2009 Week 36 in Review

This week was my last cruise aboard the MV Catalyst and was a short hop from Petersburg to Ketchikan. We left Petersburg early Sunday, and sounded the siren in front of Doug’s house (he owns the Katahdin). After a 12-hour run, we anchored in Myers Chuck, a neat little place looking out to Chatham Strait.

We arrived in Ketchikan on Monday at about noon and I cleaning the engine room really before handing it off to Eric who will be the engineer for the rest of the season. Then I flew back to Seattle, ending another great season aboard a great boat, the MV Catalyst. Thanks everyone for a wonderful summer!

Remains of the Vashon

On the way to Ketchikan, I called several float plane services to see if I could get an affordable ride out to Johnson Bay to see the Vashon.

It’s a great old state ferry powered by the biggest Washington diesel ever made. I’ve known the boat was there forever (it ran aground in the early 1990s, another victim of the Tugboat Dream), but have never had the chance to go out and take a look. This seemed like my chance, but I couldn’t find a flight for less than $400 and even though the weather was nice in Ketchikan, there was enough wind to rule out just taking the Catalyst‘s skiff over.

Damn. I hope I can visit next year – I want to take pictures of the ferry and document how much is showing at what tide, so I can judge how much will show at a super low tide to possibly salvage some parts.

Nick scanned and sent me an article from the year it sank: Old Ferries Never Die. We’ve archived it here on Old Tacoma Marine Inc, along with the original photos published with the article; go check it out.

Back to Business

Even though it was a great summer, it was really great to get back to Seattle. The work never ends here at Old Tacoma Marine Inc, and the next big job is to get ready for the Lightship #83 Rehabilitation job. This means a lot of reading government manuals and filling out government forms since most of the project is funded by government grants, but we’re really excited despite all that.

2008 Week 49 in review

Inspecting the Olympic

This week, OTM visited the Olympic, a 200-foot decommissioned Washington State Ferry with an eight-cylinder Fairbanks-Morse diesel engine. It’s currently tied up at the ferry graveyard in Eagle Harbor on Bainbridge Island, as it has been since the mid-1990s. It’s starting to show:

We were asked to inspect the engine room systems to evaluate whether the engines were still operational. Apparently, the boat is currently owned by a non-profit foundation that sells boats at a profit to fund scholarships and other worthy causes, and they have a buyer lined up on the condition that the engine works and she can be re-commissioned. We started the process with some background research. As usual, the Evergreen Fleet proved invaluable, as did the venerable Ferryboat Book.

The MV Olympic was built in Baltimore in 1938 as the Gov. Harry W. Nice, with a riveted steel hull and a direct-reversing Fairbanks-Morse engine rated for 1,400 horsepower at 300 RPM. She and sister ship Gov. Herbert R. O’Conor worked the Kent Island-Sandy Point Bay route across the Chesapeake Bay. In 1952, the route was replaced by the Bay Bridge and the two ferries were sold to the Washington State Ferry system. Renamed Olympic and Rhododendron, the ferries went into service in 1954 to work the Clinton route. In 1969, the Kulshan started on the Clinton route, and the Olympic became the overflow boat. In 1974, she was moved to the Port Townsend-Keystone route, but when the new Issaquah-class ferries took over the route in 1979, the Olympic was scheduled for retirement.

In 1983, the Rhododendron was mothballed, but the Olympic kept running despite Coast Guard concerns over operating a single-engine ferry (following an engine shut-down that left her drifting in the Sound for three hours before engineers brought it back online). She was moved to lower-traffic routes (mainly the Point Defiance run) and scheduled for refurbishment with the Rhododendron, but cost over-runs on her sister ship meant that the Olympic was mothballed in 1993. She was surplused and auctioned off in 1997, and has been in Eagle Harbor since.

