On Board with Mark Corke

Racor Fuel polishing

Diesel engines are very reliable and providing they are regularly serviced then they will last for years and years. One of the things that they hate however is poor quality fuel so for many years I have been a strong advocate of fuel polishing systems.

Essentially a fuel polisher draws fuel from the tank puts it through a filter or filters and then returns the fuel to either the tank that it came from, if there is only one tank aboard, or to another tank if the boat is so fitted. Fuel polishers remove water, algae and other impurities that would other wise cause damage to the injector pump and injectors. Clean fuel will also make the engines run cleaner and at peak performance with less chance of breakdown which could be potentially disastrous at sea.

Although there will be a filtration system on the engine a fuel polishing system can work at cleaning the fuel at any time even when the engine is not running as it is independent of the motor(s). Also it is worth bearing in mind that fuel passing through a polishing system will be transfered at a far greater rate than any fuel that will be picked up by the typical fuel pump on a diesel engine.

Racor are synonymous with filtration systems and they have just introduced a couple of new polishing system kits that could be installed into the engine room by the competent DIY boat owner.

Both Installation Kits include everything needed to install a dedicated fuel polishing loop, including the FPM-050 Fuel Polishing Module, a Parker Racor 500 Series Turbine Filter, a fuel hose and fittings.  The FPM-052-A Kit also comes with a stylish, black anodized FPM timer, enabling owners to program the new polishing system to run while unattended.

           

            The FPM-051 Kit from Parker Energy Systems retails for $919, while the FPM-052-A Kits costs $1,149, both seem like cheap insurance to me.

Golant Gaffer for sale

Mallard, my Golant Gaffer is for sale. Built by me she is probably one of the best constructed and equipped Golant Gaffers ever.

 

I am offering her for $35,000 to a good home. Mallard has Raymarine chart plotter, wind, depth, speed. Lombardini fresh water cooled 11 hp twin cylinder diesel engine which is very economical. sails 3 years old. New paint.Teak decks new in 2008. Custom bronze hardware. All LED lighting including navigation lights and a ton of other improvements and upgrades. Oh and I almost forgot a purpose built 4 wheel trailer. Always stored in a heated shed in the winter.

A real eye catcher which turns heads in any harbor or anchorage.

If interested please e mail me and I will be happy to send out a bunch of extra pictures and details. In the meantime you can down load a line drawing and basic study plan by clicking here.

Polisher test

A promised, here although somewhat later than at first planned and promised are my thoughts on the Shurhold polisher. I have also included a set of pictures of the process that I went through following the Shurhold instructions and using products that they supplied along with the machine. As these pictures show how dirty the boat was before I started and how clean and shiny it was after the uploads are large files so that you can click on them if you wish to see a bigger picture with more detail and clarity. Note by the way that although I promised a video the camera was not working at the time so you will have to make do with these still images.

 

Buff Magic is the abrasive buffing compound which removes surface oxidization and small scratches. This is followed by the Pro Polish which as the name suggests gives the surface a shine and which for most purposes is as far as you need to go but for the Rolls Royce finish and a but of extra shine you can follow this up with Serious Shine which does seem to make the surface more slick and even a little bit more shiny.

 

This is the back end of a 30 year old fiberglass kayak which I used as the test subject. It was very tired, scratched and dirty looking.

 

First I rubbed on a little buff magic here. You can add the buffing compound direct to the buffing pad or you can do as I am and apply it to the boat with a rag, an old towel works great.

 

The compound is rubbed into the gel coat with the foam pad that comes with the machine. It's larger than the backing pad by a fair bit to which it attaches with velcro. You have to get it centered on the backing pad or it vibrates badly. The best way is to place the pad down and lower the machine onto it lining everything up by eye. The machine speed is adjustable and for the compounding you need the slowest speed which is about 2500 rpm, any faster and the compound is flicked everywhere. An apron or overalls, eye protection and gloves are a good idea.

 

After the buffing things looked much better but polish brings back the shine. I followed the instructions on the bottle and spread a little onto the boat with a damp rag; you don't need much. I then swapped the foam pad for a lambswool bonnet increased the speed a little and polished the boat until the shine came through. I could have stopped at this point as the boat looked a thousand times better. But..............

as Shurhold also supplied some of the spray polish called Serious Shine I applied with a micro fiber cloth when I had finished with the electric buffer. This made a boat even a little more shinier and it felt much more slick to the touch. When I poured some water onto the surface it ran right off. In contrast a boat that is not polished will hold water on the surface.

