Bleeding for beginners

ONE OF THE strangest facts about sailboats is that a tiny bubble of air can bring a hulking auxiliary diesel engine to a sudden stop. It hardly seems possible, yet it happens all the time — and usually at the most inconvenient moments, never when you’re safely tied up in your slip.

If you know anything at all about diesel engines — say, enough to turn the key to start one – you’ll know that they work by compressing air in the cylinders until it’s red-hot. Into these ruddy infernos, a high-pressure pump squirts a mist of diesel fuel.

The mighty explosion that follows drives the piston down in the cylinder and turns a big heavy thingummy round and round. This big thingummy is attached to a box of gears at the back that turns the propeller shaft. And then the shaft turns the propeller and makes the boat go forward. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

You will appreciate, therefore, that a working diesel engine is a ferocious box of tricks, noisy, vibrating, smelly, and husky as all get-go – a real macho piece of work.

So how can this monster be halted in its tracks by a tiny, girly, bubble of air? Well, it turns out that air is compressible. Let us pause here for a moment to reflect upon the significance of that last sentence. Maybe we need to backtrack a bit.

When the fuel pump sends diesel to the cylinder, the fuel pressure obviously has to be high enough to counter the pressure of the air that has been compressed in the cylinder. I mean, if the fuel pump pressure were less than the cylinder pressure, the cylinder would blow fuel back along the line to the pump, which would be just plain silly, not to mention stupid.

Now, to make sure this kind of blow-back can’t happen, there’s a little sort of check-valve thing that will only let fuel through to the cylinder if it’s highly pressurized. If it isn’t, the little valve thing simply won’t open. And that’s exactly what happens if air gets into the fuel stream. Diesel fuel is a liquid and is not compressible; so when it’s under pressure it’s forced to squeeze past the valve thing. But air is compressible. You can pressurize it, but it won’t expand enough to open the valve thing (which some people call an injector, I believe).

That means you can turn the key and let the engine go whumpa-whumpa-whumpa for as long as you like, but no diesel fuel is going to reach the cylinders as long as there’s air in front of the injectors.

To cure this problem, you have to bleed the engine. Bleeding a diesel is like burping a baby. Air has somehow got into its insides and has to be wheedled out. In both cases, it can be a tedious, messy job. First, you have to know which end to start at. In the case of a diesel, it’s usually the nether regions because diesel burps mostly travel from bottom to top.

Here is what they teach you in Bleeding 101 in auxiliary diesel college:
• Make certain there’s fuel in the tank and that the shutoff valve is open.
• If you suspect your fuel pump has a solenoid, switch the “ignition” key on.
• Undo the bleed fitting on top of the fuel filters and operate the priming lever on the fuel lift pump. When pure fuel is oozing out (no bubbles) tighten the fittings again.
• Loosen the bleed fitting on the body of the fuel injection pump and do the same.

Now, if that doesn’t cure the problem, you’ll have to take the advanced course:
• Open the throttle wide and switch on the “ignition” key.
• Partially undo the high-pressure fuel line nuts at the injectors.
• Turn the engine over slowly — use the decompresser valve if you have one — until clear fuel comes out of the fittings.
• Tighten the nuts again.
• Locate the clean rags and clean up the mess.

I’m happy to say that some engines, such as my Westerbeast 13, are self-bleeding. Cynical as I am, I have not yet been given reason to doubt that claim, and I am very grateful.

If your bleeding problem is chronic, you might want to check all the hose clamps and nuts in the fuel line for slackness before you get into the more serious stuff. You might just luck out and find the cause of the problem.

Meanwhile, here are five reasons why there’s air in your fuel lines:
--You’re out of fuel.
--Fuel is very low, and the pipe is sucking air as your boat rolls.
--The fuel tank shutoff valve is closed.
--There’s a leak in the piping, or connections are loose.
--You just changed a fuel filter and air got in the line.

