Manasquan – Final Repairs, On to Sandy Hook Tomorrow

The rigger assessed Inyanga’s damaged stay, and returned just before dark yesterday with the new stay built and ready to install. He climbed the rig like a monkey: hands and bare feet straight up the mast, with bosun’s chair following him, hauled up by his wife. He was done in minutes, attaching the stay at the spreaders, then back down on deck to attach the turnbuckle end. That’s done.

The diver returned today to remove the failed mechanical prop, and reinstall the original fixed prop the boat came with. That did not take 15 minutes. Working under water on a boat is hard. Everything moves all the time especially in a busy waterway like this one. The current is ferocious, and the diver is constantly struggling to stay in place to complete his work. Travis, our diver, was outstanding, very skilled, and experienced. He removed the original prop nut, and Brian and I went to find an additional one that same size to use as a locking nut. His shaft had been modified to accept the Maxprop, which meant that the end was trimmed, and with, it the hole for the cotter pin. So the work around was to place the new thin profile nut in the inside, and use the thick profile nut as a locking nut. 3M 5200 was applied to the shaft in lieu of the cotter pin. After a full cure, I’m confident that the prop is secure.

Dive gear ready

Old original prop ready to be installed. I didn’t get a photo of the Maxprop, but nothing looked damaged. Just the loosened set screw that allowed the blades to articulate had backed out. Since Brian didn’t know what the original pitch of the Maxprop was, and didn’t know how to adjust it, it seemed best to put the old prop back on. The original owner of the boat was the installer of the Maxprop.

So tomorrow the adventure continues. We are wiser now, I hope, and will choose anchorages with a deeper under standing of tides and currents.

Barnegat Inlet to . . . Uh oh . . . This doesn’t look good.

Two sailboats pinned against a bridge with a rushing current holding them there. How did this happen? Where did this happen?

I’ll back up.

We left Barnegat inlet much later than planned because we had a few things to do ashore – post office run, grocery store stop, investigate water and fuel services at a marina. By the time we started, we were close to 3 hours behind schedule, so we adjusted our distance goal for the day. Formerly 50 miles to Sandy Hook NJ, now a more achievable 25 or 6 miles to Manasquan.

The weather was beautiful, the inlet was a little rough as we crossed the bar out to the open sea. Past the bar, however, it was quite literally smooth sailing. Well, smooth motoring. We could have sailed but it would have taken a very long time at that speed.

Four and a half hours later we were entering Manasquan inlet, and carefully feeling our way through the shallow, narrow channels. Anchoring opportunities were not abundant, but we thought we had identified at least two. One of them simply wasn’t going to work – not enough space to be out of boat traffic, in deep enough water, with enough room to swing on the anchor chain. The other place looked possible. It was a turning basin for a large charter fishing boat (80-90 feet long). We had room to anchor both of the boats rafted together, and we would leave early enough to be out of the way when the fishing boat had to maneuver. I deployed my anchor but didn’t get a set, so was retrieving it to try again. This takes a little time, because I have a manual windlass. Meanwhile, our buddy boat is keeping station near by, preparing to come along side as soon as we’re set. But something happened. . . our buddy boat lost the ability to maneuver. No power to the running gear. Forward, reverse – nothing. Now it’s a rescue operation, because the current is dragging them toward the railroad bridge. I don’t have the anchor up yet, and can’t really leave it down, because we can’t move effectively with so much chain out. Ruth is on the helm trying to catch a line from the other boat. We hook on to them to pull them to safety, but we’re pulling them stern first, which isn’t going to work. All the while we are both being irresistibly drawn towards the bridge. We can’t get a line out from their bow, and the closer we get to the bridge, the faster the current flows. Finally there are several crunches, and we are both pinned to the bridge by the current. Our bow overlaps their stern, our stern is crunches into the bridge structure.

No one is hurt, thank God. Standersby are watching. Several people walk out on the bridge and offer to help. Brian is calling the Coast Guard. Everything else is quiet. We can hear the water flowing past the hulls, keeping us hard against the bridge. We are taking note of damage, fearing the worst. Neither boat is taking on water. We are safe for the moment. Coast Guard is on the way with two vessels. We don our life vests. The first action of the Coast Guard is to take us off the boats for safety. They collect some information, and we initiate a salvage call to BoatUs towing service. We both have insurance with BoatUs, so the salvage will be no additional cost.

BoatUs arrives, and very skillfully pulls Cay of Sea off the bridge. We are back on the boat, and after checking for functionality and seaworthiness again, we contact a local marina, and make our way there under our own power. Our buddy boat Inyanga follows us in about a half hour later, under tow.

Both crews are demoralized, but no one is assigning blame. Our friendship is too old and too valuable for that foolishness. And really, who could have predicted a power failure at that moment? Even if I had the anchor retrieved, it is not a certainty that I could have kept both boats off the bridge. The main failure in this situation, was thinking that this little pool was a good anchorage, but without local knowledge, how could we know that either? After all, an enormous fishing boat operated out of that pool every single day. Certainly two sailboats could have anchored safely for one evening.

Damage assessment to Cay of Sea revealed minor problems, all of which were satisfactorily resolved the next day.

Bimini frame and stern rail straightened almost completely, all with the power of legs! I adjusted the Bimini hardware to accommodate the slack I was not able to fix by straightening. I will have this fixed better when we get back at the end of the summer, but it’s serviceable and not ugly for now.

