It Seems Like an Ignominious End

"Narrow Escape" was powered by a two-cylinder Swedish-built Albin gasoline engine for 39 of its 40 years.

Serial No. 1 of that engine was built in 1925, according to the parts manual. Mine was serial no. 47542, built in 1967. I had lavished several thousand dollars and a lot of time resurrecting it to service. And I succeeded, for awhile. For 110.6 hours to be exact. That's better than the last two prior owners of the 1968 Ericson 30, each of whom spent a lot of effort and money trying to get it to run reliably.

My motive was partly nostalgic. It was a funky engine, huge flywheel, 12 hp at 1500 rpm, magneto ignition. And a factory parts distributor from whom I was able to buy a brand new cylinder head in 2006. It reminded me of the single-cylinder two-cycle Stuart Turner engine in a native-built fishing boat I owned years ago during a sojurn in Grenada.

My effort was misplaced. If I combined the money I spent on the Albin with the money I've spent on the new Tohatsu outboard and mount, I would have a new diesel in the boat now.

Still, there was a pang of regret when I had the engine block and transmission lifted out at the boat yard last December and then walked away leaving it lying there like the corpse it was. One of the yard crew admired it, calling it a classic looking engine. In different circumstances it could have become a museum exhibit. But the guy in San Pedro who has a small display like that, didn't want any part of it.

There were two plastic containers of parts that I had stripped from the engine prior to having it lifted out. That was necessary for me to be able to muscle and lever it off its mounting rails and into the companionway from which it could be lifted.

I put the containers in my storage unit and have spent the intervening months moving them out of the way every time I needed to get something else out of or put into the unit.

The other day, knowing I would have to move them once more to put my 11-ft inflatable back in storage after it served as a potential liferaft for the Ensenada Race, I finally called a scrap metal yard to find out how to sell the remains.

The containers were heavy. One contained the thick cast iron flywheel and its guard. The other contained the manifold, exhaust riser (aluminum, $175 in 2005), the irreplaceable French-built magneto, and various brackets.

Together, the two containers sat in the backseat of my Mustang convertible and I drove them to the scrap yard. It turned out to be a big industrial facility. I sat in a line of box trucks and overloaded pickups awaiting my turn on the entrance scale. While waiting in line, I had to move to make room for an exiting 18-wheeler tractor-hopper trailer rig that needed the whole street to turn out of the yard, having emptied its load.

After getting the weight ticket at an office window, I was directed "over there" and cautioned to watch out for damage to my car. "Over there" was an area where a huge electro-magnet on a crane was lifting junk off the asphalt and dropping it on top of a 25-foot tall pyramid of junk.

I looked at the pavement carefully for things that could puncture my tires, parked quite a ways out from the magnet machine -- it could easily have lifted my car -- and put down the top of my convertible. There was no way to get the heavy containers in or out of my backseat without having the top down.

I didn't bother trying to lift the containers out. I just opened each one and took out the pieces one by one. I laid them in a haphazard pile that was ludicrously small given the surroundings. Then I drove onto the exit scale, which could easily have contained five Mustangs, and went back to the office window.

"What name do you want the check made out to?" the clerk asked. I said it and spelled it. He knew what an apostrophe was, which puts him in the best-educated half of the population in Southern California. But I had to repeat the rest of it twice while he retyped. Those vowels, the double L and the Y give lots of people trouble with my last name.

He handed me a letter-sized sheet of paper. The bottom portion was my check for $7.10. At the top I learned that my car weighed exactly 3600 lbs when I drove in and was 60 lbs lighter now.

I drove away sad, yet happy that I would be able to tell my wife that I had finally gotten rid of that "junk".

A Very Full Circle Indeed

Careful readers may assume that I'm now back where I started. I bought an old boat with a new outboard and an old inboard. I put all my effort and money into the old engine and sold the new outboard. The old engine ultimately failed. I threw it away and bought a new outboard.

I did have the satisfaction of restoring a moribund old Swedish gasoline engine designed in 1925 and getting another 110 hours of life from it. The two-cylinder flathead Albin with its 50-pound flywheel had its charms -- and vibrations. But our relationship had run its course and I'm not going to miss it.

In its central location just behind the companionway ladder, I can put the boat's batteries where they will be easier to reach and provide the best ballast. And I'll still have room to build a large storage shelf above them.

When I bought the Ericson 30, various people suggested how lucky I was to have a new 4-stroke outboard on the transom and how easily I could lighten up the boat by removing the old inboard. I rejected the idea without ever seriously considering it. I couldn't wait until I could get the inboard running and remove the outboard.

