Changing the seal on a SD20 Yanmar saildrive

It has been said (often) that cruising is working on your boat in exotic locations. And while that is an overly pessimistic assessment, certainly cruising cannot be entirely a vacation from maintenance.  While Valerie is away, Laurent on s/v Letitgo gets busy on one of those necessary tasks...

Some amazing photos will be present in this post but maybe not for all public; once the Vahine has left the surrounding of the boat, well in my dream… With that said I was left to ponder on what could be done during this sunny day. so let’s “dive” in one of the most interesting subject of all: oil and seals on a SD20 Yanmar saildrive. Please stop all the applause, I know you are excited but one day somebody will do a Google search and will find the solution to a problem a few years ago we couldn’t!

Another highlight of my day is that this yard is on the flight path of the Faa Airport it is not often you have a 340 Airbus doing a rather drastic turn overhead on takeoff with full load! I will spare you the 2am landing of the same bird.

Now let’s go to our interesting subject of the day. Remove the propeller, allen key for the screw at the end. Then remove the cone with a good size screwdriver inserted in the holes present in it, hold the prop, then turn.

Remove your oil or it’s going to be messy.

Remove the zinc then, the two screws holding the full assembly. A bit of persuasion will be needed to get it in your hand. Read hammer and a screwdriver… “easy cowboy!” aluminium is soft.

With a flat #10 wrench remove the five screws but first mark the position. If you didn’t, the hole that doesn’t have one, goes at the bottom.

Now everything should come out very easily.

With the help of a screwdriver, remove the two split seals.

Spend the next two hours cleaning polishing, once that is done re-insert the new internal seal flat surfaced on the inside. And generously coat them with grease.

For the rest it’s just a reverse job and 5 liters of gear oil to complete the job.

Chap Chap Dinghy Chap

Dinghies in the tropics are subjected to the full force of the sun's destructive UV in a way that those of us up north can barely comprehend.  Even the most expensive Hypalon is corrupted by the sun.  What to do?

Valerie & Laurent, aboard s/v Letitgo (currently enroute from Ecuador to the Marquesas), addressed the issue by making "chaps" of sunbrella that cover the dinghy's tubes... not an easy task, but well worthwhile!

The last four days have kept us pretty busy; a dinghy chap is not an easy sewing project and was on our list for a while. Indeed, the shape is complex with all the curves add to that the handles it definitely needs a minimum of precision to achieve something that looks half descent. The pattern had been done while we were in Panama, along with the purchase of the fabric, so we were ready. In the end, we are still talking to each other, I (Valerie) have gained even more confidence in my sewing machine and learnt a few tricks of the trade and that’s all thanks to Mum who gave me many memories to cherish and new knowledge. As for the guys they kept clear at all times from the working area and provided us with delicious and nutritious lunches every day! Thank you for that too.

We won’t be the ugliest dinghy on the dock or surfing the wave anymore!

On sprouting….

Up north on s/v Letitgo, they now have fresh greens...

 Our friends Dawn and Tom had heard of our previous adventure with sprouting and must have taken pity. So during our last meeting they gave us the Tube a 70″s looking contraption that make the art of sprouting easy.

On the first day after 12 hours soaking.

As we are all mostly vegetarians some by choice some by association. The need for fresh crunchy leaf is our reality. So after canning, bread making and yoghurt the long lost tradition of sprouting had to be revived. Sunflower was what we had in stock in the cupboard and we gave it a trial.

6 days later we have these amazing greens, phew… we are now “safe”. We will have our greens onboard! Coincidentally today is our son’s 15^th birthday today! To symbolize your “birth” day *B* we celebrate the birth of our sprouts! What a gift….

Happy Birthday *B*!

Dawn and Tom thank you so much for leading the way and sharing your knowledge. You will travel with us forever.

