That was the week (and a half) that was

 So having got Pagan back in her element and finding that, as half expected, one or more head bolts had failed to torque down, what happened next?

Simon rocked up on Saturday and we set about dealing with the stripped head bolt thread and it's partner in crime opposite. Although the second bolt had gone down to torque, two out of three of the bolts across the head at the aft end of the engine had now stripped (the centre bolt having already been helicoiled when we first rebuilt the engine) and we decided not to take any chances and do both of the outer bolts.

That was all done in an afternoon and everything put back together again. There's still a few outstanding periperhal jobs, the main ones being fitting a new and relocated engine stop cable and fitting a cooling system header tank and plumbing in the calorifier. These can, however, wait until later possibly even until the winter. We also have a low speed timing issue on the engine, which we suspect is long standing, which again isn't an immediate attention job as at normal running speeds the timing is fine. It won't do the engine any harm as long as we don't trundle around at below 1500rpm for hours on end and I can't imagine we'd ever do that.

Jane and I were then on a mission to turn Pagan inside out and put her back to being a cruising yacht instead of a caravan / workshop. During the course of that excercise, we'd determined that not only were our domestic batteries fried, so was the two or three year old engine battery. It wasn't taking or holding a charge and I've reached the conclusion that before it committed suicide, our defunct battery charger had taken out the domestic and engine batteries.

That meant a trip to Chelmsford to pick up a new No.1 (Engine) Battery from Halfords.I chose a reasonably priced 95a/h sealed lead acid battery, larger than really needed for the No.1 battery but it'll have to do double duty as I won't be fitting new domestic batteries until over the winter (we need more capacity than we can squeeze into the existing battery compartment and that means a new battery box in the port cockpit locker which isn't a quick job to create).

Finally, by Tuesday, we were ready to let go from the pontoon and go for a blat up and down the river within sight of the moorings. A good solid hour plus of zooming up and down and I was a very happy chappy.

We picked up our mooring on the second attempt and picked up where we'd left off on the immediate to-do list. The principal job now was sorting out the running rigging, bending on the sails and fitting the new sail covers.

She does look shipshape and seamanlike now she's sporting her full rig again!

That said, all of the running rigging needs to come off over the winter and be thoroughly cleaned. I don't think we need to replace anything, all the lines are sound, but it's all grungy and stiff.

The big test came on Saturday ...

Could we make it to Burnham-on-Crouch without breaking down?

Yes we could!

We probably got some funny looks motoring downriver when the sailing conditions were near perfect but this was an engine test run not a jolly. And she performed flawlessly finishing off with just about the nearest thing to a perfect marina docking manoeuvre we've ever managed.

We met up with Simon at The Old White Hart for a meal and beer where we were joined for drinks by our good friends Neal and Jos. It was nice to get out for the night but the fly in the ointment was an unfolding family crisis back at home. That had to be left in the hands of other family members overnight as there was nothing we could do about it!

Sunday saw us run back up to Fambridge again under motor. No funny looks this time as the wind was, in any case, due wrong blowing straight down the river. Given the overnight wind forecast and the need to unload the boat and get away as early as possible the next day, we decided to splash the cash and go alongside for the night.

We really do need to cut down on the amount of kit we take away with us as it takes way too much time and effort to cart it to and from the van to the boat! Anyway, by mid-morning we were ready for the off.

There was a stiff breeze blowing downriver and a bit of a chop running but we succeeded in picking up our mooring at the first attempt. Getting the second buoy tail aboard and made fast was a bit of an excercise though as it had wrapped itself around the riser chain. A bit of faffing about and we got it sorted and made fast.

All that remained was to shut down and switch off everything - seacocks closed, gas and electric off and isolated, all things that lock locked and that was that. A ride ashore on the trot boat and away home.

So ended a very pleasing eleven days. Pagan is back in commission and shapng up. I am feeling the love again, it's been sheer bloody mindedness that's got us through the last 12 months as a year ago we were on the ragged edge of calling it a day.

There's still a mahoosive to-do list but it's back to being things we planned and/or anticipated.

We're not sure exactly what our plans are for the rest of the summer and autumn as a combination of Jane's work rota being changed, yet again, and the aformentioned domestic crisis (a very elderly father who up until now has been able to care for himself but may now need someone present 24/7), mean that we're going to have to re-plan and change holiday bookings etc.

I'm hoping we can get out for a short cruise to somewhere other than the River Crouch before the season is over. We'll see.

We're also undecided about whether to haul out for the winter or leave her in. Hauling out is expensive but on the other hand it's not easy to do significant work on the boat when she's in the water. And by next spring there are several projects I want finished - the v-berth refit, fitting new anchoring gear including an electric winch and new domestic batteries and charger/inverter being the main ones.

