Narrow Escape

The Good and the Bad

2010-04-29T17:05:00.000-07:00

There is much good to report from a losing effort, which was the result of our Cruising Spinnaker class entry in The Border Run race from Newport Beach to San Diego last weekend.

Our noon Saturday start among the leaders at the favored end of the starting line turned into a late-morning finish Sunday at 10:07:11. Only one boat was slower, albeit by more than three hours, which gives you a good idea of what happened to the wind Saturday night and Sunday. The first of the ten finishers in our class crossed the line at 2:23 a.m. Two more crossed during the three o'clock hour, two more during the six o'clock hour and the other three during the eight o'clock hour. Word afterwards was that boats that stayed close to the shore did better than those farther out.

We raced on PHRF handicap ratings, which ranged from 102 to 198. "Narrow Escape's" rating is 186. In our case the rating was no factor. We finished ninth overall and were ninth on corrected time by wide margins.

We sailed essentially a rhumb line course from the start off the Balboa Pier to the mandatory rounding of the "SD" buoy marking the entrance t0 the San Diego harbor channel. The wind was light out of the west, providing a beam reach on the apparent wind and a boat speed averaging around five knots during the daylight hours Saturday. That is less than our six-knot hull speed. We stayed with the 155% genoa, which was pulling well. Many other boats hoisted spinnakers, but nobody seemed to be running away. We even stayed close to a Catalina 320, a faster boat, much of the day, feeling good about that even though it wasn't in our class.

Last year there was a lull in the wind for a couple hours from about 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., then it came in strong and steady from the southwest and we finished at 1:17 a.m. We still were next to last place (fourth of five boats) but were only 39 minutes behind the winner on corrected time. This year we were nearly six hours behind the winner on corrected time.

Not that we didn't try hard. As the wind began dying we hoisted the gennaker and kept the boat going. When the gennaker began to go limp between the occasional zephyrs and the main was slatting side to side in the waves, we dropped the main to quiet the boat and eked out a few more tenths of a knot. Around midnight when the gennaker was no longer pulling, we hoisted the "windseeker", essentially a 100% jib sewed from spinnaker cloth. That kept us moving. When the wind shifted to a land breeze from port side, we got the boat into the two knot range and hoisted the main and rolled out the genoa again and doused the gennaker. But in twenty minutes it was calm again and we furled the genoa and hoisted the windseeker again.

Around 2:30 a.m. my watch ended and freshly-rested crew took over only to cope with even worse conditions. When I came back up in about three hours we had moved down coast three or four miles.

Such is sailboat racing.

What was the good?

A great, congenial crew of Nate Tucker, often first to finish Long Beach Harbor series races in the 1979 Catalina 30 he has owned since it was new; Hobby Hobson, who has far more racing experience than me, crewing on a variety of boats, and Geoffrey Vanden Huevel, who races his Capri 25 against Nate.

Good food rounded up by Nate, who abided by my simple commandment: "I'm not cooking this year." We ate cold KFC chicken and made cold sandwiches from ample mounds of deli meat and munched on SunChips and chocolate chip cookies, and breakfasted on our choice of cold cereal or hot oatmeal.

Nothing broke. Everything worked on the boat. Not that I didn't dream up some things to buy for the boat as soon as I get the chance.

The best photo ever of "Narrow Escape" by the photographer aboard the committee boat at the finish line. And there were no other boats to get in the way of taking a picture of our joyous moment.

Our guest tie-up at the Southwestern Yacht Club. It's beautiful new clubhouse had only been opened the day before. We enjoyed a fine lunch in the spacious dining room overlooking their docks.

A nice room at the Kona Kai Hotel across the channel and wonderful courtesy van service, not only from and to the yacht club, but also to a restaurant for dinner Sunday night.

Now I look forward to what "Narrow Escape" and I do best -- a single-handed cruise to Catalina in a few weeks.

Hitchhikers

2010-04-29T12:23:00.000-07:00

As "Narrow Escape" made the long, cold journey north to Long Beach from San Diego after placing ninth in its ten-boat class in The Border Run race (another blog coming about that), these three birds joined us at separate times.

The first bird seemed exhausted, barely able to hang on to the dodger. It moved around several times during about 10 minutes and flew away. The second bird, all shades of black, gray and white except for the yellow spot above the beak, was more energetic and more curious. It flew in and out of the cabin several times and left the boat and returned several times before it, too, disappeared.

The third bird, with its brilliant yellow patches, seemed to enjoy the boat a great deal. It hopped around everywhere, including disappearing for awhile inside the cockpit coaming compartments. Eventually it ventured into the cabin, hopping down the companionway ladder step by step and then returning to the cockpit by hopping up the steps. Later it flew in and out of the cabin repeatedly, including two times when somone was going up or down the ladder. We crumbled a SunChip for it, which it enjoyed trying to crunch in its sharply-pointed beak. Finally the bird grew comfortable enough with its new surroundings to hop onto our feet, legs and arms as it moved about. But it resisted our efforts to feed it crumbs from our hands.

The third bird, too, flew away from the boat briefly many times but always quickly returned. Then it disappeared. About a half hour later I found it asleep on the cabin sole obscured by a trash bag stashed in a corner of the galley. Later it was gone, not to be seen again, leaving behind three small belly feathers.

To find out what these birds were and why they might be on our boat, I turned to my daughter, a bird biologist who is chair of the biology department at the University of Portland (OR). Below are excerpts of our correspondence.

Lazuli Bunting

Black-throated Gray Warbler

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Katie,
... What puzzled me is what happens to little birds like this when they leave the boat. Do they know how to fly home? Where is home? Are they social birds or lone rangers? Have they lost their families forever because they spent time on a passing boat?

Those are wonderful pictures Dad!!! The one with the little yellow spot between its eye and bill (called the lores) is a female black-throated gray warbler. Winters in Baja and central America and breeds in the Western US up to BC and over to Denver actually. Cutie pie! The last one with all the yellow on it is a full breeding plumage male yellow-rumped warbler. This is the western race, Audubon’s warbler. Same sort of wintering and breeding range so these guys are just migrating up to their breeding grounds. You probably weren’t that far off the coast so it looks like they were taking a break and perhaps ran out of a little gas themselves without any prevailing winds. The first bird has me stumped still. I’m going to send your pic to some friends and see what they come up with.

Wow – good thing I asked some friends. Ron LeValley, treasurer of Pacific Seabird Group and an avid birder, ID’d our mystery bird as a Lazuli Bunting, female. I don’t think I would’ve figured that one out, but sure enough, staring at the field guide now, I can see that it must be. I couldn’t see this well in the picture, but the rump is blue – kind of a gunmetal blue, but you can see a few of those feathers in your picture. Another species that winters in Mexico and breeds in the western US so it’s just migrating north. You were the easiest way to migrate for these 3 species! Pretty interesting stuff. I’ll look forward to seeing these pics and IDs in your blog Dad!

Great information Katie. And now I understand why no birds hopped aboard when we traversed the same waters headed south during the race. We probably were 8-10 miles offshore when these hitchhikers came aboard. What do they eat?

hey Dad,
They’re normally insect eaters – glean them off trees. The two warblers are forest birds and the buntings will eat seeds – more open country. I usually see them on the other side of the Cascades – Bend and beyond area. Definitely very cool to have them on board and so charismatic! Such great close up shots too. Love, Katie

American Samoa

2010-04-03T23:43:00.000-07:00

It has been ten months since my last post. There are some new improvements on Narrow Escape to report, and our upcoming second year to take part in the spring race from Newport Beach to San Diego (http://theborderrun.org).

But this posting is devoted to the three and a half months I spent in American Samoa after its devastating tsunami on September 29, 2009. I work on an as-needed basis for FEMA and was among the group of workers sent in to help with the American territory's disaster recovery. I was there through January of this year. The disaster took 34 lives, destroyed 276 dwellings and damaged another 2,650. Recovery is going well, but it is always a slow process and the losses can never be fully compensated.

American Samoa is a beautiful place populated with friendly, generous, family-oriented people. If you're familiar with Santa Catalina Island here in Southern California, imagine it in the tropics and covered with rain forest and you have a fair idea of the size and shape of the main island of American Samoa. Now put 60,000 people there, with a village on nearly every cove and a large dog-legged harbor in the center of the island complete with shipping docks, tuna canneries, a small shipyard, a large fuel tank farm, homes, shops, government buildings, churches, and very few tourist accommodations and the picture is more complete.

I work for FEMA's External Affairs Division, where my 40 years of journalism experience is put to use. In American Samoa I was a videographer/photographer for the recovery effort. I've included links to my official videos and photos on FEMA's website in case you're interested. There also are links to personal videos I took on my days off.

Immediately below, are photos taken from a sailboat in Pago Pago Harbor during the tsunami. I got the pictures from the island's public television station, KVZK-TV, but no information on who took them or the name of the boat. The most dramatic pictures, which show waterfall-like wave action, were taken when the water was rapidly receding after flooding the Pago Pago area to about 18 feet above sea level. The water is falling back into the harbor over the shore and docks, with disastrous effect.

Links to my FEMA videos:

"FCO Update 10-20-09 American Samoa"

"Power Restored in American Samoa"

"Private Property Debris Removal for American Samoa"

"Hazmat Recovery in Pago Pago Harbor"

"FEMA Region IX Administrator Visits American Samoa"

"Larger Tents for American Samoa"

"Interim Electrical Power for American Samoa"

"Temporary School Buildings in American Samoa"

"Damaged Cemetery Eligible for Federal Aid"

"EPA Cleans Up HAZMAT in American Samoa"

"Permanent Housing Construction in American Samoa"

"New Temporary Classrooms in Use in American Samoa"

"ICS in American Samoa, USCG"

"ICS in American Samoa, NPS"

"ICS in American Samoa, Governor and FEMA"

Other FEMA videos taken before and after my tour of duty in American Samoa are available at http://www.fema.gov/medialibrary/collections/401

Personal videos:

Christmas Caroling in American Samoa

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSgiuQi200Y

Riding buses in American Samoa

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTKLfMiOV8c&feature=channel

Escaped My Notice

2009-06-10T18:38:00.000-07:00

It was a great afternoon a couple weeks ago. The wind out of the southwest was building. The 1-2 foot waves were growing and white caps were beginning to appear. I was on a close reach several miles south of the Long Beach breakwater aiming for the Queen's Gate entrance. The dodger had just proved itself, deflecting the spray from a particularly boisterous wave that managed to get past the remarkably dry, beautifully flared bow of "Narrow Escape", my 1968 Ericson 30.

Suddenly water was soaking through the back of my shirt as I leaned against the teak coaming on the windward side of the cockpit. A puddle of water was trapped against the coaming by the 20-degree heeling angle of the boat. And it was working its way through the caulked joint between the two longitudinal planks that formed the port side cockpit coaming. I looked across to the starboard side coaming and saw that it was made of a single plank. No joint to leak.

Funny I never noticed that difference before. After all, two years ago I had spent months crawling repeatedly over every square inch of this boat refinishing the fiberglass of the cockpit, deck and cabin.

But I didn't pay any attention to the teak coaming then. It was coated with old varnish, cracked and peeling here and there, but my attention was focused on a filigree of gelcoat cracks in the fiberglass. Wood refinishing could wait. When I finally did strip all the varnish and decide to leave the teak natural, relying on occasional washes with soapy water and bleach to keep it clean, I didn't pay attention to the differing construction of the two coamings. And I didn't recaulk the port side seam.

The other day I tackled the job. First I dug out the caulk between the deck and the coaming outside of the cockpit. Then I dug out the thinner line of caulk inside the cockpit between the two planks of teak.

Somehow it also escaped my notice that there was something inconsistent between the perfectly horizontal line of caulk inside the cockpit and the gently sweeping line of caulk on the outside between the coaming and a deck which doesn't have a straight segment to it.

My defective powers of observation got some help when I cleaned out the inside seam with sandpaper and a corner of the paper finally emerged on the outside, slightly above the deck. The seam was exposed on the outside for several inches just ahead of the winch pad before it disappeared beneath the upward sweep of the deck. Suddenly my wet back made sense. It wasn't the deck seam that leaked. It was that small, exposed horizontal seam, right where the pool of seawater collected.

As for the other question - why was one coaming a single plank and the other was two pieces? - the only answer I could imagine was that they ran out of wide teak and made do with narrower planks when they built my boat. I searched for some structural reason for the split on the port side and found none.

No matter. A couple hours of work and an entire tube of white BoatLIFE Life Caulk should keep my back dry for many years to come.

Losing Isn't Everything

2009-05-01T16:05:00.000-07:00

Before the start.

A video of our race highlights is on YouTube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg8YD7QWMCg

A week ago my three-man crew and I raced "Narrow Escape" to San Diego in the inaugural Border Run race (http://www.theborderrun.org/). It was wonderful. There was wind from start to finish, with a few brief lulls before midnight, and we averaged 5.1 knots. The handicap distance for the short course we raced was 69 miles, which we completed in 13 hours 27 minutes. We probably sailed less than a couple miles longer than that because the rhumb line course from the start off the Newport Beach harbor entrance to the San Diego entrance buoy "SD" was generally a reach the entire way.

Our competition was four other boats that finished the "CRUZ Spin C" race and we beat one of them. The Cal 27-2 that was the only boat with a slower handicap than ours, took second place. We never saw it during the entire race, a strategic mistake on my part.

We got a clean start at the gun on starboard tack at the leeward end of the starting line, while most of the other boats were crowded together at the windward end, which undoubtedly blocked our view of the Cal 27-2. There were three cruising classes racing the short course and all of us shared a single start.

Running the line before the gun.

This is a new race, competing with the venerable Newport to Ensenada race, which we've failed to finish in the two times "Narrow Escape" was entered because of light to non-existent wind. In fact, it appeared that I would not have a crew for a third attempt, so it was welcome news when word of the Border Run alternative popped up and my crew decided they would risk a shorter race.

A Columbia 50 passes quickly.

There was some acrimony between the two race organizers, which can be found with web searches, but in fact, they coexisted nicely and both races enjoyed great wind and nearly all entrants in both competitions finished. A record pace was set in the Ensenada race. And Randy Reynolds, the force behind the Border Run alternative, was first to finish the same short course we raced, in a blistering 6 hours, 7 minutes, 36 seconds on his Reynolds 33 turbo catamaran.

Nate Tucker at the helm.

We slowly pass a Catalina 30 - but it is racing in a different class.

Paul Barbe and Hobby Hobson: I prepared four-cheese ravioli with Alfredo sauce and Caesar salad,

During the Friday evening lulls we hoisted a gennaker, which we had not previously used, and were delighted with the 1-2 knot advantage it gave us over the 155% genoa. But when the wind freshened and stayed that way after 11 p.m., the gennaker was overpowering and proved difficult to take down. Had we ever practiced with it, we would have been able to unroll the genoa in front of it and then peel it down and under the gennie. But I feared something would go awry in the dark and we'd end up with two intertwined sails or pairs of sheets and be in trouble. So we brought in the gennaker accompanied by a lot of commotion -- ours and the sail's -- but no permanent damage to sail, gear or egos. It probably cost us 10 minutes. But we lost to the next fastest boat by 18 minutes and 10 seconds on corrected time, so we didn't defeat ourselves.

The gennaker gave us better speed but was hard to douse.

We spent a comfortable two nights at Southwestern Yacht Club in San Diego's Shelter Island basin, where we arrived about 3 a.m. Saturday morning. On Sunday we motorsailed to Dana Point in about 11 hours and a marina guest slip Sunday night. The motorsail home to Alamitos Bay Marina in Long Beach was another six hours on Monday. The Tohatsu 9.8 hp outboard performed flawlessly, consuming no oil and only about 15 gallons of fuel, including the four hours of motoring to get to the race course Friday and cruise around awaiting the start.

Relaxing Saturday in San Diego.

Coast Guard makes sure we stay away from Navy submarine returning to base Sunday morning.

The Ericson 30 is a comfortable and easy boat to sail, even if it isn't particularly competitive in PHRF handicap racing, at least under my leadership.

It has been 11 months since my last posting on this blog. Much of that absence is because I have been working disaster recovery assignments for FEMA rather than sailing. That includes time in Des Moines, Iowa for historic floods last summer, Baton Rouge, Louisiana for Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, and here in California for the wildfires of last November. I'll probably be deployed again soon, so there likely will be another gap in my sailing ruminations. But when I have more to share, I'll be sure to post it.

Fine Weekend at the Isthmus

2008-06-04T23:24:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was the annual spring cruise to Isthmus Cove on Catalina Island for my club, Little Ships Fleet of Long Beach. We were also joined by the Port Royal Yacht Club from Redondo Beach. And a group, including some of our members, who charter their rides from Marina Sailing, a club with six outlets in Southern California.

Those charter boat guys miss out on some of the experiences of boat ownership. Not me. At 8:30 am Friday when I turned the key to start my engine, it made several weak revolutions and then stopped. Luckily, I had unplugged the power cord about a half-hour earlier, so my dead batteries weren't masked by the battery charger. Otherwise I would have had a couple of dark nights aboard at the island.

Just to make sure it was a battery problem and not an engine problem, I untethered my emergency starting battery from its stowage spot in the forward cabin and connected it to the engine, which fired right up.

The boat batteries were about a year old when I bought the Ericson 30 in the fall of 2005, so no surprise. I knew exactly what to do. Disconnect them. Wheel them up to my car in a dock cart and go buy new ones. Forget about the planned 9:00 am departure from the fuel dock.

I saved $52 per battery compared to West Marine's catalog price, by driving over to Wayne Electric Co. in west Long Beach and buying Delco Voyager deep-cycle batteries for $88.00 each. They were the same Group 27 size as my dead West Marine Sea-Volt Deep Cycle 90s. But they had an extra 15 ampere-hours of capacity and were noticeably heavier.

It was 1:00 pm that afternoon when I finally left the fuel dock with my tank topped up with gasoline at $5.19 a gallon. Sure glad I have a sailboat.

But that's another interesting topic. Sailing isn't always the easiest way to get to Catalina Island, which stretches in a generally NW-SE alignment roughly 25 miles south of the southern shoreline of Los Angeles County. The best way to get a sailboat to a Catalina Island destination is to leave in the morning and motorsail while the wind and seas are calm, arriving in mid-afternoon while there's still hope of getting a mooring, which are first-come, first-served unless you are lucky enough to have your own. The power boaters have all the advantages in the summer-time mooring lottery at Catalina.

Leaving in the afternoon often guarantees a long beat to windward, and several tacks if you're going to the Isthmus from my marina at the east end of the Los Angeles/Long Beach harbor complex. That Friday, the wind hit 20 knots in mid-afternoon and I flopped around for awhile hove-to trying to get a reef into the main. Finally I remembered to uncleat the boom vang and the reefing line easily pulled the new clew the last few inches to the boom. I like single-handing. But sometimes I could do with a better skipper to yell at me what I'm doing wrong.

Opting to motorsail the last few miles west along Catalina Island.

About two miles to go. Arrow Point is underneath the sun.

It took seven hours and 34.7 nm to get there. I tied up at mooring a little after sunset.

I needn't have worried about being shut out for a mooring. There were plenty on the preferred west side of Isthmus Cove, and the less-protected east side was nearly empty. It was still sparsely occupied Saturday night. To my eye, sailboats far outnumbered power boats in the mix. I think fuel prices may make life tough this summer for the Catalina residents who depend on boaters for their livelihood.

Moored in Isthmus Cove.

The comraderie of Saturday night's beach barbeque and Sunday morning's breakfast seemed to match everyone's expectations for the weekend.

The only thing lacking as we departed late Sunday morning was wind. For me it was a case of motoring for an hour, hanging out the sails for another hour hoping the zephyrs would link up into a sustained breeze, and then motoring some more. But by 2 pm it began to blow for real and by 3:30 I was flying on a broad reach straight for home at 6 to 7 knots. Before I got there I had one period of continuous surfing down three-foot waves that saw the GPS hit 8.4 knots. That's heady stuff on a boat with a 23.4-foot water line, flying a 110% jib.

The ride home took only 5 1/2 hours and covered 28 nm.

Uppermost Problem Solved

2008-05-28T22:25:00.000-07:00

Top Climber is rigged and ready for me to climb to masthead.

Shortly after I bought my 1968 Ericson 30 in the fall of 2005, I sailed it single-handed to Isthmus Harbor at Catalina Island. It was a great trip until the end. I arrived with 12-15 knots out of the west, rounded up into the wind on the autopilot and went to the mast to drop the main sail. It wouldn't budge.

Eventually, after what was probably 15 minutes of swinging the external halyard back and forth interrupted repeatedly to maneuver the boat to avoid other boats and the shore, the sail suddenly dropped.

After I was on a mooring, I examined the external sail track with binoculars and saw that it was a little bent high on the mast. And one or two screws looked like they might be a little loose.

Later, I had a rigger climb the mast and check it out for me. He replaced the top section of track, but wasn't sure that it had been the cause of the problem. It wasn't, as I found later when the sail jammed at the top again.