Sadly, when I did some research, I found this:

Before we tell you how much we like The Tube, we need you to know that The Tube is no longer available. We keep its page on our site for those lucky enough to have one. We are sorry. The manufacturer shut down around 2005. We even asked if they would sell us the sprouting portion of their business. They never responded. It wasn't the best Sprouter - Easy Sprout has always been better, but we are sad that it is gone...

Knee-deep in *what*?

It's not a pleasant task - Jane is reluctant to do it. It's not that you have to actually come into contact with the stuff... but still.  On Eolian, our holding tank is polypropylene - it is translucent.  We can check the level by shining a flashlight thru a corner of the tank, revealing, well let's not talk about it. s/v Letitgo has addressed this issue head on (oops...) with a nice solution that I am going to propose to Jane for Eolian:

Do you sometimes feel overworked?  This is how it feels in our household lately, especially when this Sunday we decided to get going and give it a good push on two projects.

Did you say messy boat! It got to the point that when we had one of our neighbour come and say hello we couldn’t sit anywhere.

On my side, I tackled the holding tank monitor: One tank was clean and empty, the other one was not.  I made my usual assumption that two hours should be sufficient!  But as usual that was wrong!  For it took closer to four hours before I was entirely done…

The first hurdle is that you need to find 12volt nearby, then a spot to put the screen itself and then easy part - the install.

To top it all up, in the middle of all this we made a run for the pump out and cleaned the second holding tank.  We can now say we are all pretty and shinny inside and out.  Yet, another system we have learned to know well.

Once calibrated and tested we reassembled the starboard side and are happy to report no leak, even the vent line is working as planned. I have included these two pictures for future reference, and to show how beautiful 2 clean holding tanks look like. We have to have something to show for all that hard work.

Now we just need to receive the red magic plug and we will be firing on all “cylinders”.

There are several types of these units out there on the market (don't neglect to check out the RV versions, if you're doing the research).  This one is the Practical Sailor pick, according to s/v Letitgo.

Moving water

Our friends on s/v Letitgo show us an easy way to move water from where it shouldn't be to somewhere else...

Our dock neighbour and friend, also a veteran catamaran sailor who sailed from the West coast to New Zealand and back, parted with us a very wise advice few weeks ago.  While filling his water tank he discovered that a fitting had broken during the winter and the entire content went into the front cabin.  Not the most pleasant of Spring surprise though a hard reality.  This is when he showed us his creative portable bilge setup.  Luckily on multi hulls we have separated “water tight”compartments but not all are linked to the bilge pump, hence the need for this clever device!  You can plug it as you need it, vacuum whatever needs to be done and then store it for the next event.  As you can see on the picture below,  yesterday while purchasing the replacement strainer screen for the water system, I acquired the entire elements to have my own portable pump.

Here are the ingredients you will need:

• 15ft of bilge tubing,
• 30 ft of 16 gauge electric cable,
• one male 12 volt plug, one clamp
• and one rule 500 GPH bilge pump.

I don’t have to teach you how to put it together, but for $30 it is a nice little system to have on board even just to empty the dinghy when you leave it out and it rain really hard.  Not that we will ever do that around here, no.

We have a similar system on Eolian, and it has served us well.

Floating neutral

Have one of those seemingly ubiquitous Honda 2000eu generators? And does it successfully drive your inverter?  You're in the minority, apparently.  Over on s/v Letitgo, they have the solution.  And it's one time when a short is a good thing...

So far this has been one of my most frustrating item, I just crossed it off my list so it deserves its own post! Don’t you think?

I am really hoping that the knowledge I just gained will help others who have the same issues on their RV or Boat. It was a nonstop fruitless search to find a picture showing exactly what to do, so hopefully what is to follow will be of help to you!

What do we need to look for? What is the symptom? You will not see it, you will not hear it. The generator works perfectly, you plug it, and it works or so it seems… As when you put the fancy charger inverter from a boat, it simply doesn’t recognize the electricity produce as clean. So here is the problem: the setup of the Honda and lots of other generators as a matter of fact is a floating neutral, also referred as a floating ground (not proper apparently). Hence, something is floating and the device only recognizes 68 volts and shuts everything down. In the house your ground is linked to the main box to the neutral, well,  not on a boat. This is all done for safety purpose, which is completely understandable but it made me scratch my head for quite a while!