Onwards and upwards ...

Splash!

 A hectic day today. Picked up Jane from the Big Shed at 06:00, drove down to the boat arriving 08:15 and got our heads down for a few Zzzzs.

Wiggy rocked up about 12ish to put us back in the water for the first time since last year.

It's always nerve wracking when the boat goes back in, the more so when you've drilled new holes in the bottom of the bolt. The moment the boat is lowered into the water, it's a mad dash round all the skin fittings etc. with a torch checking for leaks. And there was indeed a leak!

It was, however, a minor affair. The jubilee clips on the new raw water intake just needed tightening up further. No big deal and soon sorted. Then it was a tow round onto the river pontoon and make fast alongside.

Simon arrived and after carrying out further checks around the engine, it was time to fire her up. We had, of course, run her briefly whilst ashore (a bit naughty but needs must), now it was time to see if she'd start and run properly.

And happy days, she started and ran properly! The new cooling pump is rather effective, much more so than itd predecessor and the cunning bracket designed by Simon to engineer my cunning suggestion of turning the pump through 180 degrees (so that the impeller can be changed more easily) works a treat.

Then having run her up to operating temperature and let her cool back down a bit (per the manual) it was time to see if the head bolts would all torque down. We were expecting two or three of them to strip the threads as they hadn't felt great when initially torqued down a few weeks ago. And sure enough, one did.

It might be possible to sort it without taking the head off but neither Simon nor I feels 100% happy with doing that and for the sake of a new head gasket and a few extra hours work, tomorrow we'll pull the head off again and helicoil the stripped threads. In fact, we've had a thunk about it and collectively agreed that for the sake of an extra hour or two of drilling and tapping, we'll helicoil all the remaining threads and have done with it. It would be beyond frustrating to just do the one that's stripped and then have another one go when we're back to final torque down (hopefully on Sunday!). That would be a proper show stopper as Simon has to be elsewhere for a few days next week, we're not his only customers (hi Neal and Jos ☺)

So there we are for today. Floating, not sinking, running but not quite running in. I'm not downhearted, this was anticipated hence my having laid in the spare gaskets to do it if necessary.

Cockpit Gratings - the project - introduction and first steps

 So Pagan has a once nice set of Teak cockpit gratings. Sadly, however, they've seen better days!

To the left is the largest of the three gratings and as you can see it's in a state. Several of the rails have gone walkabout and an area to the left of the picture had become so rotten that my foot all but went through it when I hopped down into the cockpit a while back. That had been fixed with a temporary piece of plywood.

Underneath, the frame joints are starting to come apart and there's rot and even some "nail" sickness (actually screw sickness) where the steel screws have corroded and damaged the surrounding wood.

As a temporary measure to keep us going, I stripped out all the old grating cores and screwed split lengths of decking timber to the existing frames. It's practical but not especially attractive and, no, you're not getting a photo of them!

I was hoping that the main frames would be salvegable but they're too far gone. I could also buy the gratings to cut to size and fit within either the existing frames or new frames but they're eye wateringly expensive. And I have a fancy for a serious woodworking project so I going to set to and make all new gratings entirely from scratch.

It's not going to be my first woodworking rodeo, I've done a fair bit of wood butchery in the past and I've got a reasonable collection of tools. I've also now got a space to work in, albeit it's not exactly a huge space, having demolished the rotten wreck of what had been my brother's shed when he lived here and replaced it with a new 11'x8' plastic shed (in hindsight, I wish I'd spent more money on a good timber shed - the plastic shed is OK-ish but it's not great). I've got power and lighting to it and a security system although I won't be keeping valuable equipment in there (that'll have to be moved to and fro as needed).

So what's going to be involved? 

I'll post in more detail about the design stage in a seperate post as it's quite involved but simply put there's the timber frame around the outside, a sub-frame underneath that which carries the actual grating, two upright rails down either side underneath upon which the gratings stand and, the complex bit, the actual gratings themselves which are made of interlocking rails.

You can sort of see how they work in the picture of the smallest of the gratings which also happens to be the one in the "best" condition (as it's only got one loose rail, so far!)

To recreate the gratings will mean cutting a lot of rabbets in a lot of pieces of wood and for that we're going to (try to) work smarter rather than harder by building a custom routing jig. In fact, I've already built a Mk.1 version (of which more anon) which has been both a proof of concept (in that it sort of worked) and highlighted a number of issues which we're working to resolve.

