Odalisque - Projects

Projects

Teak, Fiberglassing, Toe Rail, Atomic 4 Engine, Chain Plate, Winterizing

When Odalisque chafed off her mooring on October 12, 2003 in 40+ mile an hour wind she ended up bow first stuck between the pilings of a private dock. The result of the wave action while pinned under the dock resulted in a shredded genoa, some dinged up extrusions of the Harken roller furling, several pieces of teak toe rail damaged, some fiberglass damage on the port bow lip which was chafed by a piling. The rocking motion of the 3 – 4 foot waves and subsequent low tide may have also stressed the rudder as it hit the bottom resulting in a lot of play in the rudder. You could lift the rudder up and the pintel would come out of its bottom gudgeon. All the teak on the topsides was going to need attention even before our accident. These were the challenges ahead of us that we were aware of that needed to be done in order to get Odalisque back in the water.

Teak

I worked on the pieces of teak through the Winter. The stuff that had been sanded, oiled, let sit for weeks, oiled, sanded, tack clothed and coated with varnish 6 times looked the best (the tiller). I coated some of the removable teak with the West System #207 clear hardener mixed with the #105 resin after sanding, oiling and wiping off the surfaces with acetone and then varnished over the resin on the recommendation of a West Marine employee in their NYC store. It all looks great now; especially at sunset when there is an orange sun pouring over it, it glows.

Fiberglassing

I had done some fiber glassing on the hull of my small 14’ day sailer “Olga” so I had some experience working with the cloth and resin and micro fibers. I was unsure of how to repair the damaged fiberglass lip of the port bow until I bought a book (“The Boat Repair Manual”) that suggested the use of forms for curved surfaces. I took some time to envision this idea while I worked on the platforms for a motorcycle show at Rockefeller Center that my friend, Godfrey, was contracted to do. I scrounged some 1/8” poplar plywood, some C clamps and saws and set out to make a mold.
The section that needed repair was between 1/2 – 3/4 inches thick and 1 inch wide across the top flat part, above the registration numbers to port. The teak toe rail had been completely ground away and the piling had dug into the edge of the deck and hull. The 1/8” ply was flexible enough so that strips could be clamped together and would conform to the contour of the bow. I used a piece of 1 x 3 lying around the boat yard to stiffen the whole affair when it was clamped together using 4 C clamps. You need a saber saw and a steady hand to make a cut that conforms to the shape of the hull. My mold supported the section of the lip (underneath the toe rail) that I needed to build up to match the undamaged sections. Then came the laminating.

It turns out that building up this material is not that difficult. Messy, smelly, sticky – yes; but not difficult if the temperature is warm, even hot. It chemically bonds together if it has not fully cured, which is what you want. If you let it cure overnight the next layer will not chemically bond to the last and you must give the next layer(s) something to key into, like a small drill hole in the previous layer. The gist of it is to build up the layers to slightly over the dimensions you need and later sand it down to more exact dimensions and then gel coat it.

Toe Rail

Once my fiberglass repair had cured and been shaped by the saw and sander I had to replace the damaged and missing pieces of teak toe rail. My friend Godfrey consented to come out to help me with this as I had helped him with his motorcycle platform job. I had already purchased a piece of teak 11’ long by 1” x 8” from ML Condon (White Plains, NY) for around $100. We ripped and cut pieces for the 4 boards that were damaged or missing. The pieces of teak seemed to fly onto the boat in one day. I finished the job the next day cutting plugs of teak out of scraps and taping them into the bung holes left behind by the screws going into the fiberglass lip. Some oil and varnish and the toe rail was done.

Atomic 4 Engine Water Pump

Noah Smith and his brother Adam came out to Glen Cove to look at Odalisque's engine. We quickly determined that the engine was not seized and that the thermostat was probably bad and that there was no water running to the thermostat housing as we unscrewed these parts from the engine and started up the motor until it started smoking and quit again. Fortunately, the previous owner kept significant paperwork on the boat and engine so I had plenty to read about our A4 and other improvements he had done.

New brass water pump installed I reviewed all of the previous owners binders for material on the A4 cooling system and find a lot. I went out and ran the bilge pump on the boat even though the stuffing box is now a slow drip. I am hopeful. With much difficulty I was able to remove the old water pump from the engine. Upon inspection, the old impeller is shot, its rubber arms in shards. I am hopeful.

Spoke to MMI and ordered a new Oberdorfer water pump and impeller, thermostat, and thermostat housing and some hose clamps.