Finally, if nothing has worked, get out the darned owner’s manual and read it. I know, I know, it’s tough -- but you’re out of options now. Be brave. Open it at Page 1 and start reading. Good luck.

Today’s Thought
A solemn, strange, and mingled air
’Twas sad by fits, by starts ’t was wild.
--William Collins, The Passions, 1.25.

Tailpiece
The Central Office of Statistics has uncovered the following fascinating fact:
Four out of every five woman-haters are women.

Giving more thanks

THERE WERE some thank-yous I didn’t say at the family table yesterday. Not all of my family are sailors, so I didn’t want to bother them with my expressions of gratitude for a safe voyage I made last summer. It was a six-week circumnavigation of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, the biggest island off the western coast of North America.

It’s a challenging trip--more difficult, many say, than the Inside Passage to Alaska--because of its exposure to the vast uneasy reaches of the north Pacific Ocean in addition to the many narrow passages and races where the tidal current rips through at 8 knots or more. On the seaward side it’s 200 miles or more of wilderness heaven, of bears, eagles, whales, orcas, seals, and sea otters, with precious few marinas or places of refuge scattered among the surf-flecked rocks and islands.

So, belatedly, I’d like to give my thanks this day after Thanksgiving.

Thanks to my dear wife June, for sharing with me the task of sailing our 27-foot sloop, Sangoma, from Bellingham, Wash., to Port Hardy, at the northern end of Vancouver Island. (There she left me while I sailed back home alone down the outside.) And thanks for filling the boat with enough easy-to-fix food for the whole trip (and at least six weeks more).

Thank you, rusty (but trusty) old Westerbeke 13 engine. Thanks for starting every time without fail, despite the way I have neglected and abused you these past years. Thanks for helping me tow to safety another sailor who was in trouble at sea.

Thank you Battery Number 2 for holding a charge, despite your 10 years of age. I had the faith. You delivered the current.

Thank you sails, mast, and rigging, for not failing in that storm south of Brooks Peninsula or those frightening hours in Johnstone Strait. I know I should have replaced those stays and shrouds years ago. Thank you for giving me another chance.

Thank you autopilot for steering in some atrocious weather. I wasn’t sure you could handle those huge rolling swells from astern, but you showed me.

Thank you little fiberglass dinghy for behaving yourself. For not ramming me at sea, for not filling with spray and sinking, for not getting your painter wrapped around the propeller. You weren’t always this good, I seem to remember. Thanks for trying harder.

Thank you dear porcelain toilet for not getting stopped up. I knew I could trust you. I’m going to give you some extra virgin olive soon to keep your little valves soft and pliable. I am, honest.

Thank you warm and cosy sleeping bag for putting up with me every night for 44 nights in a row. I am going to get you dry-cleaned and de-odorized soon, I promise. A real de-luxe dry-cleaning. June has threatened to burn you, but don’t worry, I won’t let her.

Thank you little pressure alcohol stove for never giving any trouble and never setting the galley curtains on fire. That was very much appreciated.

Thank you paper charts, all 100 of you. What can I say, except that I couldn’t have done it without you, and probably shouldn’t have done it with you, considering you’re 10 years old and have never been updated. Luckily, rocks and islands don’t move much between updatings.

Thank you GPS for finding the complicated way into Sea Otter Cove and guiding me in thick fog all day from Port Susan to Sooke. Your appetite for batteries was moderate, your contribution to safe navigation was inestimable.

Thank you CQR and Bruce anchors for never once dragging. I love you.

Thank you rudder for not falling off; compass for not deviating or variating; boom for not cracking me over the head; coamings for only crunching my shins twice; and Canadian weather forecasters for trying very hard against great odds.

Thank you Carl Alberg for designing a tough little Cape Dory that looked after me, gave me great pleasure and satisfaction, and brought me safely back home.

Finally, thank you Neptune and Aeolus, gods of the wind and the sea. I saved some champagne to give you a special toast for looking after me so well … Cheers!