The old gratings are made of Teak and I wish I could stick with that. Getting hold of good quality teak in any significant quantity is not easy and when you can get it the price is horrendous. What's more, the FSC certified teak that is available is almost all African Teak, not Burma Teak, and whilst it is similar it isn't considered suitable for boat decks (and therefore it's unlikely to be suitable for cockpit gratings).

So I'm going to be using poor man's teak, more properly known as Iroko. Whilst not quite as durable, it has many of the same qualities as teak and looks very similar. Plus, it's readily available at a vaguely sensible price! In fact, I've already bought and collected it ... or most of it as I'm going to need one more board as a result of a bit of a process rethink. 

The timber is supplied rough sawn that being considerably cheaper than buying it PAR (Planed All Round). And happily I have a small planer / thicknesser with which to process the timber down to exactly the sizes I require. Or I had until I blew it up! In fairness to the poor machine, it had been left sitting on the floor of a damp garage for several years and frankly it was a miracle it worked at all even if it only did so briefly. Replacing it with a new one, the same as the old one, was not prohibitively expensive and the old one has been stashed away as a source of replacement drive belts (prone to snapping) and what have you.

I have an old basic table saw which, with a new blade fitted, is working fine (so far, touch wood!), a sliding compound radial chop saw I acquired off my brother who has also supplied a hefty router which will be used on the aforementioned routing jig, a set of bar clamps and a whole crate of saws, planers, sanders etc. along with chisels, mallets, drills, plus cutters ... in short, I've got most of what I need and what I haven't got I can either manage without or buy for prices I can feasibly afford.

Which brings me back to preparing the workspace ... I won't kid on that it's anything even vaguely approaching a workshop! It's compact and bijou but it's enough. I've got some racking space down one side for storage and two workbenches on the other side.

One, which can be seen above right, is a cheap new bench I've bought to be used as my "engineering" bench. That bench will likely feature in future projects such as a new switch panel, new boom end fittings (how they're going to be made is being hotly debated currently!) and others.

To the left of it is an old woodworking bench my Dad acquired off his friend Richard who in turn had acquired it off his Dad. We didn't give it much thought or even think that much of it until, after moving it from the aforementioned damp garage into the shed and perusing several, mostly American, woodworking YouTube videos, I realised there was rather more to it than initially met the eye.

The planing stop after removal

It turns out to be a good example of a classic "English" style joiners bench and it was probably originally the personal bench of a professional joiner. Whilst on the smaller end of the size scale, these benchs were never huge being quite narrow and only 5'  to 7' long. This one is a 5' example. The giveaways that it's professional kit are twofold - it has a very fancy rebated sprung loaded planing stop and an equally fancy fitting for a holdfast clamp.

The holdfast fitting, removed and upside down

Sadly, the actual holdfast clamp is long gone, I wish I had it! But a cheap holdfast was £12 off Amazon and works surprisingly well as I shall demonstrate later.

I removed these fittings because there was one major problem with the table top - a slight hump in the middle which meant work rocked around on it.

I didn't want to go berserk and plane the whole thing down to a perfect finish but I did need it fairly flat.

So I attacked is judiciously with the planer and the orbital sander until the hump was no more ...

Then I carefully cleaned out the rebates for the fittings with a chisel until they sat back just below the surface of the bench ... which they didn't quite before I started anyway - and reinstalled the planing stp and the holdfast dog hole.

The planing stop springs up as you undo the screw and holds a workpiece as you push against it, usually for planing the top surface as the name suggests.

The holdfast clamp is a primitive beast! You simply drop the leg down the hole with the pad on top of the workpiece then whack it on the top of the leg with a big hammer!

It works!

To remove it, just whack it again, this time on the side at the top of the leg, and it pulls back out. It looks Medieval ... and it is! If not older as there's evidence of bascially the same device being used by carpenters all the way back into antiquity and beyond.

Sneaking into the background there is a modern metal tail vice I added the other day. This style of bench didn't usually have a tail vice but I wanted one. I just need to add some wooden face plates to it and it'll be ready for use.

The original wooden face vice has had it I'm afraid. There's no end of play in the wooden threaded screws, the handles have both broken and it's beyond salvation. I shall be replacing it with a cast metal face vice when I make up my mind which one I'm going to go for!

I shall also likely be making a few other mods to the bench. I'm probably going to replace the backboard (which is almost certainly not original) with a taller one to which I can attach some storage for screws etc. and I'll almost certainly be adding some additional dog holes - one or more on the facing board would aid with working longer pieces of timber and there may be a need for additional holes in the worktop but I shall hold off on that until the need becomes apparent.