Replaced water pump and thermostat. Arrive from NYC to find the new parts have arrived. It was a very cold winter and I did not know that you were supposed to drain the water pump. I installed the new water pump, thermostat and housing and some new hose. Stuffing box is at quiet drip.

One last fitting to install on the water pump saved from the old pump for 5/8” ID raw water intake. Install takes 20 minutes. We tested the engine under load in Hempstead Harbor. She is gulping water yet again!

Atomic 4 Engine - Water in Oil

I was certain of our diagnosis that water from our flooded cabin caused raw salt water to get into the engine oil feeds. I decided to call Don of Moyer Marine to ask him what remedial actions needed to be taken. Don rebuilds Atomic 4’s and sells parts for same so he knows everything about this engine. His suggestions included: 1 – drain the watery oil from engine; refill with SAE 10- 30 , run 5 minutes an drain, repeat 3 times; prime each cylinder with Marvel Mystery Oil; then refill with 30 weight oil of your choice. 2 – when winterizing engine drain last oil, add 1 quart Mystery oil to oil reservoir and some squirts into cylinders, start engine for 30 seconds or less as it should be smoking. 3 – when recommissioning just add oil. All of that advice was free. I love Moyer Marine. Also Don relieved me in that he didn’t say that this was a terrible thing if we discovered it quickly and fixed it even if we had run the engine with the sea water in the oil.

I brought my 12 volt electric oil pump and bought enough oil to do the job. We should probably get some kind of hand pump that will work as a backup but I much prefer the electric variety. I bought a case of 10W 30 cheaper oil and a few quarts of Rotella T 30 and some Mystery oil.

I set about taking apart the companionway steps so as to have access to all the engine parts I would need. Memory told me that my little pump can take a half hour to fully suck the engine oil out and I needed to get this started, pronto. By comparison, it takes less than 5 minutes to fill the engine with oil.

The first suck out took a long time as the emulsified water and oil had a gray appearance on the pumps transparent tubes, and the mixture was engine block temp having not started it up first in order to not spread it around or heat it up ( and breakdown the emulsification that had occurred).

When sucking the oil out of the engine, particularly when it is really dirty or contaminated with water, one has a tendency to try to suck as much as possible at the end, even though it is coming out more slowly. You may think you are sucking out the bottom of the oil pan and this a good thing but had 3 gallons of oil to put in (and suck out) so I couldn’t wait for only air to come out. I filled the engine with fresh (cheap) oil and anxiously started up the Atomic 4. It purred to life with a little more stability than it had with water in the oil. I ran the engine for 5 minutes and began draining the first flush.

The new oil was quite murky but clearer than the last tainted batch was. It takes about a half hour to drain 4 quarts of oil from the A4 with the Sure—Flo pump I have. I started the engine after draining nearly 2 gallons and I noticed some smoke coming out of the stern exhaust even though the oil was running cleaner than before. While draining the second flush I remembered Don Moyer’s advice about putting Mystery oil in each of the piston chambers, I carefully loosened each spark plug in succession and squirted 3 or 4 squirts of Mystery oil, away from the manifold. Once I had filled the 3rd gallon of oil I was curious to see how much smoke would come from the exhaust from the oil I put in the chambers. It was smoky all right but soon burned off and our Atomic 4 was sounding almost as good as it ever had.

There was one more oil change to be done and then the Moyer Marine recommendation is to run it for 5 or 6 hours, presumably to get the oil hot enough to loosen any emulsified water in the nooks an crannies of the engine oils course. I returned a couple of days later to do the final oil change. The last oil change is complete and the engine is purring nicely.

The Atomic 4 is a great workhorse of an engine and ours is nearly as old as I am but it needs more babying than I do. Sparkman & Stephens discontinued the use of the gas engine in its Tartan line for diesel engines sometime back in the 1970s. I have no familiarity with diesel engines except for the smell that trucks make on the highway, but I have had plenty of interaction with various gasoline powered chain saws, lawn mowers, and power sprayers. I have learned that the judicious use of ether (usually sold as starter fluid in a spray can) will cajole the most recalcitrant (and badly treated) engine to turn over. My uncle was a fly boy in WW II and he taught me about the ether. He said that the pilots, back then, all used a little ether to burn off the varnish left by incomplete combustion of gasoline. This is true with the Atomic 4 as well and I occasionally spray a little ether on the air intake.

