Showing posts with label have. Show all posts
Showing posts with label have. Show all posts
Sunday, 15 November 2015
How deep does water have to be to dock a boat
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Monday, 10 February 2014
The ORBs have come are you prepared
This boat really was never designed to have an autopilot installed despite the fact it's a twin engined hybrid pleasure bowrider and fishing boat. I visit the boat, crawl around, snap pics to aid my creaky memory and figure it's possible. Not easy, very cramped but I can do it. It has a new Teleflex helm jammed into a tiny console, no worries there other than the lack of room. What I didn't know was something was different, very different about this helm that I think even an experienced installer like myself could easily miss. I would bet that most couldn't tell from the picture what this is, but I'm going to enlighten all. From my experience the line from the movie Groundhog Day "Anything that's different is good" was not.
I visited the local Parker hydraulic fittings distributor and bought a substantial amount of fittings trying to shrewdly anticipate the problems I was sure to have.
The boat is living in a dealers lot and has to be completed by the end of Friday and this is Monday. I'm also throwing in a chartplotter and transducer which have their own spatial constraint issues. Half of Tuesday gully washes and is a work write off. On Wednesday morning armed with plethora of fittings and tools I crawl into the console and start the process. This is where things start to go south... really quickly.
I always start autopilot plumbing by taking out the six o'clock return port and draining the hydraulic fluid reservoir into a bottle for later safe disposal. Humm... the plug to the port is not what I was expecting. It needs a hex wrench to remove it. When did this change?
I rummage around in my kit, find the wrench and remove the plug. There is another issue that has to be contended with. Things are so cramped I can't get a bottle under the fitting to catch to hydraulic fluid so I need lots of paper towels under it to absorb the fluid.
Normally there is only a couple cubic inches of fluid, but the damn stuff keeps pouring out. I frantically grab more paper towels and jam them under, but the stuff is still escaping. More paper towels are frantically jammed in and the original ones are so saturated they are now dripping. Finally it stops but not before the oily stuff has dripped into the console on everything, weeped onto the sole of the boat and a small creek of the stuff has run all the way to the stern. A substantial amount of the stuff is now on me also.
What I hadn't noticed was the filler for the helm pump was mounted high up on the console and a foot and a half of half inch plastic hose was also full of fluid. An hour later of clean up and degreasing I'm back behind the pump staring at the fitting. It ain't right. This isn't what I was expecting. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, what's going on. Nothing I have will fit, and if it's not bad enough it's started or pour again. %$#*!!
I pick up the phone and have a good and animated conversation with Teleflex. What's different is the plumbing. Teleflex's new helm pumps are now using ORB fittings (O Ring Boss) instead of the 1/4" NPT fittings they have used for years.
Their argument is they have a lot of warranty issues with both teflon tape and pipe thread sealants getting into the systems. These fittings eliminate both of these problems. Further you can orient them into any position you want which is often very difficult to do with NPT fittings. I certainly don't disagree with their assessment. These are better fittings but.....
I get the the issues you can have with sealants of all varieties. It only takes a tiny amount of anything in a hydraulic system to cause a check valve or the ilk to allow fluid bypass. Neither gooey thread sealants or tape are great solutions, but this is all we've had for years. Of the two I like the tape better for a number of reasons.
So be it. My Teleflex colleague and I have had this ongoing friendly conversation for years. I understand if they find tape in a system I connected to a autopilot I have voided their warranty. This has never happen to me. In general if they find anything in the helm pump you're in the same position with the warranty.
So here is my problem with the new fittings. It's not that they are bad, because they're really much better. It's where do you get them from? Teleflex apparently is under the impression that West Marine is stocking these fittings in their warehouse. I took a quick look and only found four straight out ORB fittings period. I didn't check every fitting in the Teleflex catalog against the West Marine warehouse, but the next four fitting tries yielded no products in stock. As a matter of fact those three fittings you see above depleted the inventory of the only two hydraulic fittings suppliers within an hours travel of me, and in general their inventory of these smaller ORB fittings were somewhat bleak.
Now there is still a second problem. No matter what I'm still going to have to use some NTP fittings when plumbing an autopilot. Space is cramped, I often have to use NPT nipples, and other creative options to get things to fit. So we're back to the tape or goo thing again. And one more thing, these ORB fittings can be really pricey as you can see from this online marine store. Just to give you a point of contrast a NPT version of this is about $6.00 in brass and locally available
So this is what I'm going to do in the short run. I'm going to buy a good handful of both straight out and ninety degree ORB to NPT adapters like you see in the photo. Everything else will be done with NPT fittings until I can find a better, meaning has the inventory and more affordable sources. This is a good idea, but the supply chain needs some improvement for these particular sized fittings, a lot of it.
