

 

Why we didn’t do this from the get-go is a very good question.  We replaced everything else in the engine rooms.  Why not the shaft seals?  I don’t really know.  Because they didn’t seem to need it?  The cost is insignificant to the overall project and certainly to the expense of our sanity at this point.

 

The new seals won't arrive until Day 26 and it will be a stretch get them installed and the boat launched all in one day. 

 

The good news is that the engines run like tractors.  We did little more than start them and put them in gear, but they’re ready to plow a field.  We had to crank for about half a second before they fired for the first time.  Very encouraging.

 

The detritus of the project has begun to disperse into the trash, man van, or recesses of the boat as appropriate.  Spice has rediscovered the rug.

Day 21.  On which we learn that the Suburban does not have a low fuel light, and that 1/8 of a tank on the gauge is dead-flat-won’t start-empty.  It took 2 hours of troubleshooting to figure out, but the solution was satisfactory.  No faith was lost in the Suburban, and no egos were damaged.  How a vehicle that gets 13 MPG and has silly features like heated electric memory leather seats doesn’t have a low fuel warning light is beyond me.  So we blame GM for that one.

 

On the boat front, we got the cutless bearings out, but then were immediately reminded that the struts and stern tubes are metric, 40 and 43mm respectively, while the shafts are imperial — well, almost imperial, 1.245” to be exact.  So we need to buy new bearings with inside diameters that match the shafts, and then have them turned down so the outside diameters match the boat.  More fun at the machine shop!

 

But no, because this is Ft Pierce, Florida and there aren’t four inch-and-a-quarter cutless bearings in this town.  That little lack of foresight will cost us a day, and without a miracle puts a Day 22 launch out of reach.  Day 23 is a Saturday, and getting Billy to run the lift on a Saturday is going to cost me several cases of Miller Lite.

 

We're on the homestretch.  I'm sleeping on the boat in the yard now and Tanya is imposing on my mom in Clearwater.  Thanks Mom! 

 

 

We finally got the shafts back this afternoon, but too late to do anything with them.  What was only supposed to take two days, took nearly a week.  The whole project has been like that, but I’m still hoping to get back in the water on Day 22.  If we don’t make that, then I’ll have to bribe Billy to run the Travel Lift on a weekend.  We can’t be without our home any longer.

 

Machining the collar for the starboard stern tube didn’t go so well – the fiberglass kept breaking.  So instead we’ll use a piece of 2” heat shrink tubing.  It’s probably only slightly better than the layer of hose that was there before, but it’s what we’ve got.

 

Another problem has raised its head.  When the new shafts go in, it will be with new cutless bearings.  Of course, we wait until the day before to try and get the old bearings out, and I can’t get them out for anything.  The next step will be to use the reciprocating saw (yeah!) to cut through the bearing WITHOUT cutting into the stern tube.  I can’t wait.

 

The boat has to be moved tomorrow.  There’s a boat behind us that is going back in the water and we’re in the way.  Moving the boats around the yard is like a puzzle game sometimes.

 

The starboard engine is caught up to the port one now.  The raw water plumbing is finished and the start battery is installed.

 

We started hooking up the starboard engine today.  Fuel filter and fuel lines are done.  Raw water strainer is done.  Still need to insert a vented loop between the heat exchanger and the exhaust elbow.  Still need to install the battery, cables, and switch.

 

The port engine only needs a shaft, alignment, exhaust, and controls connected.  Oh, and I almost forgot — a bilge pump.  I'm not counting the secondary alternators as part of the engine installation.  They need bigger cables run to the batteries and connection to the regulators.  But you can see the space cut out for it in the image below.

 

 

 

The shafts should be ready in the morning.  Hopefully we’ll have the shafts in, engines aligned and bolted down tomorrow.   But there is a small additional complication.  The shaft seals are sized for a 2” stern tube, but the stern tubes are more like 1.9”, probably something metric.  On the port side they made a collar of some phenolic material to go over the stern tube and size it up to 2”.  On the starboard side, there was a very thin piece of hose.  That hose is not going to fly.  Instead we’re going to take a piece of 2” OD fiberglass tube, mill it out to about 1.9”, and epoxy it onto the starboard stern tube. That has to be done before the starboard shaft can go in.

