MYSTERY SOLVED ! ! ! !

SHIP'S LOG:

I was up bright and early and down at TYC to meet with the "The Diesel Brothers" - Chuck and Cliff, who care for the Club Launch and who had volunteered to help my iron out my diesel problem.

I let Chuck and Cliff into the boat and left them to their investigations and mechanical magic while I went to work on the Mizzen Mystery. Like it is with cooks in the kitchen, too many mechanics in the engine room is a recipe for disaster, especially when one of the (yours truly) ain't no mechanic.

The Mizzen Mystery(ABISHAG still has lots of mysteries) was that the Mizzen Sail, the sail furthest aft on the boat, wouldn't go all the way to the top of the Mizzen mast. I could raise it about 3/4ers of the way up and them it seemed to snag on something and would go no further. In such a position, the Mizzen was worse than useless and trying to use it would only wear the sail. I needed to be able to rise it all the way or not use it at all and yet the whole reason for having a ketch in the first place was to be divide the sail area of the boat, making it easier to handle. I had to fix it as it made no sense to haul around something that didn't work.

I checked the halyard, the line which is used to raise and lower the sail. It went up and down freely, with no strain, no snagging, no catching anywhere. This is very good news as it means that the problem was not in the mast through which the halyard ran. If it had been inside the mast, and it could not be freed with the mast standing, it meant a trip to a Boatyard, dropping the mast, locating the problem, fixing the problem, re-stepping the mast. . . . . . . . The sound you just heard was a couple of marine units going bye-bye.

Secondly, it meant that it was a problem of lubrication. When a sail is attached to a mast, there are usually slides affixed to luff (edge) of the sail that slide up and down in a track in the mast. Dirt, salt, and other assorted detritus end up in the track and can impede the slides making the sail hard or all but impossible to raise. In that the problem wasn't the halyard, lubricating the track and the slides should do the trick. Out came the graphite lube, incredible slippery stuff. No Joy! Evidently, the graphite just added to the problem by putting more "crap" into the track. Next up was the racer's friend, MACLUBE, a dry, spray-on lubricant that is used to lube everything from Genoa track and blocks and other such items on go-fast boats Well, the best that could be said in this case was that it washed some of the gunk out of the track and off the slides but the sail still wouldn't go all the way up. Last came old reliable - WD-40! This is rather remarkable stuff. It is technically not a lube but a water expeller - something gets wet that shouldn't, hit it with WD-40 and the water goes away. Still, everyone uses it a a lube and so I tried it. I sprayed the track. I sprayed the slides. I pulled the halyard and the Mizzen shot up the the top of the mast like it was coming out of a canon. Mystery solved. Let's hear it for WD-40!

Back in the engine room, The Diesel Brothers" - Chuck and Cliff - had found the problem! It was the engine being sneaky! When you change the oil in your car, you put it on a lift, position a container under the oil pan, unscrew a plug in the sump and the oil drains out. Simple! On a car yes, but rather impossible on a boat. in years past, before the EPA, it was common to remove the sump plug, drain the oil into the bilge, replace the plug, fill the engine with oil and pump the bilge - pumping the old oil overboard. It is not something you can do anymore - thanks goodness. There are a whole host of devices to catch the old oil or to remove it - with varying degrees of success and ease - from the engine. One of the simplest and most common is a small hand pump attached to the oil pan. Pumping it removes the oil and directs it into a container for proper disposal. On ABISHAG, this pump has a bracket which is attached to a bracket on the front of the engine. A rubber hose runs from the pump to the sump. A simple and efficient system. Evidently though, the screw connecting the two brackets vibrated off sometime and disappeared into the bilge.

Now this is the sneaky part! As long as the engine and oil was cold, the hose from sump-to-pump was ridged and remained upright, holding the pump on place. When the engine ran, the oil heated, as did the engine, and sump-to-pump hose softened and drooped under the weight of the pump. It would slowly lower itself to a point where it was below the oil pan sump, allowing the oil to run out of the sump through the pump. But when the engine shut down and the engine and oil began to cool, the hose stiffened and returned to its original position, leaving no indication of what had happened. Nice! Re-attaching the bracket, topping off the engine oil and the problem was solved. . . . except for the oil that had accumulated in the bilge! ! ! ! !

MASTER'S PERSONAL LOG:

This coming Friday is September 19th, International Talk Like A Pirate Day, and one year from the day I had intended to leave . . . last year. It also should be the day that I find out whether my final attempt at getting funds the pay-off the Marine Units Bill from the winter yard work comes through comes through. I like the way God seems to be folding everything together into a nice neat package. So this week will be the clean-up, pack the boat week and then ADIOS! solvent or not!