This weekend was part one of my “make the engine happier” journey.
Our engine is an original Volvo Penta MD11C. Fitted in 1979 and still mostly working by the looks of things. There is an embarrassing amount of white smoke when we start her up, but that does soon go once warmed up.
That is until recently, the gearbox oil seal is broken and it wont come out of reverse while the engine is running. There was a nasty pearly silver blobby oil in the engine gearbox. I have a feeling that not only is there bits of metal in there but also water.
Our plans for this season were a kind of priority list:
Get family involved and interested
Fix any leaks and pulpit rails
Figure out unstepping the mast before winter lift-out
I was expecting to tackle the engine injectors but not the gearbox. So that has moved up the list to the top. I need to clean the gearbox, replace the oil seal o-ring and hope that flushing through with fresh mineral oil gives me a reasonable season before I have to look at a new engine anyway.
But, so that I’m not working in a mess and so that anything I drop by accident during work isn’t lost forever I need to dry out and clean the bilges in the engine compartment. The shape of the compartment makes judging the amount of water difficult. When first looking at the boat to buy I was wary of the amount sitting there at first, but it turned out to be 99% rain water getting in through the engine fuel cut off panel (now fixed).
Fast forward to this weekend and cleaning the oil out the engine bay is step one. About Three hours of gently soaking out the oil from the surface and edges of the water using oil-absorbent sheets made some good progress. I managed to soak up lots and now the water no longer has clearly visible oil floating around.
But it is still contaminated, I really do not want to dump this in the river, not to mention the huge fine for doing so on the Broads, it would likely kill wild plants, fish and insects here in this little haven.
So, knocked up a crude filter around my new hand bilge pump. Two yellow synthetic washing up cloth sponges and two layers of oil absorbent pads all tied around the intake end of my pump, and the outlet end going into a old spare 5L mineral water bottle.
Yuck, no sediment after 24 hrs at home untouched but still smelling of hydrocarbons.
I quickly sucked out 5L of horrible brown water, no visible particles at all, and lots of oil caught in my filter. I suspect the brown is partly rust, and partly dissolved other nasty chemicals from years of neglect.
By my reckoning there is another 20L of this stuff stuck in my bilges. So more containers needed next time and then a trip to a boatyard or oil disposal place.
Horsey Staithe was extra busy! We’d arrived in the middle of Horsey Open Regatta! Many many wonderfully kept broads sailing boats, traditional, modern, hire and private were here. Lots of people out for a fun day on the water. There were several families that stopped to ask about our little Westerly and say hi to our dog as he sat; tongue out watching people float or walk by.
Combined effort – Ian + Evie
We got to work fitting our “please don’t take our berth” signpost, undid sail covers, checked oil, filled up with another can of fuel and attached a little go-pro type camera to film our escapades for the day.
Given how busy things were I was going to make the call whether to pootle around the edge of the regatta watching the races, maybe anchor or if it were not too full of racers sail about the edges a little without getting in the way.
With the staithe jam packed with some very nice and bigger than usual boats we had two options. Cast off, go further up the dyke and turn around at the bend by the water hoses (the dyke is about 10m wide, so depending on who is moored opposite we can’t always turn around with ropes), or to reverse the whole way out (about 300m). Having not driven a Centaur backwards very much this didn’t seem like a great idea.
Engine started, an embarrassing amount of white-ish smoke for about 30 seconds (we’ve got an old engine, could do with new injectors). I checked that water was coming out the exhaust, it wasn’t hot, so all good. Engine revs peaked at idle for a second or two which was unexpected. While filling up with diesel I noted condensation on the inside of the filler so put it down to a little water in the fuel, not desirable but not unexpected.
We planned to reverse off a little, and turn around up by the fresh water tap. We had a problem a few weeks ago where the engine would not come out of reverse gear, with that in mind I put us in reverse for a second expecting a bit of a wiggle to cure it if we got stuck again.
I was treated to a new, unfamiliar whine sound. My first thought was that the stern gland was not adequately lubricated, that maybe the greaser wasn’t actually pushing grease into the shaft? So I put the engine in neutral in the hope the sound would go away. Or at least I “tried” to go into neutral. Nothing, no amount of jiggling, pressure, more throttle, less or anything would un-stick reverse gear so I stopped the engine. Once stopped neutral was easy to get into. Ok.. this could be annoying, twice now we’ve been stuck in reverse.. I decided to start up again and check transition from forward to neutral and if the strange new noise really was from the prop shaft turning.