Today’s Thought
Thanksgiving-day, I fear
If one the solemn truth must touch,
Is celebrated, not so much
To thank the Lord for blessings o’er,
As for the sake of getting more!
--Will Carleton, Captain Young’s Thanksgiving.

Tailpiece
It’s just such a pity, I always think, that life’s major problems don’t all hit us when we’re 16 and know the answers to everything.

Light and sweetness

EVERY TIME I flick through the West Marine catalog my eye is stopped by those beautiful brass kerosene anchor lamps. The Dutch firm of Den Haan has been making these anchor lamps for more than 75 years.

They have Fresnel lenses, bails top and bottom, and safety guards. They’re thorough seagoing lamps, fit to make any sailor swoon.

But, the last time I looked, there was a line in the catalog that made me grind my teeth: “Not Coast Guard approved to mark a boat at anchor.”

Well now, so what? Who needs Coast Guard approval?

According to the International Regulations for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea (the Colregs), if you have a boat less than 164 feet in length and you put out an all-round white light that can be seen for two miles, it’s a legal anchor light.

It doesn’t have to be electric. The Colregs say so. A flame from a kerosene lantern with a wick half-an-inch wide and a half-inch high will do the trick.

To be visible for one nautical mile, a light needs a brightness of just under one candela.
Here are other distances and the brightness required:

Miles/Candelas
2 /4.3
3 /12
4 /27
5 /52

And what, you say, is a candela? Hell, I was hoping you wouldn’t ask. It’s kinda boring. But if you must know, read on.

The candela is the metric system’s base unit of luminous intensity. You can think of it as one candle-power. It’s pretty close. So you’d need an oil lantern the equivalent of 4.3 candles to be seen two miles away. Or five candles in a glass jar, for that matter.

Meanwhile, you might want to memorize the official definition of a candela, so you can blurt it out through gritted teeth when the Coast Guard sits you down in front of the spotlight and grills you about your “non-approved” anchor light:

“The candela is the luminous intensity, in the perpendicular direction, of a surface of 1/600,000 of a square meter of a black body at the temperature of freezing platinum under a pressure of 101,325 pascals.”

The Coasties will be astonished at your knowledge, not to mention humbled and amazed, so now is your opportunity to take advantage of the situation. Tell them to move off a distance of two miles to confirm that they can indeed see your anchor light.

As soon as they leave, blow out your lantern and slip away into the darkness.

(PS: Don’t mention my name in connection with any of this, or there will be serious consequences.)

Today’s Thought

And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
--New Testament: John i, 5

Tailpiece

“Where did you get that nice new anchor?”
“Well, I was going to my boat yesterday when this beautiful blonde came along carrying a 25-pound CQR. When she saw me, she threw it to the ground, took off all her clothes, and said: ‘Take what you want.’”
“Ah, good choice. The clothes probably wouldn’t have fit you anyway.”

Money before morals

ONE OF MY faithful readers, Oded Kishony, wants to know how he can cut down on marina expenses. The parlous economic situation into which the country has drifted has given him (and many other boat owners) pause to think.

Well, one way to save money is to pay your mooring fees in advance. For instance, at my marina they’re offering 10 percent off if you pay for a year in advance.

Now, compared with the 4 percent you’d earn from a bank certificate of deposit, that’s a good deal. But it does mean you have to have the cash already saved up. For example, if your monthly slip fee is $300, you’d need $3,600 in hard cash right now. Most of us won’t find that much by searching under the bunk cushions.

Don’t be tempted to put it on a credit card. They’ll charge you 18 or 20 percent, so you’re actually losing 8 or 10 percent. And if losing money is your object, why not invest in the stock market? Now seems an excellent time for it and you can lose money much quicker there.

