'Imi Loa

We are still here…

Rowan — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 03:52:44 +0000

We have been very busy this “summer” getting the house ready to list. I put summer in quotes because it is late July and we have only had a handful of days in the 70s and a few in the 80s.

We have done very little sailing lately but selling our house is a huge step, both financially and psychologically, toward making our cruising dreams a reality. Hopefully it will sell quickly and we can move forward with our plans.

Today was actually very beautiful and we had enough wind to sail by so we had a fantastic day on the water. Right now we are anchored out and loving it.

I am writing this on my iPhone so I can’t add captions to photos but I have included a few pics from the summer, including my first trip to the top of the mast, a drawing of the companionway doors we are having made (an anniversary gift to ourselves), and the river shortly after sunset this evening. I keep forgetting to take pictures of our new (to us but actually quite old) drifter under sail. Maybe tomorrow.

Another weekend of Spring, some more off the list.

Devon — Mon, 02 May 2011 04:45:56 +0000

Nothing too exciting or new this week of obvious Spring. Rowan had to work the weekend so Devon did some tasks on the list.

We are planning on crossing the Columbia River bar this month. We have to make sure the boat is “seaworthy” which is different from “river worthy”.

The teak block adapter mounting the staysail winch had started to pull away from the mast.

Out with the old. The broken dried out husk of a mount.

In with the new. Modern winch mount plate, all aluminum and strong.

New tachometer light switch, very important to operate at night.

Reinstalling the all important cockpit table.

Sparking new alternator.

New LED cabin lights, only draws 0.17 amps!

The list is still really long. It is directly proportional to how much you really want to use your boat. Of course the dollar amount of the task list is exponential in terms of the boat usage as well.

Life is well now that Spring has showed itself.

Night Maneuvers

Rowan — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 01:33:41 +0000

My resolve to stay home this weekend to work on getting the house ready to list evaporated by Friday morning when the forecast for Saturday called for sunshine and temps in the mid to upper 60s (we have only had 3 or 4 days over 60 this year and I think I had to work on each one). We decided to try to get out of the marina Friday night and either anchor a short way downstream (plan A) or tie up at the docks at Sand Island (plan B). I left work at 6:20, rushed home and we packed up my stuff and the groceries Devon had picked up after work and we headed to the marina (a 40 minute drive). The sun set a few minutes before 8, we were at the marina at 8:05, and had the boat out on the water by 8:30. Twenty five minutes may not seem like a big deal but it was a record for us (we had to get the dinghy off the dock and into the water in addition to loading all our crap onto the boat). So there we were in the rapidly fading light deciding between plan A and plan B. Anchoring out is more appealing than tying up to a dock, on the other hand it was getting dark fast and the anchorage was 20 minutes away vs. 5 minutes to the dock. Also, we had never been out maneuvering at night and we had never anchored in the plan A location which had some pilings and shoals (though we had explored it a bit one day and had some GPS tracks to guide us). So what did we decide? We chose adventure and went with plan A. It was pretty dark by the time we were getting close to anchoring. We were creeping slowly along at about 1 knot while scanning the water with our newly purchased spotlight to (hopefully) spot any debris or pilings when we felt our keel touch the bottom. We were in charted depths of 8 feet but our depth sounder was reading 14 to 18 feet and then suddenly it went to 4.7 feet and our depth alarm sounded. The alarm was set to 12 feet but the water shallowed out so fast it barely flashed 12 before stopping at 4.7. I’m glad we were going slow. So we backtracked and dropped the anchor in 18 feet. It wouldn’t have made any difference if it had been broad daylight, you just can’t see into the water around here, but the dark definitely made it more stressful. But we got the anchor set without further incident and had a uneventful night. The wind kicked up a bit and was opposing the current so we were a little concerned about getting the rode wrapped around the keel. We debated setting a stern anchor or improvising a kellet (sentinel?) for the primary rode but the wind died down and wasn’t forecast to pick up again so we didn’t worry about it.

One thing we do need to figure out is a good anchor drag alarm. We currently have 3 options: Our Garmin 441S chartplotter, our handheld DeLorme GPS, and the Anchor Alarm app on my iphone. None are ideal. We haven’t really used the Garmin because there is no way we could rely on hearing it in the cabin until we put a speaker inside (and it seems like a very rudimentary system but I haven’t really looked at it too closely). The app on my phone is easiest to set and monitor but the GPS isn’t very robust so the accuracy is pretty poor. The DeLorme is a great GPS and works great for monitoring your location but it doesn’t actually have an anchor drag alarm. We used a combination of the DeLorme and my phone.

