Work Trip #2 - Tankage

In what is probably going to become something of a routine, I'm now on my second "winter work session" aboard Nomadness, blogging as I go. Since the last installment, I've done a fair bit on the home front, and also posted an introductory walkthrough of the boat... the first of what should be a large collection of articles by the time this is all over.

But this trip is largely about tankage... I came equipped with three beautiful Wema level sensors, another Maretron TLA-100 for the diesel tanks, the Katadyn 40E watermaker, and a SensaTank II for the new holding tank. It was the latter that I tackled first, as it would be a quickie.

Holding Tank Blues

Like anything on a boat, of course, this little project took about 5 times longer than it should have: find a nearby source of power, splice and run a cable, mount the panel on an unused bezel originally intended for a hot air duct in the forward cabin, locate and mount the three "Mirus" sensor cells on the tank wall after cleaning with Isopropyl Alcohol, wire it all, add labels, and test. So far, so good:


Time will tell how well it works, and if the cells stay attached; polyethylene is not the most chemically active substance. That brings me to the reason for the "blues" in the title above.

Back in August, you may recall, we parked in Port Ludlow for a few days to have some major plumbing surgery done by First Mate Marine. Bob took care of a number of tasks that I would have found difficult or impossible... including the extraction of old sewage hoses (ewww), installation of a new pumpout in the steel deck, and preparation of the Ronco 35-gallon tank for installation on a platform that I built under the forward berth. There were some glitches, but it was a big job with a hefty hourly rate and I was happy to have someone else handling it.

A few days later, the smell began. Bob had used the best quality hose and proper double-clamped fittings, there were no shortcuts, and the tank is 3/8" thick rotomolded polyethylene and thus impermeable. It wasn't making sense, but the cabin would stink after sailing (or sometimes just while anchored in bad weather). More times than I can remember, I sniffed around in there, probing for a clue... even theorizing about air-pressure variations and using my Kestrel weather station to log the barometer a period during which the smell increased. No correlation.

I thought I had the problem solved when I spotted a dip tube fitting that had not been tightened... I managed to get two full turns out of it, as shown in this before-and-after photo:


Smugly, I buttoned 'er up, launched a good-natured jibe at Bob, and moved on to other projects. Only... the problem didn't go away, and it wasn't just residual stale air.

So, while doing the tank-sensor project, I continued the quest. And now I really do think I found it, though the fix may not be as easy. The major fittings were installed with a process called spin welding, in which a special hand-held router fixture spins them in place so fast and with such force that they melt together into a solid unit. That's the theory, anyway, but for some reason the dockside process didn't go quite as planned. Take a look:


I sent this to Bob and he suggested slapping some silicone on it, but I am not so sure... that doesn't actually stick to polyethylene (no goop that I know of really does), though since it only has to fill a void with quite a bit of surrounding material, it might form an acceptable plug anyway. I'm hesitant to try, though, since one thing I learned from my fiberglass years is that once silicone has been on a surface, nothing else will stick. Ever.

I welcome suggestions.

The big take-away from this is not the temporary problem that will certainly be fixable, or even my current annoyance with the contractor. It is the need to be more careful about blithely abandoning my Do-It-Yourself principles when a job looks hard or unfamiliar. $80/hour is more than I have paid for attorneys, and I am now spending my own time troubleshooting and fixing things... reminiscent of the steering pump installation by Anacortes Marine Electronics that included overfilling the fluid reservoir so dramatically that for weeks it streamed down cabin walls and ruined brand new bedding. I paid for that because I didn't know how to deal with the hydraulic fittings, just as I paid for this because it was messy and intimidating (and also because there were a few things, like, ironically, the spin welds, that I don't have the tools to do).

I am more annoyed at myself than anything, partly because I am noticing as I get older that a lot of jobs take longer and are more difficult than they were a few decades ago. Maybe this is normal for aging geeks, but I prefer to think I'm just out of shape... and experiences like this reinforce my lifelong belief that the old saying is true: if ya want it done right, do it yourself!

