Allen, our favorite wrench

While we haven't been updating our blog as often as we should, we have made progress on our winter list of things to do on the boat. We began by putting everything away, bringing stuff home and finding a place to store it all for the winter.  Last weekend we scraped all the old crud out of the bilge spaces and used our shop vac to suck up all the stuff that had collected down there over the past 30 years. Oh yeah, there were a number of old screws, nuts, bolts and washers that had been lost over the years that got sucked up too.

We also replaced the fuel lines from the tank to each engine and that was surprisingly easy.

We're going to replace both of the old Quadrajet carbs with new Edelbrock 1409 carbs and we ordered and received the first one.  The Edelbrock 1409 is a square bore carb and the old Quadrajets mounted on a Chrysler spread bore intake manifolds, so the new carbs require an adapter and obviously another gasket.  Here's the adpater:

The new 1409 carb doesn't provide a vacuum fitting for the PCV hose but the adapter does. That's the brass fitting you can see at the back of the adapter.

 The 1409 is really beautifully made, in fact, 100% made in America. We'll probably have to play around to make the throttle linkage fit the new carb just right, but that's half the fun. The new carb has an  electric choke so we can forget about the problems we used to have with the thermostatic chokes on the old Quadrajets.

We'll install the new carbs after after we take care of replacing the exhaust risers on both engines, since we have no idea of when that was done last. No sense in installing a new carb and then trying to wrestle the old risers up and over it.

Here's the starboard engine before we started. We have v-drives so the engines face aft.

While we're down here taking things apart, we might as well remove the heat exchangers (the blue cylinders mounted at the back of the engine) and have them boiled out and re-sealed by a local radiator shop. They both work fine but why not have them reconditioned while we have such good access to them? We don't want to do this again for a long time!

The risers are mounted on adapters that mate them to the Chrysler exhaust manifolds.  Each riser is fastened down with four Allen head bolts.  Why Allen head, we'll never know. We've lost sleep thinking about how we'll get these bolts out without breaking one off or bending an Allen wrench. On each riser, the aft bolt is partially covered. Cute. Whoever designed there manifolds should be made to live in our bilge for a week.

We began by soaking each bolt with penetrating oil that in our experience never really works, but it was worth a try. We began with the easiest ones, the inside bolts on the inboard starboard manifold. Since we could actually see them, they seemed like a good place to see just how difficult this was going to be.

The first two actually came out, although not without a lot of help. That's an ordinary Allen wrench. It is the only thing that would fit in that spot.

The crud you see around that rusty old bolt is actually penetrating oil. This time, the penetrating oil worked.  With the bolts on the starboard inside manifold out, we tackled the bolts on the outside starboard manifold, which is very close to the water tank.  Not much room to move in there. Note the paper towel stuffed between the manifold and the valve cover? That was to trap the Allen wrench in case we dropped it. As we get older, we get smarter.

As luck would have it, that one came out too, as did the aft bolt, which was done completely by "feel."

It was getting cold in the shed but we thought that we'd try at least the easy inside bolts on the port side. They took a little longer than expected but once out (we nearly stripped the head on one bolt), we went for the bolts on the outside port manifold. They took an hour to get out but finally the last of the 16 bolts were on the deck.

The next step is to remove the risers and unbolt the adapters that mate the to the manifolds. That probably won't be easy either, but at least we'll have real hex head bolts to work with. Or at least, we think we will. Who knows what lurks down there.

The cost of replacing the risers and the adapters appears to be about $350 per engine. Well worth it if it keeps seawater from getting into our engines.

Pink stuff

After a great summer, during which Frances used the boat as her floating summer cottage when we weren't cruising, it's time to winterize.

Last weekend, we had a freak October snowstorm that dropped 8-10 inches of snow on Connecticut's trees that still had all or most of their leaves. The result was widespread power outages, some of which have now exceeded a week.  Our street was almost impassible.