For those of us who only pretend to be rich yacht owners, finding that much ready cash is not easy. Luckily, however, there are ways to make money if you have even a modestly sized boat.
Some time ago I read in one of the West Coast magazines an article about a liveaboard yachtsman who was using his boat to farm chickens. They even went sailing with him. They roosted on the main boom, and he trained them to jump into the air and fly around for a bit when he jibed. Then they settled down on the boom again on the opposite tack.

He never lacked a bird for the pot, but he did have to react quickly when he spotted a fowl about to lay an egg. He got very good at snatching them up before they hit the deck. Some marina owners, the hoity-toity kind, will undoubtedly object to nautical chicken farming and find ways to prevent it. But don’t be dismayed. There are other things you can do that they won’t even know about.

You could farm mussels, for a start. The way the professionals do it around here is simply to moor barges and drop lots of nylon lines overboard. Baby mussels, all unsuspecting, very obligingly attach themselves to these string lines and grow big, fat, and delicious. All you have to do is pull in the line, sell your fresh mussels to the restaurant chefs lined up outside, and count your loot.

And another thing: you could rent out your boat as locker space. Boaters never have enough room on their own boats for all their boating stuff. So let them keep their spare stuff on your boat, for a small remuneration. I can see a great demand for this community service.

There’s probably also a need for a smokers’ den. Smokers probably suffer more discrimination than any other group of Americans these days. I feel sorry when I see them standing in soggy heaps in the pouring rain and cold outside office blocks and retail stores, maintaining the statutory 20 feet from the comfort and shelter of any building. Think how happy you would make them by providing a warm and cosy place in which to meet other smokers and share their tales of blight and misery.

And while we’re on the subject of renting out space, my instinct tells me that there are couples everywhere seeking a discreet place in which to rendezvous for lunchtime assignations. You could provide a secret parlor d’amour for which they would be willing to pay handsomely. And for heaven’s sake don’t worry about the morality of it. Morals take second place when a depression is staring us in the face. Survival is what counts.

More mundanely, you could cut off your bowsprit and boomkin to reduce the overall length of your boat, which is how dock charges are usually assessed. Or you could use your boat as your business office, and deduct the expenses from your income for tax purposes. You could set up a floating hospice for the terminally seasick and if you have a really tall mast you could rent it out to digital telephone companies.

But for the best returns on your boating investment you should investigate the possibility of distilling hooch. Any passing hillbilly will tell you how.

I once had a friend who did it on a 25-footer. He used the coils from an old fridge. He marketed his “white lightning” to fellow boaters with great success. A few went blind, admittedly, but this was forgiven (and his reputation assured) when others discovered that it would remove old varnish and Cetol with one stroke of the brush. He sold the recipe to a chemical company in Illinois and retired with his fortune to an island in the South Pacific.

So don’t sit around and mope about how marina charges are going up all the time. Do something about it. You, too, might hit the jackpot.

* * *

Today’s Thought
Make money, money by fair means if you can; if not, by any means money. --Horace.

* * *

Tailpiece
“I hear your wife is exercising regularly.”
“Yes, three months ago she started walking five miles a day.”
“That’s great. Is it helping?”
“It’s wonderful. She must be in North Dakota by now.”

* * *

Yo-ho-ho! and a boatload of oil

WHEN SOMALI pirates operating from little boats seized a huge Saudi supertanker carrying $100 million in crude oil, a little light went on in my head. Those pirates were asking for $25 million in ransom money.

I have a little boat. I could do with $25 million.

Yesterday I motored out into the channel where the supertankers pass by on their way to the refinery. When a nice fat one came along I called her on Channel 13.