The next suggestion was that one of the screws mounting the VHF antenna to the masthead must be too long and was catching in the halyard. The top of the halyard, about a foot down did show some abrasion. The recommended solution was unstepping the mast, removing the masthead fitting and installing shorter screws. It was the kind of job that could easily cost $4,000 because it made sense to replace the rigging, the masthead sheaves, repair any corrosion damage to the mast and have it refinished while it was off the boat.

The rigging was old but sound and I had figured out that the sail would fall okay if I gave the halyard a sharp yank before releasing it. There were other ways I needed to spend that $4,000 first.

When we arrived in Ensenada last month, however, after abandoning the Newport to Ensenada race and motoring in under main alone, the sail once again jammed in place and it was very difficult to get down.

Several weeks later I decided to go up the mast myself, remove the offending screw and take care of the problem. Assuming that the stainless steel screw had welded itself to the aluminum masthead casting, I bought a set of carbide-tipped drill bits and even practiced drilling out a stainless screw at home.

I've owned an ATN Top Climber for about five years and previously had made a trip up to the spreaders of the Ericson's mast. This time I went to the top and pulled up a heavy bucket of tools, bits, and a drill after me.

The problem screw was slotted, not philips head, which made the task of drilling it out a lot more difficult. In fact, I had only practiced on a phillips head screw. Also, it was apparent that the position of that screw was not in line with the path of the halyard over the front and rear sheaves.

Furthermore, I could see that the abrasion zone on the main halyard -- from which I was hanging -- began just where the halyard entered the forward side of the masthead fitting. Feeling with my finger, I found that a portion of the casting, which separated the main and jib halyard sheaves, was rough where the halyard touched it. It looked as if part of it may have broken off sometime, leaving a jagged edge.

My tool bucket didn't contain a small file, which I would need to clean up the casting. And I needed to be hanging from a spinnaker halyard so that I could move the main halyard away from the area that needed smoothing.

I lowered myself, which is a slow process with a Top Climber, and awhile later climbed up again, hanging from the spinnaker halyard, and smoothed the casting.

I already had a replacement halyard, a 3/8ths-inch Sampson XLS-Extra line, which is smoother, more slippery and has less than half the stretch of the lower-cost Sta-Set X rope that had been the main halyard since I before I bought the boat.

I had ordered the new line from West Marine several months earlier, but had not installed it pending my repair of the abrasion problem. Now I sewed the new line to the old and hauled up the mast, across the sheaves and down the front. As soon as the new line crossed the sheaves, I could feel how much easier it pulled.

There was a different problem, however. The new line was too short! The day I had bought it, West did not have enough line in stock at its Long Beach store. So I ordered it, and received it about a week later, coiled, secured with a wire tie, and packed in a box. It remained coiled and I cut the wire tie just before I sewed it to the old halyard that day.

I had ordered 80 feet of line. The one I received measured 60 feet. I took it to the store, without the receipt, which was in my file at home. Mine is a fairly familiar face at West Marine in Long Beach and a new line of proper length was quickly cut and soon installed.

The difference is remarkable. Partly that's because I've smoothed the casting and partly it's because the new line has a smoother structure. But probably the biggest difference is that the new line is 3/8ths instead of 7/16th like the old one. A telephoto picture shows that the new line does not touch the center divider of the masthead casting, unlike the old line.

New main halyard, left, doesn't rub against the center flange in masthead casting.

The Top Climber has advantages and disadvantages as a means for climbing the mast. It is based on the mountain climbing technique of using sliding jam cleats to ascend a rope. One advantage is that no assistance is required. I did my work alone and without anyone else on the boat or monitoring my progress. It also is safe. It might be possible to temporarily get into an uncomfortably awkward position. But I can't imagine a scenario in which I could fall.

There are several disadvantages. You must have a separate line available to climb, either 7/16ths or 1/2 inch, which is fastened to a halyard and hauled to the top of the mast. That line has to be threaded through the two ascender cleats of the unit, which is easier with 7/16ths line. The company recommends that the climbing line then be led to a sturdy snatch block attached to the base of a lifeline stanchion and from there to a jib winch and cleat where it can be tightened as much as possible to take the stretch out of the line and the halyard.

Top Climber requires its own climbing line, which is hoisted to masthead by a halyard. It runs through a snatch block at lifeline stanchion base, then aft to winch and cleat.

You aren't supposed to lead the climbing line to the base of the mast. The climbing technique requires that you be away from the mast. Your weight will cause the line to sag, no matter how tight you winch it, and that sag will allow you to easily reach the mast by the time you get to spreader height. From there up, it is not a problem being next to the mast.

Climbing line is tensioned on winch and secured to cleat.

The Top Climber consists of two ascender cleats. One is connected to the foot loops. The other is attached to the hard seat that forms the bosun's chair. In fact, that portion with its webbing back straps, thigh loops and hoist strap could be used as a traditional bosun's chair and hoisted aloft on a halyard if you had the crew aboard to do the work.

The principal is very simple. Stand in the foot loops and your weight locks the bottom ascender to the climbing line. At the same time, push up the upper ascender, which moves easily with your weight off of the bosun's chair. Then sit in the chair, raise your feet and push up the lower ascender at the same time. Then repeat. It does take arm and shoulder strength to pull yourself up at the same time you stand because you are hanging at an angle off the climbing line.

I can climb in six-inch increments, with frequent rest stops to enjoy the view. The company's on-line video shows it being done at about a foot at a time.

To descend, the process is reversed. When an ascender cleat is unweighted, the line-locking lever at the top can be pivoted up to release the climbing line and the ascender can be pushed down. It takes some care not to lower it too much, which is where you could end up in an awkward position. If you hold the lever up too long, the ascender can fall of its own weight. But all you have to do is let go of the ascender and it stops instantly.

The climber comes in a sturdy storage bag, which fastens to the harness to become a deep tool bag. I store the Top Climber and my climbing line in a cockpit locker, comforted by the knowledge that I could get up my mast alone at sea if I had to.

It Seems Like an Ignominious End

2008-05-18T08:41:00.000-07:00

"Narrow Escape" was powered by a two-cylinder Swedish-built Albin gasoline engine for 39 of its 40 years.

Serial No. 1 of that engine was built in 1925, according to the parts manual. Mine was serial no. 47542, built in 1967. I had lavished several thousand dollars and a lot of time resurrecting it to service. And I succeeded, for awhile. For 110.6 hours to be exact. That's better than the last two prior owners of the 1968 Ericson 30, each of whom spent a lot of effort and money trying to get it to run reliably.

My motive was partly nostalgic. It was a funky engine, huge flywheel, 12 hp at 1500 rpm, magneto ignition. And a factory parts distributor from whom I was able to buy a brand new cylinder head in 2006. It reminded me of the single-cylinder two-cycle Stuart Turner engine in a native-built fishing boat I owned years ago during a sojurn in Grenada.

My effort was misplaced. If I combined the money I spent on the Albin with the money I've spent on the new Tohatsu outboard and mount, I would have a new diesel in the boat now.

Still, there was a pang of regret when I had the engine block and transmission lifted out at the boat yard last December and then walked away leaving it lying there like the corpse it was. One of the yard crew admired it, calling it a classic looking engine. In different circumstances it could have become a museum exhibit. But the guy in San Pedro who has a small display like that, didn't want any part of it.

There were two plastic containers of parts that I had stripped from the engine prior to having it lifted out. That was necessary for me to be able to muscle and lever it off its mounting rails and into the companionway from which it could be lifted.

I put the containers in my storage unit and have spent the intervening months moving them out of the way every time I needed to get something else out of or put into the unit.

The other day, knowing I would have to move them once more to put my 11-ft inflatable back in storage after it served as a potential liferaft for the Ensenada Race, I finally called a scrap metal yard to find out how to sell the remains.

The containers were heavy. One contained the thick cast iron flywheel and its guard. The other contained the manifold, exhaust riser (aluminum, $175 in 2005), the irreplaceable French-built magneto, and various brackets.

Together, the two containers sat in the backseat of my Mustang convertible and I drove them to the scrap yard. It turned out to be a big industrial facility. I sat in a line of box trucks and overloaded pickups awaiting my turn on the entrance scale. While waiting in line, I had to move to make room for an exiting 18-wheeler tractor-hopper trailer rig that needed the whole street to turn out of the yard, having emptied its load.

After getting the weight ticket at an office window, I was directed "over there" and cautioned to watch out for damage to my car. "Over there" was an area where a huge electro-magnet on a crane was lifting junk off the asphalt and dropping it on top of a 25-foot tall pyramid of junk.

I looked at the pavement carefully for things that could puncture my tires, parked quite a ways out from the magnet machine -- it could easily have lifted my car -- and put down the top of my convertible. There was no way to get the heavy containers in or out of my backseat without having the top down.

I didn't bother trying to lift the containers out. I just opened each one and took out the pieces one by one. I laid them in a haphazard pile that was ludicrously small given the surroundings. Then I drove onto the exit scale, which could easily have contained five Mustangs, and went back to the office window.

"What name do you want the check made out to?" the clerk asked. I said it and spelled it. He knew what an apostrophe was, which puts him in the best-educated half of the population in Southern California. But I had to repeat the rest of it twice while he retyped. Those vowels, the double L and the Y give lots of people trouble with my last name.

He handed me a letter-sized sheet of paper. The bottom portion was my check for $7.10. At the top I learned that my car weighed exactly 3600 lbs when I drove in and was 60 lbs lighter now.

I drove away sad, yet happy that I would be able to tell my wife that I had finally gotten rid of that "junk".

Part II: "Narrow Escape" Returns to Long Beach

2008-05-05T16:46:00.000-07:00

Ensenada harbor with brush fire smoke visible in center distance.

It was hot in Ensenada on Sunday, April 27. Winds blowing southwest off the desert mountains made the air dirty, fed a huge brush fire southeast of the city, and earlier allowed racers to make it to the finish line of the Newport to Ensenada Race along the shorter shoreline route.

After a lazy brunch on the patio of the Hotel Coral, my three remaining crew and I motored "Narrow Escape" to the hotel marina fuel dock. Geoffrey Vanden Heuvel, our fifth crew member, had arranged a ride back home Sunday morning with a friend who raced down in a trailerable trimaran.

We had arrived with about one-fourth of my 20 gallons of gasoline left, after motoring from Long Beach to Newport Beach, motoring about 10.5 hours during the night, and then another five hours into Ensenada after we decided to abandon the race.

I wanted to calculate my fuel consumption, but it was not to be. The gas pump at the Hotel Coral Marina was broken. (The diesel pump was working). The fuel dock crew gave me a couple of jerry cans and told me to take a taxi to a service station in town. The cover for the vent hole on one can was missing, so I had to stop at four gallons instead of five. As a result I added about nine gallons, which gave me plenty to cover the 66 nm back to U.S. Customs and then to the Shelter Island fuel dock in San Diego.

Everyone has to stop at the Shelter Island police dock and clear customs. It was beautifully organized this year and maybe the new passport rule was part of the reason. Although you can still return to the U.S. from Mexico without a passport, you must show a driver's license and a birth certificate to do so. I gave my crew plenty of warning to get their passports renewed if needed, and did so myself.

The U.S. Customs Master's Oath was supplied in the Skipper's Packet by the Newport Ocean Sailing Association (www.nosa.org) which does an impeccable job of running the Newport to Ensenada Race every year with its all-volunteer committee. The form provided a space to enter each crew member's passport number as well as other identifying information.

With all of us on deck, all that was necessary was to approach the dock, bow first, and hand the customs officer the yellow form. He quickly scanned it and gave the bow a shove to send us on our way. I suspect that we would have had to stop and he'd have come aboard, however, if there had not been a passport number on the form for each of us. Prior to the race I had submitted a crew list, with nationality, to NOSA, and that information had been conveyed to both Mexican and U.S. authorities.

After that mandatory stop, virtually everyone heads for the fuel dock and the short-order eatery upstairs. I then was able to calculate fuel consumption, which had been .67 gal/hr since leaving for the race start.

My tactician, Nate Tucker, left the boat at the fuel dock to meet his wife who drove down to pick him up so he would be home to meet relatives on their way to visit.

After refueling, its either a non-stop bash home or a leisurely cruise. I've opted for the leisurely cruise ever since doing the non-stop bash the first year I entered the race.

For me, that means rounding Point Loma after refueling and spending the night in Mission Bay. Tuesday is a motorsail to Dana Point for the night. Then back to Long Beach on Wednesday. This year I had a slip reservation at Marina Village in Mission Bay and a guest side tie at Dana West Yacht Club the following night. DWYC is dark on Tuesday nights. But nearby Dana Point Yacht Club is open for its Taco Tuesday night, and boy was that delicious.

A highlight of the Mission Bay stay was seeing my long-time friends, Bob Dickson and his wife, Elsa. I've known Bob since junior high school and we've shared many adventures, and a couple of boats. They drove me and my two remaining crew, Hobby Hobson and Pax Starksen, to a great dining spot in San Diego's Old Town district. The Dickson's had been at their Ensenada condo on Saturday watching the boats stream in all day, wondering which one was mine. It was fun to be able to show it off to them up close.

The Sunday night motorsail up from Ensenada had been pretty easy. It was even warm at times when the offshore wind reached us. We stood watches of two hours on and two hours off, with a new person coming on watch every hour to break up the monotony.

The only excitement of the return trip came just as I was coming on watch at 2 am. Hobby was in the cockpit and making a 20-degree course change to starboard to follow our planned route up the Baja California coast. He punched the 10-degree button twice on the Raymarine ST2000+ tiller autopilot and it "exploded". The piston shot to port and kept going, falling out of the unit body to the cockpit sole. The boat did a wild turn before it was brought under control.

No problem. I have an older version of the same auto pilot as a backup. It was quickly put in place and cockpit life returned to normal.

I later discovered that all that happened was that the control shaft somehow had unscrewed itself inside the autopilot housing. I screwed it back in place tightly. It tested perfectly and I expect many more years of trouble-free service.

Autopilot disassembled. "Exploding" shaft is beside the uncovered unit.

Stainless shaft had unscrewed from bronze driver

Autopilot fixed

Pax left the boat in Mission Bay on Tuesday and Hobby and I made the rest of the trip, all in daylight hours, alone.

There were a couple of exciting episodes, however.

Late Tuesday afternoon, the outboard suddenly lost rpm and began running rough. I looked back and saw the oil pressure warning light glowing bright red.

Immediately shutting off the engine, I found it fairly easy to stretch out well beyond the stern pulpit, remove the engine cowling and pull the dip stick out for inspection. No sign of oil on it. I carried extra oil. The oil filler plug is at the rear of the engine. It is about an inch in diameter and it was possible to pour oil into the filler hole without spilling. I stopped a couple of times to check the level with the dip stick. I was surprised to find that the oil sump took the full 800 milliliters of oil that is the engine's specified capacity. The outboard restarted immediately, idled normally, and ran fine after that.

I have chosen to call this event an environmentally-friendly oil change. It is done by running the engine dry so that a full change of oil can be poured in.

Joking aside, I'm more than a little impressed that the Tohatsu was able to make use of every last drop of oil before it signaled its distress. Signal is what it did, too. Reading the owner's manual later I found that in case of low oil pressure, even intermittently, it slows and runs rough to get the operator's attention. Sure worked for me.

What I don't know, is where the oil went. I had checked it in Ensenada, but may not have wiped the dipstick and replaced it for an accurate check. The oil level was fine again in Dana Point the morning after this incident, and again the next afternoon when we reached Long Beach, a total of about five more hours of operation.

During the race we had been bothered with difficulty unfurling the jib. Each time I found that the furling line had jumped out of its drum guard and wrapped around the top of the drum. It was easy to clear at the bow of the boat, however, and I didn't try to fix it until we got to Mission Bay.

I decided that the furling line fairlead attached to a leg of the bow pulpit had loosened and worked itself too high. So I moved it down and put a hose clamp around the stanchion leg above it to prevent recurrence.

We didn't use the jib until Wednesday, however. That was when Hobby and I attempted to unfurl it and it jammed tightly on the drum and couldn't be budged. The jib was only part way unfurled.

This time I read the furler manual before "fixing" it. I had put the fairlead far to low on the stanchion.

Equipped with a set of metric allen head wrenches and screwdrivers for the hose clamp and the fairlead I made my way to the bow, which was bouncing in boisterous wind-driven seas. Opposing machine screws secured the two-piece line guard to the base of the drum, not far off the deck of the bow. The manual had cautioned that the screws were "not captive", meaning that they would fall out when loosened and probably be lost.

I carefully unscrewed one and put it securely in my jeans pocket. As soon as I started loosening the other, the guard fell from the drum. The second screw still held the two parts together, but I discovered that I could manipulate them enough to remove the guard from drum and unwind the furling line that had taken three very tight wraps around the bottom of the shaft that held the drum in place.

The allen screws are visible at bottom of the furler drum guard. The guard had been mounted too low on the drum, allowing the line to squeeze above or below it and jump out of drum.

Improperly positioned fairlead initially forced line to wrap at top of drum and then pop out of guard. After I first repositioned it by guessing the proper position, it directed the line to wrap at the bottom of the drum and then jump out and wrap tightly underneath drum. Photo shows proper position, with hose clamps added top and bottom to keep it secured.

Soon enough, the furler was in perfect working order, and I was back in the cockpit with all my tools still aboard the boat. Maybe next time I'll remember to look at the instructions while the boat is tied motionless in a slip before I "fix" something.

Part 1: "Narrow Escape" Goes to Ensenada

2008-05-01T23:58:00.000-07:00

A photo album of the race and return trip can be viewed at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Ericson.NarrowEscape/NewportToEnsenada2008.

I entered my first Newport to Ensenada Race in 2003. It was a windy race and I finished in about 22:47 in the cruising gennaker class. The following two years were slower, but great compared to the last three years. My slowest time was about 26:49.

The significance of those earlier races was that they all were Saturday afternoon finishes. It was easy to have dinner in town while the sun was still shining. That was in my previous boat, a 1986 Cal 33, which was a faster boat than "Narrow Escape", but not hugely faster.

I entered my Ericson 30 in 2005 and dropped out after four hours and about four miles sailed. About 20% of the entrants gave up that year. Last year I was refinishing the boat and missed an even slower race in which about half the entrants failed to finish.

This year, about 19% again failed to make it, and I was among them.

We drifted across the start line at 0.2 kts. under a nylon windseeker jib and mainsail. We were the first or second boat across, but we weren't moving. The eventual winner, Fair Havens, a Newport 28, headed offshore farther than nearly everyone else and disappeared. Meanwhile we got the Ericson moving and stayed ahead of the rest of the 10 boats that started in our cruising non-spinnaker class. I was particularly pleased at our growing lead against the only other original model Ericson 30 in the race.

By late afternoon we had passed the latitude of Dana Point and the San Onofre nuclear power plant and were doing 5-6 kts. We also were trending west of the rhumb line course, and even west of a course to take us a couple miles outside the North Coronado Island.

But by 8:32 pm the wind had mostly died and we were down to 1-2 kts. The cruising class allows engine use between the hours of 8 pm and 8 am, not to exceed 12 hours total for the race. The penalty works out to about two minutes for every minute under power, which is added to the corrected time calculated on the boat's PHRF rating. It seems a worthwhile tradeoff when motoring is more than twice as fast as sailing.

But a quick review of past race results will reveal that the winners of cruising classes sail the whole race.

I had another consideration. My crew of five was larger than the number of berths available. In fact, I thought that two people would have to sleep in the cockpit because the v-berth up front seemed more suited to two people who wanted to maintain contact all night than for a couple of guys who value having their own space.

Thus in early February I was able to reserve a suite at the Hotel Coral, which conveniently also had a marina in which I intended to tie up rather than anchor inside Ensenada harbor. There is a two-night minimum on weekend room reservations. With tax, that woujld total a little over $400 US. So I had a strong economic incentive to get to Ensenada in time to enjoy my expensive hotel room.

We were able to stop the engine and raise it out of the water in the wee hours of Saturday morning for 1:05 hours of sailing at 4-5 kts. Then the wind disappeared and we restarted the engine.

Things didn't improve much after the mandatory 8 am sail-only cut-off. It wasn't until mid-morning that we were able to get above 2 kts., but it didn't last long. The wind died. Wind ruffles teased us on the water nearby, but seldom developed into anything useful.

Eventually, with me at the tiller, we did an uncontrolled (and uncommanded, I insist) 360-degree turn while the knotmeter indicated 0.0 kts.

Finally at about 1 pm Saturday and about 26 miles from Ensenada, I exercised my authority and decided we were dropping out and motoring the rest of the way. I did have support among the crew, but not enthusiastic support and maybe not universal support. There was no move to mutiny, however. Thankfully. I had allowed them to keep their riggers knives and it could have been ugly.

As we motored toward Ensenada, of course, the wind grew boisterous. It was windy where it isn't supposed to be windy according to race lore. That was along the shore, which has a reputation for being a graveyard. Some boats were sailing hard through that graveyard heeled strongly to starboard from the offshore, Santa Ana-like wind blowing down off the mountains north of Ensenada.