Engine started (less smoke than before) forward gear there was no extra sound, could feel the gentle push on the mooring lines of our little Centaur pushing forward. Back to neutral, all fine, reverse… Stuck…
Ok.. Day out on the water now pretty much cancelled..
Out came the cockpit floor and open went the engine bay cover.
Worrying Whine!
One of the first things we noticed was a bubble of fluid popping out of the selector fitting at the gearbox.
This didn’t feel like a good omen. Fearing that we’d leaked out all the gearbox oil, I checked the level in the Volvo reverse gear and found not old black oil, or no oil at all, but lots of oil (perhaps too much) and all a metallic grey pearl colour. Our gearbox oil was full of tiny bits of metal. Not good..
With my mind already mentally planning a “help me!” post to the WOA forums we opted for some different entertainment and paid a visit the Horsey Wind Pump run by the National Trust here. It’s an impressive piece of engineering history. Evie and Luke soon made their way to the top and took some photos while I frantically googled “volvo penta stuck reverse gear”
Not just canvas sails here
With little we could constructively do to fix our poorly gearbox, and really not wanting the crew of the day to have a 100% boring time we set about trying to do other things. Luke and Coco went off to explore the viewing area and catch some of the racing and I showed Evie how to make a plumb line out of some chord and some old bronze jib hanks. Evie managed to work out that our spot on the staithe was only 1.4m deep. Bear in mind the centaur draws about 1.2m!
Perhaps out of frustration I set about scrubbing things, cleaning the algae from around fittings and brushing away grass clippings, to my surprise this activity was an immediate hit, with Luke and Evie asking to join in making our boat look a little more ship shape, great fun was had filling buckets, sloshing water over the side decks and scrubbing the waterline from the banks.
Once we got home, the good folks on the Westerly Owners Association forum were full of encouraging advice and recollections of similar problems that didn’t all end badly. So added to the TODO list for my next trip I’m planning to flush out the metal from the reverse gear oil and fill it up fresh. There is a chance that the oil here has not been changed for years and the extra friction is stopping the gearbox disengaging (there is a spring inside apparently). I have my fingers crossed but in the back of my mind is the thought of a replacement engine..
Before I do that though, I’m going to finally filter out all the oil and rainwater from the engine compartment, it looks more than it really is in the video, but if I drop small gearbox parts I’d rather it went into a dry tray than one floating on contaminated water.
Right now I am hoping that this won’t be an early end to our first season.
The Centaur was often sold with mainsail roller reefing (see the claw post) so you needed to allow the sliders out of the mast track if you wanted to roll the boom. Unfortunately, over the years things have warn out a little and now the cover plate that used to get removed to allow the clips to come out constantly gets in the way, jamming the sliders as it goes past. This is mildly annoying if you are at the mast doing all the work, but if you’ve lead your halyards back to the cockpit, a jam renders that useless and a visit to the mast is required to unblock. I had to do this 4 or 5 times.
Jammed main sliders – fun with Inkscape!
The broads are forgiving, but not very big. Horsey mere, where we sail is one of the larger broads but it is still only about 1 km across at it’s widest part, the rivers and dykes are often barely more than a boat length wide. Suffice it to say, I don’t want to get in the way of every other boat by having to spend a long time raising our main.
My kids are still quite small, eldest Luke is not quite strong enough to raise the main alone at the mast, so they get the job of keeping our boat head to wind while I hoist the main. Our centaur has it’s original mast and boom, the main has sliders that run up the mast as you pull on the halyard as it common on many boats.
For the time being trusting my little crew to helm while I pull and un-stick the clips seems to work, but I will see what I can do to make the problem less frequent.
I woke up early from a dream about one of my most memorable sailing trips as a kid of about 14. Going from Burnham-on-Crouch to Shotley on the Westerly Longbow “Faraway II” with my parents and our friends.
Mouth of the River Crouch to the Swin Spitway – i-boating
My dream was of wind, spray and big swell, of feeling a little sea sick but of also having a great time. I can remember trying my best to steer a compass course to the Swin Spitway safe-water bouy while at the same time wrapped up in my orange waterproofs. Shaking the sea out of my eyes occasionally.
When not steering, I can remember trying my best with compass bearings on big marks (like the goalposts at foulness) and back bearings to work out our leeway.
When we got colder than we’d like in the cockpit one of us would swap over with chart work, plotting our position and updating the helm with a compass course to steer.