I forgot to mention that on a pre-existing paved area out front of the shed there's a larger heavy duty outdoor work bench which doubles up as Dad's potting bench and somewhere I can set up my table saw and thicknesser provided it's not raining.

So there we have it for now. This is going to be a slow burn project, I don't expect to finish the gratings for some time (months rather than weeks) as there's still a lot of work to do on various aspects of the design and process. Especially the process!

Progress!

 So all in all, a good day and much progress made

The mystery of the perenially blocking up cockpit drain has been solved. Removing a cut cable tie from the end of the hose at the seacock end then released a load of crud that it was retaining. Now I need to finish off lapping in the seacocks and refit them

I couldn't get the old anode bolts out due to a lack of a 17mm tube socket but Simon "Engines" Dunn saved the day 'cos he had the right tools for the job. I did comment on the fact that I was paying him to watch me undo the bolts with his tools! The anode bolts needed replacing as they were corroding quite badly and, indeed, once we got them out it was clear that the sealant had failed and water was starting to get in behind the plates. Much worse and we would, technically at least, have been sinking!

Then we got back onto the main event - fitting the new intake seacock, water strainer and raw water pump. In no particular order, the new intake skin fitting, seacock and elbow all went in with no issues (other than cleaning up afterwards 'cos Simon and I are both inclined to use far more Sika than strictly necessary - better too much and a clean up than too little and have to start again).

We had a brains trust meeting about the location of the new basket water strainer and implemented Plan B. That meant some wood butchery to make up a backing spacer. Happily, I had a spare piece of Utile left over from previous projects that just needed cutting down to length

The raw water pump is a bit more complicated as I decided I wanted it turned through 180 degrees so that the impeller housing is facing into the cabin. As originally fitted, changing the impeller on a cold engine would have been a right royal pain in the bottom working blind with barely enough space between the engine, the pump and the alternator to get one hand in. On a hot engine, and if you need to change the impeller in a hurry you can bet it'll be a *very* hot engine, it would have been well nigh impossible

So Simon has made up a steel plate to mount the pump forward of it's original position and I made another timber spacer block from a nice piece of scrap hardwood that's been looking for a purpose in life for ages. We're agreed that we need to fettle up a bracing strut to stop the plate bouncing around but we're nearly there

The only problem that leaves me with is that I'll have to relocate the saloon blown air heating outlet as the pump is now in the way. I'm not worrying about that right now, I have options (it'll probably get re-routed out of the engine bay altogether and run through the nav table seat if I go ahead with relocating the battery bank that is currently under the seat elsewhere)

Tomorrow, my mission is to clean up and make ready to fit new anode bolts which will then be a quick job when Simon comes back on Saturday* to finish the cooling system plumbing. That, then, will be him done on Pagan until we're back in the water and can run the engine in.

I'll do some pics in due course, maybe. P'raps.

The venerable Merc is out of intensive care ...

So after a fairly intense four days (ok, actually four half days but there's a limit on how long even a highly trained gymnast like Simon "Engines" Dunn (in joke) can spend in a cramped engine bay) ...

SHE LIVES!

The venerable Mercedes OM636 aboard S/Y "Pagan" is officially a runner again after a complete top end recon / rebuild and the repair or replacement of most of the marinsation peripherals

And once she'd warmed up a bit and settled in, she sounded good! Better. in fact, than she ever sounded before

From memory ...

The head has been skimmed (requiring 8 thou taking off it which is a lot and close to the limit of the possible)
The valve seats have been recut
The valve stem tips have been reground to profile
All of the rocker arm faces have been sintered and reground to profile
The top face of the engine block has been lapped and the bores honed
The injectors have been sent away and serviced
The alloy cooling system elbows and mainfolds have all been replaced (they were corroded to within an inch of failure, every one!) as have the heat exchanger end caps (which were also on their way out)
The heat exchanger core has been re-soldered at one end where it was likewise on the point of catastrophic failure
The cooling water cap flange has been soldered back onto the cooling water tank (when we took the cap off, the flange came with it ... it ain't supposed to do that!!!)