Meanwhile, we noticed that boats that did manage to struggle out to Todos Santos Island, from whence experienced skippers typically make their approach to the finish line, seemed not to be moving.

We arrived at the Hotel Coral Marina before sunset and had a good dinner in town at the Mahi Mahi restaurant.

Afterward, we sat on the fifth-floor balcony of my room and watched an endless stream of sailboats make their ways to the finish. Some were moving smartly. Some barely moved. We felt confident that it would have been sometime Sunday morning before we had arrived had we stayed in the race.

Just a Great Day

2008-04-07T22:02:00.000-07:00

The ocean surface was alive with fish, birds and dolphins last Friday as a couple of crewmembers for the upcoming Newport to Ensenada race and I made an outboard engine endurance run to Avalon. Getting back from Ensenada later this month is going to require upwards of 25 hours of motorsailing. I wanted to assure myself--and my crew--that the engine was properly fixed after being trolled through the waves for a half-hour last month.

Our motorsail to Avalon was flawless. It was even better than that because we were treated to special sights that seem to happen mostly in the spring.

The run began under low clouds and a temperature barely into the 50s, but with dry decks as we left the slip at 8:00 a.m. We weren't far beyond the Long Beach outer harbor breakwater when large boils of bait-sized fish began erupting on the glassy sea all around us. Some were dozens of feet across and one or two may have been a half-acre in size. Larger predators below were probably driving these small fish to the surface in frantic efforts to survive. As we watched, squadrons of sea birds homed in to get their share from above.

As that spectacle ended, another began. A pod of dolphins leaped into view through the waves and soon groups were surfing our bow wave on either side of the boat, stacked one above another as well as side by side. They looked a little larger than us, perhaps six to eight feet long. Many had long scars on their backs from other encounters with something hard. Occasionally one would hit the side of the hull with a bang and veer away.

My experience has been that such encounters are rare and that they don't last very long. So I watched from amidships while my mates, Hobby and Nate, went to the bow for a better view.

After awhile I remembered that I had a camcorder in the cabin and I went to get it, hoping that I would still be able to get a little video. I need not have worried. The first group probably stayed with us for seven or eight minutes before getting bored.

Then, which has never happened to me before, we soon came across another large pod and they altered course to come take up escort positions at the bow. They stayed about as long as the first group and were replaced later by yet another group of dolphins. By this time I had taken up station at the bow and was so fascinated watching them that sometimes I forgot to press the record button. Still, I ended up with a lot of video.

After perhaps a half hour, all the dolphins were behind us and we retreated to the cockpit, seeking the protection of the new dodger and letting the autopilot handle the tiller duties. We talked about how cold it was and how much colder it will be on the overnight Ensenada Race, and the overnight motorsail back to San Diego afterwards.

The gray sky and gray sea merged into a seamless dome of gray that surrounded us. About 15 miles out from Avalon, Nate said he could see the east end of Catalina Island. But I couldn't, and he wasn't quite as sure that he had seen it. In another mile or so, however, it was clearly visible. At 10 miles out we were proclaiming that we could see the landmark round Casino building. Or maybe it was the condos spilling down the hillside above Hamilton Cove.

Originally we talked about trying to get a mooring in Avalon for a couple hours and take the shoreboat to town for lunch. But Nate had another idea: if I'd get him back home by 7:00 p.m., I could join him and Barbara for dinner out that evening.

Thus it was that at about 12:30 p.m. we were within a mile or two of Avalon, the wind was calm and the seas were smooth. So we stopped the engine and retreated to the warmth of the cabin for lunch while letting the boat drift as it wished. Amid sandwiches, chips, onion dip and chocolate chip cookies, we made periodic checks for traffic, and noted that the boat made at least two lazy 360-degree turns under the lifeless main sail. It was once again pointed at Avalon when we returned to the cockpit.

With no discernible wind, it was a perfect setting for doing an inaugural test of my new light-wind sail, a "windseeker".

Hobby and Nate were part of my Ensenada Race crew two years ago when we sailed only four miles in the first four hours after the start and I decided to drop out and motored us back to Long Beach.

With that embarrassing performance in mind, I talked to sailmaker Harry Pattison this January about how to improve my performance "if I could buy just one new sail".

He recommended the windseeker, which is made of 3/4 ounce spinnaker nylon, but is shaped like a jib, not a spinnaker. It is red, orange, yellow and blue in a pattern that I chose, so it certainly dresses up my boat, which does not have a spinnaker or the gear to fly one.

The windseeker comes stuffed in a bag with a snap shackle fastened on the bottom, which is actually the tack point for the sail. It clips onto a shackle attached on the bow just behind my jib furling drum. The luff of the sail contains a cord that serves as the sail's own forestay when it is hoisted on a spare halyard.

The colorful sail instantly proved its worth. With no apparent breeze it quickly got the boat moving at three knots and we head back for Long Beach.

Our timing was perfect. Within five minutes there was enough wind to roll out the working jib on the furler and retrieve the windseeker. We were up to five knots right away as the afternoon seabreeze began building from the southwest. By the time we were half way back across the San Pedro Channel, we were consistently in the 6-6.5 knot range and the sun was shining. It was still hazy and cold, but it was a wonderful sail home. We made it in about four hours, which gave us a lot of anticipation of a great performance in this year's Ensenada Race.

It's been a windy winter and spring this year. I'm telling myself that it's time for another windy Ensenada Race, since the last two were light wind drifters.

Big Weekend

2008-03-31T18:49:00.000-07:00

It was a big weekend for Narrow Escape. On Saturday, it was the committee boat for the first race of the season to be hosted by my club, Little Ships Fleet Yacht Club, and I was the Principal Race Officer.

Then on Sunday, the club hosted its Opening Day ceremonies, and Narrow Escape, proudly decorated, was tied at the center of the Long Dock to takes its place in our planned afternoon boat parade.

Our Saturday race was named the Murray Gordon Memorial, after a long-time member of our 71-year-old club who passed away. It was the second race of the season in the nine-race Long Beach Harbor Invitational series that is sponsored by three clubs, each club responsible for separate races.

The wind was 5-6 knots out of the southeast as we gave separate starts to three classes, sending them on courses of 10.6 nm and 11.6 nm. By the time they finished three to three and a half hours later it was in the upper teens and building, having clocked around toward the southwest.

It took three men on the bow to wrestle the Bruce anchor out of the sticky clay bottom of the harbor. That put the boat bow down, and the outboard bounced in and out of the 1-2 foot chop as I asked the remaining two crew members to stand at the stern to try to get the engine to spend more time in the water. Once the foredeck crew secured the anchor and rode at the bow and moved aft, the boat motored well through the building conditions as we returned to Alamitos Bay.

I spent the night aboard at my slip and awakened to drizzle, threatening skies and cool temperatures. After dressing the boat with strings of signal flags and colored pennants, I motored over to the Long Dock and assisted with preparations for our midday ceremonies.

Decorated and ready to go to Opening Day

We are a club without a club house, a so-called paper club, existing mainly as a venue for official entry into sanctioned yacht races, and bi-monthly dinner meetings of our members as guests at facilities of larger clubs. We do claim as part of our long history, however, a substantial contribution to the origins of the PHRF racing handicap system for sailboats.

Our only facility is a storage shed, leased from the city-owned marina, where we store our racing equipment, our barbeque for after-race festivities, and the paraphernalia we use once a year to convert the adjacent marina parking lot into an outdoor yacht club for our opening day ceremony.

The setting is far more glorious than it sounds. This small section of parking lot is set near a point on Alamitos Bay. The point itself is bordered with the grass lawn and white picket fence of the Navy Yacht Club of Long Beach, where we set up our luncheon tables. Beyond is the small bay itself, bordered by docks full of large yachts on the east, and fine homes of the Long Beach Peninsula and Naples Island on the south and west. In the distance between the two rises San Pedro Hill. And, of course, boats of all sizes are plying the water in between.

It is, however, subject to the weather of the day. On Sunday, that weather was cool, mostly cloudy, and blustery. Speakers had to take care their notes did not blow away. But it was dry. Forecast rain failed to appear.

The opening was well attended by flag officers from other clubs, large and small, and our own members. Our officers were introduced to canon salutes simulated by 12-gauge shotgun blanks, and a pair of pipers played a couple of stirring numbers, finishing with Amazing Grace. Afterwards, perfectly-grilled hamburgers were served on paper plates. As the burgers were consumed it became more and more difficult to keep the plates on the tables.

In the end, the boat parade was cancelled as whitecaps driven across Alamitos Bay by winds upwards of 20 knots pinned the eight-boat fleet hard against each other and the Long Dock.

Extricating the boats from that lee shore was skillfully handled by a combination of crews manning boat hooks from adjacent boats, pushing bows off while others kept stern lines tight, and skippers gunned their engines. The light Santa Cruz 27, a class-winner Saturday, powered by a small 2.5 hp outboard managed to avoid scraping the newly-painted Cal 40, a 2005 Transpac veteran. The Ranger 26 got cleanly away from its sidetie to the J-30, and the J-30 escaped unharmed from alongside the Mirage K-30. The Catalina 310 stepped smartly away from the side of the Ericson 38.

Finally it was Narrow Escape's turn. Three helpers walked her forward along the dock to the end. With a shove at the bow, a tug on the stern line and a healthy dose of forward throttle, she left the dock unscathed and soon was tied quietly in her slip once again.

A yachting season which never ends in Southern California had symbolically begun once more.

A Dodger

2008-03-31T17:20:00.000-07:00

I watch while Dan Loggans, right, owner of Harbor Custom Canvas, measures for a new dodger.

Narrow Escape has survived 39 years and who knows how many owners without a dodger. But these last few weeks, while I was wrestling with problems of keeping my outboard firmly attached to the transom, Narrow Escape was being fitted with a dodger.

The engine problem is now solved. A new carburetor restored the Tohatsu outboard to its normal smooth, quiet, powerful self, after its recent ocean dunking. And then a new oil pressure sensor switch turned off the red low oil pressure warning light that came on and stayed on while I was out testing the new carburetor.

That episode was only slightly traumatic. I knew the engine was full of new oil and it didn't sound like an engine consuming its innards for lack of lubrication. Never-the-less, I did make for the nearby fuel dock where I tied up and called the repair shop for reassurance before motoring back to my slip.

I've owned several boats in the past that came with dodgers when I bought them. I always appreciated their protection, while also noting that dodgers can make it more cumbersome to see forward and to move forward.

But it was time for Narrow Escape to have a dodger. She's entered in the Newport Beach-to-Ensenada race later this month and a dodger would make the bash back north after the race so much more endurable, especially since the longest leg, from Ensenada to San Diego, will be motorsailed at night.

Since I had never bought a dodger before, I didn't really know what was involved, nor how expensive they are. I solicited three bids and found that the fastest response and lowest price came from the company whose label is on most of the dodgers in my marina, Harbor Custom Canvas of Long Beach.

It took about a month from start to finish, and it involved a surprising amount of hands-on, at the boat effort.

The first step was a two-man team who came to measure the boat and talk about exactly what I wanted. That resulted about 10 days later with another visit by the same team (which included the company's owner) to install the dodger frame.

Far from being a mere spectator to the installation of a pre-manufactured item, I was a participant in the custom installation of a made-to-fit frame. I wanted it installed farther forward on the cabin than initially proposed. That minimized obstruction of the cockpit by the side curtains, and also allowed the canopy to cover the entire companionway hatch slide. Thus the front of the dodger could fasten to a molded fiberglass lip on the cabin ahead of the hatch area. I also was able to keep the canopy lower so that it would never interfere with the low boom on the Ericson 30. I can see easily over the top while standing and steering with the tiller and through it with plenty of protection while seated.

Teak strips had to be installed on either side of the cabin top to attach the outboard fastners for the isinglass front. And teak wedges were fabricated to match the curve of the cabin at the outer edges, supporting the teak strips.

The frame was left in place, secured with straps, for me to live with for a few days to ensure that it was properly placed before the fabric was fitted.

When I say fitted, that's what I mean. The team next showed up with a wide swath of Pacific Blue Sunbrella cloth and tailor's chalk. They laid the cloth on the frame and marked it up much the way a tailor would fit me for a suit.

About a week later the cloth top of the canopy and the isinglass front section were installed, along with the two vertical posts near each rear corner of the cabin that make the frame rigid and able to serve as a secure handhold for moving in and out of the cockpit. Wide cutouts on either side of the rear frame provide the aft handholds. Curved stainless bars were later mounted fore and aft along each side of the dodger as handholds for walking forward along the deck.

The last portions of the dodger to be installed, a few days later, were the removable side isinglass panels and the covers for all the isinglass segments.

New dodger offers excellent visibility forward, and easy deck access.

In our original discussions at the boat I was adamant about wanting maximum visibility out of the dodger and they did a beautiful job of meeting my demand. The sunbrella borders that are necessary to secure the isinglass panels are barely larger than the teak and fiberglass strips to which they are secured. I find there is no reduction in forward visibility compared to having no dodger.

Looking sharp all buttoned up.

Similar care was taken when they made the remaining pieces of my order. I bought weather cloths for each side of the boat, which fasten over the lifelines running from the rear cockpit gate hooks to the mid-cabin stanchions. They'll work well while motorsailing home from Ensenada by reducing the amount of spray that reaches the cockpit over the sides. I didn't intend them for sailing, however, because they fit too close to the sheet winches to allow the winch handles to be used.

Other tidbits include a new sail cover and a companionway cover. The latter will put an end to an occasional rain leak at the junction of the hatch slide and the folding companionway door. The sail cover replaces the ancient battered cover that worked okay when it protected the thin, ultra-pliable original main on the boat when I bought it. After I bought a new main I had to sew a canvas extension along the bottom of that cover to make it big enough to go around the new sail.

Perhaps it was that experience that convinced me I should never ever try to make my own dodger. Or a new mainsail cover, for that matter.

A Little Overkill Never Hurts (updated)

2008-03-17T18:07:00.000-07:00

Engine on its new mount

My goal was to never have my outboard mount break again, so I came up with the most indestructible unit I could think of, that I could make and afford to make. It began with a block of teak 1-7/8-inch thick by 11-11/16 by 11-1/2 inches. It was what I could buy at H&L Marine, Inc., which is a manufacturer of teak joinery for boats.

Unlike the Honduras mahogany block that split apart, the new teak block is large enough that I could mount it with the grain running vertically. Probably that was all I would need to do, but I studied the grain pattern and kept imagining how it might break vertically.

At first I thought I could prevent that by adding horizontal aluminum straps under the bolts on the back side of the teak. I had some aluminum stock 2-1/2 inches wide and 1/4 inch thick, which I cut to the proper width.

But then I saw that I also had some 1/8-inch aluminum sheet that was 11 inches wide. There was enough to cut into two 11-inch by 11-11/16-inch plates with which I could completely sandwich the teak block. I couldn't imagine any way such a unit could break. It also had the added benefit that the engine clamps could not dig into the wood and eventually loosen. I oiled the teak liberally and repeatedly for a day before installing it.

Teak block, on its side, and aluminum plates

The news on the engine was initially very good. The dealer reported that it was fine, having required only a two-hour labor charge to clean the starter assembly, the oil sensor and the carburetor. I was told it then started easily and ran fine in their test tank.

However, when I installed it on my new engine mount assembly, it was hard to start and then it wouldn't idle. Eventually I did get it to run pretty well, although there was some uneveness, and ran it in gear for about an hour, with the boat tied up in the slip.

But the next day, it balked at starting again, and wouldn't run at idle.

I took the engine back to the dealer today. The mechanic verified in the test tank that it would start and then die, and refused to idle. I then watched him remove and dismantle the carburetor. The bowl was coated with gray crud and the idle jet was plugged. I suspect one or more of the tiny drilled passages were also plugged. It is impossible to see through them even when they are clean.

I suggested that the carb cleaning I had paid for last week was never done, which drew a threat from another worker to throw me and my engine out of the building. As it was, I was ordered out of the work area. But not before the mechanic was able to demonstrate to me that the carburetor metal was still being dissolved by salt that had impregnated the metal during the dousing. I could literally see the light gray patina reforming after being washed with solvent, dried and scraped clean.

In a determined but losing effort, the mechanic persisted in trying to clean the carburetor and eventually reinstalled it and had the engine running. I was then invited to the back of the shop to witness the successful repair. But, then the engine died and was very difficult to restart. When it did, it wouldn't idle.

I returned to the front of the shop and ordered a new carburetor. I wish that I had been told from the outset to buy a new carb. It costs about the same as the two hours labor spent today trying to fix it. But I guess every case is different, and they were trying to save me some money to start with. As it is, we all end up a little unhappy with each other and I don't yet know who is paying the cost of today's failed effort.

The simple lesson I'm happy to pass along is that if you ever find salt water in your carburetor, throw it away and buy a new one.

At 100 pounds, with a 25-inch shaft and all the complexity of remote controls, it is not a simple matter to remove the engine and take to the dealer. I have it worked out so that I can do it all by myself, however, thanks to my engine hoist accessory for my radar mast, and a hand truck that I modified into an engine carrier with plywood for the mounting clamps and iron pipes that extend forward at the bottom to hold the hand truck upright when the engine is attached.

I was very glad for the assistance offered by a slip neighbor this morning, however, so that I did not have to wrestle it from the hoist to the hand truck. Nor did I have to pull it by myself up the steep gangway to shore at low tide.

And, once again, I was able to remove the push-pull cable fittings, the electrical connections and the battery cable without dropping anything into the water, nor falling in myself. When I raved in an earlier post about how convenient an outboard was compared to the old inboard, that was when I assumed that all I had to do was install it once and likely never have to take it off again.

Unwelcome Opportunity

2008-03-10T01:50:00.000-07:00

Those pesky laws of unintended consequences aligned last Saturday to add some drama to my blog. As a matter of fact, they ruined my weekend. It remains to be seen what else is ruined.

It was a little after 2 p.m., with a light wind out of the southwest. I was motoring out of the Alamitos Bay channel in Long Beach, which is created by two parallel rock jettys. I followed my usual drill, hoisting the mainsail as I slowly motored into the wind while inside the small bay, adjacent the ritzy peninsula and Naples Island real estate. The tiller autopilot steered while I tugged at the main halyard at the mast, since I was alone onboard.

In fact, I had just exited the channel and turned ESE toward the Huntington Beach coastline, when I heard the engine suddenly cavitate and continue to run at high rpm. I looked back and could no longer see the top of the outboard behind the transom. I pulled the remote control throttle/shifter to idle neutral and went to the back of the boat to see what happened.

The thick mahogany plank I had used to make a shorter engine mounting block on my outboard bracket had split in two horizontally. The top half was firmly gripped by the screw clamps of the motor, which was now lying on its side in the water. It was being held to the boat by a Master Lock cable lock that was stretched straight, as well as the battery cable that exited near the top of the transom.

I was about 100 feet off the eastern jetty of the channel, which was now my lee shore. The main was close-hauled and filled, but the boat wasn't really moving. I remember looking at the knotmeter and seeing 0.0 on the display.

Just a few minutes earlier the red Vessel Assist towboat had passed me inbound to the bay, and it wasn't towing anybody. I reached for the cockpit-mounted VHF radio microphone/speaker unit and tried to hail them. "Vessel Assist, Vessel Assist, this is Narrow Escape. Over." What I heard back was loud static. I remembered hearing this earlier before leaving the slip. Someone on Channel 16 seemed to have a stuck mike and no communications were getting through.

I changed the trim of the main to try to get moving and wondered if the cockpit mike was interfering with the main set mounted inside the companionway. I unscrewed its cord from the receptacle and went forward to the main radio to continue trying to reach Vessel Assist.

I've listened to both sides of these conversations hundreds of times over the years. There's a lot of back and forth. Usually the dispatcher answers and asks if you are in any immediate danger and other defining questions, such as whether you are a Vessel Assist member, how many people are aboard, description of vessel, etc. I looked at the jetty. It seemed to still be about 100 feet away and I still didn't seem to be moving.

Only later, as I write this, would I realize what an effective sea anchor I was dragging along behind me.

It is the skipper of the Vessel Assist boat Alamitos who answers me; the boat that had passed me earlier. "I'm in no immediate danger", I tell him, looking again at the ever-present jetty. But I'm gonna be pretty quick if I don't get outta here, I'm telling myself.

We switch to Channel 78. The skipper of the Alamitos says he'll reach me in about five minutes. The dispatcher comes on and I read him my member number, which I had long ago written with a Sharpie on the fiberglass headliner behind the VHF radio.

I reach back and punch in a 10-degree turn to port on the autopilot and try to get the boat moving. The jetty is a little farther away. I walk back and look at the new engine. It is still horizontal in the water and about half submerged. The cable lock seems to be holding. The broken, wet mahogany is a beautiful red-brown contrast to the black engine and blue-green ocean.

