Winter Projects and Progress

09/25/04 Work Party – We removed empty barrels, transmission parts and other non-essential equipment from the boat. It was about a 4 hour project.09/20/04 We all got a ride down to the boat with John Arscott from Port Ludlow. We got underway for Port Ludlow in the morning. Weather was great and the water was calm. Ed and Richard were guest skippers. Tied up at the Port Ludlow Marina, Dock A.

10/09/04 - Old Crew Rendezvous – What a great day this turned out to be. We had a good get together and lunch at the Harbormaster Restaurant at the Resort at Port Ludlow.

First there was retired Chief Jake Annas, Myron "Tike" Hillman and Ed Young that served together in 1955 & 56. They had their share of "whoppers" to tell. We tried to recreate this scene of Chief Annas and Ed at the helm together again after 50 years.

From the 83XXX we had Dick Craig who showed us how their boats differed in construction.

After lunch there was a short work party hauling all of the cabinet and door parts to the Crew Quarters and started trying to identify how it might go back together with new plywood bulkheads.

10/22/04 Sunday - moved boat to the inside of the A Dock finger. We had help from Mike and the Vessel Assist boat. We didn't even start the engines.

10/30/04 Work Party – More bilge oil skimming was completed. Roxane and Nancy cleaned up pilothouse. Dan was in bilge pumping surface oil into the settling barrel.

11/13/04 Work Party – We hung more white canvas and erected 3/4 " PVC pipe bows. Tike, Dick, Roxane and Dan were on board for this project.

11/17/04 – I took down the back two canvas sections because of forecasted high winds. The winds didn’t come.

11/28/04 - Miscellaneous cleanup of compartments and bilge. Worked on defining the generator output problem.

11/30/04 – Visited Ken Liden the owner (since 12/83) of the Mildred W, the former 83451. She is currently tied up in Everett undergoing a conversion to a motor yacht. Fortunately for us, many of the original things are still in place, such as cabinets and heating registers. Kens conversion includes Cat engines. This is from an email:

I indeed have 3406 Cats rated 402 hp@ 2100 with Twin Disc 514 trans and 2.5-1 ratio. I have 12 and 20 KW Northern Lights generators as well. All were purchased new and are still unused. The most recent engines were 237 hp 8-71 Detroit's and before that were 6-71. The Detroit's were before my ownership. The 8-71s had 4 hours when the boat was donated. The boat was purchased by a local car dealer and brought to Everett for remodel. His architect talked him into another boat (65 ft.). The 8-71s were installed into the 65. It was a dismal failure with a 24 knot hull able to make only 8.6 knots. They fiddled around and got it up to 9.2.. It seems that most of these 83s were re-powered with 6-71s. I only know of one that used later model 6-71s (350 hp) otherwise most seemed to be the 165 hp. Because they were very cheap I suppose. They are a few Cummins and Cats out there though.

The boiler I had picked was a Buderus G215-4. This is what I thought was best for me based on several factors. They are one of the most costly from the standpoint of outright purchase price. However I already had a system that was compatible with the new boiler. Several other factors are also involved including the internal volume of water (mass) and AFUE ratings. Any hydronic system being installed for the first time is going to be very expensive. The cost of radiators (convectors) can easily be $250 - $650 each depending on size and type. Of course you would have to plumb the boat with either hard plumbing or a mix of hard plumbing / soft plumbing. You will need fill valves, pressure reducing valve, low water cutoff valve, circulator pump, hydronic expansion tank, air separator, and an oil burner with controls. It gets real exotic if you want to control the temp in each compartment separately requiring separate zone plumbing and numerous solenoid / flow control valves. Of course you will also need a stack. No 2 diesel which is what we use has about 140,000 btu / gallon. The new boilers are about 80-86% efficient so you get only about 114,000 btu for heating. We were heating only the below decks area and had a 1000 watt heater on most of the time. Typically our fuel consumption indicated that we were using about 80,000 btu. Most of the below decks area was not insulated.

I think the water to water type heat pump is the best bet for a big boat if you have lots of room for convectors. A water to water heat pump produces heating water to about 120 deg. where a boiler typically would be operated at 180 deg. or more. The unfortunate thing is that 120 deg. water has only about 52% of the btu of 180% water. In order to heat the boat up reasonably fast or respond to rapidly dropping temps. you have to have a lot more convectors. A 160,000 btu water to water heat pump is well in excess of $6,500 while a similar size boiler is about $2,500. Both require all the distribution stuff. The heat pump requires sizeable AC power and the boiler requires high priced fuel. The smaller boat stuff often marketed for mid size boats are about the same price as a small boiler. The Espar system is a warm air system where the heat is distributed via ducting while the Webesto is a hydroid system based on a tiny 1 gal. or so boiler. For boats in the 40-50 foot range they run about $2,500. They are made in larger sizes but I think you would still have to have two of them. Electric heaters are easy but are very costly to operate. A 1500 watt heater on 110 /120 volt pulls 12.7 to 13.6 amps while producing only 5100 btu at best. There are no easy answers for heating a boat dockside.

Boilers are well represented in this area. Several brands are the Buderus, Liberty, Slantfin, Smith, Hydrotherm just to name a few. Even Grainger carries them and they are a common heating system back east. You can find lots in your internet search engine under "Hydronic Heat" or boilers.

12/04/04 - Pressure Sprayed (water) out the pilot house and crews mess/chief quarters.

12/18/04 - Work Party - Tike, Dick and Dan worked on planning the Crew Quarters layout and building a bill of materials for the replacement plywood. Roxane started scraping linoleum and paint in the Pilot House.

Aaron Benson (N7XT) worked on chasing out the 12v DC circuit layouts and confirming the drawings. Aaron drew the generator regulator circuit and found an open wire wound resistor (1K) in the field circuit. He will try to find a replacement and we will re test in the future.

This evening Port Ludlow Associates sponsored a lighting contest and a free drink at the Harbormaster Restaurant for those that participated in the event.

Next work party is unscheduled, but probably part of 01/01/05. The first task will be to take down the Christmas lights. The lights are down now. The second will possibly be to install a "sink drain" pipe in the rear port corner to let rain water flow down into the lazarette bilge instead of just pooling and getting green.