The original Nissan outboard made the same power as my new Tohatsu. It's the same engine except for the label. Except it isn't really the same. The original was a long-shaft (20-inch) model with electric start and manual controls. It was mounted on the port side of the transom because that is where it was possible to reach it by crawling beneath the stern pushpit in a gap between the backstay and a vertical support.

That difficult effort was required when lowering the engine and again when pulling it up out of the water when under sail. In other words, using the outboard was a big hassle. Every time I did it, I looked longingly at the cockpit-mounted ignition switch, gear shift and throttle lever for the inboard engine and hardened my resolve to get the Albin running.

With help, I did. We fixed what was obviously needed, such as new valves, new piston rings, new and improved wet exhaust system, new carburetor and, eventually, new cylinder head when the old one rusted through. We didn't touch the bottom end, nor even separate the transmission from the cylinder block. Both were fine in test bench runs and remained that way for 110 hours back in the boat. But something eventually let go, causing a loud knocking that demanded immediately shutting down the engine. The source of the knock defied my in-the-boat attempts to identify it. I won't ever know what it was now that the engine is gone, left for scrap at the boat yard.

With hindsight, it now is clear that fronting the estimated $10,000-$12,000 cost of installing a new diesel would have been smarter than spending half that in increments as the Albin restoration project crept forward.

But having already spent that, I couldn't see now putting another $10,000-$12,000 into a new diesel. Spending about $4,000 for a new outboard and fancy Garelick hydraulic motor mount made a lot more sense.

However, I have made the new outboard nearly as convenient to use as the inboard by purchasing a remote-control model, and mounting it on a Garelick hydraulic outboard bracket. I can lean over the pushpit, not crawl through it, and let gravity lower the engine by merely opening the hydraulic bleed valve a half turn. Raising it requires only a dozen swings of the hydraulic pump handle.

The electric starter, choke, throttle and gear shift are handled with a robust control unit mounted on the sidewall of the cockpit in easy reach of the tiller. So is the combination tachometer and hourmeter, which is an after-market unit from Teleflex.

The ouitboard feeds from the replacement aluminum gas tank I had built for the boat a year ago, through the same Racor filter/water separator that served the inboard engine. The Tohatsu's fuel pump easily handles the extra length of the heavy Coast Guard-approved fuel line. And I can carry and easily switch to standard outboard fuel tanks to supplement the 22 gallons in the main tank.

Fuel economy is predicted to be about the same as the Albin - about a gallon an hour at max throttle. But exhaust emissions are much, much lower. The Tohatsu is a three-star ultra-low emission engine.

The six amp alternator built into the electric-start Tohatsu is enough for the low electrical loads on my boat. It's about the same output as the oddball starter-generator on the Albin.

The noise level is lower in the cockpit and virtually gone inside the cabin. When we motor back from the Ensenada race next spring, the off-watch crew is going to sleep easily.

Finally, when the Tohatsu needs professional servicing. I can easily lift it off the transom and take it to a dealer. And I'll never again have to spend $1500 for a new prop, prop shaft, cutless bearing and stuffing box.

I will have to spend something eventually to remove the existing shaft and seal up the hole. However, since it exits the hull behind and above the rudder, with no strut, there will be minimal drag if I simply remove the prop for now and secure the shaft outside with a zinc collar against the cutless bearing and inside with a couple of hose clamps ahead of the stuffing box.

So, yes, as a practical matter I am back where I started, having made a substantial contribution to keep the consumer-based economy afloat along the way. It was an interesting journey. I still have a great boat. It is a much better boat than when I bought it. It still needs work.

I suspect there are a lot of old sailboats that could be improved by replacing an unreliable inboard with a quiet new, remote-controlled outboard.

Back in Business

Oops! I've had this slip for a dozen years and I had never overshot it before.

It had been four months since the last time I had approached my slip. That was Aug. 4, the day my 39-year-old Albin two-cylinder gasoline engine broke its innards and had to be put to rest. That incident was the first time I had entered my slip under sail. I did it single-handed and it went perfectly.

Since then I had worked out of state for three months and then installed a new Tohatsu 9.8 hp outboard to replace the Albin. The outboard promised to be nearly as easy to use as the inboard, since it was mounted on a hydraulic mount on the transom and had remote control and electric start operated from the cockpit.

It was December 6. Christmas lights were strung fore and aft from my masthead, forming the outlines of imaginary sails. The real sails, however, were furled and snugly covered in Royal Blue Sunbrella. The genoa sheets were securely coiled and hanked at the bow. The coiled mainsheet hung from a cleat at the back of the cockpit.

