After a fun time with Dr Rick, it was time to get back to boat jobs. Lots to do. First, our ice maker had been causing a GFCI outlet to trip, so I rewired things to prevent that. Refrigeration systems are notorious for short spikes each time the compressor restarts and this can trip the GFCI.
We did make time for a snorkeling trip. We had noticed tourist boats congregating at the same place each afternoon, about 1/2 a mile away. We dinghy’d over to see what was up. We found a big party with many tourists in the water with a few rays and some small sharks. Very calm, warm, clear water with music, drinks and tourists from 4 to 70+ years old, all in the water with floaties, water wings, etc. People were feeding the rays fruit pieces and having lots of fun. Not sure why the sharks were there – they have no interest in the fruit. It was fun, if a bit touristy.
The next day (April 9) we sailed back to Taha’a.
Plenty of wind for a good sail and pretty large swell hitting us on the stbd quarter. More on that later… But we dropped hook near Coral gardens and hung out for a few days.
The stbd engine would not start. It would try to crank, but not get a full turn and just stop. The solenoid (just replaced 2 weeks earlier), battery, and starter motor were all good. But maybe I just needed a stronger battery? So I pulled the battery from the port engine and used both in parallel. Same behavior. So I put the port battery back and now that one wouldn’t work either! Having no engines at all is a very bad thing. Not a good day. Pat was NOT happy.
The port engine was not even trying to turn over so I replaced the spare solenoid (I bought two when the stbd one failed) and the port engine was good. So at least I had one good engine again. We motored over to Raiatea Carenage, where we had done the haul-out a few weeks earlier and got their engine guy, Hio, out on Calista. Right away he determined that there was water in the cylinders. Yikes, that is REALLY bad! And how did it get there?
Remember when I said I would say more about the large swells hitting our stbd quarter when sailing from Bora Bora? Turns out that these swells were slamming the exhaust outlet and forcing salt water up the exhaust hose into a muffler in the engine compartment.
This filled up high enough that it got above the level of the exhaust elbow and exhaust manifold so the mainfold flooded. Then when the engine turns over to start, the exhaust valves open and the water floods into the cylinders. It prevents the engine from turning over because the valve closes again and the piston rises, compressing the air and small amount of diesel in the cylinder. Except that now its full of salt water which does not compress and everything stops moving. Most engines have a siphon on the exhaust hose to prevent this but for some reason, the Leopard 46 was designed without a siphon.
This can be REALLY bad. Salt water corrodes engines badly. I thought I might need a complete tear-down and rebuild of the engine, replacing rusted pistons, etc. Maybe even a new engine. It looked to me like weeks of delay, possibly months to get all the parts. And if we did not leave French Polynesia by May 12, we would be past the two year limit and have to pay about $30,000 in ‘import tax’ on the boat. I was REALLY stressed. But Hio had seen this many times and had other ideas. One of his specialties is resurrecting engines from boats that have sunk. And he is a calm, resourceful and optimistic person, fun to be around.
The first task was to get the water out of the engine which meant pulling the 4 fuel injectors. But they were pretty badly stuck. Hio had seen this many times and we went to his shop and he welded up a tool to extract the injectors. Back on Calista, this pulled 3 of the 4. Back to his shop, we built a bigger, heavier, stronger version of the tool and this did the trick and pulled the last stuck valve. Did I say that Hio is resourceful and optimistic? He and Peggy together prevented me from a meltdown.
I have a suction pump that I use for oil changes and it has a long thin tube that fit perfectly into the fuel injector holes and sucked out the salt water. Then we put some diesel in and hand cranked. Then diesel again and cranked with the starter motor. That sent diesel everywhere, shooting out the injector holes, but got all the water out and lubricated the cylinders with diesel. Then we put it all back together (after Hio showed me how to clean the injectors) and tried to crank but by now, the battery was getting weak. Luckily I had a 300 Ah lithium ion battery (spare from house battery problems two years earlier) and that had plenty of juice. After some cranking, it started!!!! What a beautiful sound! 🙂 After running for an hour, we started and stopped it a number of times. All good. Crisis averted, thanks to Hio, the magician master mechanic.
So all good, right? But why did this only happen now, when we have been sailing Calista for 4 years? And what’s to stop it from happening again? Stay tuned…
Note: I’m going to try to do shorter, more frequent posts and get caught up. I’m about 6 weeks behind right now. Queue suspenseful music… 😉
I love the ingenuity and resourcefulness here. Plus reaching out to others for expertise. Looks like Pat’s BP is back under control.
The GFCI problem came up at a friend’s place. She had an older home (circa 1910) in Pacific Grove next to Monterey and she lets us stay there several time a year on the cheap. I’m grateful, and do extra honey-dos and improvements with her permission, like stripping the deck and refinishing, light electrical work, etc.
Her son installed a GFCI in the kitchen, but with the old wiring the refrigerator was not on its own circuit. Of course when the compressor kicked on once it tripped. No one had been to the house for a month. Lisa and I come. First honey-do, clean really moldy fridge and pitch and restock some items in the cleaned fridge. Oh, and she just had the house electrical totally rewired. Looking forward to visiting again!
Also, in a small world story, your troubles with the GFCI circuit reminded me, do you remember the text book for our Intro to Electronics course at Cal? It was written by two Cal profs, one of whom, Bill Oldham, has a home about a half mile from me in Hawaii (he is 86, still helicopter skis, goes biking in the Alps, and was leaving for a motor cycle trip last time I saw him!). We play golf together and he was telling me how another Cal prof invented the GFCI circuit. They are designed to detect a certain level of current that would be drawn when a human causes a short in the circuit. To find the correct level, he got a bunch of student volunteers to grab a live wire and measured the current! He sold the patent for $20K, which does not sound like much now but Bill said back then it was about a year and a half’s salary for an associate professor.
Yikes! It’s stories like this that make me glad I’m on this trip vicariously. 😊
Boating is complicated — but you two seem better qualified than most to handle these technical challenges.