The ball of yarn that was our path at anchor, sorry for the blurry photo, it was taken on my phone.

Saturday was even nicer than the weatherman predicted. There was no wind to sail by so we just stayed at anchor all day hanging out in the sun. It was fantastic and very relaxing. We explored the area a little by dinghy and took some soundings with a lead line. The wind started picking up Saturday afternoon so Devon took the dinghy out for a sail and had a great time. He also rowed out our stern anchor (a first for us) and the next morning he had to retrieve it using dinghy because our primary rode isn’t long enough for us to let out enough slack to retrieve the stern anchor from the big boat. That was interesting in a hard dinghy, I was a little worried he was going to capsize while breaking the anchor out but he didn’t, which is very good because the water is very cold.

Devon chillin' in the sunshine.

Spring has (finally) sprung!

Rowan — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:04:06 +0000

We are anchored out on a beautiful morning. There was frost on the deck this morning but the sun was shining and melted it quickly. We had a nice sail yesterday, the wind was light and a little shifty but it felt warm in the sun (I think the high was only 53 or so) and we had a great time. The days are getting longer so even though the air is still cold it feels like summer is just around the corner, and we can’t wait!

On the way into our anchorage yesterday we had a good opportunity to calibrate our depth sounder with a lead line. We had tried a few times previously but we always had too much current to get a very good reading (plus it was usually cold, windy, and rainy so we didn’t try too hard). This time we dropped anchor in 12 feet of water with no current and got some good readings. Now that we feel more confident about exploring shallow areas. We have our depthsounder set to tell us the depth below the surface of the water because that is easy to measure but in the future we may change the offset to read depth below the keel. I think I prefer how we have it now but the accuracy is affected by whether we are sitting at our waterline so maybe it isn’t the best. Though I hope we don’t load the boat up with so much crap that it makes a huge difference and we can readjust the offset anyway…

You learn something new everyday

Devon — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 17:31:44 +0000

On the weekend of the 12th and 13th we had the pleasure of joining the Sauvie Island Yacht Club for the Anchoring Cruise. The location was the lagoon at Swan Island basin, on the Willamette River in Portland. This sounds great, a lagoon! It’s actually pretty industrial, it’s where all the big ships are refurbished and it’s close to a public boat ramp so the drunk fishermen are going in and out at odd hours.

It was great fun, and full of experiences for us newbies. We woke up early on Saturday to bad weather, rain and cold. We quickly went back to bed and hoped for a break in the weather later on. Somewhere around 10 or 11 we had a light breakfast and got the boat out of the slip and to the fuel dock to take on 5 gallons of diesel, the rain had let up. So we got a late start, there was not enough wind to sail against the current. We started at river mile 86 or so, the Willamette meets the Columbia at about river mile 102, then about 6 or 7 miles on the Willamette to get to Swan Island basin. Almost 2miles to go, and we were making only about 3 kn5ots. The recent engine work means we are limited on rpm for the break in period. It was clear we were going to miss dinner, and arrive in the dark. What fun!

The trip on the Columbia was OK. It rained some, the Sun broke out for a few minutes, pretty much uneventful. I’m glad we had a good heater. On the Willamette we brought out the head sails and picked up a whole knot of speed motor sailing. Very quickly we came to the RR bridge and Rowan hailed for a bridge lift, the tender was in a good mood and we only waited a minute or two while a train passed. We figured the VHF antenna needs 45 feet to clear, the bridge tender reported bridge clearance at 46 feet, that was too close for comfort.

It got dark pretty fast, there is enough light on land to see debris or other boats, we found the raft up easily and maneuvered in to tie up in about 20 feet of water. We had some desert and rum on the host boat, and several hours of good conversation about cruising. 7 boats had showed up for the raft up. The next morning we were up in time for breakfast, and were the first to untie and head back down the river.

We brought out all the sails after turning on to a beam reach in light air on the Willamette. We were making about 5 knots motoring, and 6 knots sailing! It’s great to go faster with the sails than with the motor, that’s why it’s called an auxiliary. Turning North on the Columbia was dead downwind, we set wing and wing with a preventer. We were making about 4 knots. We only sailed about an hour then the wind dropped off and we lost steerage, so the motor came back on to finish the trip to Sand Island. We tied up at the dock before the 50 mile an hour wind hit, the boat was heeling on the dock! There where thunderstorms in the area.

