After a year of poking around Yacht World the day had finally come. We had closed on our boat SV Cambio (the first and only boat we looked at in person aside from boat shows). With winter on our door step a decision had to be made, keep Cambio on the hard in Port Annapolis or risk running a new to us boat 30 miles up the Chesapeake to save $1000 on storage fees and an hour per trip on travel. Keep in mind that we opted out of doing a sea trial to save hundreds in launch/haul fees. Despite what people may say I’m actually a rather risk averse person and the idea of taking a boat I barely know 30 miles on its first trip didn’t seem like a good idea. Keep in mind we didn’t run the engine or conduct a sea trial during the survey to save money. I also had practically zero experience with diesel engines (but I do now).
However with a $1000 cost savings in the back of my head I threw caution to the wind, purchased a SeaTow membership and told the marina to splash her. November 6th comes Lindsey and I meet up at the destination marina in Essex MD at 6pm after working a bit later than I had hoped. We left my truck and proceeded through Baltimore traffic to Port Annapolis. We arrived well after dark and thats when the fun really began.
As a rule most all marinas have a gate with a key code entry that are usually locked at dark. It was way past dark when we arrives and Port Annapolis is no exception to the gate rule. With all the excitement of buying a boat I also failed to request a key code. No problem, after walking around the gate and jumping up and down a few times to see if I could trip the gate to open I decided it was time to swallow some of that new boat owner pride. I then proceeded to walk around the marina like a boatless person at about 9 pm hoping to be lucky enough to find somebody to take pity on me and share their key code without notifying the authorities.
Luckily I ran into an exceptionally nice woman at the dumpsters and got the code.
So minor setback no big deal we will test the engine and run off to a nice dinner at one of Annapolis’s fine establishments. WRONG. While I probably could have pulled this off with a gasoline engine or hell a diesel that wasn’t older than me neither was the case. Cambio is equipped with a 18hp SABB diesel (not SAAB), to make things even more fun it has a controllable pitch prop (more on this little devil later). So I did what any guy would do I started flipping battery switches and turning the key. The motor starts turning but nothing is happening. The engine doesn’t have glow plugs so I squirt a generous dose of WD-40 into the air intake still nothing.
No problem switch to plan C. I pull up the manual and start looking for the cigarette ports. WTF is a cigarette port you say? cigarettes are blotter paper soaked in a strong solution of potassium nitrate (stump remover at your local hardware store) they are inserted somewhere into the block or cylinder on old diesels. I say somewhere because I still don’t know where to put them on my engine.
Plan D, first off I didn’t say plan D. I sure as heck didn’t want Lindsey to think we had gotten that far down the list and I didn’t actually have a plan D but I needed one and fast. You see the kind folks at port Annapolis would start charging me per day if I didn’t vacate their dock in the morning. After failing to obtain the number of a friend of a friend that happened to be a mechanic I remembered the previous owners posted their cell number on the listing for cruisers forum. I found and dialed said number and to my glee they answered. After another half an hour of mostly trying what I had already tried the conversation went to bleeding the fuel lines. Now I know little about bleeding diesels but it seems to be generally disdained by everyone. So I swallowed a little more of that new boat owner pride and sheepishly asked the previous owner if he could give me a tip or something. “loosen the bolt on the injector and squeeze the primer bulb till fuel comes out, 13mm wrench I think” was the reply. Oh how I have come to love that little 13mm wrench. I cautiously bleed both cylinders noticing a lot of air in one of them. Lindsey started cranking and bang, bang, bang (our engine sounds like a machine gun literally) she sprang to life. Sweet we can actually get to bed before midnight, this ain’t so bad.
530 Am rolls around and we quickly ready the boat for our getaway. We are in a rather tight situation with boats all around and about a 30ft wide (felt like 10) channel to get out of the marina. Not ideal especially since I have to figure that blasted controllable pitch prop out. For those of you who don’t know; a controllable pitch prop is very rare on a 33′ boat. It has and in/ out of gear transmission and a second lever that actually changes the prop pitch while blades are spinning to put you in fwd or reverse. Fancy yes, practical nope, not a chance. With all the dock lines firmly tied I ran a test to figure out what the heck foward was. Test successfully completed Lindsey sprang the bow for me to avoid the zillion dollar power yacht directly in front of me. Actually her much appreciated spring was a bit too much and I was now pointing and closing fast on 2 boats on the other side of the channel. I turned the wheel yep you guessed it the wrong way making the situation more dire. In my defense you have to steer Cambio from the side and behind never from in front as is normal and freaking convenient on every other wheeled boat known to man. Anyways realizing my error I flailed both arms as fast as possible to put the wheel hard over in the right direction while increasing the throttle to make things work a bit better. Don’t ask me how I did this since the wheel and throttle are at opposite ends of the cockpit but it worked. We avoided collision and aimed for the nearest open water so we could figure out how the heck to control this 24,000lb beast. We were now at least fully awake and ready to take on the day.
We quickly settled in to a warm cup of coffee and a leisurely cruise up the bay. Well kinda there were millions of prop fouling crab pots and hundreds of tournament fishermen in our paths but we managed. It was actually a pretty sweet trip until it came time to park.
Now parking a boat is something I’m actually pretty decent at thanks to my Dad’s rigorous training. My only flaw was that I liked to use reverse when parking. The problem was I didn’t understand that blasted controllable pitch thing and what I thought was reverse was sail mode. Instead of going backwards we made some black smoke the engine growled a lot and refused to rev up. All the while the boat just kept doing what it had been doing in spite of me. On my third attempt I was almost hopelessly wedged between two sets of finger docks when I gave up on backing in threw the wheel hard over and nudged the bow to the end of the dock where for a brief second it was close enough for Lindsey to dive off rope in hand. We ended up pulling our boat into the slip bow side first (unlike every other boat in the marine) but on the plus side we didn’t damage anything and we owned our very own sailing yacht.