Monday, November 7, 2011

Useless Settee Meat

If you haven't read Tim's previous post, read that first so you can get the whole picture.  He spent the weekend thrashing on Kintala, I spent the weekend wrapped up in a heavy wool blanket on the port settee with chills, a pounding sinus headache, and a streppy-feeling throat, sipping on copious amounts of lemon and honey tea.  It was every bit of effort I could muster to make it the 4 feet into the head to deal with the copious amounts of lemon and honey tea.  I did manage to grab the camera on the way to and from the settee and try to take a couple pics of the whole process, so I guess I wasn't completely useless.

Not even one crumb of rubber left here...
Wanna take a guess as to whether these are the original engine mounts????

Brand new mounts courtesy of Torreson Marine and their ultra-efficient shipping department.
Lots of rubber here...

The aft starboard mount was pretty accessible

Not so much on the port side...

The forward port side was infinitely more challenging.

It took an impact hammer for the forward starboard mount.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmmm, the big wide open engine room of 7C's with her fuel guzzling V8's looks like a 747 hangar compared to your cramped engine compartment. Hmmm, keep the working fuel eater or start another project...I could rig a jib off the fishing outrigger!

As for the rust, they all rust, quickly. Just wait until you leave the clean clear Fresh waters of your lake and meet an ocean. Salt corrodes everything, you included. Make sure to keep everything well lubricated...Miller Lite works best!

Bill K said...

I guess I will quit whining about having to crawl around my v8 diesels.
LOL

Bill Kelleher

Deb said...

It's actually pretty accessible on three sides...guess which side the oil filter is on lol??????

LittleCunningPlan.com said...

I'm following your blog for inspiration as we are in the planning stages of our own cruising life. We've owned a classic 1970's Westerbeke engine and its boat (a Cal 34) for several years now and each time we set sail for our summer trip we wait with the proverbial baited breath for the day when the engine will make a terrible noise and stop working. Winds in the Puget Sound area are notoriously fickle and having a reliable engine is a safety feature.
We're never disappointed. There is always some kind of engine problem, especially since Mike began 'fixing' it. I tried to tell him that engines that old are a delicate balance. You can't fix only one thing, as that new piece always puts pressure on all the other parts of the system, leading to system overload on the weaker links. So far we're at 100% in terms of the number of trips we've taken where the engine decided to turn on us, generally when we're in swells with no wind and coming up on rocks. It makes for some exciting times, I can tell you. There have been trips when I would swear Mike loves that Westerbeke more than he does me, based only on my observations of the number of times I see him seemingly lovingly wrapped around it for days at a time.

All the time you are spending loving your engine and cursing her now equal days you will sail blissfully along later, knowing that all that work is behind you while she purrs like a kitten. You will not end up on rocks. You will not have to sail into Port Townsend in 25 knots of wind at night and drop anchor while under sail, hoping everyone else anchored there remembered to put up an anchor light. You will breathe easy. It's worth it. Stay the course, keep a good thought. Be glad you have such an incredible skill set. Your boat will be beautiful and sea worthy.

We're rooting for you here in Washington State.

TJ said...

We looked at a couple of sailboats that had "engine rooms". I'll admit they had more room than does Kintala, but I would have to be about 4 foot 4 to stand up in one. If we could have bought one for something this side of a quarter of a fortune I might have had a little more room in which to fix things.

Deb said...

Melissa welcome to the blog - although I'm not sure how much inspiration we're going to be I appreciate your comments. I'm sure we'll get out of this pit sometime in the future but at the moment it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks everyone for your encouragement!

LittleCunningPlan.com said...

Thanks for the welcome. I look forward to following along.