I don’t think that the boat’s been touched since she was mothballed the second time – she even has newspapers from her last cruise laying in the lounge:

More importantly, she still has the original Fairbanks-Morse diesel, an eight-cylinder with a 16″ bore and 20″ stroke:

The only major problem that I found is that the main diesel-powered air-compressor is missing. This is really the key to the boat, as, like almost any boat powered by a heavy-duty diesel, the Olympic needs compressed air to power nearly all of its major systems, including the generators and main engine. It still has two electric air-compressors, but they require 120 volts DC electricity to run, which in turn can be supplied by one or both diesel generators, but these each need compressed air to start. Oi.

As far as I can tell, everything else is in decent condition and looked like it had been well-maintained during its working career, but without that main air compressor we couldn’t turn it on and tell for sure. Anyone getting the boat back to operational condition will be fighting corrosion every step of the way, and that every valve will need to be exercised and every pump will need to be freed up before putting the systems back online. It also means the new crew will need to do a lot of cleaning to make it possible to work in the spaces:

After the trip, I put together a list of recommendations for the organization and any potential buyers. Most importantly, I told them to change one of the small air compressor motors to AC power and a voltage that can be provided at the dock, in order to let them exercise the machinery and demonstrate that the main engine runs (or doesn’t run, whichever the case may be). Both DC air compressors look like they’re fine, so just switching out the motor should be pretty easy:

Here’s the total process that I recommended:

• clean the vessel, giving it at least a once-over
• change the air compressor motor
• start the auxiliary generators
• put systems on line and test
• install switches for steering and jury rig manual wheel; test steering
• blow down main engine; bleed fuel lines; repair oil filter
• tow the vessel out and test-run the main engine
• re-assess the condition and determine the next steps

This would be a great project, since the Olympic is a great boat in very good condition, considering that it’s been basically untouched at the dock for over ten years. It’s also pretty historically significant as an example of state-run ferries from the 1930s to 1970s, since most of the other ferries of this era have been re-powered, scrapped, or otherwise lost. I hope that the potential new owners get as excited about the project as I am, and that they call me in as a specialist to help re-commission the boat. Stay tuned (I hope)…

Work continues on the Catalyst

I spent the rest of the week on Catalyst, continuing to file and sand the oil hole ridges off the crankshaft. I feel like I’ve been sanding forever, and I’ve still got some left.

The rod bearings also came back from Everett Engineering, freshly babbitted and looking good. I inspected them again and found two things. First, one of the check valve balls was rusty and sort of pitted. These check valves are in the top half of each rod bearing, right against a hollow tube that runs up through the rod itself to the wrist pin. This keeps the rod full of oil after shut-down, so that oil gets up to the wrist pin as soon as pressure comes up. Since balls for the check valves are cheap, I bought new ones for all six bearings and put them in.

Second, some of the peel packs, which are a set of shims stuck together with solder that fit between each half of each bearing set, were replaced with plain shims. This isn’t really a big deal, except that I like peel packs better. I might get new ones, but I haven’t had the time to look into yet.

We also decided to send some of the cam followers and wrist pins to be flame-sprayed. In preparation, I stripped the followers and sent the wrist pin bushings to Asco to be honed down. The bushings (which are made of brass) wear down unevenly during normal operation, so it’s important to get them straight and round before the wrist pins are fit in. Honing is done with a specialized tool made up of three or four stones (they’re sort of leg-shaped) that push against the outside of the bushing and grind a small amount of material off while they turn.

I sent the wrist pin bushings off while they were still in the rods:

OTM’s tips for getting your heavy-duty through the economic crisis

All owners of heavy-duty engines are going to feel some pain from the current tough economic times, but OTM has some easy tips to help your engine (and your boat) survive the recession.

Get to know your boat, and want to get to know your boat. This will not only save money, it will make cruising safer and more pleasant. Get a flash light and get under the deck plates.

