Problems and Fixes

This problem did not get resolved until 2012. When motoring above about 2000 RPM the boat would vibrate enough to be worrisome. My previous boats had resonances at different RPMs and I would try to run at speeds that avoided the worst vibration. Applied Physics had what seemed to be similar vibration, only worse. Edwin Muth suggested this level of vibration was not normal and he helped me try various fixes. We carefully aligned the shaft, but it made no difference. I also installed an R and D shaft coupling, but it did not help. Before the 2011 season, Lockwood Boatworks suggested the problem was the Maxprop, which they sent back to PYI for reconditioning. PYI said the prop had a crack which they repaired. They also reconditioned the prop. Nevertheless, I still had most of the vibration.

Early in the 2012 season Robert Lockwood went for a test ride with me and decided that the prop was probably still bad. This time I ordered a new prop which Robert installed. For the first time my boat ran without vibration. Also, although the settings on the new Maxprop were the same as the old, now I got 7 knots at 2000 RPM as opposed to 6 knots at 2000 RPM with the old prop. Either the new Maxprop was redesigned or the old one was fundmentally flawed.

We soon found that our furling system, as installed, was not easy to use. Cranking in the last 10 feet of the mainsail was difficult ... it seemed that there was too much sailcloth for the diameter of the boom and the sail was being forced into too small a space near the gooseneck. In addition, because of the tight fit, it was very hard to pull the covering flap across the top of the boom to protect the sail when it was furled. But most troubling of all, the bolt rope on the luff tended to move past the forward end of the furling mandrill and jammed against the gooseneck. This was compounded by the battens moving forward past the bolt rope.

The bottom photo of the pair shows the as-delivered system partially furled. Note how the batten has moved forward. If furling were to continue, the cloth would start to jam into the gooseneck.

We made numerous calls, first to our dealer, Sandy Hook Yacht Sails, then to Furlboom, who instructed us to adjust the angle between the boom and the mast and to be sure to apply enough tension to the halyard as the sail was furled. None of this worked. We struggled with this system for two seasons when I finally e-mailed the lower image to Dougall Johnson at Furlboom. He immediatly saw that the sail was not made to Furlboom's specs. First, the bolt rope was too large, and second the batten pockets were not properly formed. Hunter had supplied the sail, which was made by Doyle. I called Doyle and they said the problem was my fault because I wasn't using the system properly. Hunter stepped in and arranged for my local sail loft, John Eggers, in Sayerville, NJ to modify the sail with Hunter footing the bill. Dave Thompson from Eggers met with Dougall at the Annapolis boat show in the fall of 2006 and discussed how the sail need to be changed. Dave did the work, and the result is shown in the top photo. The boom angle still matters and there still needs to be tension on the halyard when furling, but it is not magic. Now the covering flap fits better, and there is enough space in the boom for the sail because the bolt rope is no longer too fat. Hunter came through, Furlboom was helpful, Eggers, as usual did a great job, but Doyle was worse than useless.

Being out on the ocean and not being able to dump the poop is not fun. Just after a month of use, we found the macerator would not pump out the holding tank in the usual way. Being one to follow the rules, I could only test this sytem when I was three miles offshore, usually in a swell. I had found that I could prime the pump and make it work by closing off the holding tank vent and then presurizing the tank with an air bellows pump through the pumpout deckplate while the macerator was being run. This required three people: one to hold the macerator switch, one to run the bellows, and one to look at the stern to confirm that the macerator was actually pumping.

After our 2005 cruise, Kevin McGettigan, our dealer from Sandy Hook Yacht Sales, made a trip to our boat at its Keyport mooring and disassembled the system and found that the macerator did indeed pump. ( I had emptied the holding tank at a pumpout station, but it was still a nasty job for Kevin.) But the next time we were three miles offshore, we still could not get the macerator to pump. I called Hunter and they sent me a new pump, which I then had the pleasure of installing. Still no good.