So solution: Which is actually against everything you learn in life so far- “short” the plug inside the generator or outside via a cable. The principal is the same, we will only use ours on the boat, so I did a permanent fix internally.

You will need the proper set of tool to crimp two cables, one about 3 inches and one 7 inches. Finish it with open U shape connector and you are ready.

Once you have those two, you will need to install them as per picture below. I have made a label to indicate that the output has been modified on the casing itself.

If you put a regular household tester, it will show that the neutral is open. But once you plug it on your regular R/V or Boat AC input, magically it registers 128 Volt and everything work like magic.

It took me a long time to really trust myself and my reading. I would like to thank Ron for his professional advice and hand holding during the entire process. You see for a “normal” human being to create a short in a plug is not natural at all.

The local Grange can be your friend

On s/v Letitgo the local Grange (farm supply store) is proving to be a great chandler:

On our recent cruise, I was confronted to the need to get sea water onboard. Not to refresh or clean the blood from the fish we caught yet though…. The bucket we had onboard are not up to the task, handle with let go under the weight, they are hard and scratch the side. This is when on the back of my small brain, I remember reading a few years back about horse feeding bucket. A little research brought us to our local equestrian shop and the wonder of the rubber bucket.

Sturdy but at the same time flexible to avoid scratches, flat on one side to easily bring it back onboard. The ideal boat bucket.

Battling Earth's most prolific residents

Single-celled life was here long before us, and will be here long after we no longer grace the surface of the planet.  That said, we still want to reserve some small areas for our exclusive use.  s/v Letitgo decides that their water tank is one such area:

Our second major undertake was to regain control of the fauna in our water tanks. Do you remember few weeks back our water filter under the kitchen sink? in this post http://svletitgo.com/2011/03/racor-filter-500ma-and-fuel-fixer-r2d2/. Well, during our trip this became a routine; we had to remove black then white, then translucent fungus! Luckily we were prepared and had gallons of fresh water for internal consumption! That being said when we arrived back at the marina we took drastic measures! Bleach was the solution, a real shock treatment, we are now happy to report success we drunk the water at lunch today and still able to write this post tonight.

Ingredients for the cleaning of water tank:

• 1 gallon of bleach in each tank with ¼ left in them. Run all outlets don’t forget the deck shower until a nice clean smell of Clorox is present. Let it sit for 48 hours no hot water tank during that time.
• Go out for a sail in 18 knots wind with some nice waves and allow the boat to get a good shake. Then empty the tank put the valves on both at the same time, and why not empty the shower in the toilet and clean the holding tank at the same time. Listen for the water pump, clean filter accordingly.
• Get back to the dock, and start filling the tank with fresh water. Use my filtering devices (a beauty by the way) and start the same process to clear the taste.
• Clean your filter again and again, empty tank, refill with fresh filtered water and you are in business.
• Nice drinkable water on your boat. I told you it’s that simple, we have plastic water tank so this help, if you have aluminum be careful the bleach eat them alive apparently.

Unfortunately, this is temporary, unless you are filling your tanks from chlorinated city mains.

Nothing is ever easy

Despite the best laid plans, sometimes things just go awry. Over on s/v Letitgo we have a recent example...

As we all know by now; on a boat things are never simple, one problem leads to another one and sometimes one can’t help an unscheduled trip up the mast…. And this is what happened yesterday when we installed our spinnaker halyard. It all started innocently with a reeve eye and a messenger line :

All went well my bowline held (thank you very much) and in no time I had everything in place, proud smile on my face! Then again, the messenger line was routed on the inside of the spreader so we had to come up with plan B. So a genius idea of mine: get a weight on the shackle and guide it with a line over the obstacle, well you can see how this is going to end at this point I am sure, it got all tangled up into the anti bird wire on the top of the spreader. As I am sure you can understand I needed a rescue for the messenger line, and *V* was to inaugurate the new bosun chair. But this time we had the camera up so we were able to take a few nice shots! As you can tell on the picture below I am scratching my head trying to figure how I am going to sweet talk my way out of that one! Though *V* loves being up there for some odd reasons….

