The crappy hose and clamp setup supplying the raw water from the sea strainer to each engine pump was removed and a new pipe and rubber elbow routing method was added. This is volunteer and friend Larry Sanneman cutting and fitting.

Photos of the 83527 and other 83 footers show a RBO receiver in the crew quarters. They were designated as ship entertainment receivers. We were donated one from the Puget Sound Navy Museum in Bremerton. It does need some work however.

For the last 8 years the raw water feed from the sea strainer was an ugly big hose supported by a line from the overhead. That mess was replaced with 2" pipe and a sequence of 90 degree connectors routed from the strainer to the pump input. Several restraint clips need to be added. Here John Cross is reassembling the segments.

The port and stbd sea strainer caps were severly rusted and replaced with new stainless steel round plates.

In early June after the raw water system was reconditioned and reconnected we started up both engines. After getting smoked out of the engine room we discovered that the bottom edge of the port muffler was rusted through. That was removed and a patch welded over the tired area and the muffler was reinstalled.

I finally got the air shift control system smashed into an enclosure and wired up. The front panel shows the air pressure at the manifold and the 24vdc for the actuator valves. The selector switch provides three 24vdc voltage sources for the system. The primary is 110vac from the generator operating when underway. This powers a 24vdc output power supply. The second source is a 12v to 24v inverter module that will run off of an adjacent 12v battery (8D size nearby). The third is two small "alarm box" type batteries in the enclosure. Since the whole system only requires about 150 milliamps when operating there is almost no strain on any of these sources. There is to be added an alarm horn for loss of 24v or low air pressure. The air compressor arrangement is not yet finalized. A complete description of this system will be provided later. The switches in the below selection are the forward gear limit switches adjusted to prevent the air valve from being activated when underway in forward gear and prevent the cylinder from pushing the clutches against the throwout bearing.

When we got the boat the bulkhead between the lazarette and the spares compartment had a a big cut out. Mark McCaffery and I have partially completed a watertight door installation in that hole.

07-2012

I'm picking up eight cylinders the dimensions of a Mark VI depth charge. They were donated to us by Rick Hermanson and  the great people at

Hermanson Co. www.hermanson.com

Many of the photos and drawings show balsa life rafts aboard the 83'ers. This is an attempt to make some life raft lookalikes. They are based on a core frame of 6" PVC pipe and "T"s. Since this was a no budget project I scrounged all that I could. The PVC pipe was donated by my friend Kim Bottles. The "T"s were purchased on Craigslist in Bremerton for $4 ea. That was way better than $30 at Lowes. After I got started I discovered that the PVC pipe, although labeled 6" was for some reason unknown to me 6" ID, while the "T"s were ready for 6" OD. This required a conversion spacer that was made out of some 6" OD pipe. It made the original design way more complicated than just joining 4 pipes to 4 90 degree corners.

The shape of the raft would be created with a 9" X 9"X 18" foam block. I scrounged about 30 12" x12"x 18" foam blocks from the Everett Lowes that were discarded. The were used to space small trailers apart during shipment. I set up a hot wire cutter frame that I scrounged from my neighbor, Royal Journey and attached it to a piece of plywood on the work table. An AV voltage variac was added to reduce the AC voltage down to about 9volts. That was the perfect temp to easily slice the foam. So the blocks were sliced down to the 9X9 dimension. Then with different rotating gadgets I made the corners were rounded and the 9" core was removed. See the videos.