During the hour and a half I motored at low throttle settings, it did occur to me that I was placing supreme confidence in a brand new engine. Not just in Tohatsu's quality control, either. I also was relying on the quality of my installation including control cables, electrical connections an a custom fuel system to feed the engine from the inboard fuel tank. I had previously run the new engine a total of 1.2 hours while tied up in the slip. And prudence dictated having the standard Tohatsu fuel tank and hose at the ready in the cockpit.


It wasn't engine failure that plagued me that afternoon, however. What failed was my judgement. Returning, I cut the power too soon heading down the channel to my slip. And I wasn't paying attention to the tide, which had just turned, flooding the basin with a discernible current. Too late to recover with throttle, I shoved the tiller over and hoped for the best.

I quickly saw that my turn wasn't going to carry me into my slip and ran forward to fend myself off my neighbor's stern, if it came to that. The boat seemed to slide sideways as much as it crept forward, but at last the bow was close enough to my dock finger for me to swing around from the pulpit and land on the wobbly planks. A couple more minutes of tugging and pushing had me tied securely in the slip. Whew!

Work of a Craftsman

Before I went away on my motorcycle trip and returned to break my Albin engine, I was reporting on the rebuild of that engine done in the fall of 2005. I assisted my friend John Dickerson, who gratiously allowed himself to be suckered into helping me. I'm sure he realized I would soon be in over my head and was curious to play with the funky old Albin.

The other day I reviewed the serial number history of the engine and the first one really was built in 1925. Mine was built in 1967 and production ceased in 1976.

Although it is a Swedish engine, a few key components were sourced elsewhere. The Stromberg carburetor and the Bosch starter-generator came from Germany. The SEM magneto is French.

The carburetor was no longer able to provide a reliable fuel-air mixture and a replacement was not available. After a lot of searching for an alternative, I settled on the only obvious choice--a new Zenith carburetor made for the Universal Atomic 4 engine. It was even possible to buy an adjustable main jet and needle so that I could tune the Zenith to match the Albin's needs.



The only problem was that it didn't quite fit the Albin manifold. John built the two necessary adapters, one to bolt to the engine manifold and the other to attach the Stromberg's flame arrestor to the Zenith. The Zenith was designed for the Atomic 4's flame arrestor, which could not be installed in the space available on the Albin.

The manifold adapter was fairly straight-forward. Two flanges were cut, one matched the bolt pattern of the Zenith and the other matched the manifold. A short length of tubing was welded between them.



The flame arrestor adapter was less obvious, at least to me. He made it from oversized stainless tubing that he cut into three sections and then sliced lengthwise. Each section was then re-rolled to create three concentric tubes that brought the outside diameter of the Zenith's opening down to the inside diameter of the Stromberg's flame arrestor. A little TIG welding, followed by the polishing wheel, yielded an object of beauty in my eyes. (The length of the adapter was necessary to clear a bulge in the cylinder block.)



The completed unit bolted into place perfectly. In fact, one night some months later, when I was boarded by the Coast Guard while single-handing back down the Alamitos Bay channel (a story for another time), I was complimented on my flame arrestor. Had it not been there I would have been cited.



Mostly the new carburetor worked well, except...

The first problem came at the end of a test run powering to Avalon. I did initially test the reinstalled engine with some fairly short inner harbor runs. But what I wanted was a boat that would take me to Avalon, so that's what I tested for.

I reached Avalon under power with no problem at all. But as I was idling while doing the necessary mooring transaction with the harbor patrol boat, the Albin died. It started up again okay, and with throttle advanced it ran. But it died once more as I idled down the narrow passage between rows of moorings to my assigned can. I ended up making a dead-stick landing, single-handed. And got away with it!

What followed were several months of motoring tests which ended with the engine dying when I throttled back from full speed to idle, but only after a prolonged run at full speed.

Eventually I discovered that the engine was flooding at idle under those cirumstances. The reason was that the fuel pump was putting out too much fuel pressure. I had replaced the old pump, which worked, with a new one without realizing that pumps came with different pressure settings. The bodies were identical. I was only trying to forestall a future pump failure, but I violated the cardinal rule, if it ain't broke...

Somewhere along the way, I inspected my aluminum gas tank and saw that it was pitted inside and the bottom appeared dirty. So I had my fuel polished and my tank cleaned. Another rule violation.

The result thereafter was that everytime I ran the engine, the fuel pickup tube would eventually clog with debris. Old fuel tanks don't clean very well, especially if you can't open one side to clean inside around the baffles and in all the corners. But what cleaning through the filler neck does do well is loosen the gunk that it doesn't remove, so that the fuel system can suck it up.

