Eeek! That sinking feeling!

Once we got the Sabb running I filled the cooling system, once filled, I suspected a possible leak from the skin tank balance pipe.

Next morning as Glenda was heading off to work she said :-

"Don't go poking around, finding more problems that we don't need"

Ten minutes later I found some water in the cabin bilge next to the engine 'ole bulkhead. As I started to suck it out with the wet & dry, a bit of rust got sucked up and a jet of water shot up from the baseplate! 

"Oh! Fiddlesticks" (or similar) I exclaimed!

Luckily there was a roofing screw nearby, which I screwed into the hole, reducing the flow to a trickle. This I then replaced with a new roofing screw, a tap washer and some silicone, stopping the leak.

We slept onboard that night and arranged to haul Freyja out the next morning.

Even though the Sabb had no coolant, throttle, engine stop or gearchange I decided to take Freyja around under her own steam.

I set the throttle to tick over, used a parasol pole for a gearchange (holding it in gear with my foot).

I was very happy that it pulled like a train.

Water seems to have collected in this spot overthe years, we knew the shower was emptying into the cabin bilge and had fixed this and dried the bilge out, But it had obviously caused the skin tanks or the balance pipe to rust through and start to leak.

The roofing screw and tap washer stopping us from sinking!

The Sabb performed well, bringing Freyja around to the pump-out pontoon, ready to haul her up the slipway.

Here, I think Glenda is signalling that this is the second time we've had Freyja out recently.

Here Glenda is multi-tasking, showing me what she thinks of my ability to find leaks as she removes mussels etc. from the baseplate.

Thirteen 8 foot x 4 foot 6 mm sheets being laid out and prepared to be welded together into one big plate. The trailer will then be reversed down the slipway and Freyja positioned on top of the plate.

The first two sheets chamferred ready to be welded together. Once Freyja is in position Bruce will weld around the edge and flame-cut off the excess metal.

Re-routing the diesel and grease pipes

After years of struggling to be able to climb into the engine 'ole (due to pipes, cables, fittings etc,) I wanted to route all coolant, diesel and grease pipes out of the way of places I need to use when climbing in to work on the engine.

I used sections of wooden decking, using the grooves to locate the 1/4" copper pipes.

 

Freyja's got a Boom-Boom!

After much fiddling and twiddling, I finally finished routing the copper piping around the engine 'ole, albeit with a few small coolant leaks.

The time had come to connect the electrical side of things and to hear the Sabb run again.

The Sabb was happy to tick over but kept fluffing and cutting out when we tried to rev her up. Next we'll check the lift pump for any foreign bodies.

A crap Xmas present? Composting toilet is the way forward.

We agreed that for Xmas we'd buy each other bits of a compost toilet kit, how romantic?!! This we'll put in the butty, we only use our cassette in Freyja to pee in and don't even put toilet paper into it. If we needed a 'big job' we've always walked up to use the marina toilets, but they are sometimes blocked.

Our seasonal gift to each other was the urine diverter and the specially adapted toilet seat from http://www.offgriddesigns.co.uk In this photo I'm trying to work out the height and position by blancing it on a cardboard box.

I cut out the hole needed for the urine diverter into a piece of hardwood that I'd been given.

Shaping around the front of the 'thunderbox'.

Getting there, the compost toilet is now usable but unfinished, as it still has no front on the 'thunderbox'

We keep some woodash in the yoghurt pot, this is used as a carbon cover which is sprinkled onto the solids.

The business end :- A painter's bucket bought from B & M for £2.99 with a green garden bag from Wilko for the solids and a four litre container for the urine.

Glenda's loss, Sabb's gain!

I first got the idea to replace our BMC with a Sabb when it was suggested by Paul Johnston who we met on Peterborough Embankment.

Paul recently paid us a visit, having recently got his own Sabb 2JHR running. I was a happy puppy when he confirmed the way I'd gone about connecting things up. But he also showed my a photo of a filter inside the thermostat housing and which would need cleaning. I took said housing off, destroying the gasket, only to find no filter.

The thermostat housing with it's new gasket but minus it's filter

Now with added kitchen sieve/filter!

 

Sorting out the Sabb's waterworks

When the Sabb was fitted I was told to connect the engine coolant and calorifier to the existing raw water. The problem with doing this is that I wouldn't be able to use antifreeze, then, if the weather turned freezing, I would have to drain the system and on refilling get all the air out.

Freyja still had her old skin tanks, so I cleaned them out and will try her out using a sealed system.

I could have connected it up quite quickly using rubber piping, but decided to used mostly 22mm with a little 28mm and a few 15mm adapters, all in soldered copper with only short vibration damping lengths of rubber pipe on each run. This meant that I could route all the pipes away from the bits of the bilge that I wanted clear so that I can climb in easily when I need to work on the engine. It also looks nice when polished!