Besides, I am not part of the mythical deep-pockets "yachtie" demographic, yet the marine marketplace is populated by businesses that expect people to roll over and pay huge labor rates without batting an eye. It is way too easy to underestimate how long something will take, and here there be dragons.

An old lesson learned afresh.

Fuel Sensors, Take One

Moving on to diesel, I started with the tank under the aft berth... that's the easiest one, since it has an existing 5-hole pattern in an accessible spot (the other two will require surgery on the aluminum inspection plates). Of course, nothing on a boat is ever trivial... I found out why the previous sensor had been so liberally bedded in gaskety goop. Whoever did the original bolt circle didn't finish it.

Tapping a hole in an existing fuel tank is nerve-wracking, not just because of chip control but because I kept playing a mental slide show of all the times I've broken taps in stainless. But I proceeded gingerly about an eighth of a turn at a time, and got away with it:


Once the new sensor was snugged down onto its cork gasket, I connected it to the Maretron TLA100... the "tank level adaptor" that converts the 240-30Ω output proportional to fuel level into a PGN (Parameter Group Number) message on the NMEA 2000 backbone, thence to be displayed by whatever system has the capability.

The core device in that department is the Maretron DSM250 mounted at the lower helm. This is a beautiful gadget that can graphically present all sorts of on-board data, and indeed the somewhat random number that had been reported by the original swing-arm float sensor stabilized immediately at 90% (a believable value, as I had filled up just before the pre-election price drop).

At first, however, there was a disturbing phenomenon, reminiscent of some glitches associated with the B&G Network insistence sending 18-degree variation data and causing the compass display to glitch every few seconds. The fuel gauge started doing exactly the same thing!

I wrote to Maretron and quickly got an answer... and it is included here in the hopes that it might save others from similar confusion. When I added the third TLA100 tank-level adaptor, I didn't configure it with a unique tank number. Oops. The phantom "fuel tank 0" interacted with the real one, causing the phenomenon captured above. They are now properly configured as 0 (90-gallon aft), 1 (75-gallon port), and 2 (75-gallon starboard).

The fun is always in the interfacing, isn't it? It's a long way, both philosophically and technically, from a big tank of sloshing diesel fuel to a tidy little graphic that can pop up wherever needed.

Next daylight work session, I'll take on the port and starboard tanks, and I'm now considering the mounting environment for the watermaker and related equipment. I need good filter serviceability, access to valves, and a gravity-feed day tank... all while moving potentially corrosive water-processing equipment safely away from the AC electrical panel where the old one was located. Water corrodes; salt water corrodes absolutely. Candidate locations are the space under the galley sink and the wall of the aft head compartment (space freed by elimination of the old demand water heater).

More soon...
-Steve

Notes From Work Trip #1

I can already see how the winter is going to take shape, and it's going to take a major exercise of will to get through it. "Next steps" bubble to the top of OmniFocus and get flagged, I make a first-pass approximation of stuff needed and load up the truck, then drive far away and camp alone on the boat for a few days... chipping away at the more accessible items until they fall away, resist me enough to be postponed, or reveal themselves to be more difficult than expected and are thus factored into still more tasks. Thus does a to-do list become self-perpetuating.

Webcam

One in the latter category is what initially prompted me to mutter "I hate computers" and make the too-easy transition from doing to blogging. The Axis 210 Network Camera is a cool little stand-alone webcam with built-in server, and I have used it in the normal home router environment. Now it's becoming part of the ship's extensive security system, easing my mind a bit when I'm across the Big Water.

It took a fair bit of clumsy poking at admin screens, though, and even when it started to work I couldn't see it from here except within the LAN. Changing to static IP may have done it, or perhaps I just stumbled on the correct incantations. When you network enough computers together, apparently, their collective behavior becomes organic and unpredictable (though we must resist the temptation to anthropomorphize them; they really hate that.)