Another thing about the Atomic 4 that deserves mention is that since it is a gasoline engine it has gasoline exhaust which, while it does not smell as bad (in my humble opinion) as the diesel’s exhaust it can be deadlier than the diesel. Carbon monoxide is a by product of the combustion process and this is why we are ALWAYS supposed to run the fan while running the engine – to vent the stuff outside the cabin. When I was flushing out the engine oil, I had the engine compartment open and the forward hatch open as well. Once I had filled the engine with new oil I ran the engine for a bit and during this time I would run the extracted oil out of the pump into the quart bottles. The pump would work harder with the engine running and it’s alternator giving considerable strength to the battery. This is why it only took 5 – 10 minutes to empty the extracted oil when it took nearly 30 minutes to extract the oil by battery alone. During these 5 – 10 minutes I would be crouching down in the cabin, trying to fill each quart bottle. I believe I may have become a little light headed from carbon monoxide but evidently it did not kill me. So be very conscious of the exhaust from this engine, it is deadly serious.
Another thing to be aware of is the water hose that helps the engine cool itself. In the Spring I changed the entire water pump assembly and some of the original hose. I would like to change all the old water hose on the engine but some of it is quite awkward to get at and at that time I just wanted to get the engine working so I could go sailing. While observing the engine running I noticed a slow drip on the outbound side of the water pump. A hose clamp had come loose! A hose clamp I had tightened, only months earlier. The engine’s vibrations (or gremlins) had undone my good intentions but a few turns of a screwdriver would remedy this situation.

One more observation about the A4’s quirkiness involves how the oil behaves inside the engine. If you operate the engine without the oil fill cap (or the dip stick for that matter) on, there will be droplets of oil shooting out of these holes, and it will get all over the engine compartment. There are gears in there that turn (even in neutral and at idle on our engine) inside this compartment and they fling the oil all around the inside. This is normal and possibly obvious, but if you forget to replace the fill cap and run the engine for a while, do not be surprised if your oil level drops and your engine compartment and bilge will be slick with oil.

I do not consider myself some great communicator or for that matter an astounding intellect, so I do not profess to know half of what Don Moyer knows about this engine. My intent is to share my observations with my owner/partners in Odalisque and anyone who has recently acquired one of these boats that don’t come with a manual. I know how frustrated and sad I was as these various problems cropped up for me when I thought I would have to pay a so called professional to remedy each issue. I have found that I could handle most of this myself (sometimes with assistance) once I had a better idea of how to do it. Finding out how to do it may require talking to other boat owners (especially at tartan27owners.com), or Don Moyer, or your neighbor who happens to be a motor head. Sometimes you just need to go out and buy the right tool for the job.

Chain Plate

The rigging had been strained by strong 25 knot gusts and we had been at a 45 degree angle at times. Laurie had been occupying a perch atop the aft lazarette (hatch) where she did not have to switch sides as we tacked. Suddenly, there was a distinct thud in the rigging as the aft stay lurched a little. It did appear to be a little looser than it had been and the chain plate moved about 1/8 of an inch. We immediately furled the jib and let the main sheet out to reduce the pressure on the rigging.

After extensive checking on the Tartan 27 owners website I understood that there was 5/8 inch plywood which was bolted to the chainplate and the whole thing glassed in. We could replace the plywood, which was probably rotten after 37 years with 3/4 inch stock.

Peter Youngblood from the T 27 site had put me onto this kind of tropical wood he spelled as “epay”, but is Spanish in origin and is actually spelled ipe. It is very dense and stronger than oak and does not float. Some 2 x 6 stock found its way into my greedy hands for free and I milled a piece down to 3/4 inch stock and shaped it roughly the way I suspected it should be at my friend Godfrey’s wood shop.

I needed epoxy adhesive and bolts to attach the chainplate to my piece of ipe. I had scored the sides of my spine of ipe with a biscuit joiner so as to give the epoxy something to key into. We made some final adjustments to the ipe spine I had prepared and then drilled out holes for the bolts to fasten the chainplate to. I began the nasty job of fiberglassing the whole thing over until I ran out of epoxy hardener.

I made a final solo visit to Odalisque a few days later to finish the laminating of cloth and epoxy one afternoon. I took my plastic milk crate filled with resin, hardener, cloth, fillers, tools on the launch and spent hours building up the thickness of the fiberglass sleeve that covered the spine that attached to the hull. All of this made me think a little bit about boat design. This design had worked for decades and was not to be scoffed at but wouldn’t it be easy to bolt the chainplate assembly directly outside the hull? In any event, the original design had hopefully been repaired, if not improved upon by using the strong South American hardwood as the spine.

