Ready To Resume

Shady Harbor Marina, N 42 27 W73 47

(08/09/05) Three steps forward, one back. I would that it were different. For the past several days we’ve been sanding, painting, and adjusting.

We repainted the blue strip on the upper part of the hull. That was a mixed success. The color is nice, and the old dings scrapes and flakes are covered. However, the finish is ripply and shows brush strokes. The original finish was as smooth as that on a new car.

We refinished the refrigerator top with rubbed varnish. It’s nice.

We refinished the floors in the cabins with glossy polyurethane. They shine so much that it hurts my eyes.

Each night we went to West Charlton to sleep while the coat of paint dried.

I also changed the pitch on the propeller. There’s a long story about that. Way back when we did the survey to buy the boat, Al Hatch decided to change the propeller pitch while the boat was out of the water for the survey. The boat has a MaxProp with internal gears that allow you to change the blade angles. I wrote in my blog that Al was stressed and hurried doing it. He explained that the maximum RPM was only 2200 which made the engine work to hard. Reducing the pitch would make it run faster. When we put it in the water and he revved up the engine and, the RPMs went way over 3,000. Al declared it a success and I didn’t know any better.

Ever since we took possession, we’ve been having trouble with engine heating. It wouldn’t go fast at low RPM, and it overheated at higher RPMs. Twice I hired diesel mechanics to work on the engine cooling. The best we were able to achieve was 3.8 knots boat speed in steady state.

While at Shady Harbor, I did some emailing. I finally heard from Bud Taplin, the guru of all things Westsail. Bud gave me the specifications including max RPM and a curve of boat speed versus RPM. I also called MaxProp and talked to Fred. Fred is MaxProp’s expert and he has done this adjustment thousands of times. Fred is very familiar with the Perkins 108 engine and the Westsail. Fred gave me recommendations. Now I had three wildly different recommendations from three very expert sources.

Anyhow, we couldn’t get away from the dock Monday night because of wind and current. In trying we bent one of the chainplates. That's the step backward. I'll write more about that later.

Today, Tuesday, we came at 730 AM, hauled the boat out of the water and, by 1030 I had the pitch reset. I chose Bud Taplin’s recommendation, but I was fearful because it was so drastically different from where Al Hatch had set it. Each adjustment step is supposed to mean 15% engine speed, and I changed it 6 steps!

To make a long story short, the operation was a success. When we put it back into the water and I revved up the engine, the max RPM and the boat speed were exactly what Bud Taplin said they should be. Now our cruising speed under power will be 5.2 knots rather than 3.8 knots and our top speed will be 6.5 knots. I can only conclude that when Al Hatch changed it that he adjusted in the wrong direction, or otherwise got it completely wrong.

This evening, we had a very nice time. The Pete and Mary Ellen Lemme came down from Albany and treated us to supper at The Boathouse restaurant right here at the marina. We sat on the deck overlooking the river and had a lovely evening. We talked about boats, and Lake Champlain, and SMD2 price convergence, and changing culture at the ISO, and we swapped a lot of stories. Thanks Pete that was very nice.

Tomorrow we head for the Champlain Canal. The adventure continues. Stay tuned.