Interesting phenomenon, by the way. Firefox (version 3.0.3), once it starts displaying the streaming video from the camera, will not "let go" of whatever it's doing... even when the browser window is closed. It continues to gobble over 90% of a CPU, raises the machine temperature to about 170°, and causes iStat to report nearly a megabyte/second of download bandwidth. This continues until the camera is unplugged or Firefox is quit and then restarted... highly pathological behavior and probably bugzilla-worthy. (Ancient Mozilla 1.7.8 that I keep around just for Composer behaves properly and stops streaming video when I close the window that contains it.) Makes ya wonder what else is going on in the background...

Joomlafication

Other recent attempts to rearrange bits on disks have been a little smoother. The Nomadness site (where this blog lives as a subdirectory), was getting a bit long-in-the-tooth, especially the old articles collection. As I mentioned in my previous post, a key part of the "business model" is keeping useful information flowing out of my head-banging on the boat, and doing it in my old creaky hand-edited HTML is a bit anachronistic. The site now has a proper content-management system; now all I need is content... as well as the continuation of a learning curve that is not as graceful as I would like, given the short bursts of attention on my end and the convoluted nature of the subject itself.

Plumbing

The new holding tank is working, though occasionally it belches foul gas. I found one dip tube fitting that the expensive plumber had forgotten to tighten (by 2 full turns!), but the source of the random eructation continues to elude me. The forward system is completely independent of the aft one with its still-nonfunctional LectraSan... though a neighbor here at the marina just gave me some tips on being much more aggressive with the muriatic acid. I'll try it.

In a much less stinky part of the plumbing system, I just replaced the Groco raw-water filter baskets. One was full of eelgrass when I checked it recently; the other was not blocking much of anything:


Pilothouse Thoughts

The weather is blustery here, and when I saw an Islander Freeport 41 named Tranquility heading in well after dark last night (just back from Alaska), I naturally donned my foulies and ran out to catch their lines... for I have lots of docking karma to repay after my occasionally, ahem, less-than-perfect maneuvers over the past few months. The new neighbors are interesting folks, and in 18 years of full-timing they have refined their boat in countless ways for comfort and efficiency.

One of the more alluring ideas inspired by today's tour of their ship is the enhancement of my current cockpit with at least a hard dodger and perhaps a whole second-level pilothouse (a hard dodger with walls). Technically, I already have a pilothouse... the main salon of this boat includes a steering station and nice all-around greenhouse windows for solar heating and visibility. It's sexy and sleek, but the reality is that visibility isn't very good from below and I thus spend 99% of my on-water time at the outside helm (standing, for the most part, but that's another problem).

There are times, during which pictures on the front covers of sailing magazines are taken, when the notion of being enclosed while steering seems absurd. But a well-designed system with very broad openings on all sides would allow navigation and piloting activity to be focused where it is most useful, protect the helmsman from foul weather and excessive sun, improve security, add living space, and generally make life aboard more pleasant. I'm staring at it quite a bit while here, imagining a homebrew glass-over-ply assembly with decent windows and wide-open winch clearance, carrying the lines of the boat so she doesn't look boxy. We'll see.

Rust

Of course, there are more immediate and pressing issues. "Rust never sleeps," as Neil Young once observed, and I have lots of it: gudgeon-dings at the transom, bad installation at the windlass, trapped moisture at the toerail tabs, galvanic action at various fittings, and even a few random spots in an otherwise flawless expanse of Awlgrip. Today I was fortunate to have a visit from the local boatyard owner, and he gave me lots of advice on incrementally dealing with it. Next work-visit, I'm bringing the armamentarium of grinding/sanding/scraping tools, and he's setting me up with a starter kit of primer and other goo. This is a big sturdy steel boat; there's no reason to try for the "Bristol finish" (which I can't afford anyway)... the real key is staying on top of it enough to keep the metal protected.

Fuelish Thoughts

I just finished one of the major jobs that was scheduled for this first session: opening all three diesel tanks, specifying the new Wema level sensors, and getting them on order. It has been maddening during the recent adventure to have very little idea how much fuel was on board, especially since two of the tanks came with an unknown amount of diesel of unknown vintage. This translated into ongoing stress about bio-gunk clogging filters, sucking air at a bad moment and digging out the Calder book to tackle the engine-bleeding learning curve while drifting into a marina full of expensive boats, and lacking basic situational awareness about my own vessel.