That led to having a custom fuel tank built because no standard sized tank would fit. Actually, that was a good thing and only cost $423 at Pipeworks Fabrication, Inc., in Long Beach. The new tank is 3/16 inch 5086 aluminum, thicker and stronger than the original, and came with a fuel level sender installed and calibrated. I also was able to make it an inch taller, adding two gallons of capacity. And I had the fill neck moved the quarter-inch forward needed to correct the misalignment of the original with the cockpit sole fill plate.

It took me a number of hours running time to create and then solve the fuel problems. But the eventual result was an engine that started and ran reliably. Until last Saturday that is.

Albin engine, Part 2

The day after the boat was relaunched, I tackled the problem of the recalcitrant engine again.

This time I pulled the spark plugs and found, to my horror, water.

What did work the day before when I was cranking the engine was the water pump. It dutifully circulated water through the raw water cooling system and out through the cylinder head to the inlet on the exhaust pipe.

Boats use the engine cooling water to cool the exhaust enough so that it can flow through a flexible rubber hose instead of a metal pipe like a car exhaust.

What makes this wet exhaust system work is, well, engine exhaust. It pushes the cooling water through the exhaust hose and muffler and back out into the ocean.

If the engine doesn't run there is no exhaust. So what you end up with is a very efficient system for filling the exhaust hose up with water until it backs up into the manifold, through the valves when they are open, and then into the cylinders. If you crank on a dead engine long enough you may ruin the engine.

Thus I belatedly learned Rule No. 1 for attempting to start a balky engine when the boat is in the water. Turn off the cooling water sea cock until the engine is running.

My immediate reaction, after turning off the cooling sea cock, was to run the starter while a mix of water and air sprayed out through the spark plug holes. Then I started spraying copious amounts of WD-40 into the cylinders and kept cranking. When I wasn't seeing water anymore, I checked the oil dipstick to see how much water had ended up in the crankcase. Not much. I changed the oil, cranked some more and then changed the oil again.

I still didn't know why the engine had not started. In fact, I didn't learn that until several weeks later, when I had time again to do more diagnoses. In the meantime I bought a compression tester. When I hooked it up to a spark plug hole and ran the starter, I discovered that the engine didn't have any compression.

That's when I decided to call me friend and Ensenada Race crewman John Dickerson, who owns Automotive Restorations in Downey, CA and has decades of experience with cars and engines. He also has been a boat owner for years, currently owning a Catalina 34.

The recommendation was to pull the head off the engine and view the damage.

The good news was that the cylinders looked fine. They were not rusted, nor scored. And there was no ridge at the top. Clearly the cylinders had been honed in a recent engine overhaul, and per the receipts the seller provided, there undoubtedly were new rings on the pistons.

The Albin O-21 two-cylinder gas engine in my boat was manufactured in 1967, according to the serial number history. Serial number 1 was built in 1925, so this was an old and relatively simple design.

The valves popped up and down on the starboard side of the cylinders, seating in the engine block. The simple flat cylinder head was cast with combustion chambers that extended off to the side of the cylinders to allow the gas-air mixture to be sucked into the cylinders and the exhaust gases to flow back out. The carburetor was bolted to the bottom of the exhaust manifold and had its own passageways to feed the gas-air mixture to the two inlet valves.

It was the exhaust valves that were frozen in place. The valve for the front cylinder was recalcitrant, but it would move if tapped with a rubber mallet.

By soaking the valve stem with penetrating oil, tapping it down, cranking the engine to raise it again and repeating the process over and over, I eventually got that valve free.

The exhaust valve for the rear cylinder wouldn't budge, however.

John suggested filling the valve chamber with penetrating oil and giving it a few days to work.

After 10 days of trying that, the rear valve remained frozen in place. By now I also had removed the manifold and could see that the lifter for that valve, which bobs up and down on the camshaft low in the cylinder block, also wasn't moving.

Clearly the engine would have to be removed and John graciously volunteered work space in his shop and help getting the engine out.

Albin engine, Part 1

One day while the boat was still on the cradle during the extended haul-out for the survey, I decided to quickly fix the Albin engine, which wouldn't start.

The seller told me he believed the problem was in the carburetor. He described how he had removed the fuel float bowl, filled it with gasoline, reattached it, and the engine ran for half a minute or so.

Ah ha!, I had thought to myself. The float needle is stuck. That's so easy. It reminded me of fixing the stuck choke on that VW squareback many years ago. I was sure that I was going to have a fully-operational Albin inboard in no time.

