October 25, 2003
Life on Melina
Here are some photos from our voyage:
Melina in the lock on the Intercoastal
Sailing with fair winds and autopilot
Yogi and Marcin in Annapolis.
Skipper Ian looking for a suitable chart.
October 16, 2003
Leaving Gloucester
With the engine now working we can now move south, but the heater now does not work, being an all singing and dancing automatic system the computer has locked out and requires taking/sending it to an agent to be reset. Not a very practical system for extended cruising.
With luck in a couple the month we should be far enough south to not need it.
When we arrived in New London Chris was kind enough to drive me on the 80mile trip to Fall River MA to get the heater system reset.
October 04, 2003
Melina's engine story
The first problem was that the drive to the gearbox oil pump failed, there was therefore no pressure to engage the gears. It has an emergancy system where it can be perminantly engaged in forward. This was the system that we used all summer while waiting for a new improved drive for the pump from the UK. This I fitted in Rockland, but shortly after leaving found oil in the bilges and noises from the engine.
So it was off with the gearbox once again and found a loose gearbox mounting bolt fighting with the flywheel! On running the engine without the gear box it was noticed that the rear oil seal was leaking. Leaving the engine in would mean using about a pint of oil every hour or so. OK to get you home but not much good for extended cruising.
In Gloucester I found Mike Ramus an engineer (mike@eastcoastindustrial.com) who had worked on Melina's model of Ford engine for 20 years. We took the engine out for a rebuild. On dismantling it was found that the piston rings were broken. This caused the oil to get coked up and hardened the oil seals. Running the engine at for a long time at low power because of the gear box problems also caused the oil seals to fail. Do not run your engine cold for long periods of time,particularly in cold climates.
The spares took nearly two weeks to arrive by overnight carrier! But the engine is now back and the gearbox has its new pump drive, hopefully all will now be well and we can continue our voayging without serious interuptions.