2009 Spring Commissioning - Fresh Engines

During the week the boys at the marina were able to replace the raw water pump on the port engine. Now, at last, I would be able to take Vintage Viking out on the water for some sea-trials of her newly-freshened engines and systems.

I traveled down to the marina early on Saturday. I had arranged for the local cable TV guy to come and get me some 'rainy-day' television capabilities. I was getting tired of the DVD collection, but didn't want the full package so I opted for basic TV channels. Never know when these guys show up, so I was at the marina at 8am. Jumped on the boat ready to fire up the engines. But no dice. The starboard battery bank was stone cold. I had recently replaced all the batteries, since they were accidentally boiled over during the winter. But I hadn't heard the on-board charger running since the boat was hauled out, and as I investigated the problem my worse fears came to be; the charger was dead. I traced all the fuses and breakers but no DC power. After what seemed like hours, I gave in and I opened it up. I found that there were overload fuses on each of the three banks to protect it, and they did just that. New fuses, an hour or so to charge up the batteries and I was ready to go out on the water.

But, not yet. The cable tv guy shows up, and gets started. Nice guy, puts the wires where I ask, but no tv signal. Apparently, the entire side of the marina is dead, not having had any customers for the last 3 years. OK, strike two for the weekend. But the engines were running!!!! I cleaned up a bit and cleared away all the tools and such from my little maintenance projects so that I can go out on the bay.

Untie the boat, pull out of the marina and into the no-wake zone. It was such a beautiful day for late April. Forecast was for clear sunny skies and temps in the high 80's. This was gonna be great!!! I approach the end of the NWZ, and begin to accelerate, being cautious of break in instructions. As soon as I attempted to hit the gas, both engines cut out. Started right up again, but would cut out when I accelerated slowly. Carburetors must need more adjusting. If I accelerated quicker, the boat would run. OK then, quick it is. As I approached 2500 RPM, the port engine started to require excessive throttle to keep up, and would only get to 3200. Strike three!!!

So here I was, four months since haul out and major engine work, and the damn thing wouldn't run! The boating gods were not looking upon me favorably today. But it was still floating, the starboard was running OK and the weather was great. So I decided to push on, and to put the boat through several tests and develop a list of issues. Being in the construction business all of my life I am very familiar with 'punch lists'. Since I considered the re-powering of Vintage Viking to be a major project, I treated the repower of Vintage Viking like one of my construction projects that we would run commissioning tests on the major equipment before turning it over to the owner. For the rest of the weekend, I would be the Owner and want to see the Project perform to my satisfaction before I accept it as complete.

Overall, the work done was exceptional. The problem was that since I was trying to get the work completed at the same time as my fellow boaters were trying to get their boats wet, the staff at the marina was a little overworked. Eddie, the mechanic who took over once the engines were set into the boat, had worked long and hard to get it to this point. But he was also pulled in other directions for other clients. He apparently never had time to take Vintage Viking out on the water for test runs.

I made the marina aware of the issues by sending them a report, similar to what I get from my clients. For the next three days, Eddie was back on board tracing down the little bugs that vexed me last weekend. On Wednesday I traveled back down at the end of the day. The weather was much cooler than the weekend, but still great to be on the water. As I puled into the marina I could see Vintage Viking moored up at the service dock. Eddie & Mike had just gotten back from a run on the bay with her, and were making some additional adjustments. Mike asked "wanna go out for a test ride?". Yeah, like I needed convincing. Hopped aboard, threw the lines and we were off. Boat sounded and behaved allot better, and soon were were taking her through some paces. Adjustments to the carburetors paid off, as port engine was doing much better, topping out at 4200RPM and running allot smoother. Still had some problems with instrumentation readings a little wacky, but Eddie was still on it. We were out for about an hour, and i had set up the portable hand-held GPS. Once I got the boat up plane, I was pleasantly surprised to see she was doing a 29MPH clip into the slight wind. What an improvement over the 18 MPH before the engine work.

Looking forward to the weekend. Since my birthday is Sunday, this weekend qualifies as MY time to do whatever I want. I'll be spending the entire weekend on board, regardless of what Mother Nature, or the Boat Gods, have in store.