19-12-24

Back from another trip to Gosport to sort out the latest issues!   Dulcinea is currently out of the water having the new engine fitted – seeing the exhaust elbow of the old engine removed showed that keeping the old engine wasn’t really an option!   Mark (Solent Repairs)  had a look at the keel bolts and wasn’t impressed – they are the original carbon steel bolts and have obviously sat in salt and fresh water for a large part of their lives.  To make matters worse, they were only ever single half nuts on the studs, and so are now almost rusted away.  We could have tried to extract the studs one by one and replaced them – but decided that it would be best to have the keel taken off  and rebedded with new studs in 316 stainless – thus hopefully putting the issue to bed for the next 25 years!   The problem with taking off the keel is that you have to take off the mast to maintain balance, so that does increase the scope of the job – but we can have everything inspected and checked and rebed the mast step at the same time, and maybe even install a deck light!   While the binnacle was out, the bearings for the ship’s wheel were inspected – they were pretty bad – the lip seal had gone and one of the bearings was almost completely destroyed – I’m not sure why it wasn’t evident when  using the wheel, but at least that is a simple and cheap job to fix – in so far as anything to do with boats is cheap! Another little isssue was the engine sea water strainer with inlets and outlets that were too small to give the specified water flow – another thing to replace – when the engine installation is complete it has to be inspected by Volvo Penta as meeting their standards in order for them to issue a 2 year guarentee, so happily all the work is externally ‘marked’.  The marine electrician was on the boat checking the wiring of the alternator and batteries to make sure it woukd pass VP inspection, so I explained what I was proposing in the way of batteries, including Lithium Iron Phosphate for the ‘domestic’ battery bank with some clever electronics as  Alternators and Lithium don’t get on well together – he suggested that it would be better to stick with Absorbed Gas Mat lead acid battteries throughout with a much simpler arrangement. since that doesn’t involve much new equipment and can always be upgraded later if it turns out to be inadequate!  I picked up another tip – the radar was connected from the mast inside with small lever clips as used in domestic wiring -Weco or something – and I thought this was a bit of a bodge, but he told me that modern production boats use them for all the hidden wiring and they were his go-to connector when he wasn’t using chocolate block – so I can give up looking for something more professional!

I stayed long enough to watch the smart new saildrive fitted – I think the engine is due in this afternnon but I didn’t stay.  Got to clear up my mess at home for Christmas…..

Interestingly I had a discussion with Ashley and Andy, the engineers fitting the engine about the engine revs I mostly used when using the engine – based on past experience in other boats I said around 2000 to 2300 rpm, but was firmly told I should run the engine harder for at least some of the time, and up to full revs ( 2900 to 3100) at least for a time each trip or it would carbon up!  I guess fuel economy isn’t the only consideration!

New Saildrive minus the Featherstream prop and Gori cutter.

 

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