Five foot-itis.. happy/sad/reflective day....

[Shawn]

Hi Jon,

Thanks, I was thrilled to spend time with the owner and see what kind of condition he kept Chouchou in.

Your method sounds very useful and one I will use... next year. This year I have a piling on one side and a Pearson 23 on the other. What I am thinking about doing is running two lines from the front of the dock to that piling at the end of the finger pier. Then come up alongside as you suggest and use those two lines to warp her back in. Might be able to do it with just a single line as well. I will also have a spring line at that piling to keep her from going to far back in.

Thanks,

Shawn

[Shawn]

Update to this... it has been a crazy 5 weeks or so.

I went down to Groton on June 27th to bring Chouchou home. This was about a 40-45 mile trip. We left the dock without incident and cleared the harbor and raised sails. Boat handled beautifully and the steering is *very* responsive. Small movements on the wheel turn the boat quickly. She will just about pivot in her own diameter at speed.

As we were clearing Fisher Island the wind picked up so we rolled in a little of the genoa as a first step in reefing. This helped balance the boat but the wind continued to increase. After a bit more we were getting white caps with bigger gusts so we decided to put in the first reef on the main. Fired up the Volvo, rolled in the genoa completely and rigged in the first reef point on the main, then proceeded to unroll some of the genoa again. At this point I'm already loving the roller furling. Water speed was right around 6 knots.

Had about 2 hours of good sailing then our new course put us right into the wind which at this point was also falling off. Our VMG was only about a knot. We were trying to get back before night so we fired up the Volvo again (started instantly) and motored. Cruising along at about 1600rpm we were making about 4knots in the water. This was pretty uneventful other than larger waves that would hit us on the bow and slow us down to about 1.5knots until it recovered.

We ended up motoring for about 7 hours with the engine just purring along. We started/stopped it a few times trying to sail when the wind became a little favorable.  Upon motoring into my home port (about 1/2 mile from my dock) we throttle back and the engine immediately died. Cranking it over and it wasn't firing at all. I had brought an anchor/rode with us (what was on the boat is junk) so we dropped anchor. We were a few hundred yards from docks. The RI Environmental police happened to be passing by on their boat and they took my father aboard to bring him to the dock. Father came back in his twin screw Bertram. He picked me up to bring me back to my dock as I had to move Serenity to a mooring until I could pull her. Serenity felt much smaller after being on Chouchou for 9+ hours. After getting Serenity secured we went back to Chouchou. My father was going to hip tow me to the dock but after we talked about it awhile we decided that probably wasn't a good idea as he had never done it before. We ended up calling Sea Tow who was on scene very quickly and got Chouchou to my dock safe and sound. That was a $300 bill, glad I paid the $28 extra for towing insurance. They reimbursed me for the tow. Luckily I remembered on a raw water cooled engine if it won't start to close the seacock before cranking it much. If you don't do that you can hydrolock the engine as the water pump will fill the water lift muffler back into the exhaust valve. Without a running engine there is not enough exhaust pressure to blow the water out the exhaust pipe.

Next day I was down at the dock trying to get the Volvo to run. The Volvo is a mechanical fuel injected diesel engine that also comes with a decompression lever and a crank to hand start the engine. It requires no electricity to run as it doesn't even have glow plugs. As there is no ignition system diesels are pretty basic to trouble shoot... does it have compression? Does it have fuel? I swapped out the two different fuel filters and attempted to bleed the system. You have to bleed the main fuel filter from the lift pump and the first bleed screw on the fuel injector pump is bled from the lift pump. I was getting some fuel at this point and was attempting to bleed to the second bleed screw on the injector pump which must be done by spinning the engine. Was getting some fuel there but couldn't get anything to the injectors themselves. From there I pulled the tank sender and removed a mesh prefilter that was a little clogged. This improved the lift pump efficiency but didn't change anything with regards to bleeding the system. I kept hearing about how this took *a lot* of cranking to bleed the system so I kept retrying it with no results.

From there I started with a lot more research. I knew I had fuel to the injector pump but none out of it. Checked fuel cutoff (diesels shut off by stopping fuel flow) and throttle linkage but both were fine. At this point I was starting to suspect a bad fuel injector pump. Luckily the exact model happened to appear on ebay and I won the auction for $100.