Usually I wear a self-inflating life vest when I go sailing alone. I started that several years ago when I began thinking that I would be very sad to fall overboard and watch my boat sail away under autopilot. At least with a life jacket on, there would be a chance of watching another boat approach and pick me up. But I didn't put on my life vest this day. And now, in the fog of this little bit of an emergency, I felt I couldn't take the time to go below and forward to the v-berth where I kept the life vest.

It never occured to me to open the cockpit locker a foot away and take out one of the eight Coast Guard-approved flotation vests or orange three-segment life preservers sitting right there.

Thus I wasn't wearing any life-saving equipment when the Alamitos pulled up on my lee and I went forward to the bouncing bow to try to catch and attach the towline. The seas are always more confused near the channel mouth and were in the 1-3-foot range. When a boat is moving, that's not much motion to deal with. But when two boats are nearly motionless, its something like two people making uncoordinated jumps on a big trampoline.

I missed catching the first towline heave. The skipper had to manuever his boat before he could try again. As his stern backed toward my bow, I feared we would collide. He assured me that we wouldn't. But he had to stay at the helm a bit longer to make good on that promise, by which time we were drifting apart again. I did catch the one-inch yellow polypropolene line this time and clamped the large caribiner through the center hole of my bow cleat.

But the line was behind the forward bow pulpit leg and would have to be moved before the tow could begin. The jetty was slightly further away. The line was taut now, and I couldn't move it. I waited for the boats to bounce through the waves closer together. Then I repositioned the line and made it secure.

The Alamitos skipper towed me into the wind and I wrestled the main sail down, trying to flake it as best I could. The lazy jacks helped. I went below for a single sail tie and returned to make it fast around the forward part of the sail. I did that two more times until the sail was secure and I told the skipper I was ready.

"Dead slow", I hollered.

I went aft and for the first time tried to pull the engine head up by the cable lock. I managed about six inches. And where were the third and fourth hands I'd need if I could raise it high enough. I let it drop back into the sea. In the time between radioing for help and waiting for the tow boat, I had retrieved the four-part Garhauer hoist from the other cockpit locker and attached it to the fittings on my radar mast at the stern. Now its hook swung dangerously back and forth at the stern. The engine was not going to be picked up out here in the ocean.

Nor was I going to be towed "dead slow". The twin-diesel towboat of about 25 feet in length, couldn't idle that slowly, nor did it have any steerage. The pace turned out to be in the 3.5 to 4-knot range as we made our way down the channel. And it wasn't a particularly pretty sight. Even though the autopilot was now on "standby" and held the tiller firmly amidships, Narrow Escape did not obediently follow the tow boat.

My bow yawed one way and the Alamitos' stern yawed the other. We seemed to be lurching toward the shoal spot in the channel and it was almost low tide. I hollered that my draft was five feet. He shouted back that we had 13 feet under us. I pointed at the shoal ahead and he said he'd take care of me. Later, I was ashamed of myself. He does this everyday for a living, and I'm trying to tell him what to do. Obviously, he'd heard it all before and graciously didn't tell me to shut up.

By now we were in calm water. Finally I decided to detach the autopilot and steer my boat to try to counteract the yawing, some of which must have been from the outboard strapped sideways to my transom. It worked great and we made the last several hundred yards into the bay in proper nose to tail fashion.

Once inside, a smaller Vessel Assist boat came out to meet us, and the Alamitos told me to remove the tow line. I drifted while the two Vessel Assist skippers transferred between the boats. My rescuer, Darcy, then came alongside in the smaller boat, about 18 or 20 feet, and lashed my boat to his.

Next we motored to a city dock, where he put me gently against the dock and another co-worker joined us. He stepped onto my extended, empty outboard bracket at the stern and reached down and attached the hook of my hoist to the outboard. I hauled it up and ran the clamps in as far as they would go, under the stern pulpit rail. Then I secured the engine some more with a length of line and we began the final part of the journey to my slip.

Darcy guided Narrow Escape down its marina fairway, spun it part way around and backed its stern against one finger of my slip where I could climb off and pull the boat in by hand, stern first so that I could work on the engine from the dock.

With the boat secure in its slip and a semblance of calm beginning to settle over me, I looked down at the engine controls and noticed that the ignition key was turned off. I have no memory of doing that when I throttled the engine back after if fell off.

I already knew why it broke off. I had mounted the mahogany plank with the grain running horizontal instead of vertical. It broke along a horizontal line between the two upper bolt holes that attached it to the outboard bracket. I did use large diameter washers. The force of the break bent the tops of those washers. What if instead I had fashioned a couple of U-shaped reinforcements from hardware store aluminum strap to clamp the wood front and back against the bracket.

What if I had used plywood instead of a single thick piece of mahogany.

As to why I mounted the grain horizontal. Simple. The plank from which the piece was cut was only 10 1/2 inches wide. The outboard bracket needed a piece 11 3/4 inches wide to straddle the two mounting flanges. The wood I bought wouldn't fit with the grain vertical.

The Tohatsu owner's manual says take a submerged engine immediately to the dealer. If that can't be done, remove the sparkplugs and pull the engine through with the starter cord to expel water in the cylinders. None was apparent when I removed the plugs, but some spray was visible when I pulled the cord repeatedly. Pour engine oil into the sparkplug holes. I didn't have any way to do that, so I sprayed lots of WD-40 into them. Change the engine oil. There was some emulsified water-oil mix, but not much.

The manual made no mention of draining the carburetor. Sunday I finally realized that the brass screw on the flat plate on the outside of the carb was the drain plug. Water came out. I also bought an oil pump can and pumped oil into the upper cylinders. Then I had to figure out how to secure cloths around a couple of places along the engine shaft assembly to keep oil drops from falling into the water.

Next stop. The Tohatsu dealer.

Patching Holes

2008-02-14T09:30:00.000-08:00

I think it's impossible to buy a used boat without acquiring an unwanted hole or two. And I'm not talking about the proverbial hole in the water into which we throw money.

The newest hole to fill on Narrow Escape was the two-inch opening where the throttle and shift mechanism for the old Albin engine penetrated the cockpit side. Frankly, I left the old unit in place and trained myself not to trip over it too often simply because I didn't want to deal with sealing it up. But several weeks ago I tackled the job of removing the unit and its push-pull cables. It was a dirty, awkward task. By the time I finished, my solution to sealing the hole was a length of Gorilla tape plastered across it on the inside of the cockpit locker. At least that would keep moisture, even rain, from invading the locker space, which houses the batteries.

It was hardly a long-term fix. I thought about the work required to fill it with a wooden disk backed with fiberglass cloth and faired with epoxy filler. That would have been more viable before I refinished the deck and cockpit. In fact, there was a similar-sized mystery hole near the rear of the cockpit that I did seal in that fashion last year during my refinishing project. But I wasn't interested in refinishing the cockpit again, so I tried to conjure up alternatives.

I decided to walk the aisles at West Marine for inspiration, which is where I spied a four-inch round stainless louvered vent cover hanging on a rack. Made by Seafit, it was $3.99. Of course it did have the disadvantage of those louver slits, so it wasn't a watertight solution.

But wait, there's more. In my dock box was a piece of 1/8-inch reinforced hard rubber, that I had used to make gaskets for my lifeline stanchions. A four-inch circle of rubber between the stainless vent cover and the cockpit wall would keep the adjacent locker dry even if a wave flooded my cockpit. And the vent cover would look good, too.

The rubber was easily cut with utility shears. I dressed the edge with sandpaper to make it smooth and fastened the stainless and rubber sandwich with four #6 stainless self-tapping screws. Quick, simple, good looking and cheap.

I recently faced a much worse prospect when I removed the Albin engine panel from the opposite side of the cockpit. That solution also was simple and cheap. I bought a 6x12-inch stainless "mirror" at the hardware store. It is only 1/16-inch thick, but it fits securely to the cockpit wall, with self-tapping screws, and provides an excellent mounting surface for my tachometer. If the cockpit filled, water might seep around it, but it is much higher on the wall and shouldn't pose any danger to the boat or its systems.

As long as I'm on the topic, I'll show you my first effort at filling an unwanted hole. This one is on the backside of the cabin, where an ancient, useless knotmeter was mounted. A Beckson six-inch round plastic deck plate was an easy solution. The clear screw-in plate lets welcome light into the galley and it can be opened for extra ventilation.

The replacement knotmeter is rectangular and I mounted it on the opposite side of the companionway, where the cable routing from the fathometer and knotmeter senders was easier.

What's WOT

2008-02-12T21:25:00.000-08:00

The owner's manual for my new Tohatsu 9.8 hp outboard says that the engine's wide-open throttle range should be 5,000 to 6,000 RPM. The manual also notes that Tohatsu ships its long shaft (20-inch) and ultra long shaft (25-inch) engines with a three-blade propeller that is 8.5 inches in diameter with a 7.5-inch pitch. The standard shaft (15-inch) engine comes with a propeller 8.9 inches in diameter and a pitch of 8.3 inches. For any given RPM, the short shaft engine is equipped to move more water than the longer shaft engines.

The manual also comes with a table of available propellers listed from "light boats" to "heavy boats". The shorter pitch prop that came from my engine is one step down in the table from the standard shaft prop, in the heavy boat direction.

Since I installed a tachometer for the engine, and I could measure boat speed on my GPS and knotmeter, I had all the information I needed to determine whether that propeller I received was the right propeller.

After I had completed the 10-hour break-in period on the engine (my tachometer also incorporates an hour meter), I found that wide-open throttle (WOT) was at least 7,000 rpm in light wind conditions. (That is the maximum marking on the tachometer.) I also saw that at 6,000 rpm, Narrow Escape was doing 5.3 knots. At full throttle I could go 6 knots.

The Albin inboard engine, at full throttle (maximum rated power was 12 hp at 1500 rpm) also pushed the boat at 6 knots. It had a larger two-blade propeller, 12-inch diameter and 8-inch pitch. There was no tachometer for the Albin, so I don't know how many rpms it actually turned.

Given all of this information, I decided that the Tohatsu prop was probably too small. The engine was running beyond the manual's recommended full throttle range at full throttle. And the boat was running about .7 knots slower with the outboard than it had with the Albin, when I stayed within the recommended rpm range.

An advantage of an outboard is that it is very easy to change the prop. I bought the 8.3-inch propeller that comes on the short shaft engine for $75, including tax. It probably took as long to readjust my dock lines to position the Ericson in the proper spot after backing into my slip as it did to make the propeller switch. By the way, the boat backs down quite nicely with the outboard, steering easily with the rudder while the engine remains fixed in its centered position.

The results could not have been better. Wide-open throttle is now 6,000 rpm and 6 knots. The ratio of rpm to speed holds at partial throttle settings, too. 5,000 rpm is 5 knots, 4,000 rpm is 4 knots and 3,000 rpm is 3 knots.

The engine also sounds better. It is working harder at lower rpm and it is obviously happier doing it. Overall it is quieter. It is less buzzy. And it has a somewhat deeper sound. It is definitely more pleasant.

"Narrow Escape" on Jan. 27, 2008

2008-01-27T18:20:00.000-08:00

It has been eight months since the first sail after the refinish project concluded and this is what the boat looks like today. A week of rains have washed it nicely, with no leaks inside. The Brightside polyurethane paint retains its gloss, but a coat of polish will add to the luster when I have time. I continue to receive compliments from passers-by.

Let me explain a few details. The windows are original and they are glass, not plastic. The aluminum frames are in good shape. An interior frame, which is screwed into an inside lip of the exterior frame, secures the windows to the cabin. They are sealed with a ribbon of butyl caulk that comes pre-formed and rolled into a coil with a layer of paper preventing the caulk from sticking to itself. Removal and reinstallation was relatively easy.

None of the port lights open. When I bought the boat, the window in the head compartment had a sliding glass pane, which leaked. For a long time I sealed it shut with silicone sealant. But eventually I went to a Kelly's used marine supply store in San Pedro and bought a single pane replacement unit in good condition for $15. Problem solved.

Also notice the aluminum angle pieces fastened to the front corners of the forward hatch at the top of the photo. Before I did that, the genoa sheets frequently caught beneath a corner when tacking.

In the upper photos, you'll notice that the three main cabin windows appear to be frosted. That is my ultra-simple privacy curtain system. It is merely translucent window film that I bought at the hardware store.

I cut it to fit and secure it by wiping the glass with soapy water and pressing the glossy side of the film against the glass. They come off in an instant when I'm going out for a sail, by hooking a fingernail under the film and peeling it off. I stack the six films atop each other and roll them up and slip them into a wide-mouth cylindrical plastic container.

After I refinished the deck, it was time to replace the original mainsheet traveler, which was awkward to use. It was simply a strip of stainless steel track fastened down over a narrower strip of teak batten. A bronze car, with no bearings, slid along the track. There was a stop clamp with knurled screw on each side of the track to position the car by sliding the car and the clamps to the desired position and screwing down the clamps.

I removed that contraption and filled all the mounting holes for the refinish. I replaced it with a custom-made low-profile traveler from Garhauer. The car slides on ball bearings and three-to-one lines control the position from each end. It is a perfect solution.

The low-profile track extrusion was bent at the factory to conform to the after-deck radius and is thru-bolted with counter-sunk machine screws. I was determined to replace the old track with a modern system that would still allow me to sit atop the lazarette, leaning against the pushpit rail, which is my favorite command position when motoring. I use a folding "Go-Anywhere-Chair" from West Marine to sit on, pull the tiller back until it faces backward and rests on the aft cockpit wood trim. All I have to do is remember the move it opposite the normal direction to steer. Believe me, it's the most comfortable spot on deck, and the best visibility, too.

Single-handed Maintenance

2008-01-27T17:12:00.000-08:00

I don't like having to scrounge for help when I'm working on my boat. So I usually don't. When I was removing deck hardware I was able to work alone by using ViceGrip pliers as my below-deck helper. I could clamp them onto a nut and remove the machine screw topside by myself. Usually the nut was loose enough to finish taking off by hand if I stopped unscrewing in time. But if not, it didn't matter if the nut fell off with the ViceGrips clamped to it.

That wasn't going to work for reinstalling hardware, however. Also, I wasn't too impressed with the small diameter washers that provided the only bearing surface under the deck for the stanchion, bow and stern railings and mooring cleats. I decided to make threaded mounting plates for each item and glue them in place under the decks with 3M 5200 adhesive.

The plates were cut from 1/4-inch aluminum plate, 3-1/2-inches wide. Aligning the plate holes with the fitting holes was critical, as was tapping the holes absolutely vertical for the 1/4-20 machine screws.

Using a drill press, I started by drilling one hole in the plate, using the fitting as the template. Then, using the drill press mandrel to assure the threads were vertical, I threaded the hole with a tap manually, turning the mandrel by hand rather than using the motor.

Next, using short screws cut to length for the purpose, I fastened the fitting to the plate and then drilled and tapped the next hole. I repeated that process until all the holes were drilled and tapped.

Installing the fittings and the underdeck plates was made much easier by using a couple of extra-long machine screws, plus the normal length screws required to be able to reinstall the side boards that cover the under decks inside the cabin. I put two long screws through the fitting on deck and then went below deck. The long length of the screws allowed me to hold the backing plate under the deck and turn the scews with my fingers to get them started into the tapped holes.

Next I used a small mixing stick to apply 3M 5200 adhesive to the top edges of the plate before I screwed it up against the deck. Going topside, I took up the slack on the long screws to bring the plates up against the underside of the deck. Then the normal length screws could be inserted in the remaining holes. The mooring cleats had four mounting screws, while the railings and stanchions had three holes. Finally, I removed the long screws and replaced them with standard-length screws and then drew all of the screws up tight on that fitting. The same process was repeated for each fitting.

This process could have been done using LifeCaulk or a similar product to seal the fitting from leaks. But it would have been messier. Instead, I cut sealing gaskets from 1/8-inch hard rubber sheet, available at the hardware store. I used a gasket cutter hole punch to make the screw holes. Finally, when I put each standard screw into the backing plate, I put a ring of sealant around the threads just below the head to seal the hole from the top.

I think that the rubber gaskets will ensure a leak-proof seal for years to come. But when and if I have to remove and replace any of the fittings, I expect to be able to do so working alone and only from topside.

The Big Refinish - Photos

2008-01-25T20:40:00.000-08:00

Taped and ready for Pre-Kote primer for Brightside

Brightside gloss coats done.

Interdeck nonskid paint added.

Refinish completed. Cockpit wood was later stripped. Wood trim
above windows along cabin trunk and on aft end of cabin
was not replaced. I like the cleaner look.

The Big Refinish - Part 2

2008-01-25T20:32:00.000-08:00

I tackled my refinishing project incrementally, spending a lot of nights aboard at my slip in between days of grinding, filling, sanding and then more of the same as I worked my way around the deck and cabin top. I wanted to be able to hose down the deck as needed, too. Thus when I removed the machine screws fastening the stanchions, pulpit and pushpit, I tapped golf tees into the holes.

I also did not remove the fresh water fill fitting abeam the mast on the starboard deck until just before I was ready to start applying primer on the decks. I was surprised at what I found.

Did someone replace the original fill fitting and need to enlarge the hole? I can't imagine this is the way Ericson made a hole in the deck when they built the boat. It was a mystery, since the chrome-plated bronze fitting that was in place was much smaller than this hole. Yet it was obviously old.

The balsa core was rotted away for an inch or more, but easily scraped away to prepare a clean receptical for epoxy filler to repair the deck. To use the fitting to create a mold for the filler, I waxed the exterior of the pipe and installed it upside down in the opening, using only the outermost bolt hole. I also taped the fitting to the underside of the deck, which is in the hanging locker and easily accessible.

After the epoxy cured, this is the perfect mounting hole that resulted. I was able to put the fitting in place, right side up, each time I left the boat while work continued. And when the refinishing was done, I drilled to two inboard holes and permanently re-installed the fill fitting with LifeCault sealant.

I spent a lot of time exploring various coating options and eventually decided to use Interlux Brightside one-part polyurethane coating. A neighboring boat had been recoated with it several months earlier by a professional refinisher, and it looked good. The refinisher told me it was easy to maintain by sanding and coating with a single new coat every four or five years.

Interlux's top product for amateurs is Perfection, a two-part polyurethane. I gave it very serious consideration, but finally decided against it because it's optimal application method requires two persons. Brightside works fine for solo workers like me.

Brightside is a high gloss finish for smooth portions of my deck and cabin trunk. For the nonskid, I chose another Interlux product, Interdeck, which is a low sheen one-part polyurethane containing a fine aggregate.

A much greater range of colors is available in Brightside than in Interdeck. In fact, except for white, there are no color names in common between the two products. I chose "Hatteras Off White (1990)" in Brightside, very pale beige tint to my eye. For Interdeck, I picked "Beige", which is darker than the Brightside hue, and has a tinge of orange.

Brightside requires two coats of Interlux Pre-Kote primer. But Interdeck goes directly over the old fiberglass nonskid after appropriate preparation with filler and a wash down with compatible thinner.

With the product decisions made, the next step was deciding how to paint without touching wet paint as I moved around, and without ending up where I'd have to jump overboard to leave the boat before the paint dried. The solution was to start with the deck perimeter first, beginning at the stern and moving forward on each side. Then, beginning at the bow, I painted the smooth center of the foredeck moving aft to do one side of the cabin trunk and then the other. The cockpit was last.

I took my time, thought about each move before I made it, and managed not to touch any wet paint as I progressed. I did that three times, each time a day's work.

Brightside was easy to work with, but I kept it thinned according to the directions as I worked. It brushes easily, flowing slowly into a smooth, glossy coat, and isn't prone to running as long as is brushed out.

The most difficult part was seeing where the last brush strokes ended in glaring sunlight. Recently I discovered clip-on polarized sunglass lenses, which I'll use on my prescription glasses the next time I do this. I think the polarization will make it easier to see where the last stroke ended and the new stroke should begin.

I gave the Brightside about a week to fully cure after I finished the three coats, and then applied blue masking tape over it and rollered the Interdeck paint in place. I gave it only one coat, but struggled to finish the cockpit, the last step, before the single quart ran out. The boat really needs one and a quarter quarts for a single application of nonskid paint. A second coat is on my list of tasks.

The nonskid paint needs to dry three days before it can be walked on, so a took the rest of that week off.

I think the final results were great. It doesn't look like a new boat. But it does look like a very well-cared-for old boat. And the finish is tough. Several months after I finished, on a trip back from Catalina Island, the Bruce anchor fastened into the bow roller worked loose in the waves and for several hours, its shackle slid sideways back and forth over the glossy Brightside paint at the bow. I figured the finish was gone. It certainly looked gone, with curved black streaks tracing the movement of the shackle.

When I finally had the courage to examine the damage closely the following weekend, there was no damage! I rubbed off the black marks with a rag, soap and water and found the finish beneath unmarred.

The Big Refinish - Part I

2008-01-24T18:09:00.000-08:00

I suspect that all restoration projects follow the same fundamental rules. If you are after perfection, pay an expert to do the work and be prepared to pay a lot. If you are the talented perfectionist, then you already know the time and money it costs to do the job to your standards.

