Visit to Estelle and Drafting

This morning I visited Bob on his boat Estelle.

Bob had been kind enough to lend me his half inch tension wrench and I was very happy to get an opportunity to visit his boat and give him a hand.

Estelle is one of the more interesting boats plying the oceans. Bob built her in Port Townsend over a period of 6 or 7 years. She is a beamy ketch with high freeboard and a ferrocement hull. Bob was very generous with his time and gave me an extensive tour of his boat and then took me through his photo album which showed the key stages of construction. He described how the boat has shallow full length keel giving the boat a 5 ft draft (compared to my 7.5 ft draft). But the boat has lee boards fore and aft that we can swing down as required. For running downwind he uses the rear board only. For upwind work he uses the front board to help trim the boat to avoid weather helm.

After the tour we got down to work which turned out to be surprisingly easy for me. Bob had to go up his mast on a boatswain's chair and I had expected to hand winch him up. Instead I used his anchor windlass controlled by a foot switch. Everything went well and Bob was back down in 15 minutes.

I am presenting a few of the many photos that I took.

A spacious aft cabin with mind boggling views of the ocean, a genuine cast iron bath tub, an automatic washing machine, and a handsome captain. What more could a woman want!

After a small lunch I got to work on preparing the drawings for the repowering project. These drawings will serve two purposes: (1) ensure that the new Volvo engine will fit in Pachuca's compartment (2) assist in the discussion and planning of the installation.

I used the Open Office drawing package because it would permit me to make drawings to very accurate scale and produce results that can be emailed and printed.

The key was to do everything to the same scale. I had already produced front, side, and floor drawings of the engine compartment. This afternoon I produced front and side profiles of the Volvo D2-40 MS15L engine. I went to a lot of trouble to properly position the accurately sized engine mounts.

Then came the interesting part. I pasted the engine profiles on top of the compartment profiles. There was a bit of excitement and apprehension during this operation. I mean, suppose I had missed something and the engine would not fit? It was like fitting in a real engine and after some adjustments the fit was good

The drawings look a bit cartoonish and don't look anything like what a draftsman would produce, but they seem to do the job that I require very well.

The side profile was particularly interesting because it shows the 125 degree angle of the engine beds, the 4 degree angle of the engine, and the 8 degree angle of the propeller shaft flange. It will give us all a pretty good idea of the modifications that will have to be made to the engine beds.

This all came at a price. I didn't get ashore to do some badly needed shopping for fresh food and when I finished at 8 PM I was too tired and lazy to have a bath.

I hope that CCC is open on Sundays.