Kaimusailing

I got my marching orders from Moyer Marine to work on the Atomic 4 engine. Take it all apart, all apart, clean everything till it’s perfect, then put it all back together again and see if it runs. I also looked on my phone about the hurricane in Hawaii and also wondered how hot it was back in the boatyard in St. Marys.
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No internet here except what I can do on the phone. On Google News an entry popped up, “Top 40 Cruising Sailboats of All Time”. They think I will read it. I started reading it and thought, it’s only monohull boats, so no Wharram catamarans, and the Catalina 30 is not a very robust cruising design, but I kept reading and getting angry. All the usual blue water sailboats came up, yes they are iconic, but I was now up to the top 10, of all time, and there at #5 was Catalina 30. How about that. Cruising World magazine had made a list of 40 sailboats, then asked readers to rank them. The Catalina came in fifth. Wow. In the notes it said it would be hard to go into any harbor and not find a Catalina 30 on a mooring or in a slip. That may be true, but you won’t find many in the North Sea.
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I still check Boat Angel to look at donated boats and now there is a 1977 Catalina 27 with 8 hours to go in the auction and the bidding is below $100. The engine is listed as not running and there are no sails with the boat. It is located in Norfolk, VA. You would have to pay the $300 processing fee though.
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It was time to start working on the Atomic 4‘s valves. The valves are in the block in a flat head engine. Access to the valve springs, keepers, and valve adjustment are under a plate and the plate is under the manifold. The manifold contains both the exhaust and intake manifolds. The valves are lined up along the side of the engine as follows: #1 exhaust, #1 intake, #2 intake, #2 exhaust, #3 exhaust, #3 intake, #4 intake, #4 exhaust. Each valve has its own port coming out of the block into the manifold, except #2 and #3 exhaust share an exhaust port.
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The valve cover plate comes off with just two small bolts. Access to the valve springs, etc., is to the side and low. I used a mirror to see what I was doing. The valve spring compression tool barely gets the valve spring compressed enough to get the keepers out, or some call them collets. The first valve was #1 exhaust and it was seized in the block. I hammered it down using an old 3/8“ socket extension and a large hammer. I could not raise it again after removing the collets, but a quick jolt from the starter made the camshaft push the valve up. I couldn’t move it even then. I put a thick wrench handle between the valve lifter and the valve stem and blipped the starter again. It brought the valve up about another 1/4“. Next I tried prying under the valve head and that worked for a little bit, then the valve snapped off leaving most of the valve stem still in the block in the valve guide. Grrr.
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Cornelia Marie texted me, do I have power, yes, but she doesn’t. I gave her my power umbilical cord so she could get her fridge cold again. She had a bad night of heat with no fan and the possibility of her groceries going bad.
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Of course now I had no power, but that line had been working before we left for Crisfield and now it was dead. I suspected the electricians, who were repairing the power line that was taken down by a fallen tree, had not reconnected everything properly. It was very hot and humid. I climbed the hill up to where the power panel was and back down to the dock where our little dock power panel was. I needed a screwdriver, I needed an electric meter, and so on, up and down the hill in the heat. I figured out that two 50 amp services were being delivered to the dock where there were 5 circuit breakers. The breakers alternate phases and the one that was working for me all night and now for CM was next to a dead breaker, two other breakers were really one breaker split in half for two 15 amp services on the dock, they were working. That left the other dead breaker. The dead breakers were fed by one of the 50 amp phases coming down to the dock. When I checked the 50 amp breaker feeding that line it had no voltage.
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I took one of the lines on the dock that was dead and connected it to one of the 15 amp breakers. That gave me power and I would never use as much as 15 amps.
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Back to the valves. I worked my way down the line. I was especially careful with #2 exhaust. It was seized up just like #1 was. I was able to pry it up and out without breaking it. I used open end wrenches as supports for the large screwdrivers to pry it up a little at a time. When I got down to the valves on #4 they came out without any fuss.
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Ken at Moyer Marine had said there is something wrong with the engine that we haven’t found yet. He might be right. He asked for and I sent him photos of the manifold stud that had broken off, of the piece of metal that came out of the block with the stud, and a photo of the damage on the block where the stud had come out. It was after 5 o’clock, so I was spared having to talk about breaking a valve.
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At the end of the day I took a photo of the community across the inlet.