But if you are somebody with an old boat because that is what you can afford and you want it to look better without paying professionals to do the work, then you're at the right blog.

When I bought my boat in September 2005, and named it "Narrow Escape", I knew it was structurally sound. Cosmetically, the hull looked okay, even capable of being buffed to a bit of a shine. The deck and cabin top were challenged, however. They bore spider webs of gelcoat cracks, mostly in the smooth areas. And they were splotched with caramel-colored epoxy resin that had been poured onto some of the cracked areas in an apparent effort to seal them. The raised nonskid area of the cockpit sole also had a lot of gelcoat cracks, which I thought would pose a problem in trying to fill while still maintaining the nonskid pattern.

By the spring of 2007, I finally was ready to tackle the job of refinishing the deck and cabin.

There is no way to do that without committing to eventually stripping the deck of all hardware and the cabin of all its port lights (okay, windows) and wood trim. I did it in increments. For instance, the windows stayed in place until I was ready to begin applying the finish.

I did not remove the toe rail. It is teak, which hasn't seen any varnish or any other finish in years. When the boat is washed with soap and water the toe rail has a wonderful gray, weathered teak color and it is structurally sound. As I was to eventually prove, water had seeped down very few of the one-quarter-inch machine screws that fastened the deck and hull together beneath the toe rail.

I didn't like the way the lifeline stanchions were fitted, nor the rear pads of the bow pulpit. The issue was that the deck of the Ericson 30 has a smooth perimeter a couple inches wide, while inboard of that the deck has an aggressive raised nonskid pattern. The design certainly was easier for Ericson's pattern makers to tool. But they could hardly have designed a more leak-prone system. The triangular bases of the two of the three lifeline stanchions on each side of the boat and the rear pads of the pulpit straddled smooth gelcoat and raised nonskid. Teak shims were inserted between the smooth perimeter gelcoat area and the bases to provide a flat mounting surface.

I decided to grind off the one-eighth-inch of raised non-skid under the pads and then finish with epoxy filler make a flat surface on which to refasten them.

But before I could take off the forward two stanchions on each side, I had to remove mohagany planks inside the cabin that covered the underside of the deck. They were secured with screws behind bungs and varnish. It was fairly obvious which bungs had to be removed. I broke the varnish with an appropriately-sized gasket-cutting punch, and then used a drill to remove the bungs.

Only one small area of the balsa core of the deck and cabin top was obviously damaged. I previously described fixing a soft area in the cockpit sole with West System epoxy and structural filler. I did the same to a small area of the cabin top to starboard of the companionway slide. Several holes penetrated the structure where some unknown item of equipment had previously been mounted and then removed without sealing the holes properly.

I drilled a series of holes into the soft area, but not through the cabin liner below, allowed the area to dry and then pumped it full of thick epoxy filler. In this case, everything was done from the exterior. The Ericson has a full fiberglass liner forming the upper portion of the interior, and it was in excellent condition.

Extensive gelcoat cracking required a different approach. Every instruction I've read about repairing gelcoat cracks says the first step is to make the cracks wider and then fill them with epoxy. I used a Dremel tool and a supply of small, fluted grinding bits to turn the hairline cracks into u-shaped cracks able to capture and hold the filler. Late in the process, I discovered that Dremel sells hardened bits for about double the price of the standard bits. But they lasted three or four times longer. Gelcoat is a very hard material.

I quickly discovered that none of the cracks penetrated to the balsa core. All were shallow. Those in the nonskid area were only about as deep as the extra thickness of the nonskid itself. That was good news and explained why the deck was solid.

One advantage of tackling gelcoat cracks is that it easy to make progress in small increments as time allows. But the other side of that is that such an approach may stretch out the process so long that it seems like it will never be completed.

Even worse psychologically was discovering more cracks where I already had opened cracks, filled them and sanded them. These weren't new cracks. I simply had ignored them the first time as I concentrated on larger cracks.

I used Interlux Watertite brand epoxy filler to fill the widened cracks. It is a two-part filler with the advantage of a 1:1 mixing ratio. But two serious disadvantages were a pot life of about five minutes and a very hard finish that was difficult to sand. My advice now would be to mix my own filler with West System epoxy and #407 low density filler, which would be much easier to sand.

Leaks

2008-01-06T14:08:00.000-08:00

When I bought my Ericson 30, it was probably a "50-footer", meaning that from 50 feet away it looked wonderful. Inspected at closer range, flaws were apparent. The cover photo on this blog is from the "50-footer" era, taken not long after the purchase. Today, looking at the deck and cabin, it's a five-footer. In this and a series of upcoming posts I'll tell what I did.

There were some simple tasks. Tape residue from the prior owner's varnishing project had turned into hard, dirty streaks along the wood trim in many places on the cabin, deck and cockpit. The cure was a can of acetone and a lot of rubbing. I'm a little ashamed to admit how long I was able to ignore that task in favor of the mechanical repairs and upgrades that I found more interesting.

There were clear indications inside the cabin that several of the chainplates for the shrouds had leaked, or were leaking. Those chainplates are crude by today's standards. The are simply stainless steel tangs fiberglassed into the hull and protruding through slots cut in the deck. A stainless cover plate secured with a small sheet metal screw at each end serves as a lid to contain caulking compound forced down around the tang. It was an easy, and early fix.

The first "messy" repair was to the cockpit sole. The Ericson 30 cockpit, deck and cabin house is a fiberglass sandwich containing a balsa wood core. In the cockpit, water seepage where the rudder shaft entered the sole had rotted out the balsa core surrounding the shaft housing for a distance of 8 to 12 inches.

The first step was to cut out the upper layer of the sandwich -- the cockpit sole -- around the shaft to remove as much of the soggy debris beneath as I could reach and allow the area to dry thoroughly.

Then, using West System epoxy, I filled the area with a solid epoxy paste that also served as a glue to fasten back into place the section of sole that I removed. The products were West System 105 epoxy resin, 206 slow hardener, and 406 colloidal silica to make the filler.

Prior to making this repair, I didn't know whether the balsa core had been waterlogged from seawater coming up through the rudder shaft housing, or water collecting in the cockpit because of clogged scuppers. One reason was that a decorative teak block covered the rudder shaft exit, as evidenced by the four holes in the sole with which sheet metal screws attached it.

I did not reattach the teak block, which provided pathways for water to reach the balsa core through the screw holes. Since then, I have never had water intrude into the cockpit through the rudder shaft housing, so all the damage was from freshwater.

A larger area of the cockpit sole, especially aft of the rudder shaft beyond my reach from the top down fix, was still soft. I later fixed that by drilling 1/4-inch holes up into the core from beneath, digging out the soggy balsa remnants with a bent wire made from a clothes hangar, sucking the debris out the holes with a wet-dry vacuum, and giving the area several days to dry while a fan directed fresh air from beneath the cockpit.

Then I mixed more West Systems epoxy filler, and pumped it into the holes using West's plastic caulking gun tubes and a caulking gun. The process was to squeeze in the epoxy paste until it began to ooze out of an adjacent hole, then move to another hole and continue. I drilled several dozen holes, spaced about two inches apart. Periodically while the epoxy was oozing, I wiped it off the underside of the cockpit.

The underside is easily accessed from the starboard cockpit locker, which is large enough to easily contain me. I did make sure that I had fresh air blowing into the area while I worked. And when I climbed back out of the locker, I made sure that I didn't step into the cockpit. A day later the epoxy was hard and so was the cockpit sole.

As can be seen in the photos, however, the cockpit sole wasn't pretty. The nonskid surface was traced with numerous narrow stress fractures. The entire deck and cabin top surface was that way, presenting a complex repair problem which I pondered for many months.

Reinstallation complete AND LATER FAILED

2007-12-29T19:59:00.000-08:00

CAUTION: THIS BOARD SPLIT HORIZONTALLY ALONG THE UPPER MOUNTING BOLT LINE AND THE ENGINE FELL INTO THE WATER AT FULL THROTTLE. SEE MARCH 10, 2008, ENTRY FOR EVENT DESCRIPTION AND MARCH 17, 2008, ENTRY FOR A FAIL-PROOF MOUNTING BOARD INSTALLATION.

With no one aboard, the anti-cavitation plate is now nearly three inches below water. Underway at hull speed, the stern wave rises another two or three inches. I'm hopeful that prop cavitation will now be a rare event. I don't know whether the after-market wing will have any effect on performance, but figured it can't hurt.

Garhauer hoist at work

2007-12-29T19:58:00.000-08:00

CAUTION: THE MAHOGANY MOUNTING BOARD ILLUSTRATED LATER SPLIT HORIZONTALLY ALONG THE UPPER MOUNTING BOLT LINE AND THE ENGINE FELL INTO THE WATER AT FULL THROTTLE. SEE MARCH 10, 2008, ENTRY FOR EVENT DESCRIPTION AND MARCH 17, 2008, ENTRY FOR A FAIL-PROOF MOUNTING BOARD INSTALLATION.

When I bought the Garhauer radar mast I also bought the accessory removable hoist. I intended it for putting my little Honda outboard on my dinghy. But it proved invaluable in moving back to an outboard for Narrow Escape's auxilliary power. While I was lucky to have some help mounting the Garelick hydraulic bracket the first time, I was able to do the removal and reinstallation alone with the help of this hoist.

Honduras mohany board - DO NOT DO THIS

2007-12-29T19:57:00.000-08:00

CAUTION: THIS BOARD SPLIT HORIZONTALLY ALONG THE UPPER MOUNTING BOLT LINE AND THE ENGINE FELL INTO THE WATER AT FULL THROTTLE. SEE MARCH 10, 2008, ENTRY FOR EVENT DESCRIPTION AND MARCH 17, 2008, ENTRY FOR A FAIL-PROOF MOUNTING BOARD INSTALLATION.

Another 1 1/2 inches lower was achieved by replacing the non-adjustable Garelick mount board with this one of Honduras mohagany, which I sized to exactly fit the clearance required for the Tohatsu clamp screws.

No prop shaft drag

2007-12-29T19:49:00.001-08:00

Prop shaft will create negligible drag when prop is removed.

Bracket re-installed

2007-12-29T19:47:00.000-08:00

After experiencing prop cavitation, I reinstalled the outboard bracket as low as it would go without extending below the transom. Note the prop and shaft for the old inboard below the water.

Remote Control

2007-12-29T19:26:00.000-08:00

Tohatsu remote control unit is robust. It includes electrically-controlled choke, key starting, neutral engine warm up throttle and forward and reverse with progressive throttle. Teleflex tachometer with hourmeter is mounted on stainless steel plate, which replaced old Albin engine panel.

New outboard original installation

2007-12-29T19:25:00.000-08:00

Engine sits high when no one is aboard the boat. With me on board, it is at proper depth. Bracket raises 14 inches, enough for engine to be above the water even with crew on board. That was before the Albin inboard was removed and the bow water tank was filled.

Garelick hydraulic bracket original position

2007-12-29T19:21:00.000-08:00

After weighting stern with water-filled tubs to simulate engine weight, and measuring according to Tohatsu and Garelick instructions, this is the original position I chose for the outboard bracket.

Original outboard

2007-12-29T19:20:00.000-08:00

This is the Nissan outboard that was on the boat when I bought it. Note the offset location. Although it had electric start, it was a hassle to use because stern pushpit interfered with access. After-market throttle extension shaft help, as did my home-made gear shift extension.

A Very Full Circle Indeed

2007-12-29T16:56:00.000-08:00

Careful readers may assume that I'm now back where I started. I bought an old boat with a new outboard and an old inboard. I put all my effort and money into the old engine and sold the new outboard. The old engine ultimately failed. I threw it away and bought a new outboard.

I did have the satisfaction of restoring a moribund old Swedish gasoline engine designed in 1925 and getting another 110 hours of life from it. The two-cylinder flathead Albin with its 50-pound flywheel had its charms -- and vibrations. But our relationship had run its course and I'm not going to miss it.

In its central location just behind the companionway ladder, I can put the boat's batteries where they will be easier to reach and provide the best ballast. And I'll still have room to build a large storage shelf above them.

When I bought the Ericson 30, various people suggested how lucky I was to have a new 4-stroke outboard on the transom and how easily I could lighten up the boat by removing the old inboard. I rejected the idea without ever seriously considering it. I couldn't wait until I could get the inboard running and remove the outboard.

The original Nissan outboard made the same power as my new Tohatsu. It's the same engine except for the label. Except it isn't really the same. The original was a long-shaft (20-inch) model with electric start and manual controls. It was mounted on the port side of the transom because that is where it was possible to reach it by crawling beneath the stern pushpit in a gap between the backstay and a vertical support.

That difficult effort was required when lowering the engine and again when pulling it up out of the water when under sail. In other words, using the outboard was a big hassle. Every time I did it, I looked longingly at the cockpit-mounted ignition switch, gear shift and throttle lever for the inboard engine and hardened my resolve to get the Albin running.

With help, I did. We fixed what was obviously needed, such as new valves, new piston rings, new and improved wet exhaust system, new carburetor and, eventually, new cylinder head when the old one rusted through. We didn't touch the bottom end, nor even separate the transmission from the cylinder block. Both were fine in test bench runs and remained that way for 110 hours back in the boat. But something eventually let go, causing a loud knocking that demanded immediately shutting down the engine. The source of the knock defied my in-the-boat attempts to identify it. I won't ever know what it was now that the engine is gone, left for scrap at the boat yard.

With hindsight, it now is clear that fronting the estimated $10,000-$12,000 cost of installing a new diesel would have been smarter than spending half that in increments as the Albin restoration project crept forward.

But having already spent that, I couldn't see now putting another $10,000-$12,000 into a new diesel. Spending about $4,000 for a new outboard and fancy Garelick hydraulic motor mount made a lot more sense.

However, I have made the new outboard nearly as convenient to use as the inboard by purchasing a remote-control model, and mounting it on a Garelick hydraulic outboard bracket. I can lean over the pushpit, not crawl through it, and let gravity lower the engine by merely opening the hydraulic bleed valve a half turn. Raising it requires only a dozen swings of the hydraulic pump handle.

The electric starter, choke, throttle and gear shift are handled with a robust control unit mounted on the sidewall of the cockpit in easy reach of the tiller. So is the combination tachometer and hourmeter, which is an after-market unit from Teleflex.

The ouitboard feeds from the replacement aluminum gas tank I had built for the boat a year ago, through the same Racor filter/water separator that served the inboard engine. The Tohatsu's fuel pump easily handles the extra length of the heavy Coast Guard-approved fuel line. And I can carry and easily switch to standard outboard fuel tanks to supplement the 22 gallons in the main tank.

Fuel economy is predicted to be about the same as the Albin - about a gallon an hour at max throttle. But exhaust emissions are much, much lower. The Tohatsu is a three-star ultra-low emission engine.

The six amp alternator built into the electric-start Tohatsu is enough for the low electrical loads on my boat. It's about the same output as the oddball starter-generator on the Albin.

The noise level is lower in the cockpit and virtually gone inside the cabin. When we motor back from the Ensenada race next spring, the off-watch crew is going to sleep easily.

Finally, when the Tohatsu needs professional servicing. I can easily lift it off the transom and take it to a dealer. And I'll never again have to spend $1500 for a new prop, prop shaft, cutless bearing and stuffing box.

I will have to spend something eventually to remove the existing shaft and seal up the hole. However, since it exits the hull behind and above the rudder, with no strut, there will be minimal drag if I simply remove the prop for now and secure the shaft outside with a zinc collar against the cutless bearing and inside with a couple of hose clamps ahead of the stuffing box.

So, yes, as a practical matter I am back where I started, having made a substantial contribution to keep the consumer-based economy afloat along the way. It was an interesting journey. I still have a great boat. It is a much better boat than when I bought it. It still needs work.

I suspect there are a lot of old sailboats that could be improved by replacing an unreliable inboard with a quiet new, remote-controlled outboard.

Mistakes and Fixes

2007-12-29T15:51:00.000-08:00

To a person, my gangway slip mates have been kind and supportive this week as I removed the new outboard, and the new Garelick bracket and explained how I had installed it wrong.

I discovered that a week ago, after the old Albin inboard was hoisted out of Narrow Escape, and after I remembered to fill up the nearly empty water tank in the bow. The combination of less weight under the cockpit and maybe 150 pounds added in the bow raised the outboard higher in the water. So high that during what was supposed to be another engine break-in voyage, the slightest wake caused the prop to cavitate and the engine to over-speed.

During the first installation I followed the instructions of both Tohatsu and Garelick to position the engine so that the anti-cavitation plate was two inches below the water line. I taped a marked stick to the transom and I filled two large plastic tubs placed on the lazarette with water to simulate the weight of the outboard. Then I made the measurements from the dock. I also assumed, correctly, that the Albin, which was still in the boat at that time, weighed less than I did, and was in about the same fore-and-aft position I would assume when steering with the tiller.

What I didn't think to do was fill the bow tank. And I was surprised at the dramatic effect those extra 15 or 20 gallons of water made when I later did.

In that condition, the graceful transom of Narrow Escape was 14 inches above the waterline, typical of 1960s-era designs.

The Garelick hydraulic bracket has no adjustment. Four pre-drilled holes are provided to bolt it to a transom. And at the other end, the large polypropolene engine mounting board was fixed in position. In fact, in a perverse quirk of design, a series of partial-depth holes were moulded into the back of the board, apparently to lighten it, in such a way that it was impossible to drill alternate mounting holes that would allow the board to be repositioned on the hydraulic frame.

I was able to drop the bracket 2 3/4 inches on the transom, to the point that the bottom of the bracket was flush with the bottom of the transom, after I trimmed the bottom sides of the structural aluminum L-brackets to match the curvature of the transom.

I gained an additional 1 1/2 inches by building my own mounting board out of 1 3/4-inch (8/4 thickness) Honduras mohagany. That process led to the discovery that one side of the Garelick frame was an eighth inch taller than the other. Since the Tohatsu mounting clamp screws had to clear that frame, I made my measurements based on the higher side.

The transom is a half-inch of solid fiberglass and I filled the old holes with Marine-Tex white epoxy, so I'm sure that I didn't lose any strength by having to redo the job. Nor will I have any problem with water intrusion in the transom.

When finished, the anti-cavitation plate was 2 1/2 inches below the water with no one on the boat. Underway at hull speed with me standing at the transom to observe, the outboard was another four inches or so deeper in the water. It's as deep as it can be without moving the outboard bracket so the it extends below the transom, which might cause some drag in some sailing conditions. With crew aboard, it will be even deeper.

On the other hand, with no one aboard at the slip and the engine raised to the top of the 14-inch range of the hydraulic bracket, the tip of the outboard's skeg is a half-inch above the water without having to tilt the engine.

A three-hour voyage under power yesterday, outside the breakwater and across as many boat wakes as I could find, proved the effectiveness of the new mount position. As a bonus, setting the engine about four inches lower on the transom reduced the noise level in the cockpit.

Back in Business

2007-12-19T18:27:00.000-08:00

Oops! I've had this slip for a dozen years and I had never overshot it before.

It had been four months since the last time I had approached my slip. That was Aug. 4, the day my 39-year-old Albin two-cylinder gasoline engine broke its innards and had to be put to rest. That incident was the first time I had entered my slip under sail. I did it single-handed and it went perfectly.

Since then I had worked out of state for three months and then installed a new Tohatsu 9.8 hp outboard to replace the Albin. The outboard promised to be nearly as easy to use as the inboard, since it was mounted on a hydraulic mount on the transom and had remote control and electric start operated from the cockpit.

It was December 6. Christmas lights were strung fore and aft from my masthead, forming the outlines of imaginary sails. The real sails, however, were furled and snugly covered in Royal Blue Sunbrella. The genoa sheets were securely coiled and hanked at the bow. The coiled mainsheet hung from a cleat at the back of the cockpit.

During the hour and a half I motored at low throttle settings, it did occur to me that I was placing supreme confidence in a brand new engine. Not just in Tohatsu's quality control, either. I also was relying on the quality of my installation including control cables, electrical connections an a custom fuel system to feed the engine from the inboard fuel tank. I had previously run the new engine a total of 1.2 hours while tied up in the slip. And prudence dictated having the standard Tohatsu fuel tank and hose at the ready in the cockpit.

It wasn't engine failure that plagued me that afternoon, however. What failed was my judgement. Returning, I cut the power too soon heading down the channel to my slip. And I wasn't paying attention to the tide, which had just turned, flooding the basin with a discernible current. Too late to recover with throttle, I shoved the tiller over and hoped for the best.

I quickly saw that my turn wasn't going to carry me into my slip and ran forward to fend myself off my neighbor's stern, if it came to that. The boat seemed to slide sideways as much as it crept forward, but at last the bow was close enough to my dock finger for me to swing around from the pulpit and land on the wobbly planks. A couple more minutes of tugging and pushing had me tied securely in the slip. Whew!