The autopilot still isn't finished. I put the return plug back in and refilled the system. My confidence level wasn't very high that I could do the plumbing correctly in the time I had left, and the owner wanted to used his new boat. He leaves town in a couple of days, and then I will finish the plumbing. This way if something goes awry, I have time to find the odd pieces I will need to make it work in the tiny space I have. It's a boat and it's always something.
Tuesday, 14 January 2014
Canoes they have
Canoes they have, but these are not my people. I find a huge party of canoeists at the put-in. There must be a dozen whitewater canoes, round and bulbous, perfect playthings for whitewater - specialty boats that aren't much good for anything else. It's too many people for me and I load my canoe quickly and make a get-away to the north.
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| Red wing blackbird |
Two geese are on the rockpile. I drift on the wind for a closer look and when I look up from fetching my camera, they are in the water. There is no nest yet and I wasn't close enough to scare a mother goose off of her eggs. Next, I paddle the few yards north and ease my canoe into the break of Broken Island. This is a favorite nest site and I want to be careful not to scare a goose off of a nest. I find one sitting on a nest eying me from behind a tree. I back away. The mate is not anywhere in site and it occurs to me what has been going on. Before the eggs are laid, the pair will be aggressively defensive about their nest sight with anything or anyone that comes near. Once there are eggs, the mate keeps a distance from the nest. His presence would signal the existence of a nest to any predator with the female pretty much forced to stay put atop of the eggs.
There are quite a few great blue herons around today. I see a half dozen just in the short channel by the West Islands.
There is a new goose nest on the West beaver lodge. No eggs, yet, and the pair are together on the lodge, but she will lay soon, I bet.
I see a woman and a boy out bird watching by the north point. I pull in for a chat since they are standing about 10 feet from a beaver scent mound and almost no one ever knows what those dirt piles are. We have a nice talk.
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| One of the big flat backed turtles from the north marsh (18-20 inches long) |
I pass two guys fishing from $15000 of boat with a 7000 hp outboard motor as I paddle into the NE lagoon. I flush a ringneck duck. This year, there won't be a goose nest in the lagoon because the little island has gone awash in the high water. But, there are about 3 dozen turtles sunning themselves on drift logs. As I leave I spot a cinnamon teal.
There is a new goose nest on the NE corner of the #1 railroad island. I've never seen a nest here before.
I cross the bay to check for a nest on the Big Lodge. It was the first nest of the year last spring, but there is no nest, yet.
In the east marsh, I head down into the big dead end just to listen to redwing blackbirds, marsh wrens, and from an unknown distance, the whooping howl of the tiny pied billed grebe. The grebes are making quite a racket today. Few will know what that sound is.
The workbench lodge goose nest is abandoned. The pair is not too far off. There are no eggs in the nest.
I pass by the canoe club - it is a class - a kind of paint-by-number canoe paddling thing that I've never believed in, but then again, I'm not in the class. It does not look like fun.
I head to Portage Bay.
Sunday, 23 December 2012
You cant always get what you want and yes we have no autopilots today
Like the headline says, sometimes you can't easily have what you want. That being said, I say, "that there is aways a way", if you want it bad enough. So here is the problem.
The boat in question is a Freedom 35'. It's a nice looking, and sturdy vessel, but at the preliminary "design the boat meetings", no one apparently asked the question "Would anyone want to use an autopilot on this boat?" Or maybe during the meeting, the question was asked, and some curmudgeon at the table said, "Real sailors aren't sissy's like those power boat guys are, they love the feel of the helm for hours on end, and the cold wet ocean spray on their face". In either case, the boat was not designed to have an autopilot installed.
The boat has a Raymarine wheel pilot, but its size, and displacement, exceeds the design specifications of the Raymarine autopilot. It's fine while motoring, or sailing in light winds, but in following seas, or blustery conditions, it does not have the horsepower to keep up. I was called to look at the problem, and see what kind of autopilot options were available.
In most cases, when a wheel pilot can't do the job, a inside installed hydraulic, or linear drive autopilot will do the trick. These types of autopilots are both stronger, and faster. This boat has a Edson radial drive steering system. In the picture above, as the helm turns, cables pull the flying saucer pulley thingy you see above left, or right, turning the rudder. It's a good system, especially if the rudder is raked back, as is this one.