Winterizing

The engine really needed some TLC as we had had salt water in the oil from a stuffing box flood. I started with the raw water cooling system first. The previous owner had installed a “T” fitting in the hose so fresh water could be fed into it from a deck fitting. I had tried this the previous fall and spring but I now know I had done it wrong. I filled the intake tube with fresh water after closing the intake through hull valve and started the engine. A few gulps of water came out, presumably salt water from the last time it was used, but the fresh water was not feeding through. I tried to remember what the previous owner had said about the “T” fitting and I thought he said not to use a hose with the valve all the way open or our hoses would burst or leak from the water pressure. I was using a 5 gallon bucket filled with fresh water and some tubing to siphon the water from the bucket to the intake fitting. I ended up unscrewing the fresh water intake sleeve on the “T” fitting to investigate if it was clogged. I found a spring-loaded valve inside that blocked my low pressure water feed so I removed the spring and the plug. I restarted my siphon and started the motor and the siphon was sucking fresh water into the engine. The water coming out of the exhaust was a bit dark and murky so I ran another 5 - 7 gallons through it before running a gallon of anti freeze in. I gather that the previous owner must have said to use a hose but not open to full pressure. I know that our water impeller pump had been compromised at best the last time I tried to do this so it was good to run nearly 14 gallons of water through. Now for the oil and fogging.

I had run the engine for nearly 20 minutes while flushing the cooling system so the oil was warm and ready to get sucked out. The pump extracted a fairly dark colored oil which alarmed me a bit as the oil was pretty fresh after 4 flushes. It was also SAE 30 and was fairly brown when it went in. Twenty minutes later there were bubbles coming up the tube from the oil pan. Don Moyer had suggested putting 2 quarts of Mystery oil in the oil pan over the winter and squirting Mystery oil into the pistons and running the engine for a few minutes to spread the mixture around so this is what I did after I set up the cooling system with some more anti freeze.

Moyer’s newsletter has an Atomic 4 winterizing list and we still have some steps to do. The water pump must be drained so that the pump’s impeller rubber arms do not get destroyed by ice. We need to refer to this checklist as we try to follow the best advice we can find.

What I began to realize is that the best order for winterizing the engine is to top off the fuel tank, add the fuel stabilizer, and then flush the cooling system and then do the oil with the water pump being one of the last details. I had not had a gas can last Monday when I started the job so I had begun with flushing the cooling system. There was no harm done though as I would flush the raw water system again tomorrow.

I took both sails off of Odalisque. The roller furled jib came off more easily than the main which has all manner of extra gear to handle (Dutchmen lines, reef lines, full battens, sail cover etc.). Lesson learned: sometimes a job you think is going to be difficult turns out to be easy and sometimes a job you think is going to be easy turns out to be difficult. You wont know until you try.

I returned the following day. I had everything I needed to treat the fuel but a gas can. The auto parts store had only a 2 gallon can and I wanted a 5 gallon can so I bought some oil and then dropped by a hardware store where they had a 5 gallon can that I wanted. It would have taken 4 trips to the gas station with a 2 gallon can instead of 2 with a 5 gallon can; I needed about 7 gallons of fuel to top off the tank. Whatever gas was left over I poured into my poor neglected car. The only trouble with my actions so far was that I had topped off the tank and still needed to put 8 ounces of fuel stabilizer into the tank but there was not enough room. So I needed to run the engine for a little bit so I added 2 more quarts of oil to the engine and gathered my bucket with 5 gallons of water and my 2 gallons of marine antifreeze. Speaking of antifreeze, I had purchased a 3 liter bottle of Georgi vodka which I intended for use in our fresh water tank. I had to uncouple the hose to the sink and drain out the lion’s share of the water into the bilge first. I had to pump the sink many times before I smelled the vodka in the water.
With the engine cooling water set up and some stabilizer in the tank I started up the engine and added more stabilizer as the tank lowered a few ounces. When the water ran out I topped off the tank with a little extra stabilizer. The next job was to drain the raw water pump, which I thought would be easy since it was replaced in early summer. I tried, unsuccessfully, to loosen the four screws of the backing plate but found it too awkward to gain mechanical advantage. I discovered a drain plug underneath the impeller chamber and had at with a variety of tools, of which the vice grip worked best. The water pump was drained. Next the boat cushions flew off the boat and onto my car. I stowed the cushions on the third floor of my mother’s house nearby.

I would still like to: wash our lines, re-pack our stuffing box, tighten the backstay, build a tent over the cockpit to keep the winter out, and remove the tools that were still aboard. Yet these unglamorous tasks would get done at some point or another.

— Caleb Davison