 

Another complication is that one of the bolts on the front right motor mount is completely obscured by the secondary alternator bracket.  We should have drilled an access hole through the bracket before we put it on the engine.  Actually, Beta should have done it before even sending it to me.  This is definitely a double-jointed 8-year-old scenario.  I’m not sure how were going to resolve it yet.  Taking it off the engine and putting it in a drill press would be a delay at this point.

 

Fabrication of the exhaust surge chamber/gooseneck is ongoing.  I think Ben is a welder trapped in a man’s body.  Or something like that.

 

The highlight of my day was drilling a 1.125” hole through the bottom for the new generator thru-hull/seacock/strainer.  The hull here at the leading edge of the keel is 7/8” thick.  Our information about Take Two is that her hulls are made with strip planked red cedar, and the plug we drilled out smelled distinctly of cedar, which was cool.  

 

 

We’re behind schedule.  Today is Day 18 and we’re trying to launch on Day 22, which is the day we lose the condo.

 

If I were trying to be positive, I would start with what has been accomplished in the last five days.  Soo… the port engine is almost completely hooked up!  The raw water thru-hull, strainer, vented loop have all been installed.   The battery, switch, and cables have all been installed.  The fuel hose and filter have been installed.  

 

I know that sounds like one day of work, but it isn’t.  Along the way, lots of things have been changed.  I’m trying hard not to let the place look like it was put together by a double-jointed 8-year-old.  It’s hard.

 

All the port engine still needs is an exhaust system.  The new exhaust ports have been installed, but the surge chambers are still being fabricated.  I’m reluctant to put exhaust hose on the engine until it has been aligned to the shaft.

 

Oh, the shafts!  When we left off on Day 13 the propeller shafts had been put back in to figure out rough engine placement, and we determined that we needed some shims to raise the engines an inch before we could make a final decision.  We should have just used wood shims, but instead we lost a couple days while steel shims were fabricated.  

 

When we finally got the shafts to the prop shop, they said we can’t use the new coupling flanges that came with the engines because they don’t fit the old shafts, new shafts they have in stock won’t fit our propellers, and our old flanges won’t fit the new transmissions.  Ugh.  The most expedient solution is to fabricate new coupling flanges for the old shafts.  That’s fine, but it takes time.  

 

Otherwise, the patched thru-hulls need to be faired and painted.  The props need to be adjusted, reinstalled, and painted.  A new thru-hull needs to be installed for the generator.  Oh, and all that stuff that we did for the port engine still needs to be done on the starboard side.

 

So tired.

The crane came this morning and by noon we had both engines and the generator in the boat.  Not installed, mind you, but at least sitting inside the boat.  

 

 

 

The engines are a tight, tight fit.  This was mostly expected, but it looks alot different on paper.  I also forgot to account for the size of the flexible couplings.  They're optional, and I think we're going to opt not to use them.  We’re making some shims to raise the engines an inch before finalizing decisions about engine placement, flexible couplings, and shaft length.

 

We have decided to use the thru-hull in the back of the engine spaces, and fill in the one in front.  This is opposite from our plan on Day 11 and if we’d had the right thru-hulls then, we might have regretted it.  There's just no room at the front of the engine for the seacock or the strainer.  We're also going to need a smaller bilge pump, which probably means a second bigger pump somewhere else.  

 

 

 

We haven’t fitted the secondary alternators yet.  That should be interesting.  There’s a shelf that might have to go.

 

 

 

I hope everyone got to see some of the America’s Cup, or at least was aware it was going on.  It really was amazing.  With 72-foot foiling catamarans going 40 knots, it’s a lot like watching NASCAR.  And not just the boats are incredible, but also the racing itself.  At one point New Zealand was leading 8-1 and only need one more win to take the Cup.  USA rallied and won 8 races in a row to keep it.  It’s good stuff, and it’s all on YouTube.