We got our power back in three days and one nice afternoon this week, we went to the boat and started that always sloppy process of winterizing the engines.

We have fresh water (actually antifreeze) cooled engines so we only have to run non-toxic antifreeze through the heat exchangers and the exhaust risers to protect us from freezing during the long winter to come. Funny to see snow on the boat on such a beautiful day in October.

Our boat came out of the water on Friday to make room for others who were coming up the Connecticut River for winter storage. Today (Saturday), we winterized the fresh water system, the air conditioner and the head and holding tank with another 10 gallons of pink stuff. Can't be happy until we see every faucet running pink.

Frances continued to put things away and get the interior ready for winter.  One of her better discoveries was a way to vacuum bag much of our bedding.  Put the bedding in a special plastic bag and then suck the air out using our vacuum cleaner. Worked like a charm. No air, no mold problems.

We have lots of things to do on the boat this winter, although we won't be spending every weekend doing them. But while we're not there, we left our little bear, who goes everywhere with us on the boat, standing guard.

Last cruise of the season

We left Norwich late in the morning on October 22 and headed back to Portland, our winter storage home. We stopped for fuel at Shennecossett Yacht Club in Groton and got a pump-out while we were there. Then we steered west, down Long Island Sound against a cool 15 mph wind. We had two good friends aboard, John and Joanne, who, as you can see, are experienced boaters.

Our starboard engine acted up as it has all season but with John aboard, we were able to narrow the problem down.

That didn't make much difference. Boating in New England with good friends during a nice day in October can be pretty nice. The Sound was cool and clear.

We left the Sound at Old Saybrook light and went into the Connecticut River. We've photographed these lights so many times but they still look good to us.

We passed many boats that were out on the river, the Becky Thatcher being one of them. Not very many colorful leaves this year.

And the Mary E. We have some history with this old boat. Nice to see her still working. And hello to Captain Ted, wherever you are.

We finally got to Portland as the sun was going down. No problem, as they were waiting for us. A little sad to turn off the ignition keys for the last time this year.

We'll continue our blog during the winter and into next summer and hopefully beyond. We have to two pictures of us, just enjoying being on our boat with friends. Frances says her hair looks crazy and I'm happy to even have any showing. We hope that you who read this blog had a great boating season.

Our boating season winds down

Our neighbors on A-dock have begun to leave for winter storage. On Sunday morning, October 16, the docks look deserted. In fact, we were the only ones still on our boat. There is a little chill in the air now and when we meet boating friends, the most often asked question is, "When are you leaving?"

For us, that will probably be next weekend. A few will stay into November, but most will take their boats home or, for the larger boats, head off for one final cruise to a marina where they will be hauled, winterized and shrink wrapped.

It's funny how accustomed you become to seeing the boats and the people during our much-too-short five month summer boating season. We hate to see those now empty slips

Some of our neighbors won't be back next year. Dick and Pattie's Maxum is for sale. Pretty nice boat at a reasonable price. Send us a message if you'd like their number.

Seems funny to see Lou and Janie's Four Winds sitting there without its top. They'll be heading down river soon, too.

This Carver has been at the marina much longer than we have. It's almost a fixture on the dock near the restaurant.

And the marina's restaurant is now closed, the barstools that we populated during the summer now upside down on the bar. The food was good this year and it was a place we enjoyed. Granted, the name isn't very original, but who cares?

The big tent that hosted so many weddings and other affairs during the summer has been taken down. Odd to see this space empty.

Just our faithful old Merc in the parking lot.

Frances and our boat cat, Pooka, have spent almost the entire summer on the boat and that alone made it worthwhile. We visited Greenport a couple of times and spent a week at Block Island and had some guests who enjoyed the boat. Time (and money) well spent, it seems to us, and we intend to do it again next year.

We'll continue our blog during the winter as we get through our list of boat improvements that we want to make. We've also vowed to spend time together doing other things, not boat related, during those long winter weekends.