A cheesy gauge, miswired, did come with the boat... and much fiddling with the Fluke meter failed to turn up any apparent correlation between assumed levels and the observed resistances of senders (even after taking the 90-gallon aft tank from empty to full, 10.0 careful gallons at a time). So I've been in the dark, like all this stuff:


I was hoping whilst poking around that the Webasto mystery would be solved in the process, and I even used the transfer pump to schlep a gallon or so from the aft tank to starboard... but no luck on that one, even though it did appear that the pickup tube is at or near the surface and might have inhaled a bubble. But at least the other task is complete... I've just ordered a trio of sensors (14, 18, and 20 inches). Data from these will find their way onto the NMEA 2000 network via Maretron TLA100 Tank Level Adapters, and thence to displays wherever needed.

Power System

One of the high-priority projects is elimination of the ProSine 2.0 inverter/charger and installation of the Outback FX2012, MX60 solar charge controller, and related monitoring equipment. Since the original power installation is in a closed equipment bay, cooling has been inadequate and the unit shuts down when trying to charge at anything over 50 amps (about half of what it should be doing).

Still, there's really no place else to put all this, and my fleeting thoughts of replacing the microwave with the inverter/charger just to have convective cooling were dashed when I actually looked at it closely. So the plan now is to use the same enclosure space, but add a large louvered vent at the bottom and a smaller one at the top (although the path up there gets convoluted) to allow convective airflow with fan-assist when the temperature gets too high. With proper thermal design, I can also circulate air through the cool bilge. Here's the environment:


The panel on the left is the inside steering station, and the one on the right is the DC power distribution panel. The gray box with yellow top is the Xantrex box; that spot will carry the solar charge controller. The new inverter/charger will live out of sight below the hinged panel, with the vent panel installed in that vertical wood surface.

Tonnage

Sky and I are establishing a rhythm in another key domain... if we're ever going to really cast off the lines for good and sail into the sunset, we have a lot of stuff to get rid of. Given that the economy is tanking and most of the advice I've gotten in that domain has led to painful losses, we're looking at the sprawling pile of artifacts in our Camano facilities as a state of energy that can be transformed into boat parts.

She is researching antiquarian books and various other things, taking photos and writing 'em up, then I do the eBay listings. The Microship General Store is finally starting to pick up again after a long hiatus. Want some stuff? Purely for the amusement, I maintain a list of the artifacts that have found new homes in the past 30 days, including price and destination, over here. It's actually quite satisfying for reasons that go well beyond the recovery of a few dollars.

Perspective

I am trying to remember not to take any of this too seriously. The list is just that... a list... and as long as we get the essentials done enough to complete the escape pod and make of life what we can, then the rest — or whatever is truly important — will follow. Nothing is permanent, especially at this age; I've already spent way too many years building elaborate machines to chase quixotic dreams, and now, freshly turned 56, am finding adventure and freedom much more alluring than gizmology for its own sake. (Of course, where the latter potentiates the former, it's a different matter entirely.)

I find this kind of poignant:


That was once someone's little boatlet, zipping around the harbor, probably with an outboard on the back, perhaps hauling laughing kids, lovers, crab pots, fishing poles, toys. Maybe it even hung for a while on the stern of a cruising boat and traveled around... but now it's slowly returning to the earth, just something to trip over on the shores of Utsalady Bay.

Someday, likewise, Nomadness will fall into other hands, sail other seas... then eventually she will become a fixer-upper, a project boat, an antique. At long last Mother Nature will win, and, deep in the arms of entropy, her elements, even the once-blinking geeky ones, will leech into the sea or the muck of an undredged and forgotten channel. It is my job to not only delay that moment as best I can, but also to ensure that her time as a boat... and mine as a human... are spent with maximum glee, here and now.

So. Those 621 miles we just covered were just a teaser, and, dear friends in the Vapours of the Net, please don't let me forget what's important. If you see this dragging on too long as has been known to happen at Nomadic Research Labs, you are hereby empowered to give me a proper kick in the pants.

