View Single Post
  #7   IP: 165.225.38.128
Old 10-29-2019, 01:28 PM
Surcouf's Avatar
Surcouf Surcouf is offline
Afourian MVP, Professor Emeritus
 
Join Date: May 2018
Posts: 361
Thanks: 328
Thanked 163 Times in 123 Posts
And what had to happen.....

So life is funny.

after allowing us to enjoy the Labor day week-end, and a few other nice days of fall sailing, Saturday was "moving day" from the "summer marina", to the "winter dry marina". Beautiful day on Narragansett Bay, engine takes us out of the marina, sails are set, easy sailing for the 2-3 miles to Warwick, RI. Arriving at the harbor channel entrance, furl sail, start engine, and engage our boat into the channel. At this point, the Sea Tow boat passes us... as a good superstitious sailor, I should have known it was a bad sign... 100 yards later, engine starts making a weird noise, and shut down. I try to re-start it, it starts right back-up (with an increased "whistle noise", aka the combustion gases leak), as soon as I engage the prop, it shuts down. So sailor get back in action: with the remaining inertia, U-turn toward the bay, sail out and back to Safety of the open sea.
Fast forward a few minutes once anchored safely, I checked on the engine... and miracle!!! my 3-years stuck spark-plug is moving!! Moving so much I was able to pull it up, without any rotation!! let's call that a bad sign...
Call to the insurance towing department, who ask his usual scripted questions. Once he knows where I am and what happened, he asks for the name of the boat, I answer the truth: "Almost There", and here we go for 5 minutes of an uncontrollable laughing session!

Fast forward today: boat is at the marina, and the head is likely very damaged.

My situation: I am supposed to ditch / donate that boat as I will be leaving the US next year. So I have no appetite to spend big bucks in an overhauled engine etc... But I like that boat and its engine despite its temperamental character, and I would love to know it is sailing again in the future. So I am willing to spend some little money (and a lot of time) to have a running engine again.

My assumptions - ideas:
- the head is dead. This seems easy based on the spark plug moving up and down like a piston, and previous pictures. Anybody to disagree?
- the best case for me is to pull the engine out (it is a Catalina 27, impossible to remove a rusty head while in place), take the head out, remove all the studs, find a used one, put all back together, paint the whole thing and put it back in place. I can feel this is going to be a huge amount of time... but what I am looking at money-wise, best case? A used head, gaskets, new studs? new engine mounts? ((I do not even want to consider what can go wrong on a very rusty engine disassembly))
- Any other idea // Comment??

Thank you !!!
Reply With Quote