That Which Sunk a Ship

Some time ago, I had been offered this Cal 34-2.  It was a bigger financial bite than I felt I could chew. A week after buying Sojourn I got an email.  The last line read, “28 years of memories gone aground on a lee shore during a midnight storm.”

She was tied to a mooring ball in the north part of Puget Sound. The three mooring lines all chaffed and then parted.  She ran aground.  She was a total loss save a few keepsakes rescued before going to the grinder.

That Which Sinks Ships

It seems probable that I am the new owner of a slightly used sailboat engine, not because (as the previous owner claimed) it was under powered for the 36 foot sailboat it went into, but because the sailboat it was installed in sank!  Now that I’ve satisfied myself that the engine is still viable in spite of that, I’ve been pondering what might have caused the this boat to sink?

The timing alone offers some clues.  It had to happen in the last 4 months given the date of manufacture.  It likely happened in the last 2 months as repowers rarely happen overnight. I was told by the previous owner that it had been sitting for about a month.  Given his omission of the subject at hand, who knows?  But,given its placement in the shop behind some of the kind of stuff that seems to collect in shops, perhaps. That places the time of sinking in January or February.  Perhaps it was a Christmas break project.

Was the sinking related to the repower itself?  On one hand, there are a lot of external forces that might cause a boat to sink in Puget Sound in the middle of winter.  We get fairly intense wind storms and had at least two spells of temperatures in the 20’s this year  In fact, the Everett marina was frozen solid twice that I observed this winter.   Perhaps the docking lines chafed to the point of parting and it ran aground. Perhaps something froze and broke. 

On the other hand, this was likely a 30 year old boat as suggested by the fact that it was getting a repower.  What are the chances of it surviving 30 years, only to sink during or right after a repower? As I would hate to be the 2nd owner of this engine to suffer this fate, this bears consideration. By the way, does any one know if the old man in the sea likes red wine as an offering? 

If I make the assumption that it was related to the repower, the next question is: did it sink at the dock or underway?  I’m a freshly minted sailboat owner and, at least this winter, was eager as they come. I only made it about 1 in 6 weeks in the middle of winter.

So, assuming the dock, possibilities that come to mind are: A makeshift plug for the prop shaft came loose.   The battery was disconnected and an unnoticed slow leak caused her demise as the sump pump sat idle. A coolant hose was propped up above the water line, only to fall with the motion of a wave with its seacock open.  Perhaps the exhaust transom fitting hadn't been secured and a storm came up.   All things that I am going to pay attention to as I embark on Sojourn’s repower to be sure.   Which one caused the actual demise?  Perhaps Holmes could do a better job of sleuthing, but my guess is it was a combination of some leak due to a temporary situation with the repower and a turned off or disconnected sump pump.

Experienced sailors and vicarious sojourners alike, it would be fun to read your thoughts on this.  Please comment below.

My curiosity led me to Google it.  Here is the first link I found that opened quickly.   http://auburnpub.com/lifestyles/article_4428699d-e5f2-5e9f-b4ea-28bb54a3860e.html.

In summary, that which sinks sailboats most often is below water line fittings, of which I have seven – that I know of.

Too Good to Be True

I’ve both found screaming deals and wasted time and money on Craigslist.  But, on balance, I have had a favorable experience. This deal…well, time will tell. 
Sojourn’s 13 horsepower, 1974 Volvo Penta MD7A is tired. She smokes when cold.  She doesn’t start without a can of assistance if the outside temperature is below 50.  Incidentally, I fearlessly bought her with two thoughts in mind.  First, that I can rebuild nearly anything.  Second, this is a hands on learning experience.  I didn’t fully appreciate the scope of the second.  The jury can decide which of those the cost of Volvo parts applies to most.

Video of Sojourn’s old MD7A

So, for the last couple of months, I’ve been monitoring Craigslist to get a feel for future repower possibilities. I wasn’t planning on acting before next winter, just getting a feel for the market and possibilities.  Then, to my surprise, a Beta14 showed up one morning at an attractive price.  I nearly sprained my pinky hitting send on my reply email! A few hours later, I was standing in front of it. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  I’m an engineer and a sailboat owner and it was shiny and red and beautiful!
The alleged story was that it was under powered for the 36 foot boat it had been installed in, which seemed at least logical.  After gathering a battery, a cable, a fuel line and discovering that the switch was corroded there was one glorious puff of black smoke and then musical, mechanical, diesel purring.
All of the fluids looked as one would expect in a brand new engine. I only had three reservations which, in the end, didn’t prevent me from buying it.  1. Was it stolen? 2. It had some unusual corrosion, at least to my amateur eyes. 3. Last, but not least, was it too good to be true?
On the first point, the transaction took place at a business with lots of employee and non employee onlookers, so I dismissed it.  On the second, I chalked up to salt air.  On the final, this is where it gets interesting.
I brought it home, fired it up and started going through it.  At first, it appeared it might even be a better deal than I thought.  I found the date of manufacture sticker.  10/10 – only 4 months old.  I also noticed that all of the paint was still on the pulley grooves.  I ran it until the thermostat opened.  The previously virgin looking oil turned a little milky.  I’ve seen this before in engines that don’t get fully warmed up often enough, so I wasn’t alarmed.  I changed it, brought it back up to temperature with no more milk.  I also noticed that the pulley grooves were now partially black – this motor didn’t have much time on it at all.