The large pulley sits on top off the rudder post, and passes through a collar mounted on a fiberglass table. So now we will open the proverbial "Can of Worms". Since this is a cable drive system, the hydraulic autopilot drive system is now a moot point, and we are left with the linear drive approach. All we have to do is to mount a tiller arm on the rudder shaft, and use a linear drive motor to push and pull it. Hmmm, no place up near the pulley thing to attach an arm to the rudder, how about below?
Nope, not below, the rudder shaft is encased in a fiberglass shaft. I call Edson, and ask if they thought I could maybe attach a post to the outside edge the pulley, and attach he linear drive to it. Edson's reply was absolutely not, and the Edson manual says the same thing. I'm quickly running out of options, when I have a small idea. See the little post with the bolt in it, just under the hole in the deck in the picture below? That is the attachment point for an emergency tiller. The emergency tiller is a pipe section, with a slot in the bottom of it, that fits around the bolt you see in the picture.
Now, if I did some very careful measurements, I could pull the bolt, and have a tiller arm fabricated, attached to a short pipe section that would fit into the emergency tiller pipe pulley mount. It could be drilled out to allow the original bolt to fit through both pipe sections. Take the original emergency tiller to the machine shop, and weld on a smaller section of pipe that would fit into the now smaller pipe.
Oh crap, none of this would work, the moment would be lifted, Edson wouldn't approve, it would be a mechanically sloppy fit if it wasn't welded, and if it broke, it would most likely take out all of the steering with it.
As I said there is always a way, but it might not be easy, or cheap, or both. So here are a couple more options, sell the boat, and buy one that you can install an autopilot on, or tear out the existing steering system, and install a hydraulic steering system, or don't be one of those power boat sissies, and enjoy the endless hours at the helm, and the cold wet sea water spray, Got any idea's?, because I am fresh out of them. Thanks Bill Bishop
Thursday, 8 September 2011
Houston we have a problem
"Okay Houston, we've had a problem here." "This is Houston, say again Albin 13." "We have had a navigation instrumentation power failure." "Copy that Albin 13, let me talk to the engineers about a work around. Stand by please." "Albin 13, the engineers want to know if you have any wire and connectors?" "Roger, Houston, there is old wire I found in the garage, some split bolt grounding connectors, and wire nuts" "We copy Albin 13, the engineers want to know what is the size of wires, and do you have any electrical tape?" " Houston, we have a piece of old black wire that is about pencil sized, and some smaller red wire. There is also a package of multicolored electrical tape that came from Harbor Freight." "Roger that Albin 13, stand by for instructions."
"Albin 13, Houston over." "Albin 13 copies Houston." "Albin 13, the engineers want you to cut two six foot pieces of the black wire, and you are to wrap one of the wires completely in red electrical tape. Then take the two pieces of wire and tape them together every six inches" "Houston we copy, stand by please." "Houston, we have the wires wrapped and taped together." "Copy that Albin 13, now cut a four foot piece of the red wire, and wrap it completely in yellow tape." "Roger Houston, confirming the red wire is now all wrapped in yellow tape."
"Albin 13, now pull the large red taped up wire, and the black one, from the primary power buss panel, to the navigation auxiliary panel." "Roger Houston, we have the wire pull done." "Good work Albin 13, engineering wants you to now strip about one inch of insulation away from the ends of the wire you just pulled." We copy Houston, the wires are stripped, and how much longer will this patch take? We are a little anxious about not having navigation capability." "Roger that Albin 13. Engineering is preparing an estimate, their slide rules are doing overtime. They think it won't take much longer. Just keep checking your position out of the port hole. You have to keep the moon in view. In the meantime take all of the black grounds, and using the split bolt connector attach them to the black cable."
"Roger Houston, but I can't get all of the grounds into the connector." "Copy that Albin 13, engineering says to get as many as you can in, and tighten the connector. Then go down eight inches, and strip one inch of the cable insulation away, and use another split bolt connector to attached the rest of the ground wires to the cable, along with the yellow tape wrapped wire, and advise when competed." "Houston, the grounds are attached. Should we attached the red wire to the auxiliary navigation panel? "Albin 13, that is affirmative, use the split bolt connector for that, and attach the yellow wrapped wire to the network box ground. Engineering says to use a lot of electrical tape to wrap up the connections so they won't short. Do not, and I repeat, do not use the duct tape, we may need it later." "Roger Houston we understand, no duct tape."
