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Showing posts from October, 2012

Mr. Perkins is in....and we're out!

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Out of the Port of L.A.  Out of California.  Out of the country!  Hoo Ray. My father joined us for our maiden voyage to Ensenada, and things were incredibly frantic the first two weeks of September as it was a mad scramble to sell the car, get the engine in, commissioned, as well as re-install all the other systems and re-commission them(depth sounder, plotter, everything on the binnacle). a true sailor Things were so tight we rushed to get Discovery out of the slip for the first time under her own power only 1 day before we were scheduled to shove off for good.  Well of course nothing went smoothly.  We test ran the engine the day before our little test cruise and naively thought it was all ok.  A loose fuel line fitting, and a cracked hard fuel line on the return from the injectors caused a vapor lock which stalled the engine as we were backing out of the slip.  After almost crashing backwards into our neighbor, we spent the next few hours fending off, side tying a

Engine goes in

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Finally, finally, finally!  We got the engine in. My buddy Keith was once again instrumental in loaning me his truck and some floor space in his company's huge warehouse were I could store the engine for a couple of weeks as I finished up the engine room.  I took the opportunity to level the Perkins on the nice smooth warehouse floor and take a bunch of measurements to make a jig that I used to locate the angle brackets for the engine mounts. yes, there was a final touch up coat of bilge paint to placate my OCD The aluminum angle is 1/2" thick, through bolted to the engine bearers.  Bolt holes were potted by drilling them oversize, filled with thickened epoxy, then the correct bolt hole size drilled, leaving a "sleeve" of epoxy contacting the bare wood(n o pictures of the potting procedure as they were on my iphone, which went swimming in the bilge and drowned).   If moisture is going to get to the solid wood stringers after all this, hopefully it