I'm getting a late start to the project this season. A couple of reasons - I can pretty much pick up where I left off in August and the weather has just been too cold and rainy to do anything else.
Today was an encouraging day - especially for day one of the boat project in 2020. I will have to digress just a little to provide some background. Over the past couple of years, we have had a contractor doing several projects on our place. One of the guys he brings with him is a Cuban named Rigoberto. Rigo is a natural mechanic and very much wanted to work on the boat, so when he had some time, I allowed him (and another Cuban named Diosmar) to help.
Today, I steamed up to 140 pounds of pressure and they worked and worked to try to get the engine to turn over. It tried and tried but six years of inactivity made the Semple Vee just a little reluctant to fire up. Rigo finally came up with an idea to use a strap wrapped around the flywheel to start it like a lawn mower. A couple of tries with that and we had a few seconds of the engine running on its own for the first time in years! I was ecstatic and Diosmar couldn't help mimicking the sound of the engine while it was running. There were big grins on faces all around. That was quitting time - the Cubans had to go back to Portland, but it gave me new hope that the boat will actually make it into the water this year. The only thing that prevented it from happening last season was that I just couldn't get it to run by myself.
April 4, 2020
Well, here it is a month later. I knew the boat was in bad need of paint and I arranged with the contractor to have some of his crew come to paint it. I really, REALLY dislike painting, so getting someone else to do it was just fine with me. Unfortunately, a couple of things happened to slow the progress on the boat. (1) It has been cold and rainy and since I needed to get the boat outside to sand and paint, it just wasn't happening. If it has gone on too much longer, we could have painted it inside but it didn't have to come to that because (2) the Coronovirus hit and pretty much shut everything down. After a while though, Luis (the contractor) and his crew decided that Wheeler was a much safer location to ride out COVID -19 than Portland and they came back to work here - keeping six feet away from all of us. That has worked and the boat is getting painted.
One interesting thing about that: the teak brown that was originally part of the trim on the boat is no longer manufactured and it seems no one else is making any kind of brown marine paint, much less a teak brown. So, I made the decision to brighten up the old girl with some burgundy paint in place of the brown. The effect has been just what I had hoped for - a nice bright accent to the beige and gray surrounding that trim. You can't see it in these pictures, but there's one other change in color - Rigo re-painted the blue on the bottom using some paint I had left over from the fishing boat. It's an anti-fouling paint that's a lighter blue than before and it also looks real nice.
April 18, 2020
So, Luis' crew has been here on and off over the past couple of weeks (as I said, they much prefer to be here than in the city), everything - the entire boat - has been painted except the topside white marine enamel on the hull. That has been particularly difficult to find. I located some at Englund Marine in Astoria, but it wasn't going to be in until last night - after my painting crew went back to Portland. But the paint guy at Englund called to say that he located a gallon at their store in Ilwaco, Washington. I could wait a day for it to come by courier or I could go get it. Ilwaco is about an hour and a half one way from here, so I decided that I would go get it Friday morning. The good news and bad news from that trip is that I did get the paint, but Rigo still had some more work to do on the hull and the boat didn't get its coat of white. I'm pretty sure Rigo is coming back to town on Monday and we'll see if it gets done then.
May 17, 2020
I did not think it would be another month before I updated this journal, but here it is. CoVid19 has had a significant effect on our lifestyle and things that seemed routine are now difficult, if not impossible.
Some things have been done though. The boat is completely re-painted - inside and out - including that white for the hull. A troublesome trailer winch has been disassembled, parts ordered and received and re-built - it now works just fine.
The lettering on the stern has started to come off, and so I have ordered a new set and that will be ready on Friday - five days from now. I will tow the boat to Tillamook to the sign shop and bring it back home the same day.
I have been in touch with our friends with the dock. They have always looked forward to allowing me to keep the boat moored there, but have been reluctant to do so as long as CoVid19 is a threat. They have, however, decided to let me dock the boat in her slip and work on her from there. I had made alternate plans at the local marina - he would find a place for the boat for a month or two - but now it appears that won't be necessary.