The valve clearances have been set and the head torqued down but both will require re-doing once she's been run back in. Simon had to helicoil one head bolt and has his concerns about whether three others will go down to final torque without stripping (a nuisance but probably do-able without all the time, trouble and expense of taking the head of again. We shall see, it is what it is)

In the process, Simon has also fitted the new parallel glow plugs I bought about 8 years ago and bottled out of trying to fit for fear of the old crappy series glow plugs not coming out in one piece. My concerns were justified as it turns out given that it took Simon the best part of half a day on the bench in his workshop to get all four out and clean up the threads. If I had tried to fit them it would have gone Pete Tong in a big way!!! (As originally supplied, the OM636 had series glow plus with a dropper resistor giving a measly 1.5v across each plug. Hnece the engine needing anything between 30 seconds and 90 seconds of pre-heat to persuade it to start. The parallel glow plugs operate at nominally 12v and she needed about 5 seconds of pre-heat to fire up from cold after 9 months of being in pieces. I think that's a bit of an improvement)

And although not yet plumbed in until after we've given the cooling system a really thorough flush (as salt water had got in there due to the aforementioned dodgy bits on the cooling system), the take-offs for connecting the closed cooling circuit to the calorifier have been freed off (I couldn't shift them, it took a fair bit of heat on the bench to shift the one on the heat exchanger, the other is into an alloy cooling elbow we've replaced and was not coming out at all)

We took an executive decision yesterday that neither of us could live a moment longer with the bloody awful location of the raw water intake sea cock and strainer basket. It's the old fashioned small strainer mounted directly to the sea cock and it's at the aft end of the engine bay which is hard to get at with the boat ashore and would be an absolute nightmare to access if the intake got blocked in any sort of seaway or emergency situation. I've been planning to re-locate it to a better position ever since we bought Pagan in 2016 and it can wait no longer.

So the existing small bronze strainer is going and we're going to fit a new seacock under the galley floor connected to a decent Vetus basket strainer mounted at the forward end of the engine bay where it's easily accessible. As the existing seacock itself is perfectly serviceable and I like the notion of having a plan B in case the main intake gets blocked (which has happened to me twice), we're going to plumb the existing seacock to a T into the new raw water feed to that should the primary intake suck up a solid plug of weed we have a "get out of jail free" card to play

And we've also decided that whilst we're at it we're going (or to be more accurate Simon is going) to completely rebuild the raw water pump with new bearings, seals, etc. etc. It doesn't look in great nick externally to be honest and it's been pumping seawater around for 45 years so I doubt it looks any better inside! Makes sense to get it refurbished now rather than have it fail in a few years time in some remote part of the Scottish isles or summat

We've also examined all the other seacocks and to Simon's surpise and my relief deemed them all fit for ongoing service.

Simon is also quite keen on the fitting of a flexible shaft coupling and I get where he's coming from. It would without doubt be a good idea but I'm taking it under advisement at the moment as a possible for next winter

My to-do list before we can launch ...

Service all the seacocks
Replace the hull anode and remake the bonding connections
Replace the prop anode and grease the prop
Sort out the permanent wiring to the new glow plugs
Do something (temp or perm) about the dead battery charger
Replace the faulty bilge pump
Apply two coats of barnacle food (a.k.a. anti-foul)

I also, less urgently, need to rework the fuel delivery system plumbing and valve work so that we can properly switch between the port and starboard fuel tanks (it all got messed with whilst trying to diagnose what had gone wrong last year and we've currently got a lash up feed from the starboard tank only)

So hopefully, boatyard willing, we'll be back in the water in about a month. Then it'll be some fairly intensive engine running in including at least two complete flushings of the freshwater cooling system and an oil change. We also need to get the standing rigging properly set up - it never happened after it was replaced two years ago due to the ongoing issues with diesel bug and then the head gasket failing on the engine - and sort out the mess that the running rigging is currently in

Then we've got a bit of a hiatus due to Jane's work schedule before maybe, just maybe, actually getting to go for a local cruise in August. September, like July, is a total bust and by the time Jane has time off work in October it's probably going to be the end of a very short season

There's a lot to then do before next year, mainly electrical stuff. I know what charger / inverter we're going to be fitting and I've jsut got to decide on where the new domestic battery bank is going (I can only squeeze two batteries into the current location and I want to increase the capacity of the battery bank by at least 50%, preferably doubling it). I think I know what I'm going to do with that but it means some wood butchery in the port cockpit locker

And I think I've finally got a workable plan for fitting a half decent amount of solar power but more (much more!) on that anon

Oh and I'm also in the early stages of designing and making all new cockpit gratings. I've got the space and the tecnhology at home to do that and I've finished the design work. I just need to order and collect the rough sawn Iroko planks I need and crack on with it. They might not be done for this season so in the next couple of weeks I'll nail some decking timber over the existing frames as a temporary solution

Boats eh? It never, ever, stops

And finally ... aplogies for the lack of pics and/or video. Even though I was just the oily rag apprentice assistant to the master engineer that is Simon "Engines" Dunn, I'm knackered! And it all got a bit intense yesterday afternoon as we were rapidly running out of time as I had to be away by no later than 7pm. I made it, just!

