Date: 10/5/99
Port of Call: Southwest Harbor, Maine
Subject: You Get What You Pay For
This weekend we find ourselves in a highly unusual position for sailors: we have to try to use the engine as much as possible! This odd need comes about because we just replaced our old BMW D-35 engine with a brand new Yanmar 3JH2E. As with all new engines, this one has a break-in period during which parts wear and settle into their eventual positions. We are trying to accelerate this break-in period so that we can have the engine's initial service performed before we leave Southwest Harbor.
Our job this weekend is to try to rack up as close to 50 engine hours as possible. (For comparison purposes, 50 engine hours would take anywhere from a week of hard-motoring days on the Intracoastal Waterway, to 3 months of gunkholing in the Bahamas. It is roughly equivalent to 3000 miles of wear on a car.) As I write this it is just after dinner. We are riding on a mooring in Southwest Harbor, trying to get another hour or so on the engine before bedtime. To put a little load on the engine, we are running the watermaker, the inverter, which powers the computer, and a lot more lights than we normally would use. Running the engine this much is providing us with as much hot water and electricity as we can reasonably use, which for us is quite a novelty. So I will take advantage of all this electricity to write this e-mail about our month in the boatyard.
In our last letter, we mentioned how the Hinckley Company smoothly hauled-out and cradled the boat, and how quickly they got the old engine out of the boat. After that, the visible progress was not so dramatic, but it was clear that things were happening. The bilge was cleaned of all the oil and sludge that had accumulated over the years, and then painted. The old engine beds (at the risk of being flippant, an engine bed is the place where an engine rests) were cut away and new narrower ones were welded in place, then painted. The propeller shaft, propeller, stuffing box, cutlass bearings, sea strainer, and refrigeration condenser were all (this is where it starts to get bad) found to need replacing. The rudder needed to be cut away slightly to make room for a larger propeller. We also found some areas of blistering in the paint at the waterline, where the paint had not adhered and was lifting right off the steel. All of this greatly increased the amount of work to be done on the boat.
A glancing blow from the remnants of Hurricane Floyd also slowed things down, since all the employees at the boatyard were diverted from their normal projects to prepare all the boats for the bad weather. Fortunately, by the time he reached Maine, Floyd's winds were down to 35-45 knots. We got lots of rain and wind for a few days, but we saw no damage here.
The new Yanmar engine
The
engine was eventually installed, aligned, plumbed and wired, and Sovereign
was launched on Friday, September 24th. A difficulty with the tachometer
kept the mechanics busy last week, but we finally had our sea trial on
Friday, October 1st. The day of our sea trial was rainy and breezy
with choppy seas, as if God had decided to throw a little extra weather
at the engine, just to see how it would hold up. Well, hold up it
did. We put the engine through its paces, reaching a boat speed of
7.8 knots with a wide-open throttle, and finding a comfortable cruising
speed of about 6.5 knots, a full 1.5 knots more than our former cruising
speed, which is an increase of 30 percent!
The new engine
has a sound quite different from the deep truck-like roar of the old BMW.
It has a much quieter hum with a fast ticking noise on top. It sounds
more like an automotive diesel--perhaps a Mercedes. After 12 years
of listening to the old engine, we are trying to adjust to Sovereign's
new voice. And after years of looking into the wet, murky bilges
criss-crossed by hoses and wires, it is nice to see a clean, dry bilge
with everything orderly and tidy. With all the problems that surfaced
during the installation, I shudder to think what our experience would have
been like if we had chosen one of the other yards that offered a lower
price and said they could do the job leaving the boat in the water.
It was pricey, but we now have an engine installation that is better than
new, and which we hope will last for much more than 12 years. We
are extremely happy with the job The Hinckley Company did. This seems
to be one of those cases where "you get what you pay for". It's just
too bad that, as nice a job as they did, the engine has to stay hidden
in the engine compartment.