After much thought, I decided that the most probable cause was too little clearance between the bottom of the macerator intake tube and the bottom of the tank. If there were just enough gunk at the bottom of the tank, there would be too much resistance to flow at the gap between the tube and the tank: the pump would not be able would be able to self-prime. I pumped and flushed the tank real well, and then removed the tube and sawed off about 1/2 inch of the PVC tube. I did this job in early spring, so the system was cold and had little fragrence. The reassembled system has been working for two years.

At the beginning of the 2006 cruise, just after passing Montauk, Dan Musgrove noticed that the engine temperture was running hotter than had been typical, which was just below 80C. We had been motor sailing at about 2500 rpm. As we got to colder water the temperature dropped and I stopped worrying about it. On the way back from Maine, as we returned to warmer water, unless I kept the rpm below about 2200, the engine temperature rose well over 80C. I thought perhaps we had barnacles on the prop and I hired a diver to scrape the bottom in Vineyard Haven, but it made no difference. I also had a Yanmar tech check out the engine thermostat in Newport, but everything was declared to be normal. Back at Keyport a mechanic again looked at the engine, and suggested replacing the temperture gauge. I did this, but new gauge also registered "hot".

Mastry, Yanmar's distributor in Florida, suggested that I try cleaning the cooling system with Prestone Radiator Flush on the theory that gunk was deposited on the heat exchanger tubes. This turned out to be a tedious, messy job, but the engine ran cool for another season, and then the problems started again. I flushed the heat exchangers again in the summer of 2007 at a mooring in Rockland, Maine and got some relief, but to do the job right, at the end of the 2007 season, Mike Lockwood at Lockwood Boatworks pulled out the heat exchanger tubes and soaked them in an acid bath. Last year I had no trouble at all. Somehow the original engine coolant broke down and coated the tubes. My plan is to now change the coolant every season.

As delivered, the tachometer was setup to run off the alternator. But the alternator on Applied Physics is controlled by a Link 2000R smart voltage regulator. When the batteries are nearly fully charged, the voltage regulator tells the alternator to stop putting out current so there is no longer a signal for the tachometer to read. Kevin McGettigan at Sandy Hook resolved the problem by having a traditional magnetic pickup installed on the flywheel to send a signal to the tach. The amazing thing was that Yanmar and Hunter said we were the first to report this problem.

This problem is not resolved. The Simpson Lawrence, Sprint Atlantic Windlass, that came with our boat, has no provision for manual recovery. This means that if the power fails, there is no good way to haul up the anchor. We have 120 feet of chain rode, and hauling in the rode by hand without mechanical assist does not seem possible. I have talked to Lewmar, who now supplies this windlass, and after delays and a runaround, and my expressed willingness to pay for an upgrade, I was ignored. Lewmar claims they never had one of these windlasses fail. I am glad they are so confident in their product and that they are sure that I will always have electrical power on my boat in an emergency. Hunter wasn't much help either.

This problem appeared after the third season and continued to worsen. Even though I was convinced the probelm was limited to the drive unit, Raymarine said they would attempt a repair only if I sent all components of the autopilot system to them, an offer I could refuse. Buying a new unit would have cost about $1K, so during the winter of 2006 I decided to try to fix the drive unit myself. In taking the drive apart, I discovered the clutch mechanism is very simple: it is just a solenoid that stops a freewheeling disk (part of a differential drive) allowing the motor to move the linear drive. The freewheeling disk is a magnetically susceptible material that closes the magnetic circuit between the poles of the solenoid.

When the boat is heeling on a starboard tack, the solenoid has to move "uphill" to reach the clutch disk. When there was too much tilt, the solenoid could not fight gravity. (I confirmed this on a bench test using two lantern batteries to drive the solenoid.) My best guess is that the clutch had worn down over time, increasing the gap between the solenoid and itself, so that the magnetic field of the energized solenoid was too weak to overcome the combination of gravity and the solenoid spring. I shimmed it with a 10 cent washer, and in sea trials in June 2006, it worked fine.