Monday morning we saw some Sun, and sail-able winds. We cast off and sailed up and down the Columbia between Sand Island and Martin Island. We were getting 7 knots moving across the current! Wow! We figure the wind was 15 to 20 knots, we talked about a reef but we were comfortable with the 15-20 degrees of heel. The wind was going with the current so there was no chop.

We decided to leave on a high note, and headed back to the slip. We prepped the boat for the week of storage in the Sun, dressed in tee shirts, no jackets required!

It was a great weekend. We sailed, we moved the boat at night, we found a new anchorage, we rafted up. A bunch of new stuff to add to our box of tricks.

There are leaves on the trees, and there is more and more Sun. I hope Spring is here!

Cold and rain, at least we are on the boat.

Under St Johns bridge

The Willamette at night

Club boats raft up, 'Imi Loa is on the right

Swan Island basin

Turning downwind. Thanks to "Ursa Minor" for the photo.

Going downwind in light air.

No parts left over so we must have done it right!

Rowan — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 22:25:53 +0000

After getting the engine off the boat we managed to get it up to the parking lot and into the back of the truck without too much drama. In my previous post I think I forgot to mention that the engine weighs ~400 lb so we were very happy to have gotten the engine out of the boat and into the truck without any damage or injury to us or the boat.

Back at home we did some initial disassembly in the back of the truck to make the engine a little lighter, then we moved it onto a table to continue the work.

A view into the guts of our little Yanmar. Our poor table could barely take the weight.

Removal of the cylinder sleeves requires a puller, which we did not have, so we made our own. In the photo below the shiny metal disc is large enough to sit on the lip of the sleeve but small enough to pass through the hole in the block. A piece of threaded rod passes through the piston sleeve and the disc, then a washer and nut are attached.

Looking up through the crankcase at one end of our piston sleeve puller.

In the photo below you can see the other end of threaded rod. It passes through a hole drilled in some very stout steel stock. The steel stock is held in place by two of the studs protruding from the block, as the nut on the right is tightened the steel stock can’t move so the disc inside the crankcase is pulled up through the block bringing the cylinder sleeve with it.

: The cranking end of our sleeve puller. You can see the cylinder sleeve starting to come out of the block.

Our homemade puller worked great and was very inexpensive to build. Total cost was ~$12 for the threaded rod, nuts, washers, and the metal disc (Devon found the steel piece in his toolbox). BTW the metal disc was a threaded flange from the gas plumbing department at home depot and just happened to be the perfect size

After lots and lots of cleaning of various parts of the engine Devon put in the new cylinder sleeves and piston/ring assemblies.

Shiny new pistons and cylinder sleeves!

After some more assembly we headed back to the boat to reinstall the engine.

Lowering the engine back into the boat.

Having learned a few lessons during the removal, putting the engine back in when much faster and smoother. Removal took about one hour, getting it back into the engine bay took about 30 minutes.

The engine back on the boat, but the work isn't done yet...

We were relieved to have the engine back in place but it still took about 3 hours to finish the installation.

So….

did

work

YES!!!

For the first time since we have owned the boat we were able to start the engine when it was cold without starting fluid! And there was no black cloud of smoke, no oily residue in the exhaust water. We haven’t left the slip yet so I will need to report back on whether we have gained any power, but even without any increase the project was a success.

So for a recap:

Monday we pulled the engine

Tuesday was mostly spent on disassembly

Wednesday we put it back together

Thursday we reinstalled the engine

Total cost: ~ $600 including parts, supplies like oil and sealants, and a few tools like a heat gun and ring compressor.

… and one last note: Aside from a little assistance from me here and there, Devon did all the work. I was planning to be more involved both to help and to learn, but I have been under the weather since Sunday so I really didn’t do much at all. Devon is awesome, I swear the is nothing he can’t do! No matter what the problem, he always finds a solution. He is a born cruiser!

Breathing new life into the old auxiliary

Rowan — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 04:26:58 +0000

Like most sailboats of her size (31 feet) ‘Imi Loa has an inboard engine. In our case it is a small (2 cylinder) Yanmar diesel. It is rated to produce a whopping 15 horsepower but it is old and tired and most certainly not producing 15 horsepower. It does have enough power to get us in and out of the marina and up and down the river when we have someplace to be but no wind to sail by. However, the whole time it is running it belches black smoke and, if the engine is cold, it will only start if given a shot of ether. Which leaves us wondering if it will start when we really need it.