Now you understand why a 15 minute job takes 1 hour, we call it boat time…. But now we look more like a real boat with the ability to raise a spinnaker, have a second line to go up and a spare shroud just in case.

One time good deal, for the next 20 minutes

From s/v Letitgo we have another great idea - how to construct a water filtration system that you can carry with you for use away from your dock...  and a one-time-only good deal!

We picked up that idea from somewhere along our learning curve while reading.  Basically it is a really good idea to  filter the water before it gets into your tank.

Two major reasons, we are looking forward to be able to drink from the tap and you can’t have any chlorine in the tank to back flush the water maker.  So why not try to get into the practice right away, after cleaning your tank this spring.  We hope to start from fresh and not have any bad taste in the future.

A little research and we came with the solution, double filtrations one for residue 5 microns, and one carbon for the rest.  As usual Google (my friend), I found the best price on the net.

• 2 x Pentek 158643 3/8″ 3G Slim Line 10″ Clear Housing  @  $18.50
• 3 x Pentek PS5-10C Smooth Core Filter Cartridge  @  $1.60
• 3 x Ametek, US Filter C-1, American Plumber W5CIP  @  $6.10

Add to this a chopping board a few coupling, a valve, tubing and attachment devices from your favourite local hardware store.  You are in business for 1 hour of assembling and fun.  Now if you contact me, I will build you a Marine version at the minimal coast of $149, for your family safety a must.  And if you buy in the next 20 minutes, I will include 2 years of filter in the price.

You are now able to hook up your water hose on one side, the device hangs from the lifeline or other place and you get beautiful and tasty water on the other side.  Grab a beer, relax the water is flowing for only $149.

Reach out and touch...

Please welcome new contributors *V* and *L* from s/v Letitgo!  In this post they describe how to build a "marine" Alpha wireless antenna, without paying the "marine tax".  I can assure you we will be hearing more from them!

How do we build a Wi-Fi long range device?

First of all we search on the net what everybody else does, and find out that for $250 we get you a “marine” magic box with an Alpha thingy plus an 8db gain antenna in a pelican box. Now we know that unsecure network are getting rare around the world, but still when you are anchorage or at the back end of a marina you may need a little boost even for a paid one.

After a few minutes of research on the net, we found with data Alliance, the kits we needed:

• 1 Outdoor Enclosure for Alfa AWUS036H / AWUS036NH combined w/ 9dBi Antenna & 5-meter USB Ext Cable (Active)
• (10-meter: Increases kit price $6 to $33.99 total) @ $33.99 = $33.99
• 1 Alfa AWUS036H 1000mW USB Wireless WiFi Adapter + Antenna. Long-Range. Upgrade from 500mW        @ $25.99 = $25.99

Attention this is not a water proof but weather proof, so we added a rubber gasket (home depot $1.09) and some generous silicone application. To hook it up to a lifeline or for us to the boom, we added two stainless snap hook (home depot $4). Total $65.07 for a system we can leave outside and bring with us, when we go on shore and need to get into that coffee shop network without having to be inside or seating just outside on the curb. People are too quick to judge you, when you stay in that posture, done it before no more!

Now for the hard part, you didn’t think it was all going to be easy. You need to get that antenna inserted into the gasket, a very tight fit. At home we have a fancy “organic” Dishwasher liquid not the best for that application. So now we just had to ask “our neighbour” for some Vaseline and look what we got! We know, for anybody who is ever going to see this box on our boat, it will bring a smile.

From our condo, the first comparison show that we jump from 6 networks available to more than 30. We will have to test the generosity of our environment in this summer cruise.