Clean the whole boat – especially the engine. I cannot overemphasize the importance of cleaning. This simple task addresses nearly all problems with the engine or other systems. If cleaning doesn’t actually solve the problem, it at least will keep the problem from getting worse – plus it makes it much easier to find and note problems so they can be addressed before they get worse. I have heard customers say “I haven’t wiped down the engine for a while so you [the mechanic] can find the leaks easier,” but I then have to spend the whole day cleaning the engine in order to find the leaks. This adds to the bill. It’s also just easier to work in a clean engine room, so the mechanic will be more efficient and productive than in a dirty engine room.

Simplify. In all situations, it’s important to just keep it simple. Good examples include:

• selling the crane and using davits and block and tackle instead. It looks more elegant and is not much more work (and you hardly ever lower the boats, anyway)
• removing the hydraulics in a small boat, because you don’t need them. Hydraulic systems are very powerful and few small boats need that kind of extreme power
• forget about the second radar unit, and clean the windows in the wheel house instead
• insist on smaller systems. Try to install “normal” systems: no one thinks a whiz-bang radar-guided autopilot is impressive unless the rest of the boat operates flawlessly, is used often, and has demonstrated a need for the device

Focus on need. Often the neatest-looking boats are that way because of how the owners meet their needs simply. I mention often how I like the “lived in” feeling of any structure that is well worn in. Another example is a small line attached to a door and frame to keep it from opening too far and slamming, which is a simple and elegant solution. A megayacht outfitter will try to get you to spend $2,500 on a mechanism to accomplish the same task, which needs to be greased monthly and rattles at full speed.

Break down jobs. See the trees in the forest and make a list with four-hour tasks. Don’t put things on the list like “rebuild engine”. It’s okay to cruise with broken parts as long as you know your limitations. Break the jobs into manageable pieces, and do some now and others next year.

Stay busy. If laziness sets in, the complacent attitude will sink the boat. Stay on task, look at the list, and keep making forward progress – even if it’s slow.

If you follow these tips, you’ll both keep your engine in good shape without spending too much money, and get greater satisfaction out of being proud of the work put into your boat.

2008 Week 36 in Review

This week aboard Catalyst, we dropped off passengers at Wrangell and then took the boat to Ketchikan to start the 12-day Inside Passage trip. Summer is over here is Alaska, so it was time to bring the boat back to the San Juan Islands. Here’s the first week’s itinerary:

Wednesday, September 3 – Ketchikan to Foggy Bay: Stormy and rainy
Thursday, September 4 – Foggy Bay to Lawson Harbour: cross Dixon Entrance, customs in Prince Rupert, humpbacks (light rain)
Friday, September 5 – Lawson Harbour to Bishop Bay: more humpbacks, Dahl’s porpoises, some soak in hot springs (overcast and fog)
Saturday, September 6 – at Bishop Bay: meet Marvin and watch bears (but no white ones), some salmon in river, kayaking and soaking

Here’s the crew:

And here’s the passengers:

We arrived in Ketchikan on Monday at about two. We spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning up the boat, then headed up to Annabelle’s for drinks. We weren’t scheduled to start cruising again until Wednesday, so I spent Tuesday looking at number six rod bearing, the one that I found babbitt flakes and leaking oil in last week.

Rod bearings, the connection between the crankshaft and the connecting rod, are made up of two cast-iron shells that fit around the crankshaft:

Each half is lined with babbit, which is a lead and tin alloy that makes a very low-friction contact surface when it’s oiled. When I pulled out the number six rod bearing, I found that the babbitt was all cracked up:

It’s not quite falling apart, but it’s getting close. Usually, cracked-up babbitt is due to the bearing being too loose or the journal being out-of-round. It might also be because of poor casting, poor machining, or overloading.

