Our Continued 'Boat Business' Adventures
Somebody
once said a boat owner is just somebody who has more money than common
sense. There just might be some truthful
wisdom in that.
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| Visual Evidence of Common Sense Disorder? |
Thus
here we are a month following our last post – having moved out of the condo and
back onto Ghost Rider – and we are still
trying to resolve the overheating stuffing box issue. Actually that situation had worsened….on our
last sea trial (after yet another repacking) not only did the main engine
shaft’s stuffing box get overly warm, but the wing engine’s unit was absolutely
cooking. We could have baked bread on
its small shaft. We had barely made it
to the first bridge down-river when we had to turn around and limp back
home. Rick once again spent more hours
in the engine room while we were underway trying to adjust tension and water
flow – while also running a stream of cooling water from a garden hose on the
shafts – but to no avail.
So
James Knight from Yacht Tech made another trip across the state to see if he
could figure out what the hell was going on.
Our working theory on the main engine’s shaft / stuffing box was that
the crab pot tangle we experienced way back in November put enough uneven force
on the shaft to cause yet another alignment issue. (In hindsight, running the boat even at
reduced RPM for those few days probably was not wise; we should have sought out
a diver in Key West.)
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| James Back at Work in Ghost Rider's Engine Room |
So
we once again pulled apart the main engine’s stuffing box, removing the
follower collar completely, and first assessed water flow. While we saw decent volume it was uneven….not
enough flow on the top of the shaft unless we raised the level of the shaft
with some manual muscle power. So that
led us to another realignment attempt, removing the clamps that held the shaft
hose in place and rotating the entire mechanism until we got even water flow
around the entire shaft. We then torqued
everything back down, satisfied that we had minimal friction and a symmetrical
flow of sea water around the entire shaft circumference. And, thankfully, once again our bilge pumps
kept up with the sea water influx.
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| Pulling Apart the Main Engine's Shaft Tube and Stuffing Box...Followed By Plenty of Sea Water Flow |
After
that we attacked the wing engine’s stuffing box. The level of difficulty there is
significantly higher as the working area space is severely constricted to just
a few inches of clearance between the wing engine’s transmission and the floor
pan. But eventually we were able to
remove its follower collar and remove the old packing rings – which looked
pretty gnarly and felt just about petrified (from overheating, no doubt. Rick
was willing to bet they were the original packing rings from 15 years ago.) Unfortunately,
even with all that removed we weren’t getting very good sea water flow. So we double-tied our dock lines, put the
wing engine in gear and then applied throttle.
That eventually forced an acceptable rate of water flow (and expelled
years of unidentifiable crap from the shaft tube). Fortunately we didn’t rip out any of the dock
cleats or ram the dock in the process.
We installed two new rings of 5/16” packing rings, but kept the follower
collar fairly loose to let those PTFE rings settle in while keeping water
flowing in the shaft tube.
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| Wing Engine's Disassembled Stuffing Box....We Discovered Its Shaft is an Aquamet 22 -- Better Quality than the Main Shaft's Aquamet 17 |
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| Packing Rings Removed from the Wing Engine's Stuffing Box -- They Were Most Definitely Shot to Hell |
At
this point, however, a combination of a full / super moon, along with an
extreme low point in the tide cycle and a brisk north wind, was providing us
only a few inches of water under the keel….so while we would not have sank very
far if the bilge pump(s) had failed to keep up, we couldn’t sortie out yet for
a good sea trial. The tide / moon and
wind conditions should improve after a few days, and we’ll be anxious to get
out of the marina to exercise and adjust both stuffing boxes – we’ve learned
from experience those are not one time “set and forget” items.
In
addition to all of that shaft and stuffing box fun, we’ve also continued to
address other routine maintenance and remediation items, learning more about Ghost Rider and her various systems
nearly every day.
→ Rick replaced our Aigean WiFi AN-7000 booster with a new and upgraded version
of the same thing; it was a volunteered freebie from the manufacturer, can’t
beat that kind of service.
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| LPG Control Panel in its New Location in the Galley; Its Previous Location is Visible on the Left |
→ We had some LPG troubleshooting to pursue after the gas range started having
intermittent issues; turns out one of the previous owners had relocated the
galley control panel to a new location, but one that lacked enough clearance
for the switch wires, resulting in bent terminals and odd behaviors. Rick was able to repair and relocate the
panel and the stove is once again tactical.
→ Our Wheelhouse maintenance program reminded us that it was time to have our
Winslow life raft serviced and repacked; that’s recommended at 3 year
intervals. Fortunately Winslow has a
full service center nearby so we were able to drop it off vs. having to ship 55
pounds of bulky raft packing back and forth.
→ Wheelhouse also was nagging us that our dinghy’s Yamaha outboard was due for
its annual servicing. It’s nearly
impossible to get a qualified Yammer tech to come out to a marina to work on a
small outboard anymore, so Rick decided to tackle the job himself. It took nearly a full day but the oil and
filter change, lower unit oil change, two fuel filter replacements, anode
replacements and new spark plugs all got accomplished without too much drama and only a minor mess.
→ During our latest monthly bottom cleaning the diver noted that both prop shaft
collar zinc anodes needed to be replaced, resulting in a bit of a scramble to
find the correct sizes; that took some sleuthing as the boat’s manual isn’t
very good on specifying those particular part numbers, but we finally got it
done.
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| Engine Room with Red Fire Bottle on the Right...It's 32" Tall and 7" in Diameter. A Simulated or Real Discharge Will Make the Engine Room a Suddenly Quiet Place. |
→ Yet another Wheelhouse maintenance reminder told us it was time for the annual
test of the Fireboy fire suppression system.
This was an interesting exercise: first you start all three diesel
engines and energize all engine room ventilation fans; then you disconnect the
lead wire at the engine room and lazarette fire bottles (separately) and verify
that the engines and fans shut down (they do); then you place the fire
suppression toggle switch to its “override” position and verify that you can
restart the engines (we could). It’s a
pretty slick safety system and we were pretty happy that none of that
experimentation resulted in a fire bottle discharge.
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| Our 20 Gallon Raritan Water Heater Cleverly Hidden Beneath the Master Berth. That Big Rod is the Magnesium Anode that Needs to be Installed. |
→ Lastly, it was also time to replace the water heater’s sacrificial anode; the
tank is oh so conveniently located beneath the master stateroom’s bunk, and that
rod is a beefy 16” by ¾” hunk of magnesium located in the hot water discharge
pipe. After depressurizing and
partially draining the tank, this should have been a straightforward task. But not on this boat; someone had used permanent pipe thread sealant on the
existing anode threads. That resulted in
a call to a real plumber who could apply a blow torch to that connection &
soften it enough for removal. (Scheduled but not yet done.)
The
other – and nearly perpetual – set of activities that continues is
provisioning….Michelle has been stocking the boat with all manner of food and
beverage, and apparently in sufficient quantities to make the boat list quite a bit to
port. Rick is trying to offset and
balance that with the appropriate spares and pales of oil plus some fuel transfers, but so far is losing
that battle.
Still....the fact that we continue to stock the boat at least means we must be
optimistic about getting Ghost Rider
away from the dock and cruising sometime soon….hopefully in early March, or at least that's our target. J
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| Note to Family....Ghost "Gaucho" Resides in Our Pilot House Now |
