About Ms Bettencourt

Ms Bettencourt is a Swedish built 25-foot trailerable trawler. Her hull was completed in 1971, No. 1117 of about 2500 built. The boat is named for my wife Dia, whose maiden name is Bettencourt.

This little vessel came to me as a gift in 2004. Before then she had been abandoned about 12 years on the Savannah River near Augusta, GA. I have repaired and refitted the boat extensively, and I have cruised her along the East coast of the US, from Cape Lookout, NC, to the Florida Keys. I dream of taking her to Havana some day.

This blog started in 2011 to chronicle the building of a hard top for the boat to replace leaky canvas. Since then the blog has become an Albin-25 boatkeeping and cruising journal.


Saturday, November 30, 2013

Triple injectorectomy

Ms. Bettencourt's 30-year-old Kubota diesel produced a spectacular plume of black smoke as we pulled away from the dock a couple of weeks ago, and full throttle refused to produce more than half-power.

A high-anxiety loop brought us back alongside the pier where I have been probing mechanical innards ever since.

Days have been spent following troubleshooting flow charts toward exhilarating peaks of likely problem solutions then to despondent lows of dashed results. And, most lately, to numbing dead-ends.

It is a fact, however, that black smoke and soot all over the transom is incontrovertible evidence of un-burned fuel. Also,the engine starts easily and idles smoothly. This means there is sufficient compression for fuel ignition.

These facts lead me to believe that the problem must lie with one or more of the fuel injectors, though individual injector tests with the engine running failed to identify a specific bad actor.

So, I think, all three injectors have failed to some degree.

As a result, with great difficulty, over a three-day period, we have come to a milestone:

Probably for the first time since Ms. Bettencourt's engine was built in the mid-1980s, its injectors are out and on the bench.




They will be going to a local diesel shop early next week.










 Her mobility thus challenged, Ms. Bettencourt will remain at the dock until this problem is sorted out. Please check back from time to time.  I'll post an update when more is known.


Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Electronics crashes!

Two very disappointing electronic failures have occurred, just as we enter the final lap of Ms. Bettencourt's center cabin rehab project.

Please recall that last week I had made new dashboard mounts for the GPS chartplotter, the depth sounder, the VHF radio and the compass.

This week I started to install and test the instruments and, right off the bat, my 3-year-old Garmin GPSMAP 546s dropped dead.

Press the "on" button and the Garmin logo appears, then fades away, and that's all there is to see. Garmin tech support was helpful, suggesting some new software from their site and an attempt at a "boot block" start-up.

That didn't work, so the unit is on its way back to Garmin and I am $270 lighter for a rebuilt replacement with a 90-day warranty.

The next bad news came from my brand-new Standard Horizon GX1700 VHF radio. I bought this radio last June and didn't even open the package until last week. The unit was installed Saturday and its send and receive functions performed as expected.

One key feature failed to function, however. This is a DSC, or Digital Selective Calling, enabled radio. It has an emergency switch that can be used to notify the US Coast Guard should a Mayday event occur. This system is dependent on the vessel's unique Maritime Mobile Service Identity, or MMSI, number being entered into the radio transceiver.

The new radio will not toggle through the routine needed to enter Ms. Bettencourt's MMSI number. The unit is useless to me with this limitation. The retailer is off the hook, because they have a clearly-stated 10-day return policy on electronics, and June was four months ago.

So, now I am waiting from a call back from Standard Horizon to see what has to be done to enter a defective product claim.

I suppose it's better to learn this kind of news while tied to the dock, rather than in the middle of a cruise.

Some days it's very hard to stay positive.


UPDATE 11/6/13: Defender Industries, from whom I bought the radio, went the extra mile and helped me work through the problem and get the MMSI number entered. John at Defender provided excellent phone coaching to get the job done. At the same time, Juan at Standard Horizon never let  go of the issue and I was presenting multiple alternatives by email. I am impressed with both firms' customer service.

I am now a relatively happy camper, awaiting only receipt of my replacement GPS from Garmin.