Diagnosis: Low compression.

Potential solutions:

a) Electric Propulsion: We really like the idea of going electric (quiet and no exhaust) but we really don’t want to spend that much. There are expensive ways (~$10k) and relatively inexpensive ways (~$2k) to go electric but all ultimately cost more than we are willing to spend at this point. FYI the system we were looking at putting together would probably cost in the neighborhood of $4,500. It is still not entirely off the table but it isn’t in the cards right now.

b) Repower with a newer (and likely bigger) diesel: Way too expensive (~$7k) and if we were going to spend that much money (and effort) we would definitely go electric.

c) Rebuild the engine we have: Still pretty expensive (maybe $2k) if we can even get all the parts we would need. And we would still have a noisy, stinky diesel and be $2k poorer.

d) Fix the problem we have (low compression): Replace the cylinder liners, pistons, and rings for $550. It would still be noisy and stinky, but hopefully start easier, smoke less, and maybe even have a little more power.

And the winner is……. d of course

We actually bought the parts several weeks ago but put off starting the job until this past weekend because were moving to a new slip at the end of February and didn’t want to risk being without an engine (the move required going out into the river for a few hundred yards).

Here are a few pics of the work so far:

Engine prepped for removal from the boat.

Starting to hoist the engine using the boom and a "come-along".

The engine is out of the boat and safely on the dock!

The removal went pretty smoothly but required lots of re-rigging on the fly to get the engine onto the bridge deck and then over the combings and onto the dock. We actually videotaped the engine removal, if we can figure out how to edit the video to a manageable length we will post it later. The work would have been a little more fun if it hadn’t been raining and spitting snow, but then if the weather was nice we would have preferred to have been out sailing!

Back in the Saddle

Rowan — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 03:49:21 +0000

For the first time since last October we actually went sailing today!! It was a rare day of blue skies and good winds. Temps were in the upper forties and the winds were 12 to 15 knots. It was pretty darn cold sailing upwind (which is what we did most of the day) but the sunshine made it all worthwhile. Since we hadn’t been sailing in so long I was a little worried it would feel like starting over but I guess sailing is like riding a bicycle… There was quite a bit of chop and we took a fair amount of spray over the bow but it was exhilerating, not intimidating We are now anchored in Martin Slough and loving every minute of it

Last week we practiced spinning the boat at a dock (in case we ever need to get out oh a tight spot). The video isn’t very exciting but I’ll try to embed it here (I’m typing this only iPhone so I have no idea if it will work).

Happy Valentines Day, and a warm boat.

Devon — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 01:15:16 +0000

We finally got a real heater.

Dickinson Newport P12000, propane heater

And with the heater installed, of course we had to ditch those 1lb propane cans and install a propane system to run it.

Rail mounted propane tank

The tank mount is temporary(of course). The heater works great, it’s rated at 9700btu on high. We are happy we got the larger model. We were able to remove a dorade and use the hole for the flue pipe. We plan to move the deck cap this Summer, we will have to cut another hole in the boat.

Propane level is between 3/4 and full

We decided on the fiberglass tank, it’s light and you can see the level of propane.

We have to finalize the mount and make a cover for the tank.

Great weather for spending the weekend at Coon Island docks with the club. We sure tested out the heater at night.

'Imi Loa, the last one at the end of the dock

No news is good news?

Rowan — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 07:15:12 +0000

This month is our sailing anniversary. It was last January that we first hatched this kooky plan of ours so learn to sail, buy a boat, and start our next grand adventure (not necessarily in that particular order).

Yes, that's me sitting in a rigged sailboat in an empty lot. It turns out they close the lake in the winter so we improvised

Right now it seems like we haven’t been sailing in ages but we are being modestly productive.

Devon continues working on various boat projects….

Our new seahood under construction. The lead weights being used to help form the curve in the plywood were originally glassed in under our v-berth.

…while I work on the cruising kitty…

no, it's not my cat!

…and we both continue praying to the weather gods for an early spring.

Tāwhirimātea

I know, not a very exciting post. So for the adrenaline junkies in the crowd (hellloooo, um maybe crowd wasn’t quite the right word) Jon over at syzygysailing has a great story about boat handling in conditions I hope to never, ever, (ever!) face.