Cheers from a sloppy, cold, windy night aboard... with wavelets slapping annoyingly under the transom, nearby halyards slapping, and seagulls squawking in the night...

Steve

621 Miles of Recognition

Nomadness has completed her shakedown cruise — covering 621 miles in 2.5 months. This is a languid pace, in geographical terms, but the experience gained was considerable... enough to induce a near-total inversion of the project priority list, satisfy a host of initial learning curves, smoke out the weaknesses of the ship, and advance to the next level of confidence. (The latter is no small matter, as the notion of seaworthiness applies at least as much to the brains of the crew as the bones of the vessel.)

The journey itself was mostly spectacular, underscoring the nature of the Pacific Northwest as a sailing destination. We've experienced everything from balmy days to 40-knot gales (docked for those, mercifully), felt the quiver as Nomadness put her shoulder down in 25-knot winds, puzzled over engine anomalies while drifting toward leeward cliffs, tangled anchor chains with a whimsical neighbor, cozied around the new woodstove on a cold night, probed the innards of the ship to reverse-engineer ancient mysterious subsystems, found new friends on exotic shores, dinked and paddled into various skinny places, circumnavigated islands, reawakened the technomadic flotilla plan, and solidified a clear concept for an integrated ship information system. Those mileage statistics... still ludicrous in boat-amortization terms... mean nothing in the context of the raw experience itself.

Still, we've done 621 miles. A good start. Here's the GPS track of the journey overlaid on Google Earth and stitched into a single big image (you can click the picture to see it larger, but there is also a clear, vertically scrollable version):

Maiden voyage of Nomadness. Yellow line is US-Canada border.

I'm no more a fan of straight lines than I was during the convoluted bicycle tour of the US; the tangled track is part of the fun, the live low-resolution version via APRS even more so. I'd get email while underway: "hey, looks like you're making pretty good time!" Seeing more and more tracking systems for sale in the marine marketplace, complete with $20/month fees, I think I'll throw together a quick how-to and use it to kick start the new article series for the Nomadness site.

Publishing

Ach, so many projects. It could easily spin out of control, but the pace of sailing has reminded me of my old adage that you can accomplish amazing things by simply moving in the same direction for a long time. Another trick is a twist on the rule-of-thumb that applies to anything taken on a bicycle or boat: every piece of work should be useful in multiple ways, in this case translating into a publication "product" that corresponds to any new design, hack, fix, or notable discovery. What this means in immediate practical terms is that the next few months should see a succession of boat-related jobs interspersed with online articles, PDFs, or print monographs detailing pieces of the system.

In this broken economy, the timing is good for this kind of micro-publishing... folks want to avoid the insanely expensive marine service industries, and for good reason. I've been burned already with overpricing, and even the guys who pull down big hourly fees don't necessarily deliver quality any better than one can achieve with some good old-fashioned DIY effort and a handy assistant. After having to fix two expensive jobs by professionals, I am feeling the need to do my part to distribute much-needed how-to material to offset an industry that has become increasingly intimidating. Manufacturers aren't making this any easier with their documentation, good tech support is hard to find, and there are marine dealers who are profiting hugely from the forbidding complexity of essential technologies.

So that's the Nomadic Research Labs business plan... becoming a writer again while fine-tuning the technomadic survival/escape/adventure pod. There's plenty of room in there for some proper gonzo engineering, methinks.


Imminent Geekery

So, what's coming up? Earlier I mentioned the inversion of the priority list; this translates into making sure self-sufficiency tools are in place before getting too carried away with seductive techno-wankage. Now that the ship has a wood stove (which works great, by the way - five fires so far), the immediate next steps involve the Katadyn 40E watermaker, Outback power management system, some kind of bow thruster, Isotemp water heater, enhanced comfort, the essentials of the communications console, outside helm chart plotter, and the on-board web server.