"Albin 13, do you copy?" "Rogger Houston, what's next?" Engineering wants you to cycle the power off on the primary power buss panel, and attached the red wrapped cable to lug H2, and the black cable to lug G3. When you're done, cycle the power on and do a systems test." "Houston, this is Albin 13, we have green lights across the board, and are good to go. Thank engineering for us." "We copy Albin 13, have a safe journey."
"Roger Houston, but I can't get all of the grounds into the connector." "Copy that Albin 13, engineering says to get as many as you can in, and tighten the connector. Then go down eight inches, and strip one inch of the cable insulation away, and use another split bolt connector to attached the rest of the ground wires to the cable, along with the yellow tape wrapped wire, and advise when competed." "Houston, the grounds are attached. Should we attached the red wire to the auxiliary navigation panel? "Albin 13, that is affirmative, use the split bolt connector for that, and attach the yellow wrapped wire to the network box ground. Engineering says to use a lot of electrical tape to wrap up the connections so they won't short. Do not, and I repeat, do not use the duct tape, we may need it later." "Roger Houston we understand, no duct tape."
"Albin 13, do you copy?" "Rogger Houston, what's next?" Engineering wants you to cycle the power off on the primary power buss panel, and attached the red wrapped cable to lug H2, and the black cable to lug G3. When you're done, cycle the power on and do a systems test." "Houston, this is Albin 13, we have green lights across the board, and are good to go. Thank engineering for us." "We copy Albin 13, have a safe journey."
If this had been a patch you had to do on a desert island, and these were the only materials available, it would work. But this was the biggest kludge I had seen in a long time. A sea of electrical tape, wire nuts, split bolt connectors, and non-marine wire that was stiff as rebar. This is a pretty Albin trawler, and the original factory wiring work is well done. At some point in the past the original navigation systems were replaced with Raymarine gear, and a six breaker Blue Sea panel was installed in the console to feed the new gear. This is where everything went awry.
The reason I ended up on the Albin was because it had a cranky Raymarine DSM 300 sounder module. One of the things that can make this box act up is insufficient power. So when I pulled the panel up, as much as I could to see what kind of connections there were. I was confronted, and confounded by golf ball sized wads of electrical tape, and a mishmash of stiff as a cob wiring. You couldn't see a single connection. A utility knife and about twenty minutes of time revealed the eclectic choice of components.
All of the wonky stuff was ripped out, and a new feed for power and ground was wired into, gasp, proper terminal blocks. The old grounds were rerouted to the new terminal block, and a new power feed was pulled to the Blue Sea panel via its new terminal block. If something new is added, power will be easy to access, and it won't be hidden under miles of old black tape. The Blue Sea panel can now be lifted up, and out of the console because it is no longer held in place by rebar. I just can't imagine why someone would take all of the time, and trouble to wrap these wires up in colored tape. You need red wire? Go by some of the right type. Everything needed to do it right was $36 at West Marine. The red wire was wrapped in yellow tape because I sure the guy just ran out of black tape. Go figure. The Raymarine DSM is still cranky, but not as much. A software upgrade for it is next on the list.
Want to read a portion of the Apollo 13 transcript that has the now famous line? Click here.
The reason I ended up on the Albin was because it had a cranky Raymarine DSM 300 sounder module. One of the things that can make this box act up is insufficient power. So when I pulled the panel up, as much as I could to see what kind of connections there were. I was confronted, and confounded by golf ball sized wads of electrical tape, and a mishmash of stiff as a cob wiring. You couldn't see a single connection. A utility knife and about twenty minutes of time revealed the eclectic choice of components.
All of the wonky stuff was ripped out, and a new feed for power and ground was wired into, gasp, proper terminal blocks. The old grounds were rerouted to the new terminal block, and a new power feed was pulled to the Blue Sea panel via its new terminal block. If something new is added, power will be easy to access, and it won't be hidden under miles of old black tape. The Blue Sea panel can now be lifted up, and out of the console because it is no longer held in place by rebar. I just can't imagine why someone would take all of the time, and trouble to wrap these wires up in colored tape. You need red wire? Go by some of the right type. Everything needed to do it right was $36 at West Marine. The red wire was wrapped in yellow tape because I sure the guy just ran out of black tape. Go figure. The Raymarine DSM is still cranky, but not as much. A software upgrade for it is next on the list.
Want to read a portion of the Apollo 13 transcript that has the now famous line? Click here.
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