The plug that wouldn't play

We've been chasing a problem with our starboard engine all season. Both engines would run fine until we had been running for several hours and then the starboard engine would stop. We could restart it but it wouldn't run above about 1,800 RPM. Next time out, the same thing would happen. Sometimes, (now that we look back on it) the engine would quit if we ran into some rough water.

We began with all the obvious stuff: Water separating fuel filters? Clean. Carb filter? Clean. Ignition system? Installed two new Mallory distributors and coils. We check the plugs and even changed the plug wires. What the hell was going on here.

This weekend, we tacked the more difficult things. We move the furniture in the salon so we could get at the hatch over the gas tank. We removed and blew through the gas tank vents. Nice and clear. We removed the pickup for the starboard engine from the tank. Looked like new, with no obstruction.

While we were down in the engine space, we decided to inspect the rubber plug that connects the engine to the boat's wiring system. We couldn't get the plug and jack assembly apart but it looked ok.  We jiggled it and decided to quit since it was getting dark.

That evening, we noticed that the salon lights didn't work. Neither did the courtesy lights on the cockpit. In fact, none of the boat's electrical accessories worked. We went to bed (in the dark) with the thought that we'd check this out in the morning.

Next morning, we made some preliminary checks of the electrical system behind the lower helm. Those accessory circuits had to have +12 VDC but we measured zero.  We went back the connector at the engine that we had tried to open the previous afternoon but this time, we used our 12-volt test light that has a pointed end you can use to penetrate the insulation to get a voltage reading. The connector has six terminals, five of which are for instruments such as temperature and oil pressure and one large (14-gauge) that supplies +12 volts to the two helm stations. Sure enough, there was +12 volts on the engine side of the connector but nothing on the 14-gauge wire on the other side of the plug.  We pried the connector apart and the big (14-gauge) contact dissolved into small bits of corrosion. We had the parts with us to bypass the connector and that's what we did. As soon as we put the jumper in place, all the boat's accessory circuits came on.

Time for a test ride. With John T aboard (old friend, master mechanic and someone who had told us to check those engine connectors), we drove down river at 3,000 RPM and back for a total of 19 miles. The starboard engine never missed a beat.

Here's a picture of that nasty connector that fouled up so much of our summer. We'll remove all of those connectors during the winter and wire them properly.

McKinley Avenue

On Sunday mornings, I often take walks around Norwich, the city where our boat is docked during the summer. Several weeks ago, I walked down McKinley Avenue and imagined, as I looked at the old houses, that the street was probably named for President William McKinley. It was not uncommon to have streets and schools named after admired presidents and 110 or more years ago, McKinley was certainly admired, particularly for his successful leadership during the Spanish American War.

McKinley was shot on September 6, 1901 by anarchist Leon Frank Czolgosa during a visit to the Pan American Exposition in Chicago. The president survived for more than a week but died on September 14, making the date of this blog the 110th anniversary of his death.

My guess is that by the time of McKinley's death, there were already many houses on what is now McKinley Avenue, which begins a little north of Rockwell Street and ends at the intersection of Franklin and Grove Streets. The houses are almost all constructed of wood and I find the detail in the architecture fascinating, especially given the fact that before the turn of the 20th century, there was no electricity, no cars and trucks, no inside plumbing and little or no piped water.

It's easy to look at this photo and write it off as just another old street in an old New England city.  That's certainly true, but a closer look shows much of the craftsmanship that was typical of that period, although time has taken its toll.

This is a dormer on one of the oldest houses on the street. My guess is that the house was built before or around the time of the Civil War and today is deteriorating. A dormer like this could have been plain but someone took the time to embellish it with two dozen or so carefully carved little brackets. There is also that little inset panel above the windows and the subtle curve of the tops of the windows. Someone way back then knew how to make a common dormer more interesting.

Another house, stripped of much of its paint but with the original window sashes still in place, shows the remarkable detail that someone, probably not an architect, designed for the tops of what otherwise would be plain windows.

