Gas System Finallyt Working, and Short Sail

I reported last January that the boat's refurbished LPG gas system was up and running OK.  Unfortunately during the Bunbury Cruise I discovered that the gas cutoff solenoid was not working properly, ie it always allowed gas to pass through regardless of the state of the gas detector.  This meant that the boat had no emergency gas cutoff.  This surprised me because the solenoid had been working OK before the refurbishment and I could still hear it clacking on and off according to the dictates of the detector.   I can best describe the problem with reference to the following photograph of the final setup with the new solenoid.

Final Setup with New Solenoid

The gas flows from right to left.   The LPG cylinder to supply gas to the boat will be set by the green selector valve.  The gas will then pass through the black solenoid switch with the brass cutoff valve above, then through the two-stage pressure reducer and on to the galley.

In the old setup the solenoid cutoff was positioned to the left (ie downstream) of the pressure reducer.  When assembling the new system I realized that this made no sense because if the pressure reducer developed a leak from, say, a ruptured diaphragm, the gas detector would cut off would not stop the leak.  The sensible thing was to put the solenoid one step forward, between the pressure reducer and the selector switch.  I did this but the surprising result was that the solenoid was never able to cut off the gas and it took several visits to Gas Components in Canning Vale to solve the mystery.

The boat's original gas cutoff had not been designed to deal with the relatively high pressures at the cylinder.  In order to make it work the original installers had placed the cutoff downstream of the pressure reducer where the pressure was low.  Yes, this worked but was totally illegal and highly dangerous.  A gas leak from the reducer could very easily have led to a buildup of gas in the bilge, then up into the cabin.  A flick of the bilge pump switch or a spark from trying to start the stove could have blown the boat to smithereens.  The company sourced the appropriate cutoff from their Queensland branch at about 4 times the cost of the low pressure version. 

This is another lesson in not accepting everything on a professionally built boat at face value.  There was a similar trap in the irresponsible wiring to the windlass battery that caused that major electrical fire in the Sea of Cortez that could very easily led to the loss of the boat with Brenda and I in the water.

The last two photos show the final setup, with the selector switch easy to reach and the solenoid cutoff and its wiring safely tucked away.





Last week Paul and I went for a sail.  We got off to an early start and were looking forward to a full day of sailing.  We sailed into a stiff northerly breeze and a rising sea where Paul got good training on reefing and what can go wrong in heavy weather when the skipper makes mistakes.

The anchor jumped off the roller in the pounding sea and we were forced to ship it with great difficulty then lash it to a bollard near the mast.  We also had unnecessary leaks because I had forgotten to tighten down the forward hatch and blank off the vent above the head.  At noon we brought down the mainsail and gybed the boat to return to the marina under headsail only.  I got lazy and tried to make the gybe with the headsail still 25% rolled out and managed to get a nasty sail wrap so that we could roll the sail neither in or out.  We got out of that jam the hard way by untying the sheets and winding them back from around the sail., but as a result we ran out of furling line well before the sail was fully rolled up.  We made do by doing a rough job of holding the excess sail to the forestay and were able to sort out the problem at the marina.

This was all due to lack of practice on my part.  The only sails I've made on Pachuca since the end of the circumnavigation 2 years ago have been on the annual Bunbury Cruise, made at the optimal time of year. 

Anyway, it was good training for Paul and a good reminder to me about preparing the boat for rough weather.