Work of a Craftsman

2007-08-08T15:15:00.000-07:00

Before I went away on my motorcycle trip and returned to break my Albin engine, I was reporting on the rebuild of that engine done in the fall of 2005. I assisted my friend John Dickerson, who gratiously allowed himself to be suckered into helping me. I'm sure he realized I would soon be in over my head and was curious to play with the funky old Albin.

The other day I reviewed the serial number history of the engine and the first one really was built in 1925. Mine was built in 1967 and production ceased in 1976.

Although it is a Swedish engine, a few key components were sourced elsewhere. The Stromberg carburetor and the Bosch starter-generator came from Germany. The SEM magneto is French.

The carburetor was no longer able to provide a reliable fuel-air mixture and a replacement was not available. After a lot of searching for an alternative, I settled on the only obvious choice--a new Zenith carburetor made for the Universal Atomic 4 engine. It was even possible to buy an adjustable main jet and needle so that I could tune the Zenith to match the Albin's needs.

The only problem was that it didn't quite fit the Albin manifold. John built the two necessary adapters, one to bolt to the engine manifold and the other to attach the Stromberg's flame arrestor to the Zenith. The Zenith was designed for the Atomic 4's flame arrestor, which could not be installed in the space available on the Albin.

The manifold adapter was fairly straight-forward. Two flanges were cut, one matched the bolt pattern of the Zenith and the other matched the manifold. A short length of tubing was welded between them.

The flame arrestor adapter was less obvious, at least to me. He made it from oversized stainless tubing that he cut into three sections and then sliced lengthwise. Each section was then re-rolled to create three concentric tubes that brought the outside diameter of the Zenith's opening down to the inside diameter of the Stromberg's flame arrestor. A little TIG welding, followed by the polishing wheel, yielded an object of beauty in my eyes. (The length of the adapter was necessary to clear a bulge in the cylinder block.)

The completed unit bolted into place perfectly. In fact, one night some months later, when I was boarded by the Coast Guard while single-handing back down the Alamitos Bay channel (a story for another time), I was complimented on my flame arrestor. Had it not been there I would have been cited.

Mostly the new carburetor worked well, except...

The first problem came at the end of a test run powering to Avalon. I did initially test the reinstalled engine with some fairly short inner harbor runs. But what I wanted was a boat that would take me to Avalon, so that's what I tested for.

I reached Avalon under power with no problem at all. But as I was idling while doing the necessary mooring transaction with the harbor patrol boat, the Albin died. It started up again okay, and with throttle advanced it ran. But it died once more as I idled down the narrow passage between rows of moorings to my assigned can. I ended up making a dead-stick landing, single-handed. And got away with it!

What followed were several months of motoring tests which ended with the engine dying when I throttled back from full speed to idle, but only after a prolonged run at full speed.

Eventually I discovered that the engine was flooding at idle under those cirumstances. The reason was that the fuel pump was putting out too much fuel pressure. I had replaced the old pump, which worked, with a new one without realizing that pumps came with different pressure settings. The bodies were identical. I was only trying to forestall a future pump failure, but I violated the cardinal rule, if it ain't broke...

Somewhere along the way, I inspected my aluminum gas tank and saw that it was pitted inside and the bottom appeared dirty. So I had my fuel polished and my tank cleaned. Another rule violation.

The result thereafter was that everytime I ran the engine, the fuel pickup tube would eventually clog with debris. Old fuel tanks don't clean very well, especially if you can't open one side to clean inside around the baffles and in all the corners. But what cleaning through the filler neck does do well is loosen the gunk that it doesn't remove, so that the fuel system can suck it up.

That led to having a custom fuel tank built because no standard sized tank would fit. Actually, that was a good thing and only cost $423 at Pipeworks Fabrication, Inc., in Long Beach. The new tank is 3/16 inch 5086 aluminum, thicker and stronger than the original, and came with a fuel level sender installed and calibrated. I also was able to make it an inch taller, adding two gallons of capacity. And I had the fill neck moved the quarter-inch forward needed to correct the misalignment of the original with the cockpit sole fill plate.

It took me a number of hours running time to create and then solve the fuel problems. But the eventual result was an engine that started and ran reliably. Until last Saturday that is.

Its Your Birthday, Deer

2007-08-07T14:59:00.000-07:00

July 25, 2007, was an eventful day. It was my brother Michael's birthday. He says I can't say which one. It was the turn-around day on our annual California motorcycle ride, which begins and ends in Los Angeles. (For him it really begins in New Jersey when he ships his motorcycle to California each year for the ride. I've convinced him that the riding is better on the Left Coast.)

After a late start in Crescent City, where I had to replace the dead battery in my Suzuki 650 V-Strom, we made it barely into Oregon. We rode up the Smith River valley on US 199 and then turned south on a county road at O'Brien. It was a beautiful, lonely path back to California. Then we rode down the Klamath River, up the Trinity River and eventually across the mountains to Eureka.

Along the way we talked with a flagman while stopped for road paving. He told us how the afternoon before authorities had to airlift out a motorcyclist who hit a deer nearby.

Down the road we found ourselves in heavy forest fire smoke, where several dozen lightning-caused fires had been burning for weeks. Alongside the Klamath River south of Happy Camp, we saw a fire crew and got a first-hand account from their fire boss and one of the hotshot crewmen. They had spent two weeks moving a back fire three miles across the mountains down to where we could see it burning now just across the river. The hot-shotter, covered in dirt and grime, told how good it felt to "spike in" on the steep hillsides in a sleeping bag after 16-hour work days.

As we were leaving, a fire chief on reciprocal duty from Marin County, stopped by to tell us about all the police activity we'd see a ways down the road. Two young men had drowned in the river that morning, one trying to save the other. Both were summer workers at a resort in Happy Camp.

We were glad to leave the fires and tragedies behind us as we continued our ride south on Highway 96.

Rounding a curve, a young fawn is relaxing in the shade beside the highway ahead.

My brother, on his Suzuki GSX1300R Hayabusa, hits the brakes as he sees the deer.

The deer heads out to meet him.

At the last instant, the deer turns, sideswipes my brother's leg, leaving a little fur behind and heads back to the side of the highway. Those four clips from my camcorder happened in 1.5 seconds.

Over the next 2.5 seconds the deer reversed course and ran across the road in front of me, making good its escape to the other side.

The entire event lasted six seconds. We didn't stop. This was one hit and run with no consequences. All three parties involved had a story to tell, however.

Do Not Resuscitate

2007-08-05T22:58:00.000-07:00

I went sailing Saturday for the first time in three weeks, following nearly two weeks on my motorcycle on my annual California ride with my brother. (I'll share highlights of that in another post).

While I was motoring out the main channel of the Alamitos Bay Marina, single-handing with the mainsail hoisted, the old Albin engine suddenly got a lot louder, making a clattering or knocking sound.

I quickly shut it down and gybed back toward my slip, about 3/4 mile away. With no engine to hold the boat into the wind under autopilot control, there wasn't an easy way to drop the main, so I decided to use it to sail into my slip. It was downwind and then a reach in 6-8 knots of wind most of the way back. But it was 150 feet straight into the wind up the narrow fairway between the gangways to my slip. Then the wind became a crosswind as I turned into the slip, with no way to spill it from the mainsail because the aft shroud prevented the boom from going forward enough. I made it without problem, however, even managing to step off the boat onto my slip finger and get to the head of the slip to stop the boat before it hit the gangway, despite the wind-filled main.

My initial visual inspection of the engine compartment found no problems. I removed the sparkplugs and spun the engine with the starter-generator motor and no unusual noises were heard. I put the plugs back in and attached the wires, and the noises recurred as soon as the engine started. Then I removed the wires, but left the plugs in place and all was quiet again. Hmmmm.

This morning my friend and mechanical mentor John Dickerson came over and made the same tests. This time the engine knocked loudly even with the ignition wires detached, but plugs installed. The oil film on the bearings had drained away overnight. Next he used only one plug, screwed into one cylinder at a time to see if the problem was a bad rod bearing on one cylinder. The engine knocked with the plug in each cylinder, leading John to conclude that the probable cause is a bad main bearing.

The parts to fix it are probably available from the Albin dealer, AME Ship Equipment, Inc. in Miami. I might even be able to buy a short block. The time to have done that, however, was 18-months ago when we replaced the valves and valve guides and left the bottom end alone, relying on reports of recent past rebuilds.

I had issued an engine health directive in my mind in recent months, knowing that a fatal problem could occur and deciding I was unwilling to put any significant money into fixing it again.

It lasted 110.5 hours since we rebuilt it. I added the hour meter when I installed the engine. It had taken about 60 of those hours to track down a series of gremlins that caused intermittent engine stoppages. They were all fuel related and ended after I had a new fuel tank built to replace the original, and installed a fuel pump with the proper low pressure setting that no longer overwelmed the carburetor needle valve, flooding the engine to a stop at low speeds. The last fix was only about 10 hours ago when I was able to identify and purchase hotter sparkplugs to end a tendency to foul plugs at low rpm.

Proving John's diagnosis would require removing and dismantling the engine. Oddly enough, leaving the engine in place will allow me to get some use from the boat.

With the sparkplugs out, and no gasoline flowing to the carburetor, the powerful starter-generator motor will spin the engine and drive the boat at about a half-knot through the transmission and propeller shaft. I tested it successfully today. The bearings that won't support internal combustion, are still good enough to enable the crankshaft to spin without any reciprocating load.

Unlike most engines, the starter motor on the Albin is designed to spin constantly. It connects to the flywheel with v-belts instead of a gear. At low speed it is a starter, drawing current from the battery to turn. When the engine starts and speeds up, the unit becomes a generator as its electrical flow naturally reverses direction and it send current back into the batteries. Some golf carts use the same simple system.

Obviously I can't go very far under battery power, but I can certainly get in and out of my slip and out to the nearest marina channel, where I can hoist the main and begin to sail. It will be a test, however, to see if I can tack the boat upwind through the main channel out to the ocean single-handed, as I normally sail.

What is the long-range plan? If the engine was an Atomic Four, a common gasoline engine in old sailboats of the 1960s and 1970s, I'd buy a BetaMarine diesel, which has a model with engine mounts that match. On my boat, however, repowering with a BetaMarine or any other engine requires building new mounting rails. It's a minimum of $8,000, including the engine, and it could climb a lot higher.

When I bought the boat it had an outboard engine. After I fixed the Albin and had it running reliably, I sold that engine this spring.

But buying another outboard and installing it differently, so that it can be controlled from the cockpit, is probably the cheapest solution at this point. I'll just have to get used to the blight of an outboard on the transom.

According to its serial number, my Albin was built in 1967. It lasted 40 years. That's a long time in the marine environment, especially for a seawater-cooled engine.

This afternoon, after declaring the Albin dead, I cut off life support. I removed the fuel lines, and the fuel pump and drained the carburetor. Now I can remove the plugs, spin the engine with the starter motor all I want and not send an explosive gasoline mixture into my engine compartment.

Then I started looking at my marine catalogs and searching the internet for outboard and mounting brackets.

Eventually I'll remove the Albin and open up some prime storage space. I'll also offer some good parts for sale - a year-old cylinder head, an 18-month-old Zenith carburetor with custom manifold flange to mate with the Albin manifold, and a beautiful bit of machining to adapt the bronze flame arrestor from the old Stromberg carb to the new Zenith. There will also be an excellent cast aluminum exhaust riser, anti-siphon valve, and the rest of the re-engineered exhaust system that ended the possibility of cooling water backing up into the engine. The starter-generator is only three years old and works perfectly. The magneto is in good condition, with a spare set of new points and is irreplaceable. The transmission is in excellent condition, too.

Albin engine, Part 4 - New Valves

2007-07-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

Mounted on a work table in John Dickerson’s shop, stripped of its intake/exhaust manifold, valve cover and cylinder head, it was obvious why the engine had no compression and wouldn’t run.

The exhaust valves for both cylinders didn’t go up and down like they should. They were up and they stayed up. The valve lifters were a little pitted, too.

If the valves don’t work right on a modern automobile engine, it is relatively simple and economical to remove the cylinder heads, which contain the valve mechanism, send them out to one of the many machine shops that specialize in that sort of work, and have them fixed.

However, while the valve mechanism on the Albin engine is much less complex than that of a modern automobile engine, there are no machine shops that specialize in that kind of work for that kind of engine.

In fact, in all of metropolitan Los Angeles, there is only one shop that will work on that engine. And that shop already had worked on this engine. Twice in two years it turns out. And the engine didn’t run.

John Dickerson doesn’t work on this kind of engine, either. Or any other kind of engine. He sends the engine work out to engine shops that specialize in whatever he needs done. Usually it involves extracting much greater horsepower from an engine than its manufacturer ever imagined.

John was doing me a huge favor by hosting me in his shop. I’m always quick to overestimate my abilities. So I had assured John that I would do all the work myself if he would let me use some space, some tools, and answer an occasional question. After all,
I once rebuilt a VW engine. Many, many years ago. And to prepare for this task I bought a book about rebuilding engines.

As it turned out, my questions were, in fact, incessant. The space requirements kept expanding. And I probably laid my hands on most of the tools in his shop. In the end, John patiently rebuilt my engine for me, while I convinced myself that I was assisting.

Several hours spent trying to free and clean up the stuck valves led to the conclusion that all four valves and their valve guides should be replaced. The valve lifters would be cleaned, polished in place with emery cloth and reused. This was a decision prompted by both practicality and fear.

Removing the valve lifters meant removing the camshaft which meant removing the front and rear engine cases, which meant removing the transmission. The danger of damaging a part that couldn’t be replaced loomed larger than the probable cost of all the extra gaskets and other parts that would be needed.

A micrometer check of the cylinders showed that they had not worn beyond as-new tolerances in the 39-year-life of this engine, and they were still round. Swedish iron is good iron. All they needed was a new set of piston rings to replace the new rings that had been installed at the engine shop when it last worked on this engine. Apparently, if new rings sit in cylinders for months without the engine being run, they lose their ability to properly break-in and seal the cylinder.

Most parts are readily available for Albin engines from AME Ship Equipment Co., in Miami, FL, which imports them from the Swedish manufacturer, Fors Marin. (See listing and link in sidebar.)

Relying on ground shipping rather than air, in about 10 days we had four new valves, valve guides, a set of piston rings, cylinder head gaskets, manifold gaskets, and the other parts and spares we needed. The cost was $583.00.

I was surprised to learn that both the valve guides and valves themselves were supplied longer than they would be after installation. John deftly drove the brittle iron valve guides into the cylinder block and then snapped off the ends at the proper distance with a chisel and a sharp hammer blow.

The valve stems had to be ground down precisely to the proper dimension for the required .008 and .010-inch clearances from the solid valve lifters. First he made a V-shaped tray for his grinder to hold the valve stems at exactly 90 degrees from the grinding surface. Then he ground each by hand, checking repeatedly as he neared the proper clearance to get exactly the right dimension.

I did assist. My job was to lap the valves to the valve seats with valve grinding compound so that they would make a good seal when closed. The seats were in good shape, and the seawater in the combustion chambers had not ruined them. Valve lapping is done with a suction cup on a round handle. The suction cup grips the head of the valve while the round handle is spun between the palms of the hands moving back and forth opposite each other. It takes awhile to mate the surfaces of the valve faces and the valve seats that way.

Eventually the engine was reassembled. John welded up a mounting stand for it, complete with fuel, water and battery connections and we did a test run. It started fine. It pumped cooling water fine. But the engine would not run smoothly no matter how we adjusted the carburetor.

The carburetor, with its prior JB Weld repairs, proved itself to be just what it looked like. Junk.

In an instant

2007-07-10T23:26:00.000-07:00

I’ve added something to my safety gear – a wax toilet bowl gasket ring.

The same material helped keep my slip neighbor’s boat afloat the other night.

John, who sails a 1975 Cal 3-30, Stronghold, was on his way to Catalina Island Sunday. He planned to spend the night at Emerald Bay and return Monday in time to watch the first start for the Transpac race, the start for the cruisers and smaller racing boats.

About three hours into his single-handed motorsail Sunday, John heard an unusual noise and his engine seemed to hiccup. It lasted just an instant, he said, and then everything seemed normal. But there shouldn’t be any unusual noises and the engine shouldn’t hiccup, so after thinking about it for several minutes, John decided to throttle back and take a look below.

The Cal 3-30 has great access to the aft end of the engine and the propeller shaft from a side hatch in the starboard quarterberth. Opening the hatch, he was greeted with water gushing in through a broken hose that had secured the propeller shaft's stuffing box to the stern tube through which the shaft exited the boat.

It was a gallons-per-minute leak, a boat-sinking leak, and there was no obvious fix. The propeller shaft remained securely in place, preventing the use of a tapered wooden plug of the sort that can stop a leak from a thru-hull fitting.

When the engine is inside the boat, there has to be some way to get its power to the propeller outside the boat. It is done by running the propeller shaft through a hole in the boat. Water cools and lubricates the shaft. What keeps the water from flooding around the shaft and into the boat is a simple and normally very reliable system called a stuffing box.

The stuffing box isn't really a box. Its not much more than two sections of pipe that surround the prop shaft, one section threaded into the other. An internal gap between the two sections is filled with flax or other material, which prevents the water from coming any further up the shaft, but at the same time does not create any undue friction on the shaft.

The outer section of pipe is the same diameter as the stern tube through which the shaft exits the hull. A length of heavy reinforced hose, much like a car's radiator hose, slips over the stern tube and the stuffing box (pipe) and is held tightly in place by two strong hose clamps at each end. It is designed to drip water while the shaft is turning at the rate of a several drops every minute. (There are other, newer design sealing systems that don't drip at all, but most boats have a traditional stuffing box as described.)

John went back to the cockpit. He shut down the engine, stopped the propeller from spinning, turned the boat back toward the mainland and radioed for help on his marine VHF radio. Sea water soon spilled out of the separate engine bilge under the cockpit and began to fill the lower main bilge in the saloon. Water was pouring in faster than the bilge pump could get rid of it.

Luckily for John he was not yet far from Point Fermin and a Los Angeles County lifeguard boat reached him within about 10 minutes of his mayday call. A high-capacity portable water pump powered by a gasoline engine was quickly put aboard Stronghold, and the water was rapidly sucked out. The leak had flooded the cabin sole with an inch or two of water rising out of the bilge by the time help arrived. His boat would have sunk without the rescue boat's pump.

While the lifeguard boat crew handled the pump, John wrapped towels around the stern tube and propeller shaft and secured them with rope, which slowed the gusher down to a manageable leak. Once the large water pump emptied the bilge, Stronghold’s own bilge pump was able to keep up with the leak.

The LA lifeguards stayed alonside John’s boat as he sailed back home. When they neared Long Beach, the LA crew turned the rescue monitoring over to Long Beach lifeguards, who accompanied Stronghold back to the Alamitos Bay channel entrance.

At that point, John assured them he was doing okay and sailed the rest of the way back to his slip unaccompanied.

A cell phone call during the sail home had a diver waiting at his slip with four toilet bowl gasket rings. John said the diver used two of them, jamming the wax into the cutless bearing that supported the prop shaft in the stern tube. The wax reduced the leak to an occasional drip. Just to make sure, John made several trips to the boat that evening to check.

He said the LA lifeguard told him about the toilet bowl wax trick, noting that it could be done with an overboard dive on the prop shaft no matter how far from shore a skipper was.

With the bi-annual Transpac race starting, John couldn’t help but speculate, “What if that had happened to me half-way to Hawaii. I’d have lost the boat.” As it was, he considered himself very lucky not to have lost the boat anyway.

Monday morning he nudged Stronghold with his dinghy to the boatyard across the channel from our slips, while I steered the wounded vessel. Once lifted out of the water, inspection revealed that the stuffing box had seized on a corroded prop shaft and twisted the heavy reinforced hose, ripping it apart.

Later Monday I headed for the hardware store to buy a toilet bowl gasket ring. $1.79 seemed little enough to pay for something I don’t ever expect to need.

After all, my own prop shaft was replaced earlier this year after 39 years of service, along with new shaft packing in the stuffing box, new hose joining the stuffing box to the stern tube and new, extra-heavy-duty hose clamps. On the other hand, maybe the wax could also seal a crack in the hull if I were ever to hit something in the water.

I think that part of being safe at sea is recognizing a lesson to be learned when it shows up next door.

Sail What You Got

2007-07-04T13:42:00.000-07:00

Broken engine or engine removed, it didn't matter. Narrow Escape was a functioning sailboat from the day I bought it. And I took it sailing a lot. This picture, taken by John Dickerson from his Catalina 34, Pelican, was on one of those early days in the fall of 2005.

The picture tells a story for anyone interested in sailing and doing so on a budget. The story is that once I bought the boat and finished with the survey haul-out and initial repairs I was ready for daysailing and Catalina Island cruising in Southern California. Most of the hours and dollars spent thereafter, and there have been a lot of both, were unnecessary.

But I'm a tinkerer. I like to putter around my boat. I like to fix things. I like to make it better. I take pride in my work. I like to look at the results and tell myself that it was worth the cost and the effort. And I believe it.