“My name is Abu bin Hijakka,” I said.
“Whaddya want?”
“Is this the captain?” I asked. “Avast there! Halt your ship, I’m a pirate.”
“No you’re not.”
“Yes I am.”
“Where are your buccaneers then?”
“There are two possible answers to that. (1) Under me buckin’ hat, and (2) It’s their day off.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re not a pirate, you haven’t got a wooden leg.”
“They don’t make wooden legs these days. They’re all aluminum. You don’t have to varnish them, you see.”
“And where’s your parrot?”
“He drove me mad telling the same joke over and over so I fed him to the cat.”
“What was the joke?”
“Never mind the joke, stop your ship or you’ll be sorry.”
“How sorry?”
“Very, very sorry.”
“I don’t believe you. Can you say Aaargh?”
“Aaaargh!”
“No, you said it with four As. That’s wrong. Real pirates say it with only three As.”
“All right then, Aaarg!”
“No, you left the H off. Sorry, you’re a phoney.”
“Am not.”
“Am.”
“I’m a pirate. I know all the words to Eskimo Nell and I’m wearing skull-and-crossbones underpants.”
“Let’s see.”
“No, it’s private.”
“Do you have a union card?”
“A union card?”
“The Pirates’ Union. We only stop the ship for union members. Are you a member?”
“Yes, I’ve got a card.”
“What’s it say on the front?”
“It says National Union of Pirates, Catering Branch.”
“Catering branch?”
“Well, it’s not so much catering as drinking, actually. Rum mostly. Yo–ho-ho and ...”
“Well, I’m very sorry, but we only stop for the Boarding and Fighting Branch, the ones with cutlasses in their teeth and flaming beards.”
“I’ve got a grappling iron under my shirt.”
“What for?”
“What do you mean, what for? Haven’t you ever been grappled?”
“Not really, no. Although once in a pub in Boston, this lady ...”
“Never mind that. Stop your ship immediately.”
“Won’t.”
“What if I say pretty please?”
“There, I knew you weren’t a pirate. Pirates don’t beg.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Pirates will do anything for $25 million.”
“Twenty-five million? There’s nothing on this old bucket worth twenty-five million.”
“What about all the oil, then? You know, the light sweet crude.”
“There’s no oil here, matey. This is the ferry to Anacortes.”

Well, it was his lucky day. I gave him a severe talking-to and let him off with a warning. The next one won’t get off so easily, specially now I have discovered that you can use Canned Heat gel to set your beard on fire.

* * *

Today’s Thought
We hang little thieves and take off our hats to great ones. --German proverb.

* * *

Tailpiece
California’s wine growers have listened to pleas from senior boatowners who have to make several trips to the head every night.

Vintners in the Napa Valley area, ordinarily producing Pinot Blanc, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Grigio wines, have now developed a new hybrid grape with anti-diuretic properties that will eliminate the need to visit the head during sleeping hours.

It will be marketed as Pinot More.

* * *

Non-essential essentials

I HAVE JUST edited an article for a magazine, and I feel deprived. The author and his wife have sailed almost halfway around the world in a 42-foot ketch, and the purpose of the article was to tell other amateur sailors how they, too, can do it.

The bit that stopped me in my tracks was a sentence that said a laptop computer is “essential equipment” on the author’s boat and most other voyaging boats for communications, the Internet, and electronic charting.

Now, as one who advocates smallness and utter simplicity in cruising boats, I found that statement very disturbing. In the course of my editing, I could, of course, have cut that sentence out. I bet nobody would have missed it; even if they did I could have invented a good technical excuse. I’ve had a lot of practice at that. But as it happens I didn’t delete it, despite the great temptation. My ethical record remains unblemished.

So a laptop is “essential” equipment, is it? Baloney. As far as I’m concerned, to cross an ocean you need a boat with a deep keel or a centerboard, a rudder, a pole from which to hang the sails, and a bucket to bail out the bilges. A little stove would be nice to make some hot coffee or a meal now and then, but you can eat cold canned food if you have to. I have.

Let me list a few essentials that the aforementioned author has on his boat, compared with what Captain Joshua Slocum had on his boat when he became the first man to sail singlehanded around the world.