All in all the test was complete success. Buffing out a seriously tired gel coat on a 40 footer would be slow work with this tool but for smaller boats and projects or for regular yearly maintenance I think that many boat owners could do a lot worse than own one of these Shurhold polishers which is fraction of the price of the almost universally accepted Makita model used by pros.

Shurhold Polisher test

I've been testing the Surhold dual action polisher these last few days and I must say that I am impressed. For $150 dollars the cost of this tool is a lot less than the cost of a polisher that the pros may use, the Makita for instance. But at first glance the Surhold seems to work well enough and the cost makesit an affordable tool for the DIY boat owner who only has one boat, wants to buff it up a couple of times a year and get good looking results.

The full report and a video will follow in the next post which hopefully will be tomorrow.

Skin fitting thoughts

I surveyed a Sabre 42 yesterday and while down in the engine room I noticed that all the sea cocks were labeled. That makes my job that much easier but I am sure that the labels were not there on the off chance that a surveyor might happen to come aboard. But I did get to thinking how sensible it is and wishing more builders would routinely label through hulls and sea cocks. Especially when one considers how many skin fittings and sea cocks there are on the average boat.

If the boat has a couple of air conditioning units, saltwater wash down, engine and generator intakes plus all the other sanitation fittings and so forth then a 40 foot boat may well have 15 or 16 holes below the water line.

It was also good to see some softwood plugs which in an emergency can be hammered into a failed skin fitting to prevent the boat from flooding although a plug of the correct dimensions should be secured adjacent to the skin fitting rather than just hung up on the windshield washer reservoir as shown above. You are going to be in a panic if you need a plug and remembering where you left it is not the place to be when the water is flooding in.

Stitch and tape construction

So called stitch and tape construction is now widely used in all sorts of boats from those that are built from plywood as I have shown here to those that may be built of more exotic materials. As it's name implies the ply panels are at first joined together with temporary wire stitches the inside, joints are then made with epoxy then after the epoxy has set the stitches are removed before the exterior joints are made with epoxy and glass cloth.

Below is the sequence of events for those that are interested in constructing a boat using the stitch and tape method. The picture show a small boat that I was building for my son but the technique will be similar in all cases except that the plywood may be thicker and the epoxy joint will be larger to thus spread the load across a larger area more effectively. I have personally built a number of boats using the stitch and tape method which produces a boat which is both very stiff and strong. One word of caution would not go amiss here and that is to check the boat dimensions carefully before applying epoxy to any joint. If a boat is wired up out of square or in other words with a twist in it once the epoxy sets up the twist will be there for evermore and the boat could be useless.

1 Mark up the planks to be joined. Clamp them both back to back so that you can drill through both of them at the same time. I was using 6mm ply so I measured in about half an inch from the edge to prevent the stitches from tearing out.

 

2. Spacings will depend on the amount of bend and tension that the plank will be subjected to. I set mine at 6 inch centers and this will be good for most applications, you can always add more if you find that you need them once you start the actual wiring together of the panels.

3. Drill for the wire stitches. The drill diameter should be just slightly larger than the wire gauge that you are using which in my case was a sixteenth.

 

4. With all the holes drilled open out the panels. Precut some lengths of copper wire and prebend them into a large u shape,  then feed them through from what will be the inside surface of the boat.

 

5. Twist them loosely together on the outside with the pliers. Leave them fairly loose, you can always snug them up a little later. Drill a few more holes and add extra wires if you feel that what you have is insufficient to hold the panels to the correct shape.

 

6. Continue wiring all the panels together. This was small dinghy so I was able to wire the entire boat together before I even thought about breaking out the epoxy. This is a fun part too as the boat starts to take shape very swiftly. As the boat was small I was able to hold each panel myself as I wired the boat together. Had the boat been any larger then a helper would have been useful; one to hold and adjust the panel up or down as required and another person to do the actual wiring up.

 

7. The wiring up almost complete. Note the temporary spacer to hold the beam of the boat to the correct dimension.

 

8 With the wiring complete it is time to mix up some thickened epoxy, I used wood flour, and spread it into the inside joints. Neatness pays here and will save hours of final sanding if you are careful. After spreading on the thickened epoxy smooth it out with a shaped stick like a tongue depressor or the back of a plastic spoon. Larger craft will have fillets that are much larger than these shown here and for that you will need to make a consequently larger spreader and smoothing tool.

 

9 This is how the finished joint should look, neat and well executed.

 

10 After leaving the epoxy to set up overnight you can remove all the staples. Most if not all should pull out with a set of pliers but if they are at all reluctant to come out then heat them with a soldering iron. This has the effect of softening the epoxy a tiny bit and allows the wire to be withdrawn.

