Sail Beausoleil

Cruising: Fixing your boat in exotic places!

Well, we’re currently anchored off the Miami Yacht Club in Miami, Florida. Being a member of the Boston Yacht Club in Marblehead, Massachusetts, we enjoy what are known as reciprocal privileges – use of their dinghy dock, showers and restroom facilities, bar and restaurant, pool, etc.

I’ve been doing projects on the boat this week:

1. Removing the last of the original fuel tanks which was feeding the generator. It was almost rusted through (“stainless” does not equate with “stain proof”.)  So after talking to a couple of mechanics, I just teed the generator’s fuel inlet and return off the main engine’s inlet and return lines. In large powerboats that’s not recommended, but even though we don’t run both simultaneously, one won’t suck down enough fuel to starve the other.  Even though the tank I removed held 29 gallons of diesel, we still have a total of  326 gallons of capacity in the four main fuel tanks. That’s a lot of motor sailing and genset running! And the nicest result? We’ve gained additional storage in the salon! Can’t have enough “closets” – especially on a boat!
2. Adding a solenoid to the Lectra-San (sewage treatment system) to automatically flush our electric head when you activate the unit. Before this, you had to start the Lectra-San, then press another button to flush the head. It was confusing for guests, so this makes it a single-button operation. I also beefed up the last bit of power cabling to the unit – it was a bit undersized.

One of our purposes for stopping in Miami was to attend the Miami Strictly Sail Boat Show to purchase a watermaker. Well, we also decided to do our patriotic duty to stimulate the economy, so we bought a new dinghy (a Caribe RIB) and a couple of folding bikes. Our old dinghy, an Avon Rover 285, had a leaky keel bladder – and we just happened to run over a submerged pipe while going ashore one day and ripped a couple of 6″ gashes in the bottom. I patched them (with the help of a fellow cruiser, Jack Ellis, whom we met in Charleston, SC), but we weren’t happy with the dinghy even before then. So we replaced it. Our Mercury 4-stroke 9.9hp outboard powers it well.

Our old road bikes (a high-end LeMond Zurich for me, and a LeMond Tourmalet for Shawna), were just too much of a hassle on the boat. They just barely fit through the companionway hatch, and took up way to much room in one of the forward cabins. The new folding bikes are by Downtube – they’re both model FS-9′s (9 speeds). They each weigh about the same as Shawna’s Tourmalet, but fit inside the boat a bit better. Plus they have aluminum frames with plastic and stainless components, where the LeMonds’ had steel frames and were beginning to show signs of rust. The salt water environment is just murder on regular bikes. Both LeMond’s are extremely nice ($$$) road bikes, and we hate to see them deteriorate.

The watermaker is by Spectra, and is the redundant Cape Horn Xtreme model. It has two feed pumps rather than one, so if one fails you can switch to the other. And you can double water output if you run both simultaneously (going from 7 gallons per hour to 14). The entire Spectra line is known for power efficiency – using just 1.3 amp-hours per gallon of fresh water produced. I’ll dedicate a future post to documenting its installation.

While here in Miami, we met up with our old friends Tom & Donna, whom we used to sail with when we lived in Rowayton, Connecticut. Tom always takes credit for turning us onto sailing! We also met up with some of our Marblehead friends, Bob and Pam. And we were anchored next to Jack and Lois, whom we first met on the Intracoastal Waterway in Coinjock, North Carolina (and yes, there truly is a place called Coinjock!).

Miami Skyline

Here’s a little more about our early adventures with Beausoleil: the initial delivery from where we bought her (Annapolis) to our home port of Marblehead, Massachusetts.

This is from a post on a website for Formosa 51 and Hudson Force 50 owners, http://www.force50.org. Remember, this happened all during the summer we bought her – August 2006.

Finally – after exploits worthy of an entire chapter of a book, Beausoleil is in her new home waters!!!

Beausoleil is now sitting on a Boston Yacht Club guest mooring in Marblehead, MA. We arrived Sunday (August 13, 2006) afternoon, accompanied by the 24 other boats in the BYC Summer Cruise fleet.

The following is a synopsis – not the whole sequence of events! One reason I’m writing this down is so I don’t forget…

We left Annapolis on Saturday morning, August 5. After issues with the fuel system, we anchored at the mouth of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal that evening at 5PM. It turns out that one of Beausoleil’s four “new & unused” 75 gallon aluminum tanks has a minor leak… We transited the canal on Sunday morning, and made it to the Cape Henlopen harbor of refuge by around 5:30PM. No issues with the fuel system at that time, although the 120hp Lehman was using up oil…

The passage from Cape Henlopen/Cape May to Montauk Point, Long Island was great – uneventful, even. Well, it was a bit exciting! We left at 6:00AM Monday, and sailed downwind towards Montauk Point at the eastern end of Long Island – the lower fork. We had 20-25 knots of breeze, and we were flying under main, mizzen, and jib. We were doing about 8 to 8.5 knots average, with peaks when surfing down the front of a wave approaching 13 knots! We truly were amazed at the speed.