Amd finally # 2 ... it is hard to put into words the overwhelming relief and joy Jane and I are feeling at the present moment. There's no ducking the fact that going for a rebuild of the OM636 was a gamble which might not have paid off. It was entirely possible that we could end up two or three grand out of pocket and still not have a serviceable and, above all, reliable, engine. Without a doubt, a nice shiney new Beta 35 would have been the preferable option but financially it was a complete non-starter. We simply couldn't afford it (and given that the current market value of a W33 in good order is not much more than a new engine would have cost, it's debatable whether it could be justified even if we could). Even a suitable second-hand engine would have put a severe crimp in our financial plans potentially committing Jane to another year in work before we get to sail away and live the dream. We're not out of the woods just yet but the signs and portents are extremely promising.

Another day, another dollar

 Time goes by dear reader and I'm still only very intermittently updating the blog

Although, in truth, there hasn't been much incentive to post

However, things are progressing ...

After one or two hiccups along the way, all of the engineering work has been completed. The head has been skimmed, the valve tips etc. reprofiled, the heat exchanger repaired and, crucially, the rockers refaced and reprofiled (which was the big worry as we weren't sure whether it would be sucessful).

A long list of parts has been ordered and Simon will soon be ready to start putting things back together again.

Not sure exactly when we'll be doing the rebuild but it should be sometime next month.

Once we know whether we have a runner in the engine department, I need to start looking at addressing a long list of other things that need to be tackled but all things being equal and with everything crossed we might just get some sailing in this year.

It'll be local stuff only, definitely nothing ambitious.

I'm hoping that once we get onto an upward trajectory my inclingation to keep things up to date will return.

As soon as you dispose of one gremlin, half a dozen more pop into existance ...

 And so another year goes by. 

Another year during which I've singularly failed to maintain this blog although followers of the Pagan facebook page and/or my personal Facebook account will be reasonably up to speed on where things now stand.

Big picture stuff first. I feel I should really put in some serious effort to grow this page and get serious about content creation (both sailing related and in other areas). Bottom line is that I have a great deal of "spare" time at my disposal because nobody wants to employ a 62 year old bloke with disabilities.

I'm going to stop beating about the bush on this point right now. I've always been extremely reluctant to refer to myself as disabled mainly because my dear old Mum was "properly" (in my mind) disabled by M.S. and my problems pale into insignficance with what she had to deal with. However, the simple fact is that I am physically restricted by arthritis (I can't lift heavy weights and I can't stand for long periods), increasingly hard of hearing which is exacerbated by severe tinnitus and whilst I have my mental health demons (manic depression is a far better descriptive tag than "bipolar disorder" but whatever you call it, I've got it!) under control, I have good days when I'm reasonably functional and bad days when I can barely cope.

Put it all together and the range of available jobs I could realistically cope with is limited and definitely doesn't include the physical warehouse work that is virtually all that is available in our neck of the woods. Then add in the neccessity for me to be available to take Jane to and from work at 6:00am and 9:00pm and that pretty much rules out most other available jobs. So I'm working "going forward" (ugh!) on the assumption that, whilst I will keep trying, I am probably effectively retired from the world of gainful employment. So be it.

I don't have a clear plan on this "going forward" (ugh #2!) but I do have a growing feeling that I should be monestising one or more of my various talents. Whether that takes the form of online content creation, writing, music (my old chum Tony played back an ancient recording of some of my songwriting and honestly I was surprised at how good it was after all these years) or something else I don't know.

So anyway, we are still clinging on to the dream and we have now set a departure date. 

Saturday the 1st of May 2027 the good ship Pagan will, if the Gods are willing, depart North Fambridge and set sail towards the Shetland Isles on the first leg of our three to four year odyessey around the coasts of the United Kingdom and Ireland.

To achieve that goal, and achieve it we must, a number of prerequisites have to be met. Firstly, and most obviously, Pagan has to be ready to go and she isn't by a long chalk. More on that in a moment. Secondly, we have to be in a position financially to live by our own means for two years as we don't qualify for a state pension until the summer of 2029. We were just about on track to make that happen with a combination of savings and our joint modest pension pots but the latest gremlin saga has knocked that back and we don't yet know how badly. This is the key reason I could really really do with an income stream from somwhere. It doesn't need to be a fortune, £10k or so over the next two years would be sufficient to make up the shortfall in our funds.

So where are we at with Pagan? 

