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12/10/2005 7:30:00 PM
San Diego, CA
Shelter Island - In the boatyard

Safely back in SD, still trying to fix problem

This is all like a suspense novel ... we arrived safely back in San Diego, but nobody knows yet how we can fix the shaft.

This feels like we are in chapter 62 of a suspense novel ... where is the last chapter of this book 'TheSchmids Start Cruising' ... OK technically speaking we left twice already, once from Santa Cruz over two years ago and then a week ago from San Diego, well we are back in San Diego. The trip back was uneventful though a bit stressful to San Diego police dock, took a tour around the dock at full speed and then when we idled down, the engine did what we all expected it would ... it DIED. Well, at least we had good reasons to come back.

After coasting slowly to the dock ... makes interesting parking when you have no reverse ... we checked into the US. Kind of hard to explain why a fully stocked boat returns so shortly ... normally you cannot bring food into the country. So after some pushing by who looked like the boss custom guy, the peon took the apples ... we REALLY had no other fresh food ... LOL.

Once checked in, we had a Vessel Assist tow us into the boat yard ... impressive entrance into a boat yard when you come in with flashing lights in tow ... that way they know there is REALLY something wrong ... I am sure they were very excited to see us back ... AGAIN. No matter, they went right to work despite no notice, got the boat out of the water and on the dry dock and went to work taking the shaft out. I have to say that up to now, we disagree who caused this problem but despite that they changed our boat back to the old packing gland (the part that seals the whole around the shaft running through the bottom of the boat), which worked in the first place.

Let me make short excursion here, why we changed this part over a year ago. Traditional packing as we had it on the boat works by sealing off the space between the hole in the boat and the shaft with something called flax which is basically string dipped in wax that is tightened down by a big nut; in order to keep this setup cool it needs continous water flow which means by design packing glands drip salt water in the boat ... slowly about 1 drip every second but it also means you will never have a dry boat bottom or bilge in boating talk. Given our bilge is very flat and we are storing food and stuff in it, that is not very convenient. There are newer dripless seals on the market for a couple years and I had heard good things about them so I decided to change us over. However, due to space constraints, our installation was not the standard easy swap as it is intended to be and required a new fitting being fabricated by the boat yard and installed ... that's where I believe lies the root cause of our problem since before we motored extensively without ever experiencing our current problems. So now, we switched back to the original packing gland and we will have to drain our bilge once in a while (depends on how much we run the motor but typically once a week).

Having given you all the background on the problem and the why, back to the story ... they had us back in the water as we were hoping in our best case scenario on Friday afternoon around 4pm; we spent the night with Bonnie, Julie and their boys and had a great steak dinner. The yard worked hard at it most of Thursday and all of Friday but I really don't believe they ever truly understood the issue ... sorry there is a bit of bad feelings somewhere that after spending all this money a year ago and all the hassle to go back twice, we are back to the same old thing. No matter, we were back in the water, confident we resolved the issue and excited. We motored over to the fuel dock to fill up and head out around Friday 8pm for a long 3 day motor down to Turtlebay to catch up with our plans to be around La Paz around Xmas. Just to make sure things were working as expected we ran the motor in full forward speed at the dock while cleaning up the boat and fueling ... motor runs nice and smooth again ie NO KNOCKING anymore and one last check ... engine in reverse gear ... YES ... YES ... DYING ... DEAD.

I just stood there in disbelief ... all this work and it still isn't right. We were pretty distraught as you can proably imagine and just motored back to the docks at the yard, tied up and went to bed ... wasn't my favorite night of sleep or the little Niki and I got. I am rarely this clueless as to what to do so it left Niki even more uncertain ... not good when the captain is out of control ... that's how I felt.

So here is the latest as of Saturday evening. We spent all Saturday with our local mechanic ... yes he came over on Saturday, actually to give him more props, he came over an hour after we called him on Saturday and it was his birthday  ... Phil Jones, Marine Man, is truly the man!!!! After analyzing the situation, he decided the motor needed an alignment with the shaft, which in turn required me to dive the boat 3 or 4 times (I cannot really remember), take the shaft out while in the water ... for beginners like me, a shaft is heavy and you might want to reduce your weights when you dive doing that or blow up your BCD ... I sunk to the ground like a rock ... :-). The shaft got straightened and adjusted by our metal guy, DanFab, then put the shaft back in the boat without propeller, then taken out again, then the prop goes on and the shaft put in the boat again ... I guess here is the answer, I dove the boat 4 times today. For some of our San Diego friends an inside joke, someone asked me while changing into my wetsuit on the bow if we are in Palm Springs ... are you getting it David H?

Tomorrow Sunday around noon we should know if the new aligned engine fixes our problem or not. We will keep you posted on our progress. If things go well and it works, we are planning to leave pretty much right away or at least the same day. Our spirits have returned and Niki even knows now WHY this all happened to us ... we weren't flying our Rikabamboo (where were you Missy?) ... that is a talisman we got from our friends in Santa Cruz 2 years ago for our original start. So we will fix that right away tomorrow.

Happy sailing,

Robert and Family

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