We did have a few problems – the compass light didn’t work, so steering was a challenge (our autopilot was not yet hooked up). Steering by GPS compass heading is fairly easy in light winds during the day, but can be harrowing at night with an overcast sky where you can’t see the horizon. Since the GPS basically only tells you your location and heading a few seconds earlier – and not now – you can easily get off course and basically find yourself steering big S’s in the ocean…

We made it, however, and arrived at Sag Harbor, LI NY on Tuesday afternoon. At 200nm, this was my first real offshore passage. Shawna had done the Marblehead-Halifax Race last year, and helped deliver a J42 back from Bermuda after the Newport-Bermuda race this year.

We joined up with the BYC Summer Cruise in Sag Harbor. Wednesday we motored the 10 or so miles around Shelter Island to Dering Harbor.

Thursday the fun started again. With our destination of Stonington, CT only about 36 miles, it should have been a cakewalk… Well, the engine quit 2 miles from Stonington Harbor entrance, and with the currents running as much as 3 knots (the “Race” between Fishers Island and Mystic/Stonington, CT is aptly named), we opted to sail back and forth while I took a look below.

I found what I thought was the ultimate culprit: the fan belt broke, so with the water pump not pumping water through the heat exchanger, the engine overheated and died. We radioed the belt part number to our fellow BYC cruisers, and within an hour we had a replacement and a spare. However, we found the crankcase was virtually empty of oil. The culprit there: the crankcase sump vent pipe had fallen out of its socket, and while we were heeled to port, almost all the oil had poured/sprayed out. Put back in, filled up the crankcase, and started the engine. It promptly died. Tried again. Died again. Decided the heck with it and sailed into Stonington Harbor and dropped the hook at the edge of the entrance channel. There was still current, and the wind was still ripping at about 15 knots or so – so much for the “no-wind” reputation of Long Island Sound.

After futzing with the fuel system, we finally got her started, so we limped on over to our reserved mooring, with the local marina’s chase boat shadowing us in case we had any more trouble.

So on Friday morning, rather than following the BYC Cruise to Cuttyhunk Island, we lined up a mechanic in Stonington to take a look. First thing he fixed was our instrument cluster – hadn’t worked the whole trip. Then he tried to figure out why the vent pipe and cap kept falling out. Turns out it wasn’t falling out – it was popping out just like a cork! What I can’t understand is why the engine manual calls this thing a vent cap – there is no vent hole in it whatsoever. In fact, it has an o-ring that seals it very nicely. When the crankcase pressure gets too high, it pops right out like a champagne cork! So I take the mechanic’s suggestion and drill a small 3/64′s hole in it. And it hasn’t popped out since.

Our plan was to motorsail to the next destination of the BYC cruise, Marion MA, and wait there for the rest of the cruisers to come in from Cuttyhunk, but since it’s a 60 mile sail we opted to make the short hop to Point Judith, RI and look up a friend of ours. So we leave Stonington that afternoon at about 2:00, and motorsail over to Point Judith and drop the hook at around 5:30. Our friend has a buddy of her’s ferry her out to the boat in his Boston Whaler, and she spends the evening aboard with us.

Next morning (Saturday) we motor from the outer harbor at Point Judith to drop off our friend at one of the commercial docks. The tide was coming in and the entrance is narrow, so there’s a wicked current setting in at about 2.5-3 knots. I tool around for a few minutes, waiting for an opportunity to do a “drive-by drop-off” at the dock without securing any dock lines. The gods were with us, and I was able to pull it off against the current without a hitch. Must have looked strange – the only sailboat on the commercial fishing side of the entrance… Said goodbye to our friend and fought the now 3 knot current to exit the inner harbor and make for the open sea.

We exited the outer breakwater a few minutes later and began to head east to cross the mouth of the Narragansett Bay entrance, where car and passenger ferries rush in an out ferrying their charges to Block Island, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and the north and south forks of Long Island at dizzying speeds. Less than 5 minutes out, the engine dies again! Being an old hat at this, I dive into the bilge. Of course, by this time we’re beginning to question the wisdom of saving money by buying an older boat that needs some work rather than a newer one…

After priming the Racor fuel filter with diesel several times and bleeding the fuel pump several times, I found what I think was the real root cause of the engine dying often – especially when switching fuel tanks. While bleeding the fuel pump, I looked down and noticed a stainless band clamp in the middle of the length of the fuel line – midway between the engine’s fuel lift pump and the Racor filter a few feet away. Air was seeping in and diesel was leaking out at the fitting where the clamp should have been. I slid it up and tried tightening it, but it was stripped. So I dug out a new one and replaced it. Primed it up again and the engine started first crank.