However, I'm realistic enough to know that this photo shows that other people could logically reach a different conclusion.

If you stick with me on the blog, I'll explain a lot of the things I've done to Narrow Escape since I first got it back in the water. And I'll provide some cost figures, though not accurate to the cent. I didn't keep a lot of the receipts. Besides, I don't really need to know. Its not like I would have wisely invested the money if I hadn't spent it on the boat.

The Nissan 9.8 hp electric start outboard was a fine engine. But a little awkward to use. I did a couple of things to improve that.

I found it hard to reach all the way to the stern to control the throttle when I was motoring with the Nissan. So I bought a HelmsMate outboard extension handle, the $60 model with a universal joint. Problem solved

Trying to shift the engine from neutral to forward and back again, or to reverse was even more awkward. Just when I most needed to be looking forward, docking the boat, I had to turn around and lean backwards through the pushpit to reach the shifter

I couldn't find any off-the-shelf solution, so I made a shifter extension out of plastic plumbing parts from the hardware store.
By trial and error I selected a plastic pipe nipple that would slip over the shifter on the Nissan. To achieve the needed horizontal motion and allow necessary flexibility, I added a 45-degree fitting and a closed cap fitting. The horizontal pipe was given cap fittings at each end.

I joined the two cap fittings between the 45-degree piece and the horizontal pipe with a stainless machine screw and oversize washers inside each cap plus a lock nut. I drilled the holes in the end caps larger, to allow the machine screw to wobble, but not too much. That work was done in increments and tested on the boat until it worked well. Then all of the plastic parts were cemented with plastic plumbing cement.

I made one omission that was discovered in a most awkward fashion. In April, 2006, as my crew and I motored out of my slip in a hurry to reach the starting line for the Newport-to-Ensenada race, the shift extender fell overboard. Air trapped in the long handle (despite the oversize screw hole) kept it afloat long enough for it to be retrieved. Later I added a lanyard to tie the extension to the pushpit when in use.

Albin engine, Part 3

2007-07-01T20:19:00.000-07:00

When my Ericson 30 was built in 1968, I'm guessing that its Albin O-21 engine was bolted into place in the hull cavity before the deck and cockpit molding was lowered onto the hull.

Now, it rested in a cave beneath the cockpit sole. Like a sleeping bear, the trick was going to be to coax the injured engine out of the cave, and up and off the boat without dropping it or getting hurt. Then we'd have to get it into John Dickerson's truck for the journey to his well-equipped auto restoration shop.

Weighing about 350 pounds, it was not going to be easy. But there were some advantages. Access to the engine from the side through the starboard cockpit locker was good. The cabin sole was a simple painted surface, not highly varnished teak and holly. A little dirt and even a few scratches weren't going to matter much. The opening aft to the engine from the cabin was large and unobstructed. And a lifting eye was bolted to the cylinder head at approximately the center of fore and aft mass.

The plan was to rig a 1-inch iron pipe through the aft portion of the cabin extending into the engine compartment, through the lifting eye. With everything unbolted, we would then lift the pipe about four inches so the flywheel could clear the lower lip of the engine room bulkhead. Next we would slide the engine forward on the pipe until it could be lifted vertically through the companionway.

With the help of a cable hoist lashed to the boom, the strength of my two companions, John Dickerson and Dick Barnes, and lubricant on the pipe, it worked. Not quickly, not neatly, not quietly. But it worked.

There were the moments when I realized that the engine was hanging about four feet above the cabin sole and I wondered what would happen if it fell. I put the cabin cushions below it.

Swinging the engine over the side of the boat so that it could be lowered into a dock cart on the dock finger was piquant, too.

I was beginning to understand why the quotes for a new diesel engine were approximately double the cost of the engine itself. I would gain more appreciation of that cost ratio as the project progressed.

Albin engine, Part 2

2007-06-23T12:32:00.000-07:00

The day after the boat was relaunched, I tackled the problem of the recalcitrant engine again.

This time I pulled the spark plugs and found, to my horror, water.

What did work the day before when I was cranking the engine was the water pump. It dutifully circulated water through the raw water cooling system and out through the cylinder head to the inlet on the exhaust pipe.

Boats use the engine cooling water to cool the exhaust enough so that it can flow through a flexible rubber hose instead of a metal pipe like a car exhaust.

What makes this wet exhaust system work is, well, engine exhaust. It pushes the cooling water through the exhaust hose and muffler and back out into the ocean.

If the engine doesn't run there is no exhaust. So what you end up with is a very efficient system for filling the exhaust hose up with water until it backs up into the manifold, through the valves when they are open, and then into the cylinders. If you crank on a dead engine long enough you may ruin the engine.

Thus I belatedly learned Rule No. 1 for attempting to start a balky engine when the boat is in the water. Turn off the cooling water sea cock until the engine is running.

My immediate reaction, after turning off the cooling sea cock, was to run the starter while a mix of water and air sprayed out through the spark plug holes. Then I started spraying copious amounts of WD-40 into the cylinders and kept cranking. When I wasn't seeing water anymore, I checked the oil dipstick to see how much water had ended up in the crankcase. Not much. I changed the oil, cranked some more and then changed the oil again.

I still didn't know why the engine had not started. In fact, I didn't learn that until several weeks later, when I had time again to do more diagnoses. In the meantime I bought a compression tester. When I hooked it up to a spark plug hole and ran the starter, I discovered that the engine didn't have any compression.

That's when I decided to call me friend and Ensenada Race crewman John Dickerson, who owns Automotive Restorations in Downey, CA and has decades of experience with cars and engines. He also has been a boat owner for years, currently owning a Catalina 34.

The recommendation was to pull the head off the engine and view the damage.

The good news was that the cylinders looked fine. They were not rusted, nor scored. And there was no ridge at the top. Clearly the cylinders had been honed in a recent engine overhaul, and per the receipts the seller provided, there undoubtedly were new rings on the pistons.

The Albin O-21 two-cylinder gas engine in my boat was manufactured in 1967, according to the serial number history. Serial number 1 was built in 1925, so this was an old and relatively simple design.

The valves popped up and down on the starboard side of the cylinders, seating in the engine block. The simple flat cylinder head was cast with combustion chambers that extended off to the side of the cylinders to allow the gas-air mixture to be sucked into the cylinders and the exhaust gases to flow back out. The carburetor was bolted to the bottom of the exhaust manifold and had its own passageways to feed the gas-air mixture to the two inlet valves.

It was the exhaust valves that were frozen in place. The valve for the front cylinder was recalcitrant, but it would move if tapped with a rubber mallet.

By soaking the valve stem with penetrating oil, tapping it down, cranking the engine to raise it again and repeating the process over and over, I eventually got that valve free.

The exhaust valve for the rear cylinder wouldn't budge, however.

John suggested filling the valve chamber with penetrating oil and giving it a few days to work.

After 10 days of trying that, the rear valve remained frozen in place. By now I also had removed the manifold and could see that the lifter for that valve, which bobs up and down on the camshaft low in the cylinder block, also wasn't moving.

Clearly the engine would have to be removed and John graciously volunteered work space in his shop and help getting the engine out.

Father's Day

2007-06-20T09:14:00.001-07:00

It was a beautiful sailing day Sunday, despite inner waters jammed with dads and their boats. A few miles offshore the breeze was averaging six knots out of the south-southeast and this ketch and I were having great times.

See the fisherman's staysail flying so gracefully between his main and mizzen masts. Click the picture to enlarge it.

It took some effort to set that sail. I saw that someone had to climb the lower portion of the mizzen on this pilot house ketch, probably about a 60-footer. The fisherman's tack apparently was the culprit. But after it was fixed, it flew perfectly and the self-tending sail tacked and gybed itself as the ketch changed course.

I was sailing alone, but my children were with me in my thoughts and in my heart. Daughter Katie is in British Columbia teaching a class at Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre. And son Randy, his partner and my grandson were in Pittsburgh at the wedding of a close friend.

I'm a lucky father. My children are successful, happy, and doing things to make the world a little better for their presence here. It was easy being their father, mostly anyway. They were always self-directed and full of ideas. I tried to nurture that rather than ridicule. By the time they were in their early teens I realized they really were smarter than me and accepted it. I tried to let them be responsible for their own goals and achievements.

Take another look at that ketch above. It's sails are set perfectly and it is on a course to windward. Windward is somewhere to its starboard bow and it won't ever get there on its present course. It'll have to tack and follow a zig-zag course if the skipper really wants to get somewhere to windward.

It isn't really possible for me on my boat to know where that skipper is headed. All I can know is that he or she is doing it very well at the moment. That progress could be ruined, however.

What if I could command that skipper to turn more to the right, to point closer to the direction I think the boat should be headed. Parents can do that to their children and the result might be that the child ends up in irons, not really going anywhere, accompanied by a lot of flailing and commotion.

That's never a pretty sight on the water. Nor in life.

Principal Race Officer

2007-06-19T09:06:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday was my first time as the Principal Race Officer (PRO) of a sailboat race. I was a bit surprised to learn how demanding the job is. The feedback was positive. Participants seemed to be having fun. I certainly did.

Sailboat racing is viewed by many as an oxymoron, especially racing at the local club level where a really fast boat may occasionally hit 8 or 9 knots. Most sail at the 5 to 7 knot range in a 12-15-knot wind.

I’ve been racing sporadically since I bought my first sailing dinghy (Lehman 12) in 1965, in Denver. I read books from the Denver Public Library to learn how to sail it.

There are sailboat races for every kind of boat, and at all economic levels. Our club sponsors what could be called “run what you brung” events, and people bring every thing from affordable, older boats of 25-feet and up, to the latest 40-something-foot racing-cruising boats. They are able to compete with each other through a handicap rating system.

Racing your own sailboat has the same virtues of most kinds of competition. It makes you better at what you love to do. It imposes discipline. It provides a true measure of achievement. And it is fun.

I learned a lot by being in charge of a race. I saw some expert maneuvers. I saw some flawless teamwork. I saw what not to do the next time I’m racing. And I saw all of that sitting on the cabin top of Narrow Escape, anchored in the waves to form one end of the start-finish line.

It was unusually warm with light winds leading up to Saturday, and the marine weather forecast did not suggest much wind Saturday, either. But by 10 a.m. we already were measuring 6 knots from the south, and both the strength and direction held fairly consistent through the noon start for our series of three races for three separate classes of boats.

Yacht racing is a highly-disciplined sport. It has a set of international rules, and an international jury to which a dispute, even at a minor local level such as ours, could theoretically be appealed. In most cases, races are conducted without any sort of refereeing or judging. The rules are enforced only by the participants themselves through the right to file a protest against another yacht.

The race committee, of which I was chair, would have to hear the evidence, possibly view the damage, and render a binding judgment of right and wrong. There also is provision for a yacht in the wrong to tacitly admit it during the race and take a 360-degree penalty turn to wipe out the transgression.

There were no protests in Saturday’s race.

There are steps required to become the PRO for a race. First comes racing and serving on race committees. Then there is a day-long training course and test conducted under the auspices of US Sailing, which is the United States' member of the International Sailing Federation, and is the US Sailing Olympic Committee. Next was a race in which I served as the understudy to the PRO. Finally I got to be PRO, but with an experienced PRO aboard to coach me and keep things from becoming a complete shambles if I messed up.

The most important job of the PRO is to define a good race course for the participants; a course that will be challenging, fun, long enough to justify the considerable effort in gathering crew members and preparing for a race, yet not so long that few are able to finish within the time allotted. In other words, you have to do a little short-term weather forecasting and predict what the wind will do during the afternoon conduct of the race.

My race was midway along in a series of seven races called the Long Beach Harbor Invitational Series. Each event is run by one of the three local yacht clubs that created and sponsor the series. Saturday it was the turn of Little Ships Fleet Yacht Club, a seventy-year-old institution that can trace its history back through the beginning of modern-day handicap yacht racing.

There were no two boats alike among the thirteen that competed. Instead, each had a handicap rating issued by an organization, Performance Handicap Racing Fleet of Southern California, that exists to rate the relative performance of sailboats.

There were three start times, five minutes apart, one for each of the three classes. The finish time for each boat was recorded. Then the handicap rating was applied to their actual race times to calculate a corrected race time. The boat with the shortest corrected time in each class won that class.

The system seems to work more or less fairly, and has done so for many years, and throughout the country, from all three coasts to the Great Lakes.

Saturday’s course choices seemed to work. They ranged from 10.6 nautical miles for the fastest boats, to 6.6 nautical miles for the slowest. All the boats from all three classes finished with 35 minutes of each other. The boats took about 2 to 2.5 hours to complete their courses.

Depending on boat complexity and the skipper’s preference, the boats raced with three to six-person crews. On the committee boat, we had a six-person crew and everyone was busy with assigned tasks from the time we reached the start area about an hour before the racing began, until all three races were underway. The failure of any one of the six to perform his or her task properly could create an unfair situation for the racers. Race postponement could be the outcome. But there were no failures. The wind held. The races started as scheduled.

Then we relaxed, bobbed at the anchor, munched, read, talked, told tales, and waited to time the racers' finishes.

Afterward, our arrival back at the dock and the eventual posting of the results and awarding of trophies was much anticipated. Hamburgers, chips, beer and sodas, kept the racers occupied long enough to run the finish times through the computer and print the results.

I had never before realized that the PRO gets the last hamburger. If he’s lucky.

Albin engine, Part 1

2007-06-14T11:13:00.000-07:00

One day while the boat was still on the cradle during the extended haul-out for the survey, I decided to quickly fix the Albin engine, which wouldn't start.

The seller told me he believed the problem was in the carburetor. He described how he had removed the fuel float bowl, filled it with gasoline, reattached it, and the engine ran for half a minute or so.

Ah ha!, I had thought to myself. The float needle is stuck. That's so easy. It reminded me of fixing the stuck choke on that VW squareback many years ago. I was sure that I was going to have a fully-operational Albin inboard in no time.

The first thing I figured out was that the seller was a lot more dexterous with his fingers than I was. There was no way I could have removed the bowl from the carb, put gas in and reattached it with the gas, or at least most of it, still in the bowl. Especially not in the water. I couldn't even do it with the boat motionless on the cradle.

Instead, I removed the carburetor and took it apart. It was a Solex 26, which I would later learn was irreplaceable, and it was in sorry condition. The bottom of the float bowl was coated with JB Weld or an equivalent product. Undoubtedly the bowl had corroded because of water in the fuel sitting in the bowl and someone had decided to fix it. The fix didn't look recent.

What it did was limit the movement of the float so that the needle valve remained closed when the float was resting on the bottom of the bowl. I fixed that by bending the brass tab and got the carburetor to the point that I could blow air through the fuel inlet into the bowl. Ah ha! I'm a genius. This engine is fixed.

Even though the boat was high and dry, I decided I could fire it up for a few seconds to prove my success. A lot of cranking ensued. But no ignition. I removed the plugs and verified that they sparked. If you have fuel and you have spark you have ignition. Hmmm. I didn't have ignition.

I bought new plugs. The old ones were rusty. And I went about my other tasks, deciding not to try starting it again until it was in the water.

After the boat was launched, I spent some time at the boat yard dock trying to get the engine to run. Finally I gave up, pushed the electic start button on the outboard, and motored back to the slip. I had been paying the slip rent since the boat was hauled. I would have about six weeks to stay in that King Harbor slip while my other boat was in my slip in Long Beach awaiting purchase.

What's in a name?

2007-06-12T21:55:00.000-07:00

My Ericson 30 came without a name. It used to have one, but the previous owner didn't like it and took it off. I don't know what it was. No matter because with one exception, I've always given my boats a name of my own choosing.

There are superstitions about changing boat names, which is entertaining for those who care. I'm not one for either superstition or ceremony, so the most difficult thing about changing a boat name for me is getting the old name off. That can be quite a chore if its painted on.

The most useful reason for naming a boat is so that your friends can easily hail you on the marine VHF radio by simply saying the boat name on Channel 16 and giving their boat name for your response. "Narrow Escape, this Pelican calling," for example. And I respond "Pelican, this is Narrow Escape. Over.

If your boat doesn't have a radio there's not much point in naming it.You may also want to put your hailing port on the transom. When you're anchored in a quiet cove somewhere, others in the vicinity will know where you're from.

Must have been a tough sail all the way from Phoenix, AZ. But there are no Coast Guard or any other rules about what constitutes a hailing port, so a lot of people put their residence on their boat. I use the location where my boat is berthed. If it was a trailer sailor, I'd probably put my city name on the transom.

You can look up various listings of most popular boat names on the internet. My goal has always been to have a unique name, so it would be disappointing to find my boat name on such a list. I also like names that are descriptive or meaningful, especially if they can have more than one meaning.

"Narrow Escape" came to me fairly easily. At 9 feet, 6 inches, the Ericson is narrow for a thirty footer. And its my escape. From land, from boredom, from other obligations, from all sorts of things.

It is a name that people seem to connect with. At Isthmus Cove recently, a lovely young woman came paddling by in kayak and paused. "Narrow Escape," she said. "Yeah, I know all about that. We just spent 15 days sailing here from La Paz."

This is the eighth boat which I've owned or had an interest in since 1974. Only one retained its previous name, Popeye, a Catalina 22, that came with Popeye-motif curtains and other decorations.

The first that I named myself was an Islander 32, Mirth. It was a family boat when my two children were young, and the name described the typical atmosphere aboard that boat.

Later, after a divorce, there was a Pearson Triton 28, which I named Metaphor. The children were a little older, I had them on weekends and we spent glorious hours together on that boat. The name was perfect on many levels.

Along the way was a Nordica 20, owned by an out-of-town friend. I paid for the slip, insurance and maintenance and got to call it Brio. I liked the jaunty sound of it, although I'll confess that I didn't always feel jaunty the time I sailed it single-handed for 35 hours to get from San Diego to Avalon.

Later came a Catalina 30. IBM's super computer had recently won a chess match against a human champ and Deep Blue seemed the perfect name. I sailed it on the deep blue sea, the upholstery and sail covers were dark navy blue, not the more common, lighter, royal blue. And my life seemed to be having its ups and downs.

Then there was Wave Theory. This Cal 33 was named Manuia 4 by its original owner, an island word that had meaning to him. I found it just hard to pronounce, and explain. Besides, now it was my boat (actually it was mostly the bank's boat).

The name came from a concept my son had about the fundamental workings of the universe. The colorful red, orange and blue pattern I used as the fill color for the vinyl lettering came from one of his computer simulations of the theory. It seemed to me like nothing epitomized the implementation of another kind of wave theory better than a sailboat.

Painting a boat name onto a hull is a complex skill. You don't want to buy a brush, a can of paint and try it yourself. On the other hand, using adhesive-backed lettering systems, just looks cheesy.

But what is easy is taking your request to the local sign shop, which can design most anything you want on a computer screen and then cut it in self-stick vinyl. Applying a name made that way merely takes a little care and the result looks professional.

The Survey

2007-06-09T19:29:00.000-07:00

On a calm, warm September morning, the Ericson 30 was lifted out of the water on a sling, the bottom was power-washed, and it was set to dry on a cradle in the boat yard.

At mid-morning, the surveyor arrived and set about making his inspection, which lasted more than an hour.

A marine survey is not required when buying a boat, unless you want to buy hull insurance that will pay you if the boat is damaged or sinks. Insurance companies don't write hull policies without a survey. But you can buy just the liability insurance that marinas require without a survey. However, some marinas also require a boat survey, even though they don't care if you have hull insurance. They just want to make sure that your boat is not going to become an abandoned derelict in their slip.

Not having a pre-purchase survey is risky. But it happens. Several weeks ago, an acquaintance had the Newport 30 he purchased without survey hauled for bottom painting. It was a donation boat that he got for $5,000. It had not been hauled since 1996. It could have been virtually worthless if it was suffering from severe osmotic blistering. But he was lucky. The bottom did have more than two hundred blister bubbles, but they were small and easily and economically repaired by grinding them out, filling with epoxy filler, and repainting.

The Ericson 30 I was buying had no blisters. The seller said there were only three minor blisters a year earlier when he had it hauled for his own pre-purchase survey. Those blisters were fixed and the bottom was repainted.

The surveyor I hired found only a few problems with the boat, all of which were fixed by the yard, or by me while the boat was hauled out.

I found a few other things I also wanted done. The days mounted and so did the yard bill, eventually reaching about $3,800 for two weeks of work.

There were useless old thru-hull fittings for an inoperative knot meter and a missing depth sounder. Add $255 for new fittings to install the new $300 combined unit that I purchased.

Several repairs and improvements were required or desired for the head and its holding tank. I made the mistake of asking for some items after other work was completed. Altogether about $1,500 in parts and mostly labor went into the head system.