The boat is now essentially a one piece monocoque structure but there is still a lot of work to do, the outside joints have to be made and the fiberglass reinforcement added. I'll be covering these steps in part two.

Flashlight fetish

I've always like flashlights ever since my dad got me on for Christmas when I was a small boy. As I recall it was a cheap affair but the best thing was that it had different colored shades that flipped in front of the lens to change color of the projected beam. I took it to  bed that first night and read under the covers with it. The thing was that I must have fallen asleep and left it on for in the morning the batteries were dead.

Things have moved on a bit since those days some 45 years ago and although I still have a fascination for flashlights I tend not to fall asleep reading under the covers with them any more , but if i did I could do far worse than to do it using one of the new Maglite flashlights with an LED 'bulb'. The light output is fantastic and best of all the new models have a 25% setting meaning that the light is reduced to one quarter of full power and in this mode will work for literally days on one set of batteries; probably enough to polish off War and Peace under the bed clothes!

I use mine for surveys and other assorted tasks aboard and although I have used it almost every day for the past year or so it has worked faultlessly apart from the time I thought it was broken and took it apart and rebuilt it only to find that I had put the batteries in back to front ... oops.

Maglites come in a variety of sizes but all are made form aircraft grade aluminum apparently and come with a lifetime warranty but  don't drop them over the side of the boat, the warranty won't cover that!

Winter preparations

I've spent a good portion of the day getting Mallard ready to go into the barn for the long winter ahead. Part of that entails changing the oil and filters so that the engine will sit with fresh in it oil during the cold weather. Although it is very tempting to simply roll the boat into the shed or cover with shrink wrapping and then forget about it all until the spring recommissioning it is always best to service the engine before the boat is laid up for any length of time.

Engine oil holds impurities in suspension and sucking out the oil removes these. One of the main contaminants is sulphur and if left stagnant in the oil will combine with condensation which forms within a cold engine and turn into sulphuric acid and thus begin eating away at your very expensive motor from the insides out.

As an aide memoir as to when I actually changed the oil I like to write the date on the filter then as the next service interval approaches I will not be trying to wrack my brain as to when the oil and filter was actually swapped.

 

Although I have a check list that I work through each end of season there are some things that do have to be done before the boat goes back into the water. After winterizing the boat I therefore attach a note as shown over the ignition switch so that the engine cannot be started without removing the label and running through the essentials that absolutely have to be done. 

By way of an explanation of the things shown on the list above.

The raw water pump has been removed for inspection and replacement but has been left out for the winter so that the vanes will not take up a 'set' or deflection from which they may take some time to recover.

Although the filters have been changed in the fuel line, bugs and algae can grow so I like to change these once more before putting the boat back into the water and firing up the engine. Algae in the fuel can clog lines and injectors and cause all sorts of problems, new filters will avoid this malady.

Checking the oil levels is self explanatory and should be done each time the engine is operated anyhow.

I like to stuff a rag into the air intake to prevent spiders and other critters from nesting there. if the engine is started without removing the rag it will get sucked into the engine and cause a ton of damage.

I like to change the anode in the engine at least once per year, but mine was not too badly eroded this year and after inspection has some life left in it so I put it back.  I have a new one on order and as soon as it comes in I will replace it although in my case it is not critical to do this immediately.

Boat hauling

It was a sad day today as mallard was hauled from the water for to begin her winter sojourn back in the barn. It seems like only yesterday that I was splashing her with anticipation of the coming season afloat which alas has passed me by all too swiftly.

One of the first things to do when the boat comes out of the water is to pressure wash the bottom as soon as possible. I know I have said it before but it pays to wash the bottom without delay. Waiting until tomorrow makes the job much much harder. The little critters will have set like concrete and those that would have washed off without incident just after hauling the boat will now require the use of a scraper and about 3 times the length of time with the pressure washer to get the old girl cleaned up.

I don't have a fancy pressure washer just a modest electric model that works well enough. Not as powerful perhaps as a gas powered model that pumps out 2600 psi but good enough for removing the nasty stuff while it's still soft.

DIY Boat Owner Magazine

 

DIY Boat Owner magazine which many On Board readers will be familiar with has been sold to Madmariner.com the on line boating resource site. The magazine was originally started by Jan Mundy and her husband Steve Kalman in 1995 before being sold to Boat US in 2006 who in turn have sold it to Glen Justice the owner of Mad Mariner.

As before DIY Boat Owner will continue to be published quarterly although at the time of writing this I am unsure as to whether Jan Mundy is to stay on as editor. The first issue to be published by the new owners will be available next month and it will be interesting to see what sort of changes if any will be incorporated.

The magazine is currently available through subscription and in some West marine stores.