Bits and pieces reassembled to a heater that works!

It's been cold for the last few days- easy to be discouraged from getting out and doing any work on the boat. The past week has been a historic cold snap for North Carolina. Snow fell, and on the deck of the Black Pearl it was still there to-day, a whole week later. But it's a chance to find out whether all the work John did to rehabilitate our Espar heater worked..... or not.

One inch at a time

It used to be that our "tail pipe" exited from the starboard side, just behind the cockpit. John has decided that the occasional whiff of diesel will henceforth only be detectable from the stern. In the refitted system,  the engine exhaust and head discharge vent from our new composting toilet will emerge together into a cloaca-like chamber. Makers of the composting toilet assure us that no offensive odors are to be experienced. This remains to be seen.

 This day, here is the  work of  art that will take off from the engine. One day soon, we will get to fire up the engine and see how it still works. Within 4 months this whole project should come together, so that we will have some place to live while we build out next house, but for the moment, it's all torn apart.

Very Little is "Off the Shelf"!

In getting the exhaust gas eighteen inches from the engine through muffler to the hot water tank, there are  very few straight runs. Of course, the whole lot runs near the base of the hull, and the muffler itself is an odd geometry. Here, at the bottom of the page, are both the rear end (pipe and flange) which connects to the waer heater, and the front end (special bellows...more story of that in another post)  which connects to the engine .

John has reduced the size of the hot water tank so as to better accommodate the cockpit drains, but it too is slightly odd. He pointed out that in my last post I said the exhaust had boiled off the water.  Actually, what happened was that the steam generated by boiling the tank burst the pipes, after first blowing the water tank up like a balloon, so to this day, the ends of the tank are curiously bowed, and thus the bottom does not sit flat either.

ps to my friend Bernie: it's not hard to get to the boat: we have a path through the woods...here it is-

Exhausting

Our engine exhaust passes through the hot water tank....very nifty arrangement that provides plenty of hot water when traveling. The original system revealed its flaw on a particularly quiet and beautiful part of  the Hudson River. That is the whole point of a shake down cruise, of course!

On a lovely sunny autumn day in 1982, we were suddenly engulfed in  an alarming great cloud steam as a small private yacht club came in sight. The sight of a dock at just this moment was miraculous. It was extra good fortune that the  people on the dock were so helpful.

After the adventure of billowing  in and having our lines taken, it turned out that  heat from the exhaust had entirely boiled off our hot water! The Poughkeepsie Yacht Club helped us get to the nearby town of Rhinebeck for parts, and let us stay on their dock while John devised a sensor and cooling pump system to solve the problem. They also encouraged us to visit the nearby  Roosevelt home in Hyde Park  (I had just started reading Eleanor Roosevelt's autobiography, so that visit  was another unexpected gift )

John has simplified the system for this refit- 1) by realizing that the engine had double and unnecessary cooling, 2) by building extra keel-cooling tanks,3) by designing a muffler, and 4), by re-routing the entire affair. In my previous post I showed the work-of-art-muffler...these are stainless steel pipe and flanges created on the home lathe this very afternoon.

Is it a muffler, or a work of art?

When we lived aboard the "old" Black Pearl , it was never really possible to stay below when we were underway - too loud under power. So that is one of the things John has changed- the engine will be completely encased in steel, AND we will have a muffler. Like everything else, it could not be found "on the shelf" and needed to be specially designed.... but here it is, on the dining room table

Some history of the Black Pearl

John built this 43-foot steel ketch in the back yard of the Sandy Hill house we owned  in downtown Ottawa, Canada. We lived aboard when our kids were small, and cruised to the Bahamas. We "stopped off" in North Carolina, raised the kids, and never even thought of selling her as the leaves accumulated on the deck, mold grew everywhere, and the kids grew up.