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Old 02-08-2008, 20:36   #76
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Still no.
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Old 03-08-2008, 09:55   #77
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Something was partially clogging your exhaust...something biological like some bivalves or barnacles living in there?
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Old 03-08-2008, 10:06   #78
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Something heavy sliding around in the bowels of the ship, has bumped into the hose causing it to kink?
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Old 03-08-2008, 10:11   #79
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Hah...I'm guessing Zach got it. A kinked hose! Its really obvious when you think about it.
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Old 03-08-2008, 10:15   #80
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Zach, you got it. On our boat, there is a very large lazerette in the aft section. We stow our storm anchor there. I had removed everything to do some cleaning, and after I repacked, we started to notice the problem.I went through all of the above possibilities, but could not find a problem. It was only by chance, I pulled a few things out of the lazerette to double check the sea cock, and as I got to the anchor, I noticed the hose was crushed under it.
Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best ones
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Old 03-08-2008, 12:17   #81
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My turn? (Grin)

It's Friday afternoon. You fire up both engines on an ancient wooden 80 foot trawler, and head out on a falling tide on the way to Oriental, NC via Adams Creek. (ICW) You back out of the slip with both engines in reverse, and slide out into the cove on your way to the ICW. When you clear the pilings you put cut the wheel over and put both engines in forward... except only the port engine goes into gear.

Wind is such that you cannot get back into the slip at with one engine, and a sandbar prevents you from turning out to the channel with your port engine in forward. A small fishing skiff putters by you, between you and the pilings in the only dredged area of the cove as you are being blown towards the sandbar. After sweating bullets balancing the crushing of the skiff and maintaining steerage to avoid taking off the bow of a new Hatteras. Distant third is keeping the boat off the bottom. You make it out to the turning basin. Deciding what to do you proceed with only the port engine.

You make it under the Morehead City Causeway bridge skirting sideways in the chop current one way, wind going the other while getting passed by expensive looking sport fishing boats. You get out to the ICW, your crew runs up and says the engine room is full of steam, the port engine is overheating. On the port engine, you are making 4 knots. No sooner than your crew says this, the coastguard issues a small craft advisory over the VHF... for the Neuse river and an impending thunderstorm.

Your engines: Two Cummins diesels, with heat exchangers. Your controls are cable operated Morse MT3 shifters. Your cables are intact, the controls shift perfectly on the port engine... but only neutral and reverse on the starboard, which feel the same as always. The Starboard shifter will simply not move into forward, and does not click into gear.

What do you do to get into the next dock capable of handling your boat? Just happens to be a boatyard, it is Friday afternoon and the only hope for having whatever parts you might need over the weekend. Only problem? It's 12 miles away, and you have to get there without melting down the port engine.

You are at the helm and you have one other crew. Just to add to the riddle, your windlass is non-operational. Yesterday the back half of the windlass started lifting off the deck from the tug of the dock lines. You scraped the paint out of the anchor lockers man hole cover, and knocked it loose with a breaker bar. You pull out the pieces of what used to be the anchor chain from the locker in awe. The only anchor you have is a bent 15 pound danforth kedge with a few feet of chain and a hundred feet of 3/8ths nylon. (See the skit of “The front fell off…” you grab a few handfuls of dusty frames and avoid getting stabbed by the bronze screws… as you scurry back out of the hole.)

What was the problem with the starboard gear? How do you lock it into forward, and what was the fix that brought the shifter back to life (After you make it to the dock... ) No tools required for this fix.

What was the problem with the port engine, and how do you limp along to make it to the dock before the thunderstorm starts, without it melting down? You will need it to dock so it must not blow!

(True story! A harrowing adventure of not knowing what the heck your doing... Beginners luck. )
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Old 03-08-2008, 12:31   #82
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Good story Zach...and detailed!

As far as the starboard engine not shifting correctly, go back to the tranny and see if when you shift, the shift cable pushes the shift lever into reverse. If not, disconnect the shift cable and see if you can shift it by hand manually. If it does shift, then put your engineer on a hand held radio and give him shift commands from the wheelhouse. If it still does not shift, then its an internal problem inside the tranny and there is nothing you can do anyways until you get the boat back to the dock. You may even have to have the tranny pulled.

Ok...I have to ask this. Why did you ever leave the dock with effectively no working anchor? Not to be on your case but that is pretty basic. My second suggestion was to put down the anchor and pay for a rather expensive tow. I would definitely go ahead and get the tow while drifting before running aground.

As far as the port engine overheating, that's probably the result of your port engine cooling system being on the edge of overheating with both engines working, but with one engine working, its now overheating caused by a greater load on the port engine. Your port engine should have been able to handle the additional load so there are reason(s) why it is overheating. An overheating engine can be caused by quite a number of things. Its anyone's guess at first glance.
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Old 03-08-2008, 13:01   #83
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Wow! with this boat there could be a million things that have gone wrong and your stbd gear check did not say if it still turns in astern (Only that your control moves)

Prayers aside, the first thing I would do is check to make sure that when you were backing up, you didn’t catch a line in the wheel.