The ongoing engine problems notwithstanding, there's only a handful of big cost items left on the to do list. The biggest by far is the anchoring gear. There is universal agreement that the current manual anchor windlass has to go. It is horribly slow and really hard work raising the anchor with it and let's be brutally honest, we're not getting any fitter as we get older. So an electric windlass is a must as is new chain and if we're going that far we mught as well replace the anchor with a modern design too. That's probably going to cost around £2.5k but it's pretty much the one thing left on the list that we both agree is non-negotiable and which cannot be skimped on. This is particularly critical gear since, in order to be able to afford to live day by day, we are going to have to stay out of marinas as much as possible (once we set off, our budget will run to maybe one night a week, on average, in a marina, two at the most).

Next on the list is batteries, solar and inverter. On this front, in the light of the engine issues, we've scaled back our plans. Our existing AGM house batteries need to be replaced anyway, one has died altogether and the other is likely to follow it soon enough, so now we plan to replace them with two LiFePo4 batteries, as big as we can squeeze into the battery compartment and scrap the earlier plan to fit a seperate battery bank for the inverter power under one of the saloon seats. We're still going to fit a 2kw to 3kw inverter to power electric cooking appliances but we probably won't be able to cook electrically every day. 

Fitting solar panels to Pagan has always been a head scratcher as there's surprisingly little space available on deck. I had come up with innovative solutions to getting quite a lot of solar nailed on but it was going to be quite a costly excercise and we've knocked most of it on the head. We now plan to strap a semi-flexible panel on top of the sprayhood as our main semi-permanent panel and we'll probably add a foldaway "suitcase" panel that can be deployed on deck when at anchor. Then we'll see how we go before spending money on adding more.

The third "big spend" item that cannot be ducked or deferred for much longer is the saloon upholstery. It's falling apart and the seat cushions are shot. New foam for the seats (the backs are OK) and new cushion covers are essential. Commercially made upholstery is frighteningly expensive and neither of us can sew for toffee! However, we may have a solution which needs to be discussed with my cousin and aunt, who can sew, and who may be able to knock up the covers for us for a lot less money. 

Beyond those headline items, there's the v-berth refit to complete, there's a lot of varnishing and painting needs doing and a few other maintenance and repair items to be addressed but nothing spectacular or worryingly expensive ...

Which brings is to the socking great elephant in the room ... the engine.

So, dear reader, you will recall that we left matters last September with a provisional diagnosis of a failed engine driven fuel lift pump and with me contemplating how to move or remove the engine in order to get at it.

Well first up, I had a stroke of genius and demolished half the galley! Cutting out the drawer runners and cross bars below the sink and then cutting the entire panel out of the bulkhead between the drawer unit and the engine bay created workable access to the starboard side of the engine where most of the "gubbins" is located. The drawer runners have now been screwed to the bulkhead panel which bolts in place and can thus be easily removed or put back as required. I haven't quite figured out how to refit the front rails yet, I'm trying to avoid screwing them back in place but I may have to.

With working access to the engine, I tried every trick known to man to get the sheared off stub of the injector manifold bleed screw out to no avail. In the end, I had to bite the bullet and drill it out as deep as I dared to go and then tap to M6 to take an M6 bolt with a washer and gasket. So far, it seems to be working and sealing. We'll find out if it's a permanent fix in due course.

Several sources suggested replacing the mechanical lift pump with a high pressure electric pump. I found a cheap Chinese one on Amazon for about £20 so I thought it worth a go. I removed the failed mechanical lift pump (and in the process confirmed that it was indeed failed - the plunger return spring has snapped) and blanked off the takeoff for it. The electric pump stalled when I tried to start the engine due to voltate drop but swapping it over to run off the domestics and starting the engine on it's own battery worked a treat. The venerable old Mercedes started second turn of the key and settled down to idle happily. As we were ashore in the cradle with no engine cooling and it being a bit of a dodgy thing to do, running the engine in a shore cradle, we couldn't test it for more than a minute or two but all seemed well and we were greatly cheered. Oh foolish optimists!

At this point, I ordered a replacement mechanical lift pump from Manfred at Westfield 4x4. The electric pump isn't going to waste however, it will be repurposed and replumbed as a priming and fuel transfer pump in due course. Arriving on board a week or so ago, I set about fitting the new mechanical pump which was no great problem and getting all ready to launch last Monday in the expectation of a couple of days of engine testing and then maybe even getting to go sailing.

Launch we did and once alongside the river pontoon I turned the key confidently expecting the engine to start. Did it heck as like. I spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning chasing things around and couldn't figure out what was wrong at which point I admitted defeat and gave Simon "Engines" Dunn a ring. We were now getting to the stage of more drastic action and I'm not a diesel engine guy. If I started pulling things apart myself, there was a very good chance of doing more harm than good.