Next, I moved on to the electrical.  The alternator didn’t work. They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  It only took me a minute to realize this picture was saying “gurgle gurgle gurgle.” I took it apart to find the conductors between the brushes, the regulator and the diodes were gone!  There were only rusty nubs where the conductors used to penetrate the substrates of the various components.
Experienced sailors no doubt have filled in the blanks.  Later, my friend Ben, an experienced sailor, confirmed the worst of the three scenarios running through my mind - the boat had sunk during or after repower.  He had in fact concluded that upon first inspection, but felt is was still a good deal and didn’t want to burst my bubble so he kept it to himself.
So, in answer to the third point, yes.  My fantastic craigslist find, in all likelihood, went down with a ship.  Time will tell if it turns out to be recovered treasure.

A Neighborly Visit

One of the things I enjoy about time in the marina is the neighbors. 

I’m not actually sure if this neighbor is a fella or a gal, nor whether the hissing could be interpreted as chatting or something else, but I enjoyed the visit nonetheless.

A neighbor

RSS Primer

I’m finding that surprisingly few of my friends know about RSS.  It is a handy way to follow a blog like this.  So here is a quick primer.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. If you care to know more about what RSS is, you can read this wiki page on it. If you would like to know how to automatically get updates in Microsoft Outlook or Feedreeder, read on.  These are the two I’m familiar with.  I’m sure all of the others are very similar.

To get started open this article in a second instance of your favorite browser (I prefer Chrome) so that you can keep reading this one. You can do so by clicking here. Click the posts icon to the right.  Then click on Atom.  The screen will turn to gibberish. Copy the address from the address bar.

If you are using outlook, right click on RSS feeds in the tree on the right. Select “Add new RSS Feed”.  Paste the address you copied into the window and accept. You are off to the races!

If you are using FeedReeder, open it and press F3.  The address will usually auto populate.  Click OK.  Change the description if you like. 

Now, anytime I add a post, you will automatically be notified.  Here is what it looks like in FeedReeder. 

 

 

Happy Sojourning!

Topping Off the Batteries

Tuesday is usually Jack’s Pokemon league night, and I usually watch the girls.  On this particular Tuesday, my wife called at about 4:30 and informed me that she negotiated a play date with a friend in lieu of Jack’s Pokemon league. I had the evening to myself. What I really think she negotiated was a little time with an adult, for which I can’t blame her. 

To go up to the boat or not to…. what a stupid question!  Besides, I needed to check on critical supplies. This evening, the critical supply on my mind was the Black Box of red wine kept in the galley. In case you are wondering, I find boxed wine works better than bottles on the boat – more efficient storage, longer shelf life when opened, etc.

Seventeen minutes later, I was pulling into the Everett Marina parking lot. A few minutes later, I was satisfied that my mission was accomplished and diminished some of that critical supply in a coffee mug.  I put on a little B.B. King and proceeded to have an existential experience.

The marina was a rare and delightful sanctuary of tranquility. The water was mirror-like, disturbed only by my own movement.  Steam from the paper mill rose directly toward the heavens. The sailboats were silent, taking a break from the usual wind chime of halyards bumping against masts.  Birds were lazily gliding on laminar air. I took it in for – well, I don’t know how long.


In my new relaxed state, I donned my headlamp and proceeded to tinker on Sojourn. I fixed her knot meter, checked the juice in her batteries, made plans for a new GPS mount and, in general, just puttered. When I finished my wine and my puttering, I went back up on deck and took the, now, night time scenery in again and, then, headed home.

As I left the marina, I felt profoundly rejuvenated - like I had just topped off the batteries that maintain my sense of well-being.

A Sojourn Survived, A Lesson Learned

Kyle and I set out for Kingston at 10 AM. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the steam pouring from the stacks at Kimberly Clark was almost horizontal, racing south by southwest over the navy base.  White caps adorned the particularly dark blue water.

As I drove past Kimberly Clark bearing witness to these, I was in my mind rubbing my hands together with joy thinking this is going to be a great sailing day.  “We’ll cruise down to Kingston, have some lunch and cruise back”  The predicted wind was out of the north with a slightly westerly component, so coming home I wouldn’t have to tack too much. 

Now that I am getting a little practice, I’ve changed the order I do things.  I very quickly fire up the engine and cast off, waiting until we get underway in the channel to take off the sail covers and rig the sails. As we rounded the marker on Jetty Island, I had my first realization that it was blowing really hard! 

I’m new enough to sailing that heeling excessively makes me uncomfortable, so we started out with just the main, in a single reef.  We were only able to make four and a half knots this way, so after a few miles I rigged the jib and hoisted it.  We immediately picked up speed and heeled over.  The average heel wasn’t so bad as indicated in the photo, but gusts would frequently un nerve me.   