I'm a little shocked at the cost of that portion of the work. It's compiled from several different yard bills, which I had never totaled before. I've been wondering if I was cheated? Thinking back, I know that I hired out the work rather than tackle it myself because it is hard, unpleasant work in tight spaces and I didn't know how to do some of it. I also recall that some of it took four hands--a pair inside the hull and a pair outside the hull. That second pair of hands may not have been busy all the time, but had to be there when needed. So the hourly labor rate doubled. I do recall going over all the labor charges with the yard at the time I paid the bill.

My experience with a variety of boat yards is that the hours charged for labor always seem excessive. And when I work on my boat myself, it always takes two or three times longer than I anticipate.

The rudder was fine, but I thought it was too loose and ask to have it shimmed up. Add $170 labor.

After the boat was supposedly ready to be launched, I broke the ball-valve off a thru-hull for the cockpit scuppers. An additional yard bill ensued. The broken part was very difficult to see and broke when I put a lot of pressure on it trying to replace a scupper hose. I'm glad it happened in the yard. The thru-hull, ball-valve and associated fittings definitely needed to be replaced.

Finally the launch day came. I had paid the seller what I owed him. Arrangements were underway with the Foundation to transfer the lease-purchase to me, and at last, emotionally at least, it was my boat. It wouldn't really be my boat until the following summer when I could exercise the purchase option portion of the lease agreement.

But it was certainly mine to spend time and money on. And daydream about all the repairs and enhancements I wanted to make.

The Sea Trial

2007-06-08T01:53:00.001-07:00

Often a broker will handle the sea trial himself and the buyer will never meet the seller. In this case it would be just me and the seller.

Taking a boat out for a sail is not as casual as taking a car for a test drive. It doesn't happen until the buyer has put up real money as a deposit. Pretending to be a boat buyer is not a way to get in a free day of sailing.

Instead, it is meant to demonstrate that the boat works as it should. The engine can get it out of the slip, and back again. The sails can be raised and lowered and they are in satisfactory condition. The steering system works. The electronics that are advertised to work, actually do work. (Old electronics on old boats seldom work, which is built into the asking price).

The sea trial is scheduled in advance and unless it is stormy, that's when you go. A smart buyer in Southern California will set up an afternoon trial because that's when the wind is most likely to be blowing. If it turns out to be a beautiful sunny day with a fresh breeze, you've hit the jackpot. That's how it worked out for me.

The Nissan 9.8 hp outboard was cold and the seller assured me that it had not been started since I had first seen the boat a week earlier. It started instantly with a push of the electric start button, and fast-idled to warm up.

There are a lot of good reasons for using an outboard as auxiliary power for a sailboat, especially an old sailboat whose inboard engine has gone bad. I already had gotten a ballpark estimate of $12,000 to $13,000 to replace the Ericson's old gasoline engine with a new diesel. The estimate assumed that the new engine would be half the cost. The other half would be the installation, which would require re-engineering the installation and replacing most or all of the other components such as propeller shaft, fuel tank and exhaust system.

Frankly, I didn't appreciate the complexity involved in re-powering an old sailboat. Nor did I know that in the coming months I would become intimately acquainted with all those issues.

I know of several old boats in the same size range as the Ericson 30 where owners have removed old gasoline engines and hung outboards off the transom.

The result is a lighter boat, better fuel economy, a quieter cabin under power, and big cost savings. When the Nissan was purchased, its list price was about $2,300. When and if it needed service, it was light enough to be removed and hauled to the shop, saving an expensive bill for on-the-boat repairs.

On the other hand, its presence ruined the the aesthetics of the transom of the Ericson 30. It was awkward to lower it into position and raise it out of the water afterward. It was difficult to shift the transmission. And steering by turning the outboard--especially helpful when backing out of the slip--was tricky.

So, as we did back out of the slip and head out of the marina for Santa Monica Bay, I was thinking of the outboard as a temporary expedient and assuming that I would soon have the inboard Albin working.

Once beyond the seawalls, we encountered light winds, a small swell and just enough wave action to demonstrate how smoothly the Ericson rode through the sea.

The mainsail was easy to hoist, running up an external track on the aft side of the mast rather than up a slot extruded into the mast. I mentally chalked that up as a plus. There was a mast-mounted winch for the main halyard, but used only to snug it up the last few inches.

The main on my current boat--the one I would soon put up for sale--had to be hoisted using a winch mounted on the cabin-top, or better yet, with a crewman hauling on the halyard at the mast while another cranked the winch.

At the bow the Harken roller furler looked to be a recent installation and worked well. The sails were old, soft, grubby, and daylight shone through some of the stitching on the main. The main could easily have been original. But we weren't racing. The sails trimmed well and the boat quickly proved that it would be nice cruiser in its current condition.

As we motored back to the slip, I paid close attention to our route, looking for the numbers on the ends of the gangways, and memorizing the path from the owner's slip to the boat yard where the boat would be hauled for its survey a few days hence.

It would be up to me to motor the boat back to its slip once it was out of the yard. The owner and I already had figured out how long I could keep it at his slip. I had my own slip in my own marina, but it contained my current boat, which wasn't even officially for sale yet.

Breaking News: Weekend Cruise Report

2007-06-06T20:25:00.000-07:00

We interrupt this narrative to report on last weekend's three-day cruise to Two Harbors at the Isthmus on Catalina Island.

It is the first cruise since a lengthy project to refinish the boat from the gunwales in -- the deck, cabin exterior and cockpit. All the how-to details will come later.

From Long Beach it is typically a motor-sail part way to the Isthmus, especially leaving in the morning. If the usual southwesterly to westerly afternoon winds prevail, you need to get well west of Pt. Fermin to set a close-hauled sailing course to Two Harbors.

Of course, the typical winds may not prevail, or at least not develop in time. That was the case last Friday. After motoring through the Long Beach Inner Harbor to Queens Gate, and then direct to the San Pedro buoy in light morning southeasterlies, I found myself with calm winds and glassy seas south of the buoy. In fact the wind didn't come up until about 2 p.m., about three miles out from the moorings at Two Harbors. And it was directly on the nose. So what. Narrow Escape motor sails at an easy 5.7-6.0 knot range leaving me plenty of time to enjoy the scenery and daydream.

Arriving at the harbor, the moorings east of the pier were virtually empty, while those to the west were only sparsely filled. Had everyone made the trip for Memorial Day weekend and didn't want to return? Were there fears of lingering effects from the Catalina Island wildfire three weeks earlier? Was the cool overcast of June Gloom, responsible? Who knows.

I arrived at the Harbor Patrol boat just ahead of my friend Nate in a Catalina 30, and we ended up with side-by-side moorings. The most difficult part of single-handed sailing is picking up a mooring. Steer for the pickup wand, modulate your speed, take the engine out of gear so the boat will coast to a stop just as it reaches the wand. Then run to the front of the boat with the boat hook when you're sure that it is all going to work out.

With my friend watching and waiting for his run at the adjacent mooring, I got to do this little drill three times before I succeeded. Thankfully there were few other boats around to worry about hitting. Too much working and not enough sailing lately. With two crew aboard to help, Nate did it perfectly and quietly in one pass, the way a skilled skipper should.

The cruise last weekend was to join fellow members of one of my clubs, Little Ships Fleet Yacht Club on its Spring Cruise. Highlight of the event was a beach barbecue Saturday night at Two Harbors, which drew about 50 people from aboard about 15 boats. They included the crews of five boats chartered from Marina Sailing, which raced each other to Ship Rock on Saturday and back to Long Beach on Sunday.

The return sail on Sunday really was a sail. I didn't leave until 1:30 that afternoon. The wind was already blowing about 8-10 kts. and it kept blowing even after I got away from the island's influence. Too often it will start blowing at the island in late morning and then die to nothing within 2-3 miles of shore. In fact, that morning I had watched the Marina Sailing boats drifting on glassy seas out by Ship Rock as they attempted to start their race home at noon.

No drifting for me however. As soon as I got the sails up I was doing 5 kts. on a broad reach with a course of 035 degrees. By the time I was within 10 miles of my destination, there were small whitecaps and 1-2 ft. of wind chop on top of 1-2 ft. seas. My knot meter was bouncing between 6 and 6.5 knots. There was no sun, however. The sky was gloomy and hazy with a low ceiling all the way across. The sailing was great.

Complications

2007-06-06T19:52:00.000-07:00

The Ericson 30 was offered for sale. But the seller didn’t have the pink slip. In fact, he did not own the boat. He leased it. The boat had been donated a year earlier to the Pacific Coast Sailing Foundation in Long Beach. The Foundation operates the United States Sailing Center, which is partly financed through the sale of donation boats.

The Foundation “sold” him the boat in a two-year lease with purchase option deal for $7,500, plus an additional $250 fee. He paid most of the money up front as payment for a 23-month lease. The balance was due in the 24th month (July 2006) to exercise the purchase option. Otherwise the boat would revert back to the Foundation, which held the title.

The seller was taking a $2,000 loss, not counting the cost of the new outboard, a new inflatable dinghy, the so-far unsuccessful repairs to the inboard and any other money he had put into it. The deal being offered was to give the seller $4,000 cash and agree to pay the $1,500 balance due to the Foundation the following summer to gain title. The seller said the Foundation had agreed to transfer the lease-purchase agreement to his buyer.

It made me a little nervous, yet it seemed simple enough and it should be easy to verify that the transfer would happen before I paid off the seller.

Being an experienced boat buyer and boat owner, I knew the steps to take. Put the terms of purchase in writing and make sure the details are clearly understood by seller and buyer, especially the details about how the purchase can be aborted and the deposit refunded if the boat doesn't measure up.

If you buy a boat from a reputable broker, the sales person will walk you through these steps. It's a little different buying from an individual.

However, after spending several hours together on the boat at the dock and then going to the seller's house to view more paperwork and write up the deal, it was clear that I was dealing with a honorable person and I felt quite comfortable making an agreement with him.

There are two major turning points in a boat purchase. The first is the "sea trial" and the second is the "survey". The sea trial is a chance to make sure that everything works as claimed and that the boat performs as it should. A buyer can decline the purchase if the boat doesn't meet expectations. The seller foots the bill for the sea trial, which should only be the cost of fuel involved. On a sailboat that should be trivial.

The buyer pays the costs of going forward with the next step in the purchase. The boat should be surveyed (inspected) by a professionally-accredited marine surveyor specializing in that type of vessel. For sailboats like the Ericson 30, the typical price in the fall of 2005 was $15 per foot. Generally such a survey does not address engine condition. For that a separate engine survey, usually by another expert, is required. In my case, I knew the engine didn't work and I thought I knew enough about engines to fix it, so I didn't bother with an engine survey.

The boat needs to be hauled out of the water for a proper survey to be made, which means taking it to a boat yard and paying the requiste fee.

The assumption is that the boat will need new bottom paint and most yards will offer to absorb the haul-out charges if the new buyer hires the yard to refinish the bottom once the survey is finished. Of course, it knows that there likely also will be a series of repairs made to fix what the surveyor finds wrong with the boat. The costs of those repairs, especially serious and unexpected repairs, are often the subject of last-minute price negotiations between buyer and seller.

At a minimum, if the boat turns out to be a poor investment in the eyes of the surveyor, the buyer can walk away, but will still have to pay the haul-out charges and the surveyor's fee. A neophyte buying an old boat could end up paying out significant money with nothing to show for it. Chalk it up to education.

It's a lot cheaper to surf the internet and learn as much as possible about boats before walking the docks looking at "For Sale" signs.

Fast Work

2007-06-05T23:05:00.000-07:00

I'm sometimes accused of being impetuous.

I found the Ericson 30 on the internet on a Saturday morning. I met the owner at its slip Saturday afternoon. That evening we were at his house looking at the boat's documents, agreeing on a purchase timetable and I was writing a deposit check.

Oh yes, I would have to sell my current boat.

Life had changed since I bought that other boat with it's 12-year bank loan. Now I was retired, which I hadn't planned to do, ever. I was living on a fairly fixed income, having found that my idea of what my services were worth to other employers was inflated. Mostly, they were worth nothing.

The current boat was bigger, much newer, in superb condition and should sell easily. I had been thinking about selling it for awhile. I simply couldn't continue making its payments and also buy the new sails it needed to be competitive in club races, nor add the radar that I wanted on board the next time I found myself alone offshore in the fog. And, being larger, it took a greater physical effort to sail alone. I had realized that I wasn't going to get younger or stronger, or even maintain what youth and strength I currently had.

So recently I had begun looking at boat ads on the internet. Mostly I didn't see anything I liked that I could afford and nothing that I could afford that I liked. Then, on that fateful Saturday, I saw the listing for the Ericson.

I had thought that Ericson 30s were pretty boats every time I saw one, which was only occasionally. This one certainly was, despite the outboard hanging off the stern. It was in pretty good condition. The interior was remarkably clean. Boom-end sheeting for the mainsail greatly reduced the effort to handle that sail compared to the mid-boom sheeting of my current and previous boats. The mainsail may well have been 37 years old, but I could afford new sails for the Ericson. The last boat I owned with a new sail was a Snipe dinghy in the early 70s. The Ericson was cheap. I could afford it. I couldn't even bring myself to haggle over the asking price in good conscience. So I agreed to pay $5,500.

Later, after the deal was made, I learned that the seller had dropped the price $1,500 that very morning. And after several months of little interest, he began getting multiple calls a day after accepting my deposit check.

What is an Ericson 30?

2007-06-04T14:34:00.000-07:00

Ericson Yachts, based in Costa Mesa, CA in the 1960s, began building the Ericson 30 in 1966, along with the smaller Ericson 26. The Ericson 30 was designed by Bruce King, who would go on to design many fine boats for the company, including the later Ericson 35 series and Ericson 38.

The Ericson 30 bears no kinship to the 30+, sometimes referred to as the 30-2 or 30-II, a race-oriented rather than cruiser-oriented King design built from 1977 to 1979.

Sales Brochure

I don't know if King designed the Ericson 26, but I do know that the Ericson 30 is a vastly superior vessel, size differences notwithstanding. I've owned both. In fact, if my current intentions remain, they will serve as bookends to my Southern California boating life.

I bought an Ericson 26, probably a 1966 model, when I first arrived in 1974. It was roomy inside, which was attractive for my family, which included two grade-schoolers. But it was not a pleasant boat. It was very tender. There was scant side deck space which made going forward to handle the jib difficult. And the interior bulkheads creaked alarmingly sailing upwind in the typical Hurricane Gulch winds. I sold it, for a small profit, after about three months, and bought a 1964 Islander 32. The Islander was much heavier and made a good family boat for daysailing and weekend anchoring in Buttonshell cove on Catalina Island.

My recently-acquired 1968 Ericson 30 is a solid, comfortable, seaworthy boat with wide side decks, a snug and practical cabin, and a beautiful sheer with a high, rounded bow, and shallow concave arc of the cabin-top.

It is smaller, narrower and lighter than the 30-foot coastal-cruiser, club racers that were introduced in the 1970s, such as the Catalina 30. Those later boats with their capacious interior designs must have overwhelmed the Ericson 30 at the boats shows. Only 150 were built between 1966 and 1970.

Other Ericson designs were much more successful, such as the Ericson 27 with 1,302 built from 1971 to 1979; the Ericson 29 with 622 boats from 1970 to 1979; the 497 Ericson 32 models made from 1967 to 1978, and the Ericson 35 with 555 boats from 1967 to 1981.

To my eye, however, none were as beautiful as the Ericson 30, with its classic hull and cabin lines in the tradition of the lovely boats of the Cruising Club of America design criteria. Below the waterline, it is more modern. The wine glass cross-section profile of the hull is more bordeaux than chardonnay. It doesn't pound through seas like the later, flatter-bottomed designs. But the keel is fin type and the semi-spade rudder is placed well aft.

The rig is shorter than later designs, with a long boom and a large fore-triangle for the jib to fill.

The sailing characteristics are delightful. It heels readily to lengthen the waterline, but remains stiff. The tiller carries modest weather helm, providing low-effort steering. With a 110-percent jib, it beam reaches at 6-6.5 knots in a 15-knot breeze. A large genoa will overpower the boat upwind in the same conditions.

It measures 30 ft. - 3 in. with a 23 ft. - 4 in. waterline. The beam is 9 ft. - 6 in. and the draft is 4 ft. - 10 in. Displacement is 7,900 lbs, with 3,000 lbs. of lead encapsulated in the fiberglass molded keel.

Mast height above the deck is 35 ft. It is 12.3 ft. from the forestay to the mast. The boom is 13 ft. long. With a 155% genoa, my rated sail area is 530.5 sq. ft. and my Southern California PHRF rating is 186.

Ericson offered a standard interior with aft galley, fore and aft bench dinette to port with settee opposite, head forward to port with hanging locker opposite and v-berth in the bow. That's what I've got. The optional layout has quarter berths aft, side galley starboard and U-shaped dinette opposite.

For one or two people, the standard layout works well and has the advantage of three huge cockpit lockers, one each port and starboard plus a lazarette aft of the cockpit that spans the width of the stern.

Interior woodwork, including bulkheads, are varnished mahogany, which has held up well over the years. The only Formica is in the galley counter and dinette table tops.

The hull is solid fiberglass. Exposed portions inside are thick woven roving. No chopper-gun fiberlass is apparent anywhere. The deck is inner and outer shells of fiberglass with a half-inch balsa core. The cabin sole is painted 3/4-in. marine plywood.

Overhead is a single molded fiberglass headliner which runs from forward of the forward v-berth bulkhead aft through the rest of the cabin where it is brought down to form the inside of the aft bulkhead of the cabin. The bulkheads that form the head and hanging locker compartments were built inside the boat before the headliner and deck assembly were lowered onto the hull. As a result, fastenings through the cabin top or the aft bulkhead are leak prone because in the main cabin there is a natural gap between the fiberglass headliner and the fiberglass and balsa cabin shell.

Fortunately, most of the wiring runs near the outside edges where mahogany planks can be removed (with some difficulty) to gain access both to wiring and to hull-deck bolts, lifeline stanchion bolts and aft pulpit bolts. Other forward deck fittings are easily accessed through the chain locker through doors in the v-berth forward bulkhead.

A 1968 Ericson advertisement listed the price of the 30-footer at $13,750, and touted a string of race victories in its first racing season up and down the California coast and in Florida.

Sailboat Story

2007-05-17T16:50:00.000-07:00

This is an ongoing story about a sailboat, a 1968 Ericson 30, which I named Narrow Escape. Sometimes the story will be about day sailing, or trips to Catalina Island, mostly single-handed sailing. There will be a little bit about cruising class racing. There will be a lot about restoring an old boat, including making an old Albin gas engine reliable once more. Replacing and adding hardware and electronics will also receive some attention. So will refinishing cracked and crazed gelcoat. And sometimes it'll be about just hanging around the boat and the marina, special places both.

The story will not be about crossing oceans or planning to sail around the world or even to Baja, not that this boat isn't capable of all those things with some preparation. Voyages don't fit in with everything else that is part of my life. Narrow Escape provides my principal form of recreation, but not the only one. That probably makes me a lot like a lot of other people who own and enjoy boats.

I don't know the former name or names of this vessel. It had none when I bought it in September 2005. It is hull number 57 of the Ericson 30 line, which was the first of many boats that Bruce King designed for Ericson Yachts. The company and the boats enjoyed a fine reputation from the sixties into the eighties, when the Southern California yacht-building industry withered. Pacific Seacraft bought Ericson's assets and built a couple models for awhile. But it stopped doing that in the early 1990s to focus on building its own lines of cruising sailboats which have earned their own fine reputations, among them the Crealock 34. Pacific Seacraft used to have an Ericson section on its website. But at the moment the company's website is undergoing reconstruction, with no link to Ericson material and no indication if there will be one in the future.

What I know of this Ericson 30 is that it was based in San Francisco Bay until about 2003, when it carried its owner and family south as far as Avalon on Catalina Island. I could make out the shadow of its former hailing port, Redwood City, on the transom. Apparently a voyage to Mexico was the plan, but engine problems and perhaps other issues prompted the owner to call a Long Beach boat broker from Avalon with a plea to sell the boat -- immediately!

As luck would have it, the broker had a friend looking for a sailboat. They went to Avalon, struck a deal on the spot, and motored and sailed home after somehow starting the engine despite a dead battery. The broker recalls being able to hand crank it. But by the time I acquired the boat nearly two years later from a successor owner, no crank was aboard. Nor can I see how it ever could have been done.

What I do know is that when I bought the boat the inboard engine was not working, although the seller assured me that it had been rebuilt and had some parts receipts as evidence. Meanwhile he had invested in a Nissan 9.8 hp electric-start outboard, and a transom-mounted bracket.

The inboard did, indeed, look rebuilt with a good coat of paint, a clean engine compartment, and a plausible story about a problem with the carburetor that seemed like an easy fix to me. Besides, the outboard worked fine.

As I was telling the seller that I would buy his boat, I thought back many years to the time when I bought a VW Squareback that would barely run. That seller gratefully accepted my lowball offer. Then I drove the VW a few discrete blocks away, opened the engine compartment, freed up the stuck automatic choke, and it ran beautifully thereafter for many thousands of miles. I had visions of similar good fortune with the Ericson.