Diesel engine (Slocum, no engine); radar (none); autopilot (none); wind vane (none); Dutchman sail-flaking system (none); watermaker (none); two alternators producing 150 amps (none); refrigerator (none); single-sideband radio (none); Pactor e-mail system (none); towed generator (none); battery monitor (none); 2,000-watt inverter (none); fuel polishing system (none); WiFi (none); laptop computer (none).

I myself am not a greatly experienced voyager, but I have twice crossed the Atlantic in boats of 33 feet and under that lacked the “essential” laptop computer, not to mention radar, autopilot, electronic charts, fridge, single-sideband radio, and a whole lot of other things from that author’s list. I didn’t even have an electric bilge pump.

The strange thing is, now that I know what’s essential, thanks to this experienced author, I suddenly feel deprived. It’s like not having taken advantage of hallucogenic drugs when I was still young enough to recover and save myself. It’s just too late for me to start on the essentials now. And besides, most of the boats I sail don’t have anywhere on board that would be dry enough for a laptop.

I am astonished that I managed to cross the Atlantic twice without all the goodies I really needed. To tell the truth, I’m really rather ashamed of myself. I shall try to do better in future, honest. Pray for me, willya?

* * *

Today’s Thought

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand … Simplify, simplify. --H. D. Thoreau

* * *

Tailpiece

“That’s an unusual vase.”
“Yes — my husband’s ashes.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. How long has he been gone?”
“He hasn’t gone. He’s just too lazy to find the ashtray.”

* * *

Time for Plan B

TIMES ARE getting tough, so let’s talk for a minute about Plan B. Plan B goes back a long way, to a time when I was living in a South Africa, a time when South Africans expected an uprising, a bloody revolution. Plan B was always to steal a boat.

We had a boat, of course, a nice little C&C 28, a Trapper-class fin keeler, fast and pretty. But we wanted something a little bigger and more seaworthy, something that could take us around the Cape of Storms and across the Atlantic to America, my wife’s country.

So whenever we sat on the veranda of the Point Yacht Club in Durban with our sundowners, our eyes would scan the serried ranks of sailboats gleaming before us in the sub-tropical sun.

We were very picky. We had to be able to handle her ourselves, just June and me and our 17-year-old son, Kevin. We’d prefer a ketch, for easy sail handling, but a sloop or cutter would be OK, too. We particularly wanted a boat with wind-vane self-steering. Something between 30 and 35 feet. Four berths. A full keel. Fiberglass or steel or aluminum, no wooden hulls, thank you. Been there, done that. Oh, and a engine that was easy to start, because we probably wouldn’t have the engine key. Definitely wouldn’t have the key.

There were usually two or three contenders, and our current choice would change from time to time as new intelligence came in. Kevin was our main source. “They hide the cabin key in a flap of the dodger,” he’d announce after a sail through the ranks in his dinghy. “They have an Aries vane and a 10-foot Avon dinghy with a Yamaha outboard.” We promised him the best berth in exchange for his information.

Come the revolution, when the streets were dripping with blood, and there was shooting and stabbing and buildings ablaze and all that sort of thing, we would rendezvous at Plan B and make our escape, unnoticed in all the carnage.

OK, nobody’s expecting that same kind of revolution in America right now, but things are getting tougher. If your mortgage has gone toxic and bankers keep yelling at you because you’re overdrawn again and you’re worried sick because it looks like your job is going down the tubes, you might want to start thinking about Plan B.

They tell me it’s a lot cheaper to live in Mexico. Those Caribbean islands look quite nice, too. The weather’s great and the rum is cheap. But first you’ve got to get there. Maybe it’s time you started working on Plan B.

* * *

Today’s Thought

Men’s plans should be regulated by the circumstances, not circumstances by the plans. --Livy.

* * *

Tailpiece

“A cat burglar got into our place last night.”

“How you know it was a cat burglar?”

“Because the only things missing are the parrot and a liter of milk.”

* * *

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