WILDCHILD IS FINALLY IN THE WATER AGAIN…..YAY YAY YAY YAY and a big YAAAAAYYYYYYY. So as you guys already know I had to suffer thru another 2 week “self isolation” not by choice in a very hot apartment instead of getting my boat ready to go. That’s all done now. For the last 12 days I have been working like a machine to get my girl ready to splash again. Most of the work on a boat can be done while out at anchor, but all the outside bottom work has to be done during those rare occasions when a yacht is up on the hard in a yard. She is lookin pretty in pink again which makes me happy.
The boat yard here has been pretty good to deal with. They oast of themselves as a high end high service marina. This mostly means the charge you for everything thru the nose and nickel and dime you for everything, high end marina right…? They were very little help to me actually with any of my boat work and they did quite a bit of damage to WildChild thru their negligence, but in the end they were kind enough to bend and help me out where they could, they eased off on the nickel and diming me to death which was lovely.
Apparently they charge you $15e.c. a day if you plug a power cord for a power tool into the box in the yard, they only charged me for 3 days. They did not have water available in the yard, as it had a pipe burst underground, so they waived the daily water access fees. They usually charge for use of scaffolding or ladders but they were kind enough to waive these fees for me. I guess for the “inconvenience” (insert giant expensive pain in the ass) of not allowing us to liveaboard our boats while getting them ready to launch they are reimbursing 2 days of yard storage fees, which is very kind of them. I am out $1500e.c. for the apartment and living expenses for the randomly applied Covid quarantine but the marina did reimburse me $100e.c. so that’s a nice gesture.
All-in-all I am grateful for the chance to get all my boat work done and get WildChild ready to launch in the condition I want her to be in. Some American boatyards do not even let you work on your own boat in their yards so it could have been worse. You gotta look on the bright side. WildChild looks pretty in her new bubble gum pink boot stripe and accent stripe huh? 🙂
I had a lot of damage on the bow to repair that had been weighing on me for like a year now. You never want bear fiberglass exposed to water. Well on my bow the anchor had dug chunks out of it during that nasty failed sail in the thorny path last year when the anchor broke free on the bow and hung down in the 10 foot waves and smashed around up there for 30 minutes before I could find and restrain it again. Also there have been other times when crew were bringing up the anchor in rough waters that the anchor swung into and smashed up the bow.
I was able to grind down and fiberglass reinforce all areas of concern and make them stronger than ever, Captain Lexi’s mantra of bigger better more power huh 🙂 Although colour matching dark blue is a hard color to match I did a reasonably good job and hiding some of the paint chip damage, just don’t look too closely.
Another little project that has been on my mind for a while was trying to effect some type of repair to my cockpit cushions. If you have been watching the youtube videos you know I have been trying to save them with duct tape and tuck tape and gorilla tape and glue and everything else I could think of. Each repair only being rather temporary and ugly. My brilliant plan while back in Canada was to buy, and bring back with me, outdoor fabric and reupholster covers onto the molded foam cushions. It took a day but I think it turn out rather well.
Another idea I got from other cruisers was to bottom paint my dinghy, why not? I was already spending ridiculous money on the bottom paint for WildChild so why not use a little extra paint for the dinghy bottom? Dinghies are also subject to the same bottom growth as your hull and believe me I have seen dinghies with 2 feet of hanging marine growth on them from yachts without davits.
This is my $5000 family car so why not protect it right?
I think its a brilliant little idea and I have no idea why everybody with a hard bottom dinghy doesn’t paint it, but maybe I will find out in due course huh. I will let you know in a year how it is going.
Finally after 12 grueling hot sweaty horrible dirty days spent in the boatyard WildChild was ready to launch on time and at the appointed hour. The marina had asked me to wait an extra day because they were launching the boat beside me (from my new friend Jon on sv. Imagine) and it would make it easier to get the lift in to pickup my girl. They promised me the pickup before lunch slot and launch after lunch slot so I could get my pad marks painted. Nothing went according to plan but they did pick me up by 1:30pm and let me stay up for 45 minutes to give my bottom paint some time to dry.
Alex was wonderful about helping me. He said to me later he had no idea how much work it was going to be. He also later called me a machine and was prompting me to slow down and not work so hard, but I had a deadline to make. My other new friends here had also been commenting that every time they saw me I looked very stressed out. The culmination of all this stress and misery however, is launch day. I was nervous, as I always am during my launching, as it is extremely unnatural to see your sailboat up in the air swinging around in the slings as she moves across land but the yard did a great job moving her slowly and helping to keep me calm.
