Engine working and more!

Last week Tim felt we had turned the corner on getting King Malu ready, and this morning I was not so sure.

When I arrived at the boat Tim was already there and suggested that while Ken works on the engine we replace the stern gland packing. The 'stern gland packing' is some waxy/greasy rope that goes around the drive shaft to stop the water coming in. If a boat is left out of the water for too long [as King Malu has been] then the rope becomes brittle and doesn't block the water any longer.

Access to the stern gland is through the hanging locker in the rear cabin. And I think we have found the only design failure in the boat. The design failure? Well... the hanging locker doesn't go right to the floor and stops about 30-40cm from the floor. So, to access the stern gland you have to put towels on the the wood between the floor and the locker and then bend over with your tummy on the towels and hang down into the bilge area upside down! Not a comfortable position and one that you can only maintain for a few minutes before you black out!

So I started and removed the nuts from the stern gland and then removed the stern gland. I then tried and failed to remove the packing and so Tim took over. He opened the stern cabin hatch so that if he did black out we could get in and drag him out as he was effectively blocking the door into the stern cabin!

With some effort he managed to remove the old packing and we went off in search of new packing. None of the chandlers had it, one had gland packing, but the wrong size. However, in the way of Cyprus, Andreou Brothers, a hardware store had it. They sold it by weight and the cost of 60cm of gland packing? A 1 euro outlay.

Back at the boat Ken was ready to try restarting the engine. No luck. We tried a number of times. We were using ether to try to start the engine as the glow-plug was missing. No joy. Then... ooops... the top came off the ether aerosol spray. Where did the top go? It was only a serious loss if the top had gone down the air intake into the engine. So we were desperate to find it to ensure that it hadn't. Eventually Ken and Tim took off part of the air intake and checked it was not about to go into the engine. We never did find it.

Lunch and a welcome break. All sorts of theories were put about as to what to do with the engine. The most serious of which was to remove the top and bottom of the engine, remove the pistons, regrind and refix everything - basically totally recondition the entire engine... should only cost around 5,000 euros. No, we don't want to believe that!

Back from lunch and Tim repacked the stern gland and the the sun came out and I dashed out to paint the grey topcoat at the stern. Ken checked out the engine and we decided to have another go. She ran! We let the throttle go back to idle and she ran at idle. We stoped the engine and then restarted without ether. She ran beautifully at idle.

Just as we were congratulating Ken the phone rang. It was Steph with some more ideas about the engine. Tim put him on speaker phone and then after Steph had suggested all his ideas, Tim interrupted to tell him the good news. Absolute silence from the other end of the line. Eventually Steph found his voice and asked how it happened. With a totally straight face [or straight voice] Tim said 'Ken laid hands on the engine, Richard prayed it it came to life'. Steph found difficulty in believing this and Tim admitted that it was true that the engine was working but left the truth of anything else ambiguous.

Final task was to check out the running rigging [that's the ropes for the non-sailors reading this blog]. Some of the ropes were fine, some needed replacing. Surprisingly it was the old [possibly original] ropes that were fine and the newer braid-on-twisted that needed replacing. There is one rope that is possibly OK, but could do with replacing. Its the genoa halyard, which is a 6mm wire connected to a 12mm braid rope. Not a nice rope to replace. I think Dan may be able to do wire to rope splices so we will wait till he comes in April and ask him then.

Then check out the list of purchases. Measure the size of the cooker to replace that, check horseshoe, check the blocks/rope needed for the mainsheet... and a few other items.

Tim and I were feeling on a high, what with the engine running, most of the ropes not needing replacing and enough dry/sun to be able to get a coat of paint on the stern grey band, this had been a good day.