Inyanga suffered very little more than we did, remarkably. The cause of her power loss was a failure of the mechanical mechanism that sets the pitch of their prop. The set screws had backed out, allowing for the blades to turn flat against the direction of rotation. That means no forward or reverse torque is applied to the propeller – only resistance. They were going no place fast. Brian has the old original prop on board that he will have a diver install tomorrow, and that will fix that. Other damage to Inyanga includes compromising of one lower stay, which will be replaced tomorrow, and a couple of bent stanchions. No urgent need to fix those before we go. We are staying our second night in this marina, and will probably stay one more, then we’re off again.

It is appropriate to remember a cruiser’s definition of cruising. I don’t know who said this originally, but it is certainly true: Cruising is the art of fixing boats in exotic locations. It is also worth noting, that few activities offer more opportunities for looking foolish and inept than operating a boat. It happens to everyone at some point.

More tomorrow. . .

Can You Modify a Propeller to Meet Your Needs – Yourself?

Have a seat.  This will be a controversial post.

So, can you successfully cut a propeller down to size on your own? Would you dare even try? I’ve done it twice now, and it worked great, but there are limitations. . .

First, why would I, or anyone for that matter, do this? Because my goal in sailing is to make it as reasonably affordable as possible, and I’m convinced that a lot of work done by “professionals” in the marine industry can be done just as well, and much less expensively by me.

So a couple of years ago my prop and shaft fell victim to a vicious crab pot line attack. Neither survived. They now reside somewhere on the bottom of Herring Bay. All through the winter that followed, I searched for a used prop that would match what I needed. No joy. I finally bit the bullet and purchased a new 3-bladed prop. My old prop was a 2-blade, and I’d always wanted to try the 3-blade.

Turns out, I hated the 3-blade. It needed to be reduced in pitch, and that would have improved it’s performance under power, but nothing would improve it’s performance under sail. It was like dragging a bucket behind. For a boat that’s as heavy and slow as a Watkins 27, that’s just not going to work.

I began the search again this winter, and again found nothing in the used offerings that would suit. I finally bought a prop that was too long, with a pitch that was one inch too shallow. I would cut it down myself, and it would be a grand experiment! After all, I only paid $95 for it instead of $350+ that a new one would cost.

Why did I think I could get away with this? I’m not a propeller technician.

Well, you see, I’ve done it once before, and it was crazy successful. When I repowered Cay of Sea 13 years ago, I needed a new prop then too. The old original prop spun up too far, by 500 RPM, and it had lost too much zinc to have the pitch adjusted (this makes them brittle). When I went looking for props I found out how expensive they are, so I turned to the used market. I happened to find one that was slightly too long – about .5″ at the corners. I cut off the corners so that it wouldn’t hit the bottom of the hull on every half revolution. It turned out to be the perfect match. I could develop all the RPM in the specs (slightly too much, actually) and nearly achieve hull speed.

So this time I was able to find a 15″x12″ right hand prop with one inch shaft, and I thought I would try again. After all, I needed a 13″x13″ rh 1″. So, if I cut an inch off of either side. . . perhaps the pitch would allow it to spin up too far, but I could always get it repitched next winter when I haul again. On the other hand, because the dimensions of the prop were larger over all (larger hub, broader blades, and longer blades) I might get away with only trimming the ends, having the broader blade size compensate in area for the slimmer pitch.

This is the old prop that I trimmed.

New three blade prop I hated.

New prop. Sorry for the bad photo – I forgot to get a good pic before launch.

What follows is an illustration of what I did to trim down to size.

Not the actual prop – I found this image on line. Note the pink color – this indicates loss of zinc. This prop would be pretty brittle.

This is a very crude photo, but it might illustrate what I did – in part. I carefully measured from the middle of the hub to the end of the blade on each side and marked it, then double checked by measuring back from the end of the blades. Making sure I was removing the same amount of material from each side, I used a cut-off wheel with my Dremel and trimmed the ends of the blades. I used my stationary sander to round over the corners and relieve the edges (thin them down to match the rest of the prop edges).

After making sure everything was smooth and even, and rechecking for balance, I installed the prop and crossed my fingers.

So how did it work?

I was really wasn’t confident that I had got it right – I fully expected the prop to need repitching, but hoped to get away with it for this season. However, I my hopes were fulfilled beyond my most optimistic expectation. The prop spins up to exactly 3600 rpm – specified in the engine manual as developing max horsepower – and achieved what I was led to expect from the prop size calculator on boatdiesel.com regarding boat speed. It actually performs better under power than the prop I lost – that one allowed the engine to over-rev slightly (to 3800 rpm).

So, the limitations are, as alluded to above, that 1) you cannot change the pitch of the prop at home. This takes specialized equipment (torches, measuring tools, bending jigs) that the average diy guy doesn’t have at his disposal. I would think that the balancing of the prop would also be a critical component of changing pitch. 2) you cannot easily change the inside diameter for receiving the shaft. In fact, I don’t know if you can actually go smaller that original, but I do know that the shaft opening can be resized larger.  Again, specialized equipment, etc.  Add to that, the shaft hole is tapered with a key slot cut into it – who can do that at home without a machine shop?

Finally, selection of your not-quite-perfect prop is critical. I think more that two inches oversized wouldn’t work well. I think you would lose too much blade surface area, and be left with too much hub. Also, I would think you would be limited to props that were designed with symmetrical blades – where each blade has the same shape top to bottom. Some blades are elliptical, and I think that shape would be difficult to replicate in a shorter profile.

So there you go.  Tell me what you think? Would you be brave or foolish enough to do this yourself, like me?