Happily, it not being a busy time of year, Simon was able to come out to us on Friday afternoon to investigate and it was not good news. Quite the opposite. The first thing he spotted, that I had not thought to check, was that we had next to no compression on the engine. That's why she wouldn't start. Then he spotted that we had salt water in the fresh water cooling circuit. That's bad!

At this point, it really looked like the engine was going to be beyond repair. As we've previously discussed, we'd love to fit a shiney new red engine (a Beta 35 for choice) but we really can't afford to go down that route. It would set us back at least a year financially and it isn't just about our planned departure date, the bigger picture is that Jane is desperate to retire from what is a physically demanding job with bloody awful hours and understandably does not want to be stuck with it for more than another couple of years. If that's where things had stayed, we'd now be on the hunt for a second hand motor. However, all was not lost.

We talked things over with Simon and decided that it made sense to pull the top end of the engine apart and find out exactly where we stood. For the sake of a couple of hours labour, we'd then know for sure whether there was any hope or none at all.

Meanwhile, it being clear that our sailing season was over before it had even begun and given that being on the pontoon costs money, I rang the office to arrange to lift back out asap. It looked as though we might be stuck on the pontoon for another week and a bit due to the tide times and heights but that sterling chap Wiggy pulled out all the stops and hoiked us out late Friday afternoon. As frustrating as it is being back in the yard cradle, it makes working on the boat much easier.

So anyway, first up Simon pulled apart the Bowman heat exchanger discovering, in the process, that the source of the salt water where there should be fresh was one of the end rubbers which was perished internally. The tube stack was reluctant to come out but eventually gave in to gentle persuasion and suprisingly it all looks to be salvageable. We'll know for sure when it's all been cleaned up but if we can avoid having to replace the heat exchanger that's really good news as they're well over a grand.

Next up, it was off with her head. And again, the expected dire damage internally was most notable by it's absence. There were clear signs of the head gasket blowing on three of the four cylinders (and possibly on the fourth too!) which, given that Simon and I agree that it could well be the original head gasket (based on it's make up and appearance) is hardly surprising! 

The valves don't look bad at all and may even only need lapping back into the seats - maybe she'll need new valve seats, again we'll know when Simon has pulled it apart. And finally the bores are OK. There's some evidence of minor water damage from water standing in the bores but nothing that can't be dealt with in-situ. We don't need to pull the engine out of the boat in other words.

The bottom end all seems to be OK, There's no apparent lash on the big and little end bearings, the piston rings all seem to be good to go etc.

So at around 2:00pm it was "you need a new engine" but by 5:00pm it was "it will live again"!

With the top end off, it makes sense to do a full top end overhaul so we'll throw the extra cash at having the injectors serviced (£100 to £120 an injector and we've got four of them!) and whilst we're at it we'll get the parallel glow plugs I bought and never fitted years ago installed and sort out the plumbing for the calorifier which I bottled because I couldn't get the blanking plugs out.

We'll also knock off the other planned engine jobs and fit an uprated alternator and the spin off oil filter kit as well as new senders for the oil pressure and temperature gauges (neither of which have worked since we got the boat).

So the bottom line is that, if those Gods are finally smiling on us, we should come out of this with a good serviceable Mercedes OM636 at the cost of somewhere between £2k and £3k. Given that a good second hand motor of known provenance (as opposed to some random old lump like our existing engine pulled out of a boat because it was being replaced) would be twice that plus fitting and a brand new engine would be double up again and then some (at least £14k by the time it was in), that's a result!

To some extent I am, I have to confess, culpable in that I have neglected the engine since before Covid kicked in, I have either missed or ignored several warning signs of impending trouble and she really should have been properly mothballed back in 2018/19. In my defence, there's been an awful lot of stuff going on over the last five years both boat related and away from the boat and the head gasket and fuel pump problems were probably going to happen anyway sooner or later. Looking on the bright side, better that they happen now whilst we're still here at Fambridge than it manifesting itself in the Shetland or Orkney Isles or somewhere similarly remote!.

I shall have to do better in future

So anyway, we still have more than a week on board. Simon will hopefully progress the cylinder head and heat exchanger refurb back at his workshop this week but we won't be bolting things back together for a while yet. I've gone as far as I can with rebuilding the partially demolished galley sink unit as it's all got to come out again to rebuild the engine.

Our next mission is to look at replacing the cooker which is on it's last legs. We've had a nearly new replacement sitting in the container for yonks, it's time it was on the boat! That's today's mission. Then there's the planned microwave shelf above the nav table, much cleaning, sorting and tidying that needs doing, progress can be made on the v-berth refit etc.

Onwards and ... onwards

In, out, shake it all about

Demolishing the galley drawer unit

Now we can see the job!