Bilge Business

I’m reading a book called "The Voyager’s Handbook" by Beth Leonard.  It’s a extremely thorough collection of all the stuff you need to know about offshore cruising aboard a sailboat.  Somewhere near the beginning; after crew considerations, choosing and financing your boat, and before sails and sail handling is a chapter on upgrading the boat for offshore.  Therein is a recommendation to have a manual bilge pump below deck that will pump at least thirty gallons per minute.  This is in addition to an automatic (DC powered) bilge pump.  There are good reasons to have a manual bilge pump below deck: it will work when all power is lost, it will be out of the elements, and it can be within reach of the VHF radio at the nav station.

Quijote has an automatic bilge pump that will pull water out of the bilge at 67 gallons per minute.  She also has a 20 gallon/minute manual bilge pump in the cockpit where a single hander will be able to steer and pump at the same time.   Those two pumps mostly meet the book's recommendations.  While the manual pump is out in the elements and puts out less than the recommended thirty gallons/minute, it is in reach of the wired VHF remote  at the helm.  Still, I began to consider supplementing the manual throughput by adding a second manual bilge pump below deck.

I was loathe to be adding any additional through-hull valves for that purpose, but what if I tee’d into the existing bilge pump plumbing.  To that end, I spent the better part of a day investigating the feasibility of adding a second manual bilge pump.  I looked into making room for a new hose that follows the existing manual pump plumbing and discovered very little additional room in some key constrictive places.  I also found few places below deck that would not be awkward to operate or consume precious storage space.

It occurred to me after several hours of pondering and scrabbling about, that teeing into the existing manual pump plumbing is a dumb idea anyway.  If I lose power and need to pump manually, I don’t want the choice of pumping in the cockpit or below deck; I want to be able to use both manual pumps if I can.  That being the case, I want to be teeing into the automatic pump plumbing.  As luck would have it, that turns out to be a much less invasive change, since the plumbing runs through a forward locker rather than squeezing between heating ducts and hot water hoses in the engine room as the existing manual pump plumbing does.

It also turns out that a twenty gallon manual pump is about a fifth of the cost of a thirty gallon pump and takes up a lot less space.  If I buy a second identical 20 gallon pump that taps into the automatic pump’s plumbing, then the manual pumps are interchangeable, I need only one spare, and I get forty gallons per minute when the power is out.  If the power is not out, I’ll have the 67 plus 20 gallons per minute I have now.

So that’s the plan.  I still need to do a little research, maybe use a check valve or two to prevent back pressure from one pump to the other, but it is a change that should be relatively easy and affordable.

Nice to know

The water tank has long been a mystery to me.  It's supposed to have a 110 gallon capacity, but it has never seemed like the tanks hold that much.  I decided to test that perception: I used a hose to fill a five gallon bucket with a stop watch and figured out the rate of fill, then I timed how long it takes to fill the tanks.  By my calculation the tanks held  about 40 gallons.  Today I set out to figure out why.

My first guess was that the vent was clogged.  A clogged vent, I reasoned, would trap air in the tank, leaving less room for water.  I followed the vent hose down to the tank, disconnected it and blew through the vent to find that it was working properly.

Then I opened up the access port of the upper tank (65 gallons) and found it had a couple of inches of water in it when it should have been empty - a clue!

I'd never set eyes on the lower tank, because it requires removing the saloon table and floorboards, but that didn't turn out to be too tough.  When I had the tank exposed, the placard offered another clue:  the tank holds forty gallons.  The hose that fills the lower tank comes in from the deck filler, and tees to the upper tank.  I followed that hose up under he nav station drawers, already sensing what I would find:  A closed valve.

In order to fill all 110 gallons and use 110 gallons, there is a valve that must be open.  Nice to know.

Wind Whisperer

I went down to the boat on Saturday.  They were predicting gusts to 65 knots - a perfect day to get blown away.   I spent the morning replacing the last of the old reading lamps with the newer frosted glass lamps.  Soldering wires, drilling holes, driving screws, I kept an eye on the wind speed while I worked, taking a peek whenever the din outside rallied in ferocity.  Sometime around 5 when the shrouds started to howl, I figured it was time to take advantage of the front row seats.  I carried up a folding cushion and settled in to watch the cacophony.   The Fury of flogging tarps on the Aurora bridge added to a thousand banging halyards.  Over all the percusion, the wind sang a keening, wailing anthem.  I sat and watched in silence, a whisperer in its midst.

The water maker is up and running!

It took a few weeks to get there, but Quijote can finally desalinate water.  The fun started by rewiring an unused circuit breaker to provide power.  Curiously the previous owner disconnected the power wires and left the ends free for me to try and find.  A more cynical mind would wonder if he wanted me to be able to test the water maker before buying the boat.

The next obstacle was to try and figure out the source of sea water.   I started pulling floorboards and found a sea strainer and through-hull valve under screwed down floorboards.  I would classify that under the shoddy installation department.  If the hose was severed and water started gushing in, I might have found myself ankle deep in water, not knowing where the water was coming from.  Every other through-hull has an access port that can be lifted from the floor.

I replaced the sea strainer and moved it into the engine room with all the other components of the system.  I also started work on an access port through the floorboard.

With that it was time to start troubleshooting.  I installed new filters and fired it up.  It was encouraging to hear the pump come on and see things proceeding properly, but it was no surprise to then find it generating errors.  First it told me the filters need to be checked even though they were new.  That problem turned out to be bad pressure sensors.  Then it started shutting down with a salinity probe failure, so I replaced the salinity probe.

With that, the system seems to work.  Granted it's working in Lake Union where the salinity of the water is about 70ppm.  Less than 750ppm is classified as "fresh," while puget sound is in the tens of thousands of ppm.  It'll be interesting to try it in real salt water when I get the boat out in Puget Sound, but at least everything is behaving without generating errors.

Two cheers for Quijote! We'll cheer once more when we get a cup of fresh water from Puget Sound.  To that end, I installed a sample valve that will let me sample the water before diverting it to the water tanks.

New Quijote Blog

This is the first post in a new Quijote blog that will keep interested folks up to date on all things Quijote.  I expect it will detail maintenance, local trips, and future plans.   So stay tuned!

Since returning from our epic trip to Glacier bay this summer (see svquijote.blogspot.com),  I've been mostly focused on maintenance and repair aboard Quijote.  I'll tell you what I've been up to in coming posts shortly.

Sad to say I haven't been out sailing since my return; preferring to putter around the boat and work instead.  In fact the main sail has been removed for repair, so I don't expect to get out any time soon.  Looking at that weather, maybe it's just as well.

This Thursday I will meet with Carol Hasse from Port Townsend Sails to take measurements for storm sails and to hand off the mainsail for repair.  The mainsail needs a couple of things that I know of.  The sail is mast furled and as such has a small corner of the clew that is exposed to sunlight when furled.  That small bit of sail is covered with fabric for protection against UV.  The barrier has done it's job, but now needs to be replaced.

The sail has vertical battens that give it, with its positive roach, a better shape than it would have without battens  Some of the stitching that connects the batten pockets to the sail have started to deteriorate and will need to be reinforced or replaced.

That's what's coming; next I'll talk about what's been done since we returned.  I'm sure you can hardly wait.