After I found that, I pulled out the spare rod bearings and started cleaning up the crankshaft. It had goop built up on it and a lot of scratches and scrapes on the journal, so it took me a good eight hours to clean up, then I spent another four fitting the lower half of the bearing. I thought this would be a fairly fast job, but I found that the machinist who had poured the babbitt into the bearing didn’t know that Washington crankshafts have a unique 45° flat bevel on the edges of the throw. Pretty much all engines except the Washingtons have a rounded edge on the throw, which was what the fitted the babbitt to. It turns out that when the Catalyst‘s spare bearings were sent out to be re-babbitted, a few years back, they went to the machine shop at the same time as the Westward‘s Atlas bearings. The machinist did all of them using the standard rounded bevel.

Anyway. I got the crankshaft cleaned up and started fitting the spare rod bearings in, but they didn’t fit correctly because they had the round bevel and the crankshaft had the 45° flat bevel. This meant that it was time to pull out the bearing scrapers:

The way you fit a rod bearing to the crankshaft is to get the crankshaft really clean, then smear it with “blue” – a special grease that’s bright blue. Then you put the rod bearing onto the crankshaft, push it around a bit, take it off, and look where the blue is smeared. Those are the highest places on the bearing, so you start scraping the babbitt off there. The goal is to get the bearing the exact same shape as the crankshaft, scraping off the blued areas until the entire bearing is entirely blue, which tells you that you have a good fit. I blued the crankshaft, put the bearing on, and just got a little bit of blue on the bearing at the peak of the round bevels. Then I started scraping:

I scraped and fitted and scraped and fitted the bottom half of number six rod bearing for about four hours. At 10 PM, I had the fit really close, but the other half still had to be fitted and we had a noon departure the next day. I decided that fitting the spare bearing wasn’t possible with the tools and the time available, so I re-installed the cracked bearing (which will still works, but needs to be replaced pretty soon), bumped it, and called it a night. The next morning, I cleaned up the big mess of babbitt shavings I’d made, ran the temperature check, and got the boat ready to go by noon. Number six rod bearing is still knocking, so I might take out another shim later in the trip.

Now after all that, you might be wondering why Washingtons have that unique 45° flat bevel on the crankshaft, rather than using the rounded bevel like all the other engines. The answer is that Estep probably thought it was really special and just that much better than anyone else’s design.

Adrian Estep was an engineer and designer who worked for the Atlas-Imperial company in Oakland, California, right when they started their diesel line in 1915. He moved to Seattle in 1919 and opened a shop in Fishermen’s Terminal to repair gas engines. He must have still been really interested in diesel tech, though, because he sometimes converted gas engines to run on diesel, and he started building a prototype heavy-duty following the Atlas model but making some design improvements.

Apparently, the prototype was pretty impressive, because Mr. Frink, the president of the Washington Iron Works, saw it and wanted to buy it to power his own yacht. At the time, Washington Iron Works was a foundry that manufactured logging equipment and steam engines out of its South Seattle shop. I don’t know what happened to the prototype engine, but within a couple months, Frink made Estep an offer he could not refuse: a ten year contract to build diesel engines of his own design.

Estep worked for the foundry from 1921 to 1931 and full authority to guide the drafting room, pattern loft, foundry, and machine shop in developing one of the most efficient, ruggedly built, and most beautiful diesel engines ever. He patented a couple components of the Washington engines, and made a lot of little innovations like the flat-beveled crankshaft. The first engine to roll off the production line went into the Elmore (now, ironically, powered by an Atlas), and soon they were powering a lot of Seattle and Alaska workboats, logging camps, and power stations.

Every engine’s base doors read “Washington-Estep” until he left the company in 1931, which led to Washingtons also being called “Washington-Esteps” or just “Esteps.” Apparently, he went on to work for Kahlenberg in Wisconsin, but Washington Iron Works kept producing the engine for all sorts of different customers, including the US Navy and the Russian government. They made 651 engines before they shut down the engine line in 1951. I think it’s very unfortunate how few of them they made – and how few of them they are left – since they’re such great engines.

Incidentally, this week’s cruise on the Catalyst was pretty fun. We jumped into hot springs, saw an amazing sky full of stars, and saw more bears: