On the way to Amble

Blogging from the fordeck is new to me .  On passage Sunderland to Amble ..  maybe going up to Farne for a look too

Shakedown cruise

First trip of the year, with work travel causing a late start to the season. With Mike and Sarah we set off from Hull on the ebb, heading to Grimsby.

Reflecting on Hull Marina there are some good things. Kilsdale Marine, the Chandlers, are well stocked, very helpful, and ultra convenient. Richard the boss is especially helpful and is the Cruising Association honorary local representative and a mine of information.  The people who operate the lock and hoist are all experienced and helpful too. The main draw back is that it is run by British Waterways, who run mainly inland waterways and seem rather clueless. I have never met a boatyard that does not operate the hoist at   weekend for example. It is also fairly expensive both in the marina and the yard, and a long way to the sea!

Off then to Grimsby which is closer to the sea and the marina, rather more like a Danish one, is run by a sailing club, the Humber Cruising Association.

Leaving on the ebb the plan was to not fight the tide, go past Grimsby and anchor then come back in n the rising tide. It is in principle possible to do the trip in one tide, but the stream runs at about 4 knots at springs so initial progress would be slow. Grimsby opens the lock for free flow 2 hours either side of HW, but penning in other times depends on the amount of commercial traffic as they have priority.

The Humber is a busy port and one requests permission to enter the estuary from Humber VTS, a bit like air traffic control. Near  Immingham  they asked us to tack out of the channel as a large ship was leaving that port. Our AIS transponder meant they called us by name (not they don't bother with AIS - basically too fiddly!) which is very handy. The boat behind us a nice Elizabethan ketch of about 32 feet didn't have an AIS transponder and I don't think had announced their departure from Hull. I think they got the hint when they saw us tack and perhaps heard VTS talking about them to the ship.



We anchored near Spurn Point which was pleasant and sheltered. Actually this is where VTS is based, as well as the lifeboat. We had a early dinner and saw a seal. The forecast was for brief torrential rain, which lasted half an hour and the visibility closed in. Then it cleared nicely for us to head back over to Grimsby on the flood.

Finally launched

Tui was launched in Hull Marina yesterday.  The engine started straight away after I bled the fuel system. Once launched I checked the seacocks and the stern gland and there were no leaks. The cooling water was happily coming out of the exhaust and I set off.  Before I got far the engine overheated, and the cooling water was not coming out any more. Barry, who is in charge of the boatyard operations towed me to the harbour wall in his launch. I checked the impeller and it was fine. I couldn't see anything wrong. Barry in the launch and Richard in a Rib towed me round to the berth. Eventually I worked it out. One of the hose clips on the suction side of the sea water circuit was loose. This means the pump was sucking in air and couldn't self prime. That tightened up it worked fine. One more fault I now know how to diagnose!

I just signed up to a new nice simple boat tracking site I saw on SV Delos's web site Farkwar.com. Here is  Tui






Max prop and stuffing box

The engine back in and we are nearly ready to go back in the water. The stern gland needs repacking. The propeller needs greasing and the anodes fitting

Picking the gland packing out of the stuffing box using an engineer's scribe

Here is the packing material picked out. It was in fairly good condition

Prop shaft anode. This model has a copper protrusion to improve electrical contact

These are the grease screws on the Max Prop Classic. You take them out with an Allen wrench to fit the Zerk grease nipple. This grub screw was damaged so I took it out with a screw extractor

Prop Protector rope cutter and anode fitted

Practicing with a litter grabber

Thanks to many boating friends who suggested ways of retrieving  lost phones and other precious things from bilges and other places I might float - test them (after the phone bilge float test incident last weekend) . A litter grabber from a pound shop looks like a winning option! Indeed fellow Oyster owners report that they are standard equipment. Here I am practising with it at home.  A child's fishing net sounds like a good thing to carry too.

My daughter suggested I fit an auto inflating key buoy  to it too.

Fishing for my phone in the bottomless pit of bilge

I wanted to clean the engine bilge before putting back the engine, now its oil leaks are cured.

Belts and belts and braces. Well strapped down on trailer with ratchet straps fore and aft as well. The engine is screwed to he wooden engine barers too.

For some reason I don't understand an Oyster 39 has a 4 foot deep hole under the engine to drop things down. The rest of the bilge is shallow but this goes right down in to the keel. The hole is triangular in cross section and has a confusion of pipes over it including grey water in and out. The grey water tank occupies the bilge forward of the bottomless pit. I was leaning in to it to reach down to get out the much when I heard a plop. My Samsung S4 phone had fallen in the hole. It was waterpoof ad I could still hear it beep but it did not float. Moreover the water at the bottom was to dirty to see it. As I couldn't reach it I thought I would continue pumping and washing in the hope of seeing it. My bilge pump did not manange to get up the last bit of water and now I had foam obscuring it instead of oil.

Retrieved... look its still alive

It began to feel like one of those cave rescue sagas where you could still hear the victim wedged in the cave but the rescuers could not reach them.  The clock was ticking as we had to go home and the engine is being craned in tomorrow. I was wondering if I was going to have to abandon the phone even though it was still alive. I imagined if we inverted in the open ocean and the boat came up with gear everywhere fallen out of lockers the rig damaged but my phone appeared shaken from the bilge.

Several helpful suggestions (and some unhelpful ones) arrived via Facebook and email. The phone pinging from the depths. They also appeared on my work phone and from America Simon suggested duck tape, sticky side out, on the end of he bilge pump.

Sarah, frustrated that she wanted to ge home now joined the fishing expedition. She caught an old screwdriver, the strainer end of the pipe for the manual bilge pump, and eventually she eased he phone up at the narrow end until I could grab it.



The case is a Red Pepper waterproof case for Samsung S4.  I bought it for about £20 in a phone shop in Cardiff. It is rated at 2m for 45 mins. It survived several hours in several tens of cm of oily water and was subjected to a high pressure jet of water too. It dropped about 1.3m into shallow water.  There was a very slight ingress of oil on one of the seals. As a case it is of course a little bulky and the screen does not respond as well as without but it is manageable and I leave the case on most of the time. I usually have big pockets and the case makes it easier to get hold of if anything. There is a special waterproof adapter if you want to use the ear phone jack (I don't). It has a simple flip down lid for the charging socket which is not waterproof. Some micro USB so plugs, not the official Samsung ones, are too fat to go in.  The phone does not float in the case in water.

Lessons learnt include putting some kind of grill over this hole, and fitting a landyard to the phone case (it has a hole). Certainly that would make it easier to fish out!

Engine out for major service

Time to fix the oil leaks that plagued us last year. The beast is a Thornycroft 154, a 2.5L marinized BMC diesel engine. Mine was originally supplied in 1981 by ARS in Norfolk when Tui was made. The mechanic at Dekanian Yachts (who finished the hull bought from Oyster) ,  moved there when MacWester went bust. Older gaskets were made of cork, and I have a fairly complete set that came with the boat and we carry as spares. However they have a limited life and modern gasket material is much more long lasting.

The cockpit sole and "dinghy locker" removed its a long way down to the engine!

 

Finally its free

Flying engine

In the trailer and partly strapped down.

I had the engine craned out at Hull Marina, using the jib on their Wise hoist. I needed to remove the service alternator, the water pump and one of the legs  (the engine's mounting legs  not mine) to get it out and then it required some careful tilting and manoeuvring. The team at Hull Marina were very experienced, calm and helpful. For me it was somewhat stressful. Especially when we realised I had not disconnect everything (engine stop cable was one I missed).

 I had borrowed a small trailer (from Shipshape) and had wedged in large bits of wood so the engine mounts could sit on them and then held it down with ratchet straps and covered with a plastic tarp.

 The sump and two other gaskets were leaking and there was a hairline crack in the sump as well, that only leaked when the engine got up to working temperature. Rodney from Shipshape Marine Engineering in Hazel Grove has it all done now, and a coat of battle ship grey heat resistant paint. The lighter colour paint should make it easy to see any further oil leaks in the future.

I am going to call it Gandalf. Next time I will paint it white. We held it on to the wood using big wood screws and coach bolts but still used lots of ratchet straps.  This type of box trailer is not ideal - it has no suspension or brakes and while it is rated to take the weight I had to make sure the load was taken by the chassis not the flimsy box. I even reinforced the base of the load space with some hefty plywood.

Rodney suspected that we had used the wrong grade of oil. We use 20/50 multigrade mineral oil generally which agrees with the engine service manual.  In Tyboron we couldn't get that so used one with a lower SAE. Rodney recommends single grade SAE 30 oil (the older owners manual say SAE 20 or 30 depending on ambient temperature).

I painted the Bowman heat exchanger, oil coolers and associated pipes in blue Hammerite. Here it is ready to go back to Hull. I might have used an excessive number of ratchet straps but I am nervous about heavy things on trailers.