The beautiful detail shown on these houses is probably European in its origin. Norwich was a thriving city in those days and had been since the turn of the 19th century, exporting produce, textiles and other goods manufactured at the water-powered mills in eastern Connecticut. Successful men and their families went to Europe and came back with ideas of what a great home should look like. No more plain, drab New England  houses.  America was taking its place in the world and our homes began to reflect that. That time also saw the arrival of craftsmen from Europe who knew how to build houses that spoke to the owner's sense of importance. Soon, the idea of building a beautiful house, at least from the street-side perspective, was available to those who were merely successful, if not truly wealthy.

A number of the houses on McKinley Avenue have been restored, as the one has. Perhaps the owner researched the original design to discover these colors. I didn't have the nerve to knock on the door early on a Sunday morning and ask. The detail above the windows and across the porch are beautiful. The shutters are new, as you can see by the way they fit on the attic window.

There are very few trees on McKinley Avenue and the side yards between the houses are sometimes small. In this case, almost non existent. 

Here's another house that has been maintained to look much the way it did in the late 1900s. There is so much fascinating detail, all leading the eye up to the pointed roof with the whimsical circular window. And note side porch. No air conditioning in those days, so porches were important.

Speaking of porches, here's an interesting one, although it was enclosed long ago.

That now enclosed second floor porch is probably what was called a "sleeping porch" and it was actually used for sleeping. Respiratory illness, primarily influenza, was rampant in America back then and many doctors recommended sleeping outside as a health benefit.

If you were invited to a house with a front porch like this, you must have known you were entering the home of someone with means. The detail is almost overwhelming and even with water powered saws and lathes, it must have taken a long time to build. It is, by the way beautifully maintained. Those horizontal wood beams running between the columns probably aren't original, since the spoil the proportion of the design. My guess? They were added as a place to put hanging plants.

Most of the houses along McKinley Avenue were probably built as single family homes and since large families were common, big houses were necessary.  Over the years, many were converted to multi-family use and that meant escapes had to be added.  Here's what was originally a two-family house that eventually needed a fire escape to another small apartment on the third floor. Nothing like building something elaborate - very elaborate - right across the front of the house.

It was more common to add fire escapes at the side and some of the very big houses have truly massive ones. Here's one that even has a roof.  Note that if visitors didn't mind the climb, this top floor apartment had its own private entrance. There is also a lovely porch that was probably even more inviting before the addition of the fire escape.

As I ended my last tour of McKinley Avenue, I came across a patch in the sidewalk. It's not old like the houses on the street but it does contain the names of all the kids who were lucky enough to be around after the contractor left and before the concrete hardened.

Which former city kids among us didn't have great fun scratching his or her name for posterity?

New distributor

We've had an ignition problem that has haunted us for half the summer. Run the boat for more than an hour - or possibly more - and the starboard engine would shut down. It would re-start immediately but wouldn't run over 1800 rpm.  We checked all the ignition components and changed the coil and checked the fuel filters but nothing seemed to cure it. Finally we decided to bite the bullet and install a completely new distributor to replace the 1980-era Chrysler "electronic" distributor that was on the boat when we bought it.

We haven't changed a distributor in years, but we went at it.

There's the old bad boy.and here's the ignition surgeon at work.

Of course, we always work as a team.  Frances watches every move and reminds me that "you need to put that wire on there."

Once complete, the engine started and ran better than ever. With that success, we decided to install another  new Mallory distributor on the other engine. (Not a small decision. These things cost $400 with the needed coil and resistor.) We also borrowed a timing light from our dockmate Rob.

The following Saturday, we installed a new distributor on the port engine but missed the timing. Our friend John T., master mechanic and virtual co-captain of our boat, jumped into the bilge and managed to correct the timing. He put Rob's timing light on both engines and now they both run as smooth as silk.

We think we're in great shape for what little remains of the boating season.