December 6, 2010

A blanket of fog had settled over the Delta Sunday morning, so I negotiated the narrow and serpentine levee roads that led to the marina with just a bit more caution. Rather than stress over the delay, I settled back, sipped a steaming cup of coffee and listened to classical music as I drove. The forecast called for more rain, so I had planned to continue the rainy day projects I started on Saturday. I had managed to get one of the table extension leaves refinished and ready for installation (the other still needed another coat or two of varnish) and picked up a few supplies, but that's about it. The big item on Sunday's agenda was trouble-shooting the engine instrumentation problem. After studying and annotating the manual at home, I was ready to meet the challenge with a new and steely determination.

First, I needed to be sure that the engine was getting full voltage. It was. Next, check the wiring harness connections. I disassembled them, cleaned the contacts, and reassembled them. No change in the symptoms. I disassembled and cleaned the connections to the oil pressure sender. No change. Finally, I cut the wire to the sender near the gauge, disconnected it at the sender and ran a separate and brand new jumper wire from the gauge to the sender. No change. However, with no wire connected to the gauge, it did register zero oil pressure. I concluded that there was no fault with the wire from the gauge to sender and the chances were good that I have a bad sender. So my next step will be to get a new sender and see if that cures the problem. The drama (trauma?) continues....

I spent the remainder of the day doing projects inside the cabin, since it had begun raining by mid-morning. A couple of modifications to the stove installation were my first priority. The changes were needed to mitigate some serious safety hazards. As on my previous boat, the original stove had been replaced by a larger one, which placed at least one burner too close to a flammable bulkhead. To make it worse, there was also a pretty crude wooden spice rack screwed to the bulkhead in the most hazardous place possible (probably to hide previous heat damage). In the "before" image you can see the damaged finish behind the spice rack. To fix these issues, I removed the spice rack and mounted a piece of mirrored stainless sheet as a heat shield , leaving about 1/4" of clearance between it and the bulkhead as well as around the edges to ensure air circulation. The only tricky part was holding the screws and spacing washers in place while it was mounted. With no room for fingers or pliers between the sheetmetal and the bulkhead, I tried temporarily taping them in place to the back of the stainless sheet. It proved to be a simple and effective solution.

The other safety issue resulted from the stove swinging forward on the gimbals whenever the oven was opened. Can you imagine what would happen if you opened the oven while a pot of water was boiling on top of the stove? The Previous Owner's quick fix was to tie the stove to the guard rail. Not only was that tacky-looking, but it didn't work: the stove would still swing forward enough to be dangerous when the oven was opened. To secure the stove firmly, but still allow it to be released easily when necessary to swing when the boat is heeled at sea, I installed a barrel bolt forward on the side where there was room and improvised a polished stainless toggle aft using a backing plate from a u-bolt for the side where there wasn't clearance for a barrel bolt. After seeing that Worst Marine wanted $50-$60 (!) for a stainless or bronze barrel bolt, I looked for a more reasonable alternative and found a solid brass barrel bolt the right size for $6 at the local hardware store. Even if it corrodes in just a couple of years, it would be a cheap and easy thing to replace.

Next was installing the saloon table extension leaf that was finished. That was simple, quick, satisfying, and a long time coming. The table saga goes back to early October when I worked on salvaging the corroded, gunked-up, seized-up and very expensive Soss hinges. And don't get me started on the trials of trying to get a blemish-free finish. Anyway, it's all there in the October and November blog entries.
I'll install the other extension leaf as soon as it's "finished."

I decided my next little project would be to finish organizing and filing all Circadian's equipment manuals and other paper bits partly because it would allow me to enjoy using my newly refurbished saloon table. In the process I discovered a few little gems I didn't know I had, and gleaned a little more information about Circadian's history. Based on a long-gone liferaft's certificate of inspection from 1996, she had apparently been actively used at least until then. I also found the instructions for raising the genoa on the furler and tightening the luff, which had heretofore been a bit of a puzzle.
It was a real treat to do something useful and satisfying that was free of trials and tribulations. I wound up the day by digging out a couple of old GPS units that came with Circadian for later testing at home. After buttoning up everything, I drove back home through a heavy rain.