A Decca receiver similar to the one I remember
These were the days when our dead-reckoning and bearings from landmarks were MUCH more accurate than the DECCA navigator unit we had, it was a remarkable device but would give us a position as much as 1500m wrong.
UPDATE: The Foxwell Family had a trip to this very area recently! Check out their video:
We set off early but got caught in the Good Friday traffic, our usual 85 minute trip turned into nearly 3 hours! Must leave before dawn next time!
This thing is magical!
We finally arrived, armed with sandwiches, fruit scones, sun and a strap wrench we tackled our first job of the day. The stuck fuel cap.
And brilliant! In seconds we were ready to fill up, slip the mooring and go sailing! We now have 20L of diesel in the tank, will add more on the next trip.
Horsey is one of the most popular spots in Norfolk for sailing, it is especially popular with traditional broads yachts from Hunters Yard and Martham Boats who were out in force in an impressive race.
Everything went well, all the bits and bobs worked, the engine started easily and the lazy jacks actually were useful. It was a great first trip out. Roll on the next one!
I’ve been reading through some of the old paperwork that came with Rosie Free. Numerous surveys, receipts, licenses and a few letters.
We seem to have the full history of Rosie Free right from the time her hull was certified by Lloyd’s.
Originally named “Katrina” in 1979 I believe she was renamed “Rosie Free” in 2007
Also, one thing I brought back is a 2001 copy of “East Coast Rivers” by Janet Harber, lots of potential future destinations. I might by a more recent version.
Not much else to report, ordered a replacement fuel filler which I will fit soon.
Today was supposed to be a simple day out, a first quick sail around. I had a couple of essential jobs from the TODO list, checking and topping up the engine oil and filling the diesel tank. But after we were going to go sailing!
I read on the WOA forums that I’d been checking the level with the dip stick slightly wrong (I’d been screwing the stick back in before pulling out to see the level) and now doing it the right way (not screwing the stick in) shows we’re on the low side so I need a top up.
On our shakedown trip I took it for granted that we had enough fuel to reach the new mooring because the previous owner had offered to take us on a trip there and back, I went with that and didn’t actually check until today (our intended second trip). The tank is stainless steel and appears in good condition. The capacity is 40 litres. My plan today was to add 5L of garage forecourt unmarked diesel and repeat the next few visits.
But nope. The cap is jammed. No tool I had to hand helped. Could I still keep the crew happy with a short jaunt out without topping up? Some tapping and careful listening (the tank has no visual gauge) told me … “meh.. maybe..” but not enough to be confident. We have less than 1/4 of a tank, probably less than 1/6. So.. nope, not enough to be 100% sure for a trip.
So today became a day for Vicki, Luke and Coco to explore the walk to the beach and the wildlife around our moorings while Evie and I got on with a few other jobs.
Lazy Jacks
I admit, I’ve never used them before, and on our pre-purchase sailing trip I was baffled by the funny zippy sailbag thing that I could not remove from the boom despite trying. After watching Ian and Hannah Foxwell’svideo about Lazy Jacks I now realise what we have is a “Stack Pack”.
One of the lazy jack lines was threaded behind the starboard cross tree, which probably explains why they were not attached to the boom but instead tied off at the mast. With a twist of ingenuity and comedy involving using our kettle as a weight, Evie and I managed to get the lines the right side of the trees and have rigged our stack pack!
Things definitely look a lot tidier now! The wind was blowing from ahead so I decided to see what all this lazy jack fuss was about and haul the main up on the mooring.
Now, our Centaur has blocks, clutches and coach roof winches. The halyards and topping lift are lead back to the cockpit. Great I hear you say! Well, turns out not that helpful for two reasons:
Friction from all the blocks and clutch makes the job LOTS harder
The luff clips keep getting stuck so you have to go on deck anyway to free them 4-5 times.
Only going to use these beefy winches for the topping lift now
Without #2 I would probably endure having to do a little more pulling to be able to steer and manage the main. But our Centaur has the original mast with the removable rail that would let you use the boom roller reefing by letting the clips out so you can roll the boom.
Faraway II had the same boom and mast system and I can only remember ever using it once, the rest of the time we used slab reefing because it was a pain. So because of #2 I’ve decided to leave the main halyard up at the mast. I can raise the sail in a few seconds this way and un-jam clips if needed easily one-handed.
Stack Pack Verdict?