The latter might sound like it's straying into that non-essential category, but more and more of the problems come down to a centralized information resource. A dedicated Mac Mini will run MAMP, Joomla, Wordpress, and Ruby on Rails... becoming the core system for almost all ship operations (and it's small/cheap enough that in addition to continuous LAN backup I can carry a whole spare sealed away in case of disaster). I've already got Joomla and Wordpress running under MAMP on the laptop, and it's a sweet environment.

What justifies all this on a sailboat? Well...

First, the boat came with a very handy manual assembled by the previous owner, running through basic procedures for all on-board operations (it was chartered three times, for a week or two each). This has been helpful in my learning curve but is drifting out of sync with reality, so I'm re-doing that class of content in the form of a local Joomla website... one short procedural how-to for every action that has to be performed on the boat (emptying holding tank, starting wood stove, dropping anchor, starting engine, and so on).

A second menu tree in the same site carries technical information about all components and systems on the ship, including PDF documentation, drawings, and any other relevant material. This is augmented by the "NOIDS" devices-and-links relational database (in FileMaker), also published to the internal web.

The third section of the "static content" server is for ship's logs, maintenance records, fueling history, spares, inventory, and so on... though Wordpress might be quicker for updating logs and personal observations.

So far, this is all pretty traditional webbish stuff, and is almost trivially easy to set up. The next layer gets a bit more challenging: bringing together all the data sources into some kind of coherent view of the boat, accessible on the local console, any laptop in the LAN, or remotely via dynamic DNS.

Here, we have to pull together quite a mess of information. The NMEA 2000 network includes a Maretron USB interface; I haven't clawed my way into this enough yet to be 100% certain it can live outside the Windoze environment, but I'm betting it can... and it will feed all the PGNs corresponding to the network of devices around the boat (GPS, compass, masthead wind data, depth, power, rudder angle, fuel tank levels, and so on). At the same time, National Instrument 6008 USB interfaces slurp in analog and digital data points (hatch and other security sensors, bilge pump cycling, temperatures from all over, states of circuit breakers, dedicated system sensors, and other random stuff). What to do with all this?

Well, basically it all gets dumped into a database (SQL), along with time-stamps. This is where Ruby on Rails comes in, providing the framework for a "database-backed website" and allowing such niceties as overall power status screens, live display of the plumbing, detailed security sensor map, and historical plots of measurements to aid in diagnosing problems. Other clients of the same pile of data include the voice-response system that allows DTMF queries via handheld ham radio, selected telemetry transmissions as a function of available bandwidth, monitoring scripts for alarm conditions, and a simple command line interface that will work over very thin pipes (packet). There is also an always-on micro that sees a subset of everything I mentioned, capable of initiating an emergency response during times of extended power-saving when the Mac is powered off.

That takes care of the whole input side, but there's also a lot of active intervention necessary — the kind of stuff that usually translates into front panels full of switches. This will be done with USB latching relay boards which manage PTT-steering and control of the radios, power switching, video routing, and other tasks that involve direct control from the browser front-end or simple scripts. Video, for example, has to route 8-10 analog sources around the boat to three monitors, a recorder, and an IP video server that lets any of the channels be remotely viewable as a webcam. (I wish I had this right now, in fact... one of the cameras is a sealed miniature unit mounted atop a remotely steerable spotlight on the bow... it would be nice to peer up and down the dock from here in my office and occasionally turn around to gaze across the expansive foredeck, check for seagulls, and initiate a squawk from the hailer horn if so... or at least say hello with the speech synthesizer to startle passers-by. I know. It's a sickness.)

Finally, this Mac at the heart of the boat will run all the normal day-to-day applications, as well as MacENC navigation software, which has proved itself well during the recent adventures. With a Planar or Argonaut marine sunlight-readable display at the helm, I may end up completely removing "appliance chartplotter" from my shopping list.

So. It keeps creeping up in priority, this gizmology: a big part of the "mission profile" of this project is to integrate layers of complexity into something that feels as simple as possible, yet makes it easy to implement new ideas without having to build or buy more gadgets. Doing that means starting with a solid and extensible architecture, making sure everything is interfaceable, adding sensors to stand-alone units, bringing all signals into a central area (analogous to all lines returning to the helm), avoiding vendor or standards lock-in, and thinking it through before getting too far into construction.

