The Blue View - Flares, and More Flares

Marcie was doing her annual ditch bag inspection not too long ago, and noted that our flares were due to be replaced. Flares have a shelf life of 3.5 years, which seems like a long time, but it also seems like we are always buying them.

There are a host of different flares available, ranging from handheld flares, to orange smoke flares to signal rocket flares with parachutes. We’ve got quite an assortment. The prices vary accordingly, from expensive to really expensive.

We also have a 12-gauge flare pistol. Just like in the movies, a shotgun shell sized flare is loaded into the pistol, which is then fired into the sky, sending a bright red flare 500 feet or so high. Unfortunately, this type flare gun is considered a weapon in some countries, and must be declared and held in bond until the vessel leaves the country.

The U.S. Coast Guard requires us to carry at least three flares for daylight use and three flares for night use as a minimum. (Some types of flares are approved for both day and night use, in which case only three flares in total are needed.) In addition, because we sail offshore, we felt we should follow the International Sailing Federation (ISF) guidelines for offshore vessels, which requires 6 red parachute, 6 red handheld and 2 orange smoke flares. That’s a lot of flares, and did I mention that they ain’t cheap? It’s about $600 for the complete set – ouch!

Our approach was to carry the ISF flares in our sealed life raft, which has to be opened and inspected every three years. If we ever had to abandon ship, we’d be sure to have a good set of flares in the life raft, even if we lost our ditch bag. The coast guard is authorized to board any vessel in U.S. waters (or any U.S. flagged vessel anywhere in the world for that matter) to do a safety check. Since it isn’t practical to open the sealed life raft, we also keep an in-date set of the USCG required flares in our ditch bag to ensure we meet their requirements – and to have on hand if we have an emergency that doesn’t require abandoning ship.

Once the flares pass their “Best if Used By” date, they are most likely still usable and can still be kept aboard, as long as we have sufficient in-date flares to meet the USCG requirements. Thus, we have kept the majority of our outdated flares over the years to use as backups, and we’ve accumulated quite the collection.

Disposing of used flares is difficult. They can’t be tossed in the trash. They can’t be set off without the possibility of creating a false distress alarm. The coast guard won’t take them, nor will most local fire or police departments, and the manufacturers won’t take them back. In some places, the local coast guard auxiliary or sea scouts may take them for use in training. When we decide to start thinning our inventory of old flares, we’ll do what everyone else does - ask around and make lots of calls until we find a solution.

This year, we decided to use a different approach. The coast guard allows an alternative to the usual pyrotechnic flares. It’s now possible to buy an LED electronic flare that is USCG approved and which never expires, as long as the batteries are replaced each year. It is waterproof and floats, and once turned on, it flashes a very bright S.O.S. signal.

Since this is only a night time signal device, it is also necessary to have flares for day use. The coast guard also allows the use of a large orange flag with a black circle and black square printed on it, in lieu of the usual daylight flares. Weems & Plath, the company that manufactures the electronic flares, very cleverly sells a package that includes both the light and the flag.

We ordered the electronic flare package on Amazon, installed four C-cell alkaline batteries and tried it out. The light, which has a visibility of 10 miles, was as bright as expected. We stowed it and the orange flag in the ditch bag, and Marcie has changed her annual safety checklist to include changing the batteries.

Our life raft will be due for inspection this January, and the ISF flare set that is stowed inside will be near its expiration date. Should we invest $600 or so on the replacements or should we scale down a bit? We aren’t planning to cross any more oceans in the next three years, so maybe it’s okay to cut back.

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The Blue View - A Simple Project?

One of the items on my to-do list was to replace the galley freshwater foot pump. We have pressurized water for the freshwater system, but fresh water aboard the boat is precious, and we try hard to conserve it. When a constant stream of water is not required, like when brushing teeth or washing hands, a pump or two on the foot pump sends a long squirt of water to the faucet above, and provides just the right amount of water without wasting much at all. Our foot pump died while enroute from Puerto Rico to St. Augustine, FL, and it's been on the repair list since then. Now that we are tied up next to a boatyard in Chesapeake, VA, I am finally getting to it.

It shouldn't have been much of a problem – just disconnect the hoses and remove four screws to take the old pump out, then reverse the process to install the new one. Simple – an hour, maybe two at most. Except, as our readers have heard on more than a few occasions, nothing's ever easy on a boat.

To begin with, the old pump is original equipment on Nine of Cups, and the same model is no longer available. The newer models are almost the same size, but the hose connections are not in the same place. Okay, add an hour or two to re-plumb the hoses.

As I was removing the pump. I discovered a couple of things: 1. The bulb in my task light had burned out. No problem – I'll order a new one on Amazon and use my “mouth-operated” task light in the meantime, and 2. there were several hose clamps that were overdue to be replaced. After checking my stock on-board, it became evident a trip to the chandlery was in my future. May as well replace the hoses at the same time. Add another hour and $35 to the job.