My instinct is that lazy jacks can get in the way when raising the sail (it did on the mooring until I adjusted the jacks) and that they are only useful when dropping your main. But, I don’t actually have a choice at the moment, we have no traditional mainsail cover and the zip bag thing looks horrible flopped over to one side if the lazy jack lines aren’t attached. So we will see how it goes and probably learn to live with it.
The Claw!
I mentioned above that the Centaur has a rolling boom reefing system. You might have been wondering how on earth you can put up with disconnecting and reconnecting the vang/kicker using this. Or even if you can have them at all. Well, the cunning folks at Proctor who invented it came up with “the claw”. For some reason our claw was not fitted, so finding it and fitting was the next job of the day.
Claw on the left
The “claw” is a “C” shaped aluminium block with four small wheels on the open end of the C. The gap at the open end is only about 8-10 cm, enough for the sail to easily pass through. The idea is that the boom can still roll and you can still haul down on the kicker.
You can see the wheels more clearly than from my vector drawing here. With the stack pack attached the roller boom system is pretty much impossible to use so I could attach the kicker to the boom directly. But, this works and I don’t want to drill holes in the boom.
So, next visit is going to involve some brute force to get the diesel cap off and finding an easier way of filling the main engine oil. If the weather is not very nice maybe I’ll get around to part 2 of the pulpit.
Set off early this morning to attempt to fix our dislodged pulpit.
My plan was to loosen the screw on the other foot so as to get more access to the one I need to fix. That worked but I fumbled one of my spanner sockets while in the chain locker and now there is a piece of my tool set that fell out of sight and will remain that way forever!
My spanner decided to find out what it is like down the small gap in the bottom left of the locker…
I managed to get the foot raised enough to try screwing it back in but with no luck. With the help of my phone camera I could see the fitting a bit more and decided to remove the tube and clean it up. I took the chance to test the navigation light with a multi-meter and some good news is that the cable running through the pulpit frame is sound and the bulb is good. The bad news is that there is no power coming in from the cabin. The wires from the battery end of things were dead. So that’s another one for the TODO list.
The tube’s thread was a little mangled at one end, but with some gentle persuasion involving some mole-grips, nut and spanner it looks in better shape now. But try as I did, I could not get the thing to even slightly go back into it’s hole. I really do wonder if it has never been in there properly.
So the only thing left to try, is on my next trip up to cut a flap in the other side of the headlining, undo the other feet and remove the whole pulpit and try to get the thread in there from a more human angle.
One fairly urgent job on my TODO list is to re-attach one of the pulpit feet to the deck. Our surveyor mentioned this as one of the recommended items for attention on the phone to me so I decided to pay visit to check before committing fully as I’d not noticed any damage before.
Some time between my earlier visit to the boat and the marine surveyor turning up she’d been moored up wrong and pressure on the bow rope had, over the period of about a week pulled out one of the pulpit feet from the deck!
With the wind a few days earlier, without any springs attached she rode forward about 5 meters and put pressure on the pulpit leg
The pulpit on a centaur has four feet, each attached to the deck like so:
After gently cutting away some of the pristine headlining inside, a closer inspection of the damage (and mopping up the rain water) revealed no sign of any damage to the metal fittings, deck, or threaded tube that the navigation light cable runs through. It simply was no longer screwed into the pulpit foot. I suspect it had been like this since an earlier refit and had only been attached by the sealant around the metal foot!
Being short of time on our maiden trip to our new mooring at Horsey I was only able to apply duct tape to stop rain getting in. So this weekend I hope things remain dry and I can finish the job properly. I will include photos if I remember!
On the broads it’s easy to totally forget about the rise and fall of tide, and the currents in many places are not strong at all. But there is no harm in roping up properly just as you would at a coastal marina.
Springs and Warps!
If you only have two lines and one comes undone then your pride and joy is going to cause havoc or be damaged. In our case damage was only done to the boat we are about to buy, but it could easily have caused damage to someone else’s boat.
Rosie is 40 years old! That’s 1 year old than me, 2 older than Vicki and 1 year older than our house. She’s solid, but like any boat needs some regular TLC.
Something missing here!
Lucky for us she’s had lots of work done already, keel bolts re-bedded, hull epoxied etc and everything on board seems to work so far. But there definitely is a TODO list of things that I need to get done before they become problems later such as: (not in any particular order)
Fit split pins in forestay bottle screw – DONE!
Fix rainwater ingress around engine fuel cut off – DONE!
Centaur Free 