avionbianca   Blog for s/v Avion

Problem Solving

Return Day 9 8/82014 13:00 (979 Miles to Golden Gate Bridge)

When you plan a delivery such as this you have many options to thin k about. For example; should you follow the rotation of the high so you are constantly in wind or should you cut out a few hundred miles and motor through the high? We gave this extensive consideration weighing the increased distance to the dependency on the engine. We felt that even with motor sailing we could only gain about 2 knots advantage by following the wind not nearly enough advantage to justify the added distance. The downside of this decision is once in the center of the high and the engine has issues we could be stuck for a while waiting for wind or have to alter course to the southeast making a detoured to San Diego. Though I love my brother and sister in law that live there I’m not sure the extra few weeks of sailing would be worth it. I am one that typically hedges on the downside risk; what is the worst that can happen and make decisions that minimizes that from happening. So in this scenario that would typically be take the extra few hundred miles so that we could always sail towards San Francisco if we have any major mechanical failures. We choose the opposite approach because we have had very little issues with the engine, we have plenty of fuel and we were confident in our abilities to fix most of the issues that could arise with the engine and rigging.

I looked down and saw David up and about to relieve me so no need to go down and get him rousted. Lindi, my watch mate, had just gone down below to work on cleaning up the galley. As she was descending the companionway she told me to turn around and watch for nets and stuff. She had been forward on the bow keeping a close eye for more glass balls so I was trying to get confortable snuggled into my favorite spot looking aft. So I turned around and started watching the surface of the water in front of the boat for any obstacles. You would think that being 1000 miles off shore this wouldn’t be necessary, unfortunately we were in the middle of a huge debris where literally within a 100 yard radius of the boat you could always see something. Mostly it was small floating pieces of Styrofoam and plastic with an occasional line or plastic float and rarely a glass ball with webbing! I’m not seeing anything so I relax and enjoy the scenery of the rolling swells that remind me of small rolling hills back in Wyoming. All of a sudden we hear a loud bang and the engine drops considerable RPM ‘s. I look down into the companion way and see Lindi looking up at me with eyes that must have looked as large and concerned as mine. I immediately de-throttled the engine to neutral and looked around to assess the damage. Since David was getting ready to come up there was little delay in his entrance into the cockpit. I turned off the engine and he went below to check and see if the shaft would turn. He reported that it did so he suggested that I start the engine put it into gear and see what happens. I looked aft and saw a big net float below the surface about prop depth. We now knew what we had hit. So we shut off the engine and David got on his snorkel gear and dove on the prop, came up asked for the cockpit knife, went back down and came up with a big handful of netting. He reported everything was clear and no visual damage to the prop. Great news, however we had another issue to be concerned about.

In the early going on the return we discovered a strange behavior of the engine. Once we stopped the engine and turned it off we found that if we immediately restarted the engine the heat alarm would sound and there was no way for us to get it to stop buzzing without waiting for the engine to cool. While I was cruising in Mexico on Alocus I had the same engine as Avion and I explained to the crew that I had a similar issue but had installed a thermometer in line with the heat sensor so when this happened I could monitor the engine temperature to determine if the alarm was an issue and eventually the alarm would stop once the fresh water flow cooled the engine. We would wait to see if the alarm would go off and not knowing the temperature we felt uncomfortable waiting with the engine running so we would just let the engine sit for a while (typically we were motor sailing at the time so we were still making good way without it) and every time it would correct itself by simply waiting. This time there was no wind so instead of motor sailing everyone decided to go swimming except for Juan who like to be on the water not in it.

After swimming, bathing and general frolicking for about an hour we decided we should get back underway. We fired up the diesel and the engine heat alarm continued to blare. We thought for sure that after an hour the engine would have been cooled down enough to behave like we had experienced earlier. We decided to perform a more detailed analysis of the issue by tracking the water flow through the engine. We discovered plenty of water coming out of the pump, a good sign, but not so much coming out of the thermostat. We had replaced the thermostat before leaving Alameda so we were confident that it hadn’t fail. When we pulled it we saw that it was properly open so we decided to run the engine without a thermostat to see if we could get the alarm to stop. Sure enough it stopped so now we figured we are back in the same scenario as before but just had to hurry it along the cooling of the engine without the thermostat. We put the thermostat back in, fired up the engine with no alarm, put it in gear and bingo, the alarm came on; damn. Our thoughts now lead to a restricted orifice in the thermostat, so why not make it bigger? Since we had a spare we thought we should try making the hole in the thermostat slightly larger. This rational came from me based on my cruising experience; there had been lots of discussions about overheating issues involving boats that had sailed down to Mexico from Northern California, Oregon and Washington from cool water to warm water. We thought we could have a cool water thermostat and a warm water thermostat. Unfortunately the symptom persisted with the drilled out hole. Now the question was, what is the downside of running without a thermostat in warm water? Hopefully we will not find out because after 3 1/3 hours of trouble shooting this was the only way we could motor without the heat sensor sending an alarm.

Return Day 10 8/9/2014 10:00 A.M. (868 NM from Golden Gate Bridge)

After nearly 20 hours everything seems to be fine. We have a call into the owner to see if he can find out if there is any downside to what we are doing. We feel comfortable with our decision. Motoring through the Pacific High still seems like the right decision. Only time will tell!

Our shifts of 4 hours on and 6 hours off are working out very well. The days are actually 20 hours long consisting of two full rotations; one typically during daylight hours and one during the night time. Since every day the shifts change by 4 hours we never have one watch the same time of day within a week (which for us is 6 days). Every few days the schedules line up perfectly where you can experience both a sunset and a sunrise within a 14 hour period of two on-watches and one off-watch. Last night I was able to first see a beautiful sunset followed by a glowing near full moon; then after my off-watch, I saw a the moon drop over the horizon that rivaled any harvest moon I’ve seen immediately followed by a gorgeous red sunrise. It just doesn’t get any better than this; well maybe the sunset over the Tetons back home but my schedule there doesn’t typically allow for the follow up sunrise over the Absaroka Mountains.