The first thing I figured out was that the seller was a lot more dexterous with his fingers than I was. There was no way I could have removed the bowl from the carb, put gas in and reattached it with the gas, or at least most of it, still in the bowl. Especially not in the water. I couldn't even do it with the boat motionless on the cradle.

Instead, I removed the carburetor and took it apart. It was a Solex 26, which I would later learn was irreplaceable, and it was in sorry condition. The bottom of the float bowl was coated with JB Weld or an equivalent product. Undoubtedly the bowl had corroded because of water in the fuel sitting in the bowl and someone had decided to fix it. The fix didn't look recent.

What it did was limit the movement of the float so that the needle valve remained closed when the float was resting on the bottom of the bowl. I fixed that by bending the brass tab and got the carburetor to the point that I could blow air through the fuel inlet into the bowl. Ah ha! I'm a genius. This engine is fixed.

Even though the boat was high and dry, I decided I could fire it up for a few seconds to prove my success. A lot of cranking ensued. But no ignition. I removed the plugs and verified that they sparked. If you have fuel and you have spark you have ignition. Hmmm. I didn't have ignition.

I bought new plugs. The old ones were rusty. And I went about my other tasks, deciding not to try starting it again until it was in the water.

After the boat was launched, I spent some time at the boat yard dock trying to get the engine to run. Finally I gave up, pushed the electic start button on the outboard, and motored back to the slip. I had been paying the slip rent since the boat was hauled. I would have about six weeks to stay in that King Harbor slip while my other boat was in my slip in Long Beach awaiting purchase.

Sailboat Story

This is an ongoing story about a sailboat, a 1968 Ericson 30, which I named Narrow Escape. Sometimes the story will be about day sailing, or trips to Catalina Island, mostly single-handed sailing. There will be a little bit about cruising class racing. There will be a lot about restoring an old boat, including making an old Albin gas engine reliable once more. Replacing and adding hardware and electronics will also receive some attention. So will refinishing cracked and crazed gelcoat. And sometimes it'll be about just hanging around the boat and the marina, special places both.

The story will not be about crossing oceans or planning to sail around the world or even to Baja, not that this boat isn't capable of all those things with some preparation. Voyages don't fit in with everything else that is part of my life. Narrow Escape provides my principal form of recreation, but not the only one. That probably makes me a lot like a lot of other people who own and enjoy boats.

I don't know the former name or names of this vessel. It had none when I bought it in September 2005. It is hull number 57 of the Ericson 30 line, which was the first of many boats that Bruce King designed for Ericson Yachts. The company and the boats enjoyed a fine reputation from the sixties into the eighties, when the Southern California yacht-building industry withered. Pacific Seacraft bought Ericson's assets and built a couple models for awhile. But it stopped doing that in the early 1990s to focus on building its own lines of cruising sailboats which have earned their own fine reputations, among them the Crealock 34. Pacific Seacraft used to have an Ericson section on its website. But at the moment the company's website is undergoing reconstruction, with no link to Ericson material and no indication if there will be one in the future.

What I know of this Ericson 30 is that it was based in San Francisco Bay until about 2003, when it carried its owner and family south as far as Avalon on Catalina Island. I could make out the shadow of its former hailing port, Redwood City, on the transom. Apparently a voyage to Mexico was the plan, but engine problems and perhaps other issues prompted the owner to call a Long Beach boat broker from Avalon with a plea to sell the boat -- immediately!

As luck would have it, the broker had a friend looking for a sailboat. They went to Avalon, struck a deal on the spot, and motored and sailed home after somehow starting the engine despite a dead battery. The broker recalls being able to hand crank it. But by the time I acquired the boat nearly two years later from a successor owner, no crank was aboard. Nor can I see how it ever could have been done.

What I do know is that when I bought the boat the inboard engine was not working, although the seller assured me that it had been rebuilt and had some parts receipts as evidence. Meanwhile he had invested in a Nissan 9.8 hp electric-start outboard, and a transom-mounted bracket.

The inboard did, indeed, look rebuilt with a good coat of paint, a clean engine compartment, and a plausible story about a problem with the carburetor that seemed like an easy fix to me. Besides, the outboard worked fine.

As I was telling the seller that I would buy his boat, I thought back many years to the time when I bought a VW Squareback that would barely run. That seller gratefully accepted my lowball offer. Then I drove the VW a few discrete blocks away, opened the engine compartment, freed up the stuck automatic choke, and it ran beautifully thereafter for many thousands of miles. I had visions of similar good fortune with the Ericson.