I was nervous and filmed the entire event but I know my girl and had no problems at all. I had just repacked my packing gland for the prop shaft 2 days previously but I did a great job and WildChild’s perfect condition seacocks did not leak a drop of water. All that weird electrical modification I made 3 years ago worked perfectly and my seacocks all look like new. I know of a big trawler power boat that had new seacocks corrode completely away in less than a year and their boat started sinking on their way down the ICW to Florida. Protecting your seacocks from stray current and electrolysis is a real thing, a big thing.
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Engine Troubles
The next big area of stress and concern for me was of course the engine. I must say I FUCKIN LOVE THE OLD VOLKSWAGON RABBIT little 4 banger diesel engine in her, but she is 40 years old and it was like 50 degrees C in my engine room and humid as heck for the last 5 months. So I was a bit worried.
The engine started right up immediately without much hesitation at all, maybe it took 8 seconds to catch and fire up. I LOVE this engine. I listened over the back side for water splashing and had water pumping out it all sounded good…. for 60 seconds…. then I noticed I no longer had raw water splashing out the back anymore. I killed the engine immediately and my heart sank.
UHHH – Ohhhh…. I have engine problems.
Now Captain Lexi is the girl who can fix or build almost anything, but engines are not my strong area. I understand logically how they work, in theory, but they scare me and they are such dirty work, just hell on my nails.
My stress level shoots thru the roof as I fight my internal urge to panic and imagine the worst case scenario. OMG … I’m gonna need a whole new engine… fear runs cold thru my veins. Breathe and fight the panic. I know this ground, I have been here before, I know the taste of fear. I summon my courage and begin working the problem.
I get my emotional brain to calm down and give the logical side of my brain time to think. I am an engineer, I know these steps, I have been here before, I know what to do, trouble shoot, analyze what you learn, gather information and think it thru. I have Alex at my side and my friend Barry is there to help too. I am safe at the side wall and I have tools and resources.
The first easy thing I can check is the cooling reservoir, its bone dry. Fuck I forgot to check it before I started the engine, my bad. I grab a bottle of water and pour it in, and need another and another bottle of water. As I am pouring I can hear water running from the back of the engine, that can’t be good. I pour another bottle and grab a flashlight and peer into the darkness and see water cascading down the back side of the heat exchanger. My heart sinks, this is bad. It is a 40 year old heat exchanger and it has been exposed to salt water now for 2.5 years. I was smart about putting the boat away, I did flush the main engine thru with fresh water and even ran some coolant into the raw water side of the heat exchanger for its preservative agents to protect the inside of the exchanger. I felt like I did everything I could to protect it before I left, but now it has failed. This could be a very hard part to replace.
Further investigation reveals that it was only the two clamps that hold the output hoses on that had failed. YAY….! easy fix. I ask Barry to run over to the Budget marine and and buy me replacements as I begin tearing out everything under my pilot berth to get access to the side of the engine. It does not take long to effect the repair and get the coolant reservoir filled.
We start the engine again, it starts right up, but we still do not have any raw water output….?
I kill the engine again and fight the urge to cry with frustration.
There is still something else wrong.
I consult with my team and Barry seems very confident the impellor has failed.
I know what the raw water impellor is. I know where it is. I know how to get access to it. I have never done it before and I am nervous. I have dreamed about someday having to conquer this problem and it seems today is that day. I have no choice anymore.
With help I get the raw water pump removed from the engine and get the back plate open and reveal the mystical rubber impellor. It does indeed have a single fin missing, broken off and nowhere to be found. Could a single missing fin on an impellor cause it to loose all vacuum pressure and not pump a single drop of water? Barry assures me the answer is yes. He feels quite confident this is the culprit, fix this and you will be good again. I draw emotional strength from his confidence because I do not feel any confidence inside at all.
The fight takes until well after sunset but eventually LEXI WINS again…! 🙂
We restart the engine and this time we have raw water output pressure…. YAY…. We did it… we fixed the engine. This is a huge relief to me, another big check mark conquered on my very long to do list. I have throttle control and nice idle speed, I shut the engine down for the night and call it a day.
The end of a long stressful day.
Cheers Sailors
Thanks for following along.
Captain Lexi
…………… the hot sweaty stressed tired and exhausted…. but victorious …!
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