Waretown, NJ (Boynton Beach, FL)

2

H. WARREN TIMM

PO Box 66 (130 NE 26th Av, Ap301)

Waretown, NJ (Boynton Beach, FL)

08758 (33435)

609-693-4513 (561-739-9100)

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August 13, 2003

Dear Mainshippers;

OK, so maybe our last Tices Rendezvous fully qualified as a washout (those predictions for heavy rains were not that far off, were they?), but this time at least the odds say that we can expect some clear weather. Well, being a bunch of die-hard boaters, let’s see how nice it will be to be out on our local waters again with some of the nicest people afloat – our members! We’ll be at Tices shortly after noon, and we’ll probably have a nice afternoon of interesting tale swapping, followed by a short cruise to the Captain’s Inn and dinner there at 6:00 PM (1800 hours for the nautically inclined!). And if we have another drencher, lets get together as we did in June and enjoy our dinner together at the appointed hour.

Is your “beast in the basement” one of those furry creatures otherwise known as a Caterpillar? Rich Calef reports that on a recent trip on his 350, the Caterpillar engine quit a number of times while underway. The former owner of his boat related that the problem might be in the Caterpillar Junction Box associated with the fuel solenoid circuit. “During our trip, we merely jiggled the connector and that worked for short times, but a fix involved a slight bit more than that.” The culprit here was a loose or poor contact between the connectors and the box. Tightening these female contacts (ed note – won’t make any comments here at all!) and the use of silicone anti-corrosion/connector lube did the trick. Mike Hankins at Mainship Service was notified of this problem and contacted Caterpillar on this situation – and if things progress as they normally do, there will be a notice on this sometime before too long. Rich suggests that periodic inspections of this unit be a part of every owner’s routine maintenance tasks.

Oh my – what are those strange gurgling sounds and the overabundance of water? Many of us who connect to shore water systems and use their supply and pressure rather than continually feeding our fresh water tanks are always aware of the consequence of failure of these systems. To guard against this requires a pressure reducing valve at the water inlet. But if the shore water is on, and a hose within your boat breaks (or a hose clamp becomes undone), your local water supply company will try to fill your boat with delicious drinking water. If you are aboard, you will hopefully hear the gurgling sound and shut the water off. But if you are not and the shore water is on, chances are that your engine will get a fresh water bath that was not exactly intended.

Of course, the ideal answer is to remember to shut the water supply off each and every time you leave the boat. Knowing the probability of an occasional gap in the performance of this task, some of our members have taken an additional step to keep their water bills down. They have installed a common lawn sprinkler timer to the water intake which will pass only 50 gallons and then shut itself off. To use more water, just reset the timer for another 50 gallons. Of course, there you are in the shower – all lathered up – and the water stops. Danged inconvenient, but think of the time when you are out to dinner and away from your boat and a water line does let go. It’s quite likely that those who do have these devices hooked up check them just before hopping into the shower. By the way, I have been advised that Home Depot has these for sale (Melnor #101CBS Flowmeter Water Timer, and they sell for a princely sum of $10.95. Of course, you’ll need a battery to operate this device, and this is only $7.42 for two of them. At prices such as these, it’s no wonder that marine stores don’t carry them!

Feed an engine dirty fuel, and it eventually stops. With gas engines, you merely change the filter and you are on your way again (taking close care of fuel vapors that arise upon changing a filter). With diesels, the story is a tad different. This fuel can sit in a tank and get gunked up all by itself. What to do??? There are articles on Fuel Polishing on the internet, but one of our owners has rigged up a setup on his own. He has installed a Gulf Coast Filter (that uses rolls of paper towels to clean the fuel), and a 12V Walbro fuel pump on his 1980 boat. He installed the filter assembly in the dark reaches of the corner cabin in his deckhouse (it drains itself after use, and makes changing filters much easier), and has connected it to his original fuel system using valves. He put a “tee” in the line leading from the CAV fuel separator in the rear, and feeds this through his pump to his filter. The output is then dumped into each tank through the bypass lines, and he uses the equalizer line to keep tank contents from overflowing. He can draw from each tank, put back into that tank, and keep the fuel not only clean and sparkling, but well circulated as well. He runs this around 20 hours a week per tank, and after 5 days and 5 rolls of paper towels, what was once a problem tank is now bright and shimmering (or at least the fuel in the tank is). The whole system costs around $700, the filter is a Gulf Coast # GC-0-1HF and sells for $395 including hoses and fittings. You may contact Ralph Wood at Vinwood Enterprises, 6790 Bobwhite Way, Sanger TX 76266, or telephone 866-263-2929. The rest of the expense is the pump and hardware for your boat.

No matter how hard you try, it’s impossible to get our engines to run on air alone. In gasoline powered boats, if a little air gets into the fuel line, it gets percolated through the carburetor and released to the atmosphere. But in a diesel powered boat, a few little air bubbles can put your engine into paralysis. With gas engines, one must be particularly careful not to let any gasoline leak out of fuel lines or fittings. But on diesels, a slight opening that is too small to let fuel out can let air in, and cause your engine to stop. When this happens, the prescribed way to get this air out of the system (a process similar to burping a baby) is to open up fittings high on the engine and pump fuel to the engine until the “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” routine is no longer appropriate. There are a number of different ways to do this, but here are a few of them:

1. Open the fitting on the output end of the last filter in your fuel line, and that oftentimes is the one on the engine. There is a manual lever on the fuel pump that will pump fuel through the system and is used for what is known as bleeding the system. Operate this pump until all the bubbles stop coming out of the fuel stream. Of course, having a container underneath this fitting makes clean-up much easier.

2. Many of the fuel filters are located low in the bilge in Mainships. If your filter is below the level of fuel in your tank, you can change the filter, open the bleed valve on top of the filter, and then just open the feed valve to the tank with the highest level of fuel in it. It takes a little while, but fuel will siphon from your tanks and fill your filter up. When bubbles no longer appear, tighten the valve or plug and you’re off and running.

3. Isn’t electricity just wonderful? If you have an electric fuel pump back at your tank location, just change your filter and start the pump with the bleed valve open. It will then do your pumping for you and make getting that air out real easy.

4. The opposite approach is to disconnect the output line from your filter closest to the engine, put a hose over it from a crankcase drain can, pump a vacuum in that can, and let the vacuum just pull the fuel through your system. It’s a bit hard to determine when all the air is gone, but after a good amount of fuel is in your drain can, you will be confident that the air is out of the system. And if the tank was clean to begin with, you can then pour the fuel back into your fuel tank. This is the method used by Scott Shaw whose boat is called, “NoWannaCondo”.

Looking for a New Home Dep’t

Mike Pisacano has decided to put the KOKOMO up for sale. She is a Mainship 390 fully equipped with 24 mi radar, autopilot, a 400’ anchor rode plus a spare, Switlick life raft, 330 Cummins, and a 8 KW gen set that powers her air and heat. That plus lots and lots of electronics aboard. If you are interested, Mike can be contacted at 321-298-2181.

Anyone out there with a crystal ball that can tell us what our weather will be for our Tices Raftup? Regardless, get a good bunch of people together and you’ll have fun no matter the weather!!!