While removing the screws, it became apparent that the mounting block under the pump was somewhat dodgy. I probed it with a screwdriver and discovered it was wet through-and-through and delaminated, so it would need replacing. We also have a seawater foot pump mounted next to the freshwater pump. It is currently working, but the block supporting it also appeared to be deteriorating. Add four hours to R&R the other pump, then fabricate, seal and paint both mounting blocks.

But wait... as I was removing the mounting blocks, I noticed that the floor under the sink had a few soft spots. I investigated this to find some delamination problems with it as well. I could just ignore it and plan on doing it in a year or two, but since I now had the pumps and mounting blocks all removed, I might as well do it all now. Add a couple of hours to remove the old floor, then a couple more to fabricate and fit a new piece of plywood, plus a couple of hours to epoxy it in place, then seal, prime and paint it with two coats of marine enamel.

And as long as I'm painting the floor and the mounting blocks, I should repaint the rest of the area under the sink as it's starting to look a bit worn. Of course, I'll have to remove a few more things before repainting, like the filter assembly for the watermaker, and, oh, look there – the bracket holding the filter in place is all corroded underneath. Shouldn't take more than 2-3 hours to locate or fabricate a new bracket and fit the filter to it.

Finally, to add injury to insult – literally – I cut my head on a hose clamp on the sink drain as I was leaning in to remove the filter bracket. But that's to be expected; rarely is a project completed aboard Cups without shedding at least a little blood.

So now we're up to 18-20 hours – if nothing else goes wrong – for this simple, 1 or 2 hour job, and it's definitely cutting into my afternoon nap time. I'm really glad this wasn't anything complicated

The Blue View - Replacing Fuel Tanks Pt. 2

In last week's Blue View, I talked about removing the tops from the old fuel tanks, making the drawings for the new tanks, then building mock-ups out of plywood. Once I was happy with the fit and the drawings, I hired a “flete”, sort of a combination small truck and taxi driver, and made the trip to the metal fabricator. After a lengthy discussion that required Marcie's reasonable Spanish, my crappy Spanish enhanced with a great deal of hand gestures, the drawings and the mock-ups, the fabricator assured us he understood what was needed. He gave us a quote and promised delivery in about a week.

Sure enough, 8 days later I got a message that the new tanks were ready. We rounded up several hundred dollars (Ecuador uses the U.S. dollar as its currency), stuffed them into our pockets and hired a taxi to take us back to the fabricator. The shiny new tanks were lined up alongside the mock-ups, and looked identical. I asked the manager if they had been pressure-checked, and his response was “Si claro, Señor, claro”, which meant “Yes certainly, sir, of course”. I paid him the remaining amount due and arranged to have the tanks transported to Nine of Cups.

They arrived the next morning, all carefully wrapped to protect them during the trip. We loaded the first one into the dinghy and transported it out to Cups. I made a small harness and attached a spare halyard to the tank, then Marcie cranked away at a cockpit winch while I guided the tank up out of the dinghy, down the hatch and into the saloon, trying very hard not to damage the varnished teak in the process. Once it was below deck, I guided it into the old, cut-away fuel tank, and then slid it into place, securing it temporarily with a couple of bolts.

This process was repeated with the second tank, but when we tried to install the third tank, it wouldn't fit into place. We found that the hose fittings were not to specification...something we hadn't noticed when we looked at them at the fabricators...and thus wouldn't fit. Out they came, and we hauled them back one by one to shore in the dinghy, hired a flete once again and took them back to the fabricators. Oh, man!

By the end of the week, they had fixed the problem and the tanks were re-delivered to us. We got them all in, plumbed and ready for the final pressure testing. They had been tested at the fabricators, of course, but this was the final check before filling them with fuel. Leaks...leaks...leaks! It was hard to identify them all in-situ, but there were a lot of pinhole leaks in the welds! So much for the fabricator's assurance that they had been pressure tested. We were sick about it.

Out they all came, and we transported them ashore once again, one at a time. I also hauled my compressor and extension cords as well as several hoses and fittings ashore. We pressure checked all three tanks and found more than 30 leaks in all! We marked each leak and worked with a local welder to make the repairs. It was cheaper and quicker than hiring a flete and returning the tanks to the fabricator. After a new coat of paint, the tanks were ready to go back aboard – for the third iteration.

This time, after the tanks were installed and plumbed, they passed the final pressure check. I secured each in place with bolts, then reinstalled the floor stringers, floorboards and table. Hoorah!

All-in-all, the fuel tanks turned out well, and I was quite pleased with the results. Like most of my boat projects, however, building the new tanks took about three times as long as I planned. On the other hand, I was quite pleased with the cost – looking at the bright side, it came in at only about 50% over budget as opposed to the usual double or triple.