So, that brings me to today. The boat is ready to go in the water to enable me to work on it with the condensing system completely submerged. One of the obstacles has been the closure of the local boat ramp because of the virus. Things have progressed to the point where it looks like the ramp will now re-open this week. That means I can get the boat in the water before too long. However, there's still the problem of the engine. Although we have had it running for a couple of minutes at a time, it's still going to require some fine-tuning at the dock. I plan to use the fishing boat to act as a tugboat to get the steamer to the dock. The problem is, the outboard is still getting its bottom paint restored and it won't be ready to launch until for another couple of days.
So, stay tuned. The next entry should be about a successful journey to the dock and the resumption of the work on the engine to get her running well for the first time in seven years. Anxious? Hell, yes!
May 26, 2020
Delays, delays, delays. I towed the boat to the sign shop in Tillamook to get the lettering re-done and had to tow it right back home again. The sign guy said that the old lettering needs to be removed, the area sanded smooth and then re-painted before he can do anything. I hadn't really looked at it before then and he's absolutely right. It's a mess. Take a close look at the lettering in the photo above and you can see where the hull color has been applied around the letters. So, instead of launching, I'm waiting for the lettering to be removed and the hull re-painted. I suppose I could do it, but the guy who painted the rest of the hull can do it much better than I could, so I'm going to wait a while to see if he can work some time into his schedule to do that. Once that has been done, I get to tow the boat back to Tillamook again to get the lettering applied. Then, after waiting a while for the letters to really set, I will finally be able to launch. The outboard is done and is ready to be launched as a support vessel. The boat launch has re-opened, but is limited to weekdays only. That may affect the number of people I can gather to help with the launch. But, first things first; get the old letters off and get it sanded down.
May 29, 2020
After 6 years, 8 months and 20 days, the Captain Bell finally returned to the water. Let me get caught up before describing my feelings about that occasion.
First of all, we got the old letters off the stern. It wasn't too difficult; half of them were falling off already anyway. We sanded the area where the letters were and then primered and re-painted the hull around that space. I made a new appointment to get the new letters applied and Thursday, I made a return trip to Tillamook to the sign shop to try again the get them put on. It took a little over an hour for the sign guy to finish the job and...WOW...do they ever look good.
So, with the letters done, there was nothing left but the launch the boat. We set Friday as the target and I made an extensive list of things I needed to do to make sure she was ready. There were a couple of glitches in the planning though. The guy I was counting on to act as a towboat was a no-show - he hadn't launched his boat yet. The other thing was that I pretty much had set 3:00 in the afternoon as my target for getting everyone together and helping with the launch. However, the day before, I was told that we were going to hold a special city council meeting at 3:00 that afternoon. I was promised that it was going to be a short meeting, so I proceeded with my plan to get the boat in the water that afternoon. I had to get the fishing boat out and launched and then make a return trip with the steamer. I launched the Captain Bell just before the meeting and left her at the dock until I was able to return. We took her under tow with Numbut V (that's now the name of the fishing boat) and a few minutes later we were moored in her usual spot at Kahrs' Wharf.
That's where I wanted to leave her for the night, but I was persuaded by the rest of my crew to steam her up and get the engine turning over. We had the time, so that's what we did. On board were my son-in-law Jason, Luis, our contractor on a project we're working on, and Rigoberto, the Cuban that works for Luis and who was instrumental in getting the engine fired up and rolled over in the first place. Rigo was sitting in the captain's seat, so I let him get us steamed up. We had time for only one beer before we had steam and had the engine rolling over at the dock. It's amazing how quickly Rigo picks up on all things mechanical. He instinctively knew how to balance the oil and propane/steam feeds to maximize the heat in the firebox.
Anyway, we had pressure and Rigo was rolling the engine both forward and back with apparent ease. I was just sitting back watching the show, so I have no idea how much effort it took to shift between forward and reverse - Rigo is a big, strong guy - but I was almost giddy watching the engine run; first forward and then back. That's one of the things I had worked on last season - getting her to shift. Prior to that, it would not shift into reverse because the linkage was all wrong.