I would also check that part of the linkage that pushes the stbd gear into Forward has not slipped off that little post.

Once fixed I would head back to my dock and get drunk...
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Old 03-08-2008, 13:06   #84
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LOL Pelagic
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Old 03-08-2008, 13:08   #85
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I was the crew and along for the ride... and didn't know at the time... to be afraid. It was only a few months before that I had learned what a surveyor was, and why they are helpful! Had just finished bringing her around from Orange Beach, Alabama in her current shape... Whats another couple miles. (I did have my swimming trunks on at the time... )

The cable operated smoothly when disconnected from the lever on the transmission. Quite bizarre. With it connected the starboard transmission worked in reverse, would shift to neutral, but would not shift into forward.

The temporary fix, was to manually shift the lever on the transmission into gear and get to the boatyard. (Hard to do, as the lever was snapped off just above the pin for the cable.)

The problem? The guide tube mounted on the transmission had been stepped on! This bent the tube down, causing the cable to jam when pulled forward! When the cable was disconnected, it worked perfectly... odd.

(The port transmission blew earlier in the journey... Found out we didn't have reverse... in Daytona Beach Marina... about a hundred and fifty feet off the stern of the yacht commissioned by the creator of Pizza Hut. 130 foot pristine... twin MTU's with surface drives! Panic? No insurance? Yes... it is possible to drag a hundred ton boat sideways to the dock. Folks chicken out on catching inch and a half nylon though!)

The port engine shredded the impeller... (Great timing!) It was run with a close eye kept on the gauge and shut down to give time to cool off. It is also the second half of the challenge... as the boatyard was closed when we arrived, and after calling everyone within 50 miles with a service shop getting answering machines, we found Barbour's marine supply downtown Beaufort that not only was open, but had them in stock! New impellers, at 26 dollars apiece. Jarrett Bays price the morning we were pulling away... 400 bucks plus labor. (Yikes!)
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Old 03-08-2008, 14:30   #86
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Next up... (Grin) I think I'm more story teller than Challenger, so someone send us a brain cruncher!
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Old 03-08-2008, 17:08   #87
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Ok…….. Back at sea…..Closest land is 1500nm away.

You have had another one of those pesky fires (dam smokers!) and all your electronics have been wiped out.

All you have is your sextant, watch and magnetic compass.

The good news is that the weather is fine and clear, the bikinis are up on the clothes line drying and you have a perfect view of all those heavenly bodies.

How do you determine your compass error?
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Old 03-08-2008, 17:43   #88
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IF you had a reasonable EP, you could throw away the watch and sextant alike because the sun rises in the east and sets in the west--and using the calendar you can count the days from the equinox, divide out the degrees in the earth's tilt, and tell exactly where (degrees north or south, of east or west) the sun is rising and setting.

Sight it with your compass, compare the reading with the actual location of the sun, and you've got compass error.

With a watch and a stick, you could chase noon and mark a shadow pointing north or south, and check the compass error again. Watch being optional but convenient, all you need is the shadow.

Or, you can use the watch AS a compass--analog watches only need apply. Point the hour hand a the sun, and north/south is halfway to the twelve. (Which way depends on am/pm and your hemisphere, an exercise left to the reader.) Again, compare to compass. (Doesn't work well when you get into the equatorial regions.)

Sextant, pfaf. Who needs all that newfangled navigation gear anyway? Drop it once, and its junk. Given the sun, a stick, and the calendar, the rest all falls in place.
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Old 03-08-2008, 17:52   #89
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Did the Nautical Almanac burn to ashes or not?

During midday, you do a LAN. During LAN, the sun will either be north or south depending on your hemisphere and perhaps also the time of year depending on your latitude. You could get a pretty accurate compass error then....even without know your exact longitude.

At night, Polaris is within two degrees of true North. You can use the tables for Polaris in the Nautical Almanac to make it an even more accurate azimuth. You then apply variation to convert the azimuth to magnetic. Of course this would only work in the northern hemisphere.

You can do an azimuth of any celestial body.

Quote:
Originally Posted by hellosailor View Post
IF you had a reasonable EP, you could throw away the watch and sextant alike because the sun rises in the east and sets in the west--and using the calendar you can count the days from the equinox, divide out the degrees in the earth's tilt, and tell exactly where (degrees north or south, of east or west) the sun is rising and setting.
The movement of the sun north or south with respect to where it rises is a sine function and not a linear function. So this would only work at the beginning of one of the four seasons. It would probably be relatively close but not exact most of the time.
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Old 03-08-2008, 17:55   #90
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Hellosailor,
Thats perhaps the coolest thing I've read in weeks.

Where do you guys learn this stuff? Sheesh!

(Off to go read about equinoxes and try it out... tomorrow. )
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