While waiting for that to arrive I started to prep. for pulling Serenity as I was just borrowing the mooring for a week or two. Installed new trailer lights on the trailer and greased the bearings. I went to move my truck over to the trailer to test the new lights and lost the trucks brakes on my steep driveway. Both front and rear brake lines burst from rust. I was really glad that happened on my driveway and not when towing Serenity home... would have been ugly! I ended up having to borrow a vehicle to get Serenity back home after I had it pulled.

Back on Chouchou I was trying to figure out how the injector pump comes out. Turns out there is an inspection cover on the rear of the engine. That cover also holds the water pump that is driven by the same shaft as the injector pump. Couple of major problems here. Access is a total nightmare. Barely see it and can't get to it at all from either the front of the engine or when crammed down in the starboard seat locker. The other problem was the water pump had one of its seals go back so it was leaking raw water onto the inspection cover. There was major corrosion on two of the bolts that held that cover on. That cover had to come off to remove a nut that holds a gear on the injector pump shaft. Luckily the pump was leaking onto the cover, if the weep holes on the pump had become clogged it would have force the raw water into the crankcase through the second oil seal on the pump.

I ended up having to take apart a bunch of the galley cabinets and the sink to get more access to the engine up front. For the cover I was able to remove 4 of the 5 bolts relatively easily but the last one took a bunch of work. I ended up having to buy a Milwaukee 0375 close quarters drill and left hand bits to try and drill it out. For access to the bolt I ended up in the seat locker on my back with my feet straight up drilling down the length of my body. Took several hours but I eventually got it out. And whoever built the engine 34 years ago used anti-seize on the bolts so the bolt finally came out clean without damaging the threads.

After much struggling I finally got the replacement injector pump installed. Now I could bleed to the injectors. When I finally got them bled properly I could hear the injector firing from the pressure. Reconnected the cooling system and tried to fire it up. Was getting white smoke from the exhaust but it wasn't starting. After thinking about it awhile I realized my timing might be off. Diesels control "ignition" timing by altering the timing of the fuel injection. You do that by rotating the fuel injector pump. I moved it one direction and had no difference. Going the other direction the RPMs were accelerating but not quite enough to catch. Moving the pump as advanced as possible the engine fired up. As the seacock was still closed I wasn't getting any water pumping out.  Quickly shut it down to open the seacock and started it again. Still no water.

The water pump on my engine is a Johnson pump but they haven't made this exact version of the pump in a long time. Rebuilt kits for it hasn't been available in a long time and when they were it was $90 for the kit and about the same for a replacement cover that can wear from the impeller. A newer model replacement pump is $300. Somehow I lucked out and the local marine consignment store have a rebuild kit (oil seals, shaft, cam, bronze bushing) for my exact pump sitting on a high self. Not only that it also had a replacement cover (mine was badly worn from the impeller)... all for $20. A machinist made a jig and a tool to use with his press to change out the bronze bushing in the pump. Only charged $20 for that and then I replaced everything else in the water pump.

After reinstalling all this I tried firing it up again. Still no water. Turned out one of the hoses had cracked under the hose clamp, a gasket on the strainer was bad and the connection from the tranny to the water pump (tranny is cooled from the raw water pump) was also sucking air at both ends.

After working through all that I fired up the engine again.

This time, finally, the engine fired right up and was immediately pumping water. And pumping more water than it had been previously. The worn cover was reducing the pumps efficiency as it was leaking internally.

Last night I was able to put the interior back together the interior. Probably made 5 trips to the car getting the vast amount of tools out of Chouchou.

In theory the first sail with the family will be Saturday. *Fingers crossed* all goes well.

Up to this point I've probably spent 50-60 hours working on her and was getting *extremely* close to reinforcing the transom and hanging a Tohatsu on it. Outboards are vastly easier to work on.


Shawn

P.S. During this whole process I was also swapping out the head as its pump was leaking and everyone suggested to just replace it as the original wasn't very good. Also replaced all of the sanitation hoses, they were *nasty* and had an odor once a little water got into the system.

[BruceW]

Whew!

The guy I know who has a Sabre 28 has some head smell issues; he has been replacing a hose, I think.

[deisher6]

Hey Shawn:
Good post on the trouble shooting of your diesel.  Good logic. 

I can appreciate starboard cockpit lockers.   Fortunately on the C -27 they are huge and engine access sounds much better. 

Enjoy sailing.

regards charlie