There sure are a lot of ways to do this. I'm daydreaming about geekery even when at the helm:


Bow Thruster Redux

Finally (and briefly), the bow thruster issue is still not resolved. I got a $quote$ from Cap Sante Marine, the local experts who do this a lot, but communication fell apart when we were in Anacortes last week, and then the economy collapsed... they could have had me there, but now I am backing off to re-think cheaper alternatives. I do have one approach in mind, a hack that is a jump up from the original Redneck Bow Thruster idea but still a fraction of the cost of a tunnel thruster.

I have learned much more about handling the boat since the last time I wrote on this topic, including the technique of punching it hard in reverse and then dropping into neutral and using unbiased sternway to improve rudder response. I've even had a few sweet docking maneuvers, including one in Anacortes (naturally with no witnesses; isn't that always the way it works?). But the problems continue... especially when there is wind or current in tight quarters. I've grown very fond of anchoring, where this is never a problem.

Nomadness actually has a tight steering radius (100 feet), but it is damn near impossible to bring the bow into the wind without having some good steerageway. Tight maneuvering in marinas is thus dangerous, and I've gotten used to making sure before going in that there is a way back out. We used it yesterday, twice in fact, making multiple passes at a slip with about 15 knots of wind from starboard:


While I like to think of this as tying a ribbon on the journey, it was a bit tense until we had a line around a leeward cleat and the boat resting on her fenders. Eliminating these little dances at the end of an otherwise exquisite sail is one of the highest priorities over the next few months.

Here we go...

Cheers,
Steve

The Little Cod Wood Stove

The season is turning, that's obvious. We're pinned down in Deer Harbor with a frontal system coming through... 30-40 knots tomorrow, a brief respite on Sunday, another blast on Monday. We parked here to rendezvous with Andrew of Navigator Stove Works and get the black-enameled Little Cod wood stove installed.

The timing couldn't be better. My Webasto AT-5000 diesel heater chose this cold weekend to stop working, failing to start and presenting the 1-blink error message that means, according to the manual, "No start." Well, yes. I noticed that. But why?

There will be time to fix it (most likely a bubble or blockage in the fuel pickup line, which dips only into the starboard tank that contains vintage diesel along with a fair bit of biological gunk), but this is the week for conversion to wood. And quite the marathon it was! In the chautauqua below, all photos, as usual, are clickable for larger versions.

First, meet Andrew, shown here contemplating the surgery necessary to mount the custom stainless shelf to the side of my galley counter. This turned out to be somewhat less trivial than expected, as I had been rather cavalier with initial measurements... meaning that without a bit of additional fixturing the triangular leg would extend over the initial curve of the radiused corner. Fortunately, since we had to sacrifice the pole that went from rail to the cabin top, we had some perfectly finished mahogany to harvest for the application:


Once the overall scheme was signed off by all, it was time to start with the surgery. Any sailor knows the trauma of adding a new hole to the boat, even above waterline... and this one was a doozy: a very large opening in .2" steel topped with Treadmaster, backed with a very dense .75" marine ply, and blocked for the extricated pole amidst an expanse of foam insulation filling a grid of steel ribs. After much head-scratching and calling out reference marks 'twixt deck and pilothouse, we punched a pilot hole, then broke out the jigsaw. Here, Andrew's assistant Jeff from Indian Summer II is carefully slurping up any remaining steel bits to prevent future rust spots...


The guys headed back to the shop to conjure a few parts, including a trim ring that compensates for the 5° camber of the deck and supports the beautiful cast bronze deck iron. This was all bedded in place using screws for clamping pressure, prompting the first of many comments that it looks like it was meant to be that way:


This made for a nicely finished exterior appearance, but from below we could still see the wood "underlayment" - meaning that it would be exposed to radiant heat as well. The hole had been lined with copper sheeting as a first step:


In a flash of inspiration, Andrew conjured a pair of aluminum components that would further reflect heat while allowing cooling airflow. It also prompted one of many amusing photographic moments, given all the awkward angles necessary when working on a boat...