So, there we were. Full pressure and engine rolling. I wanted to leave it like that for the night, but Rigo begged me to take her out for a spin. I declined, pointing out that we had no oil in the lubrication system. He picked up the oil can and started oiling her up while continuing to work at convincing me to cast off. Considering that he speaks no English and my Spanish is extremely limited, there was a lot of "Charades" going on and I finally - against my better judgment - said okay. We loaded the boat with the crew that had been watching on the dock and pulled out of the slip. Luis was at the helm and Rigo was the engineer. Two guys who had limited experience in a boat, much less a steamboat! We made a loop upstream past my house for a photo op for my wife and my daughter before I told them to head back to the dock. We had lost feed water pressure by that time and the boiler level was getting low at an uncomfortable rate. I debated whether to inject more water into the boiler, but calculated that we could just make it back to the dock with what we had. So Luis and Rigo got us back into the slip and we secured her for the night.
As expected, she was taking on water - it had been nearly 7 years with a wooden boat high and dry - and she really needed to swell up and close the joints. So Jason and I made a quick trip to Tillamook to get a pump and float switch. We spent the rest of the evening rigging the whole thing together and at just about dark, we were able to test the thing in the shop. It worked just fine, so we hauled everything down to the boat and set it up in the bilge. I had visions of having to set my alarm every two hours and run down to the dock to plug in a modified fountain pump I had rigged. This new system cost a few dollars more than I was prepared to spend, but the peace of mind of having a reliable pump that will automatically keep her afloat was worth it.
All in all, a pretty good day. A monumental day if you will. 6 years, 8 months and 20 days is a long time to go without having the boat in the water, and it feels soooo good to get her back.
May 30, 2020
I was up at 5:30 this morning to check out both boats in the telescope. Bilge pumps must be working because the waterline on each boat was just where it was supposed to be.
This journal is a work in progress and will be continued.
Well, here it is a month later. I knew the boat was in bad need of paint and I arranged with the contractor to have some of his crew come to paint it. I really, REALLY dislike painting, so getting someone else to do it was just fine with me. Unfortunately, a couple of things happened to slow the progress on the boat. (1) It has been cold and rainy and since I needed to get the boat outside to sand and paint, it just wasn't happening. If it has gone on too much longer, we could have painted it inside but it didn't have to come to that because (2) the Coronovirus hit and pretty much shut everything down. After a while though, Luis (the contractor) and his crew decided that Wheeler was a much safer location to ride out COVID -19 than Portland and they came back to work here - keeping six feet away from all of us. That has worked and the boat is getting painted. 
One interesting thing about that: the teak brown that was originally part of the trim on the boat is no longer manufactured and it seems no one else is making any kind of brown marine paint, much less a teak brown. So, I made the decision to brighten up the old girl with some burgundy paint in place of the brown. The effect has been just what I had hoped for - a nice bright accent to the beige and gray surrounding that trim. You can't see it in these pictures, but there's one other change in color - Rigo re-painted the blue on the bottom using some paint I had left over from the fishing boat. It's an anti-fouling paint that's a lighter blue than before and it also looks real nice. 
I did not think it would be another month before I updated this journal, but here it is. CoVid19 has had a significant effect on our lifestyle and things that seemed routine are now difficult, if not impossible. 
The lettering on the stern has started to come off, and so I have ordered a new set and that will be ready on Friday - five days from now. I will tow the boat to Tillamook to the sign shop and bring it back home the same day. 
So, that brings me to today. The boat is ready to go in the water to enable me to work on it with the condensing system completely submerged. One of the obstacles has been the closure of the local boat ramp because of the virus. Things have progressed to the point where it looks like the ramp will now re-open this week. That means I can get the boat in the water before too long. However, there's still the problem of the engine. Although we have had it running for a couple of minutes at a time, it's still going to require some fine-tuning at the dock. I plan to use the fishing boat to act as a tugboat to get the steamer to the dock. The problem is, the outboard is still getting its bottom paint restored and it won't be ready to launch until for another couple of days. 
After 6 years, 8 months and 20 days, the Captain Bell finally returned to the water. Let me get caught up before describing my feelings about that occasion.