The adventure of a broken gear in the transmission

In mid-August we had the port transmission lock up just as we were preparing to anchor at Redfish Island for a Saturday afternoon. Janice Crockett was along so we went ahead and anchored. After lunch we launched the dingy and went ashore. I called Land & Sea the next week, and a mere 11 weeks later the transmission was reinstalled on Monday, November 2. The gear was evidently still available, but the shaft for the gear was not. They bought a rebuilt transmission to scavenge for parts, including the shaft that we needed. To celebrate the new(ly rebuilt) transission, we went back to Redfish Island for an overnight the very next weekend... All is well once again.

Replacing rusted out exhaust elbow (We know how to have a good time...)

Lucky Us has twin 6.0 litre (about 372 cubic inches) Ford/Lehman diesel engines that are fresh water cooled. To do this there is a heat exchanger system that intakes raw water and cools the fresh water that actually cools the engine. At our marina on Clear Lake, Texas or in our nearby cruising grounds on Galveston Bay, the water is brackish, which means that it is a mix of salt water from the Gulf of Mexico and fresh water from land, rain, etc. The brackish water is corrosive do to the salt content. While the engine itself is protected from the corrosive salt water, the steel components of the raw water side of the cooling system are vulnerable to "rust". About 6 months ago, we a large cast iron exhaust elbow replaced on the starboard engine. It had leaked and corroded the mounting bolts so badly that we could not remove them. Thus, we had it replaced professionally, which means that it was also expensive. This time the leak had barely begun and corrosion was minimal, and we were able to remove the old elbow relatively easily. However, it seems that hot salt water leaking from the exhaust system is HIGHLY corrosive so those little casual "lookabouts" before each cruise can save a LOT of work and expense down the road. The first picture shows the badlycorroded underside of the exhaust elbow where the leak occurred. The port Velvet Drive transmission had previously been removed for repair, but the absense of the transmission made overall access much easier. Note that the black (3.5 inch inside diameter) exhaust hose also appears to have failed or been cut at this location. If the hose had leaked first, then this could have caused the rapid corrosion and failure of the elbow from the outside. The Admiral did a wonderful job of scraping, wire brushing, and using emery cloth to remove the rust, and the she applied a coat of the venerable "Lehman red" spray paint (second photo). Along the way we also replaced two additional hoses on each engine.
The final picture show the "Captain" in an unfamiliar role of exhaust elbow repairman. If he looks relaxed and relatively happy, it is because the picture was taken early in the adventure. Well, the final result looks good, but it remains to be tested until the transmission has been repaired and replaced. So, time will tell. If the repair was successful, we did it for about half of what the professional version cost and also gained more knowledge about the inner workings of OUR boat.

New dingy: the learning curve has included...

Life is an adventure, and so, it turns out, is the addition of a dingy to our list of toys. The addition of a cover was an obvious choice, but supporting the center to make the water drain off was not trivial. The Admiral came up with a brilliant idea by putting a 4 foot diameter beach ball in the dingy. The ball supports the cover and drains most of the water off the sides. Other trials were not so successful. We tried lifting the dingy vertically using pulleys and long 2x4 lumber to simulate davits mounted on the fly bridge. This worked okay, but the limited mechanical advantage made this option undesirable... Another idea was to keep the dingy on a floating dingy dock when at our home marina. The basics of the floating dock are two 24x48x12 inch high polyethylene floats mounted under a 4ft by 8ft deck. The dock worked "okay" although if was a little "tippy". Ultimately, we abandoned further development work on the floating dock partly because the marina had recently banned such docks (even though they neglected to tell us...).

Adventures in dingy launching & retrieving

The hypothesis is that if the dingy is easy to launch and retrieve that we will use it more. Toward that goal we have done a lot of experimenting. The latest advance is the addition of a winch that provides a significant mechanical advantage (about 14 to 1) for the retrieval process. We had initially tried a variety of pulleys with a mechanical advantage of only 5 to 1 that really made it difficult to retrieve the dingy. It turns out that launching is easy since gravity does all of the work...

Our "favorite" passenger...

Taken June 13, 2009, this picture show the Admiral with granddaughter Sarah on Sarah's second trip aboard Lucky Us. We went out into Galveston Bay and anchored at Redfish Island where we had lunch and swam in the bay. All went well, except that we discovered that we had far too few inflatable water toys on board. Note: that (minor) problem has since been remedied...

The Admiral in her brand new barge (aka dingy). Wait a minute... Where's the water? Where's the crew?