So we took it easy, motorsailing at about 1500 RPM the rest of the 59 miles to Marion Harbor. We were the last of the fleet to make it in, getting there just before sunset.

We took a launch into the dock and had dinner and cocktails with the rest of the cruise. I was beginning to get a reputation as a wizard of a systems troubleshooter – at least that’s what they said in my presence! They were probably wondering whether we bit off a bit more than we could chew – we certainly had that thought at times! We also celebrated Shawna’s birthday a day early – we needed the relief!

Sunday morning we left early so we could catch favorable currents through the Cape Cod Canal. Our SOG hit as high as 10.4 knots! The rest of the day was uneventful, except for the fact that the wind was on our nose the vast majority of the sail. We finally could see the Boston skyline just after noon, and made Marblehead Harbor by 4:30.

As stressful as it was, once we got to New England the presence of the BYC Cruising fleet gave us reassurance that we’d have help only a radio call away.

We bought Beausoleil in June of 2006 after a lengthy search down in Annapolis, Maryland. She was previously named “Agave”, and before that “China Lady”. More on her earlier history later. For now, let me tell you about our first adventures aboard Beausoleil:

Here’s an e-mail update I sent to our friends on July 18, 2006 after our first delivery attempt back to Marblehead:

For those of you fortunate enough not to “enjoy” the festivities last weekend here’s a synopsis: We came. We saw. We got our butts kicked! In other words, Beausoleil is still in Annapolis and we’re all back here in Marblehead. Engine problems kept us from even leaving the dock. But we did find a great little bar down the road from where we were…

Fortunately, we were able to find a mechanic Friday night through a chance conversation Shawna, Rick Fishkin, Rick Williams and Mike Bravo had earlier in the week at the BYC with Nate Burke. He has a friend named Phillip down in Annapolis who recommended a mechanic named Alex, an ex-concert pianist from Yugoslavia who’s now trying to earn money off us boaters while he tries to get accepted into the mechanical engineering program at MIT. How’s that for a twist?

Alex was able to diagnose the ultimate cause of the problem: Two of the six fuel injectors had no seals whatsoever anymore – both were allowing oil into their respective cylinders and causing compression lock. I’m sure if we could have swung the flywheel about 20 or 30 revolutions by hand, we could have blown most of the oil out of the cylinders – just kidding. Once the injectors were removed, we were able to freely turn the crankshaft. But the rest of the injectors weren’t in much better shape: the tips were worn and rough, and the seals were beginning to come apart. So he is going to order a rebuild kit for the injectors, including new seals. He’s also going to rebuild the injector pump, as it was still sounding a little rough as it went through its pressure/firing cycle. Hopefully he’ll get the new parts today or Wednesday and get them installed and the engine tuned up by Friday.

My theory, and Alex thinks it’s certainly plausible, was that when the previous owner of the boat came by Friday morning and we started up the engine, we didn’t allow it to come up to operating temperature before shutting it down. I guess what had been happening was that the last few times the engine had been started, it was allowed to heat up properly and all the various parts like the pistons and rings would expand and seal properly, preventing oil from seaping past most of the injectors and it would run “fairly” ok. In the meantime, the running of the engine would burn all the oil and blow all out the exhaust valves and out the exhaust. Instead, we allowed too much oil in, and the old girl still ran (a bit roughly, but I attributed that to it not getting up to temperature), but once we shut her down we were locked. The oil Alex found inside the starter must have been a product of oil blowing past the seals… So in a bass-ackwards kind of way, it’s a good thing we abused the engine on Friday morning and got it to lock then rather than having it blow out the rest of the injector seals in the C&D Canal or 50 miles off the coast!

So assuming Alex is successful by Friday, Shawna and I may go down to Annapolis this weekend and just sail Beausoleil around Annapolis and the upper Chesapeake to make sure the engine’s running fine, and for both of us to get a better feel for her 26 tons. Plus, having time to install a working autopilot would make things a bit easier. Right now we’re thinking that we try again on the morning of Friday August 4 and just meet up with the BYC Cruise when they get to Block Island on Sunday the 6th. But it’s still early and we haven’t even gotten any word from the mechanic yet.

And here’s a followup from August 2, 2006:

All,

Well, Alex got the parts in last late last week, and finishing installing them last night. He’s supposed to change the oil and do some final tuning and re-wiring of the starter solenoid and relay this morning.

So, the starter’s been re-built, all six injectors replaced, the injector pump’s been rebuilt, injector timing adjusted, oil & fuel filters replaced. Let’s cross our fingers!

Shawna and I fly out early Thursday morning and hope to get underway a little after noon. We plan on getting to Block Island by early Sunday morning to meet up with the BYC Cruise…

Wish us luck!