With the hole prepped, it was time to get the stove mounted. They used the cannibalized wood from the original pole to frame out the plywood wall at the end of the galley counter, allowing a clever hack in which a routed channel created clearance for a row of 1/4-20 T-nuts. The whole assembly is thus removable without dragging out the refrigerator that's on the other side of that wall... a process that is complicated further by having to remove the foot pumps under the galley sink to provide enough fridge-movement clearance to get an arm into the cavity. Boats are for contortionists, something I am most emphatically not.

When the shelf was installed, Andrew immediately insisted that I park on it to convince myself that it is sufficiently robust...


With that test passed, he added a stainless heatshield to protect the wood... and then the stove was centered and bolted to the shelf, its tripod legs insuring that no amount of heat-induced casting warpage would cause rocking. A few leveling washers induced general positioning consensus, then it was down to the final steps.

Pipefitting is something of an art, it turns out, and I was surprised at how fiddly this part was... but patience and collective insistence on perfection eventually yielded a smooth and well-considered run. Here we are eyeballin' and tweakin'...


Now you can see the final configuration of the deck-iron interface, with the heat shield spaced away from the headliner giving a strong sense of the etymology of stove-pipe hat:


Topside, we have a couple of operational choices. The smoke head can be plugged directly into the deck iron for a low-profile look like this:


Or, as is the case at the moment in the oppressive wind and rain of an incoming cold front, we can insert a 2-foot pipe section to improve draft and disperse the startup smoke above the level of the dodger:


And it's done! With the pipe all fitted and already showing a patina from the test-firing, here are three views of the finished Little Cod installation on Nomadness. From the passage to the aft cabin:


Lying on the sole looking up (with the draft damper visible in the angled section):


And from the center of the pilothouse, showing the loading door on the end:


And, you see those little holes on the front corners of the top shelf surface? One of the major issues here is safety — not just keeping skin off the dangerously hot stove pipe, but keeping fast-moving knees off the sharp shelf corners, one hand attached to a handhold at all times whilst bounding along in a seaway, and careening bodies off the stove itself. Removing the original pole, which was necessary to allow pipe to pass through the deck in the only available location, complicated the problem; it's a large enough cabin that one could get thrown off-balance easily without something solid to hold on to at every stage of a traverse from one point to another.

I'll add a few more strategically-placed teak handholds, but the central fixture will be a sort of "caging" of the stove by two 1.25" stainless poles from those shelf corners to the overhead. We'll grind the flanges to a soft curve, TIG weld 'em to fill the gaposis, and it should give the overall integrated impression of a smooth and solid structure while being strong enough to handle dynamic body weight.

The other huge issue, actually the biggest trade-off of this whole project, was the impact on engine and generator access. Massive sole panels have always lifted to the 90° position and locked in place with springs, but now they only make it to 60° and have to be held up manually... obviously inadequate, although the most-frequently serviced bits are still easy to reach (Racors, tank-selection valves, oil filters and dipsticks, the sticky shutoff rail on the injector pump that needs an occasional tickle, coolant caps, and so on). The raw-water impeller on the main engine, already a major pain to change, is now more so, and I shudder to think of having to change out the starter with this reduced clearance.

We'll immediately fashion a couple of latches to support the access panels from the stove shelf, but if serious surgery is necessary, it will be necessary to unscrew the hinges and lift the units completely out (removing the stove as well if major gymnastics are going to be involved). Fortunately, it's all serviceable by design.

Other than that detail, I am thoroughly delighted with this new life-support component in the technomadic escape pod. An efficient heat source is now readily harvestable, and even a small fire renders the cabin cozy without the Webasto roar or the shore-power requirements of an electric heater. And to anyone who Googled their way to this page whilst contemplating a stove for their boat... I can warmly recommend Andrew and his products. He exudes an old-fashioned sense of quality craftsmanship rarely seen these days, and this little stove of time-tested design is clearly going to outlast the captain of the ship.