The wind relaxed as did I as we sailed past the Mukilteo ferry dock.  It was turning out to be a very good day and I was looking forward to lunch in Kingston, now less than 2 hours away.

Not long after I snapped these photos, the wind kicked back up and white caps appeared again.  We continued out of the wind shadow of Whidbey Island.

As Kingston, or at least the shoreline came into view, I could see massive white objects on the horizon.  After a couple of minutes of puzzlement, I concluded that they were white caps on rollers miles away and that if I could see them from here, they were bigger than than the ones we were now in – way bigger!  I told Kyle “I’m not going there.” Being already nervous myself, I was shocked to hear him ask, without a hint of fear, “why not?”  “Because those white objects on the horizon aren’t ships,” I replied.  “So?” He asked, clearly in a different, perhaps blissfully so, mental state than my own.  I agreed to stay east of the rollers and try to go to Edmonds and then evaluate.

The wind continued to pick up as we distanced ourselves from the protective wind shadow of Whidbey Island.   I was now sorry that I hadn’t pulled in the 2nd reef earlier and sorry I had agreed to go to Edmonds.  Then I was really sorry!  Within seconds, we found ourselves in even higher winds. The wind had shifted a little and we were directly in the blast coming down Admiralty Inlet. Then we took a wave over the bow.  Not a huge one, but enough to get me soaking wet as I wasn’t wearing my foulies.  For perspective, it seemed like a 5 gallon bucket of 45 degree salty water square in the chest.

Fortunately, I’m not generally given to panic, but down wind, I’m sure you could smell the fear.  Evidence of my fear would be that despite being quite wet in strong 40 degree winds, that I didn’t realize that I was cold for about an hour. Kyle on the other hand was still wanting to go to Kingston.  I had had enough. I fired up the diesel and had Kyle man the helm.  He headed into the wind so I could I drop both halyards.  The jib wouldn’t drop, so I had to go up on deck and pull it down.  Unfortunately, I hadn’t set enough throttle. He lost steerage and we found ourselves pointed down wind.  Kyle was yelling.  I couldn’t hear what he was saying but I knew. It was pointless to yell back; it was just too noisy. I quickly lashed the flapping jib to the deck with a dock line using my now numb fingers and worked my way back to the cockpit.  At this point I was thinking “Kyle remembers my man overboard instructions right?”  My man overboard instructions are simple for novice crew, which is everyone that has crewed for me so far – verify the radio is on 16, key the mike and repeat “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday man overboard.  Tell them you are either north or south of Everett, if you don’t know exactly where you are.”

Fortunately Kyle didn’t have to remember.  I made it back to the cockpit and got Sojourn going into the wind again, just leaving the main to flap. I felt it too dangerous to try to tie it. I have now raised lazy jack’s to the top of my to do list.

The white line in the image was our intended path, the red line is my best guess to our actual path once we deviated and the blue lines are the wind. 

We motored back to Possession Point at wide open throttle for about an hour at 3.2 knots on the GPS. Kyle asked, “why aren’t we sailing?”  ‘Cause I’m chicken!” I responded.  Once we finally made it into the wind shadow, I set to dealing with the sails.  Both halyards had wrapped themselves around the shrouds.

Once the halyards were no longer fouled, we pulled the kill knob on the diesel and were under sail again.  Kyle went below and took a nap.  Clearly he was not pondering the same “what if’s” as I was.  I sailed past Mukilteo overpowered and on a close reach. From my experience earlier that day, I knew the main alone wouldn’t make much speed on this point of sail, so I left it that way.  We were making 5.8 knots, at least when the sensor was in the water, which it frequently wasn’t. 

For the first time in a couple of hours, I found myself relaxed, or at least not tensing every time the toe rail dipped into the water.  I’m pretty sure I was very close to rounding up several time as I found myself standing on the lee seat pulling the tiller as far windward as I could to keep Sojourn straight. 

I yelled to Kyle several times as we approached Everett, but he was sound asleep.  It was windy, but didn’t seem too rough, so I set the auto tiller to hold Sojourn into the wind while I dropped the sails. That was dumb as even if I didn’t need Kyle’s help, I should have had him on watch while I was on deck in case I went in the drink.  By then I was wearing my foulies and that was a good thing.  Sojourn dipped her bow into every couple of waves while I was trying to secure the whipping jib for the second time that day. 

Once inside the marina, I set the tiller brake and just enough throttle to maintain steerage and went below for a few seconds to rouse Kyle.  He came out and asked “why are we going so slow?”  To my self I said, “because we have a 20 knot wind pushing us into Sojourn’s slip and one shot to not harpoon the pier or my neighbor’s boat if we miss.”

That night I checked sailflow.  Point No Point reported a steady 30-34 knots the whole time we were out there.  Point no point is at the north end of the blue lines on the map above. 

The old man in the sea taught me a couple of things this day.  First and foremost, he affirmed who is in charge. Second, there is pilot’s saying “never go where your mind hasn’t gone 5 minutes before.” I try to abide by that, if on a slower time scale while sailing. Clearly I failed to do that today. I ended this day with a much greater respect for the power of the sea than I started it with.