transmission fluid – Have Wind Will Travel

May 25, 2013 – The Crossing Finale – Duct Tape and Dasani

September 10, 2013December 30, 2013anniedike

There we were, with fluid dripping out of our brand new transmission like a leaky faucet and we were two hours from Carrabelle, two hours from Apalachicola, at least two hours from any port. It was like a geographical oddity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw_YryVgLOg

We were two hours from anywhere!

And with only a half-quart of transmission fluid to go on. Having run her completely out of transmission fluid the last time, did we think to pick up more to have on board in case we needed to add more to the new transmission. Of course not! That would be way too effin smart. Nope, this was the same half-quart the infamous Mitch tried to hand us when we were topping off the fluids the morning she locked up in the Carrabelle River (You remember the Irony! http://havewindwilltravel.com/2013/07/29/april-29-2013-oh-the-irony/). I’ll bet his greasy fingerprints were still on it. I can just see Mitch now, leaned back, fingers steepled, his body racked with the bellowing “Muuuu-ha-haaaa” laugh of an evil villain.

Okay, so I couldn’t find a picture of Mitch arched back in “villain mode.” Every picture I have of him he looks so sweet and blue-eyed. Mr. Innocent. But I know better. That Mitch is an evil, dynamite-laying, mustache-twirling villain. Deep down. A real Boris, that man.

And I just have to point out the “irony” of this Boris-comparison because Mitch’s real-life “Natasha” is not nearly as … vertically inclined.

You see. Gorgeous? Yes! Tall? … not so much. But, we love Michelle. You’ll see more of her soon, I can assure you.

But, Mitch and “Natasha” and all other evil transmission villains aside, we had really found ourselves in a bit of a pickle. Every drop of fluid that splashed to the bilge put us one drop further from home, and we had a long way to go. Let me put things in perspective for you. Here’s the trip we had yet to make to get our boat from Carrabelle to Pensacola:

Yeah, that’s right. Quite a ways to go. And, the first leg of the passage, from Carrabelle to Panama City:

is about 90 nautical miles, roughly a 22 to 24-hour trip.

Then the last leg, from Panama City to Pensacola:

is another 24 hours, easy. Like I said. Quite. A ways. To go. Hence, the pickle. The transmission drip was kind of a big dill. (Mmm-hmmmm … that’s right. Pickle jokes. Man I’m on fire today!)

Remember, we had very little wind that morning. It might have been blowing 3 mph. Maybe. But it was blowing out of the southwest, right on our nose, so it certainly wasn’t working with us. We weren’t going to get anywhere sailing even if I jumped up on the deck myself and blew into the sails.

And I’ve got a mighty set of lungs!!

Chill folks … That’s just me blowing up a rockin’ marshmallow number for Halloween last year. You remember ole’ Stay Puft??

Damn that was a great costume!

Okay, back to the tranny. Fortunately we still had cell reception so we called Mechan-Eric to see if he had any brilliant ideas. UN-fortunately, he didn’t answer his phone and we had to leave a message. You can just imagine the agony of the next few minutes while we watched little tiny pink drops fall to an untimely death in the bilge, one after the other, while I constantly checked my phone.

Slide to unlock. Click. No messages.

Tick, tock.

Click. No messages.

Drip, drop.

Then. Finally! My phone shimmied and vibrated on the nav station, like a happy little bee. Such a glorious sound. I clawed and clamored and clicked that thing open faster than I ever have before. It was Eric calling back with what he said was “good news.” If you recall, the guy we bought the new transmission from had bought it brand new for his own project boat, that he, as many men often do, couldn’t seem to find the time for. So, the transmission sat on a shelf for over a year. Eric said he had seen that happen before, when a new engine component sits for a while the little rubber gaskets inside dry-rot and have to be replaced. Eric was sure that was it, just a simple little 97-cent gasket. An easy fix. “Just keep pouring more fluid in and you can replace the gasket when you get home,” he said. “Good news, right?”

Wrong Eric. Very wrong. As you know, we didn’t have that much “more” to pour in. (Cue the evil Mitch laugh again).

I explained our half-quart dilemma and Eric must have been on fire that day, too, because he did have a brilliant idea. Catch it. Capture it. Find a way to save those little pink drops of gold and pour them back into the transmission. Reduce, reuse, right? I nodded slowly and gave Eric the old “mmm-huh” as my inner gears started spinning. I relayed the news to Phillip, who responded with a blank, mind-boggling stare. “Do what??”

Thankfully, for Phillip, for the boat and for that damn transmission, I grew up country.

That’s right. Country. As a child, I “summered” on my Grandma (aka “Big Mom’s”) farm. In Alabama.

With cows.

And dogs.

And a four-wheeler!

Man, farming’s exhausting …

But, if there’s one thing I learned on the farm, if you can’t get there in mud boots or fix it with duct tape, it’s probably not worth it.

So, my country instincts kicked in.

“Phillip, I’m going to need that Dasani bottle.”

“And some duct tape.”

I cut the top off of the Dasani bottle and flipped it over to make a funnel into the bottle and taped it on.

Real high-quality engineering. Then I taped her up under the shifter arm of the transmission where the drip was coming from.

The drip was coming from the base of this bolt here and would then fall into the Dasani funnel:

The fluid would then pool in the bottle and voila!

We’ve now successfully “captured” the transmission fluid and can pour it back into the transmission as needed. See? Nothing to it. Just takes a little country ingenuity is all. … And some duct tape.

With the ability to recycle the fluid, we were then able to keep on trucking across the Gulf. We set our sights on Panama City and never looked back.

May 24, 2013 – The Crossing Finale – A Trail of Tears

September 3, 2013December 30, 2013anniedike

We woke Thursday morning to the sound of gerbils. Angry, evil, little warbley gerbils. (Yes, that’s a word. If it in any way conveyed the throat-rattling, turkey gobbler-like sound they made, it did it’s job. It’s a word). You might think gerbils are these cute, cuddly little creatures, all soft and innocent, but I’m here to tell you they’re not.

They’re loud, mangy, annoying little boogers that woke us up at 5:15 on Thursday morning. Or, whatever it was sure sounded like gerbils, at least how I would imagine they would sound, if four of them were stuffed in a sock together, all wrestling and rabid. For your benefit, I tried to capture the lovely sound that morning so you could truly understand. Listen very closely:

http://youtu.be/1J0GBY2HB4A

And I would apologize for the language, but it was early and they were annoying and we are sailors, so … I make no excuses.

Okay, so you have probably figured out by now that they weren’t gerbils. They were birds. Angry birds.

I’ve since learned this particularly noisy breed tends to inhabit lots of marinas and they like to wake you up at four in the friggin’ morning with their warbley, sock-wrestling mating calls. Effin gerbils!

And, just as an interesting aside (so you get the benefit of all my hard blogging work), every time I Googled for images of gerbils, Richard Gere kept popping up. Yes. The actor. Richard Gere. I mean, every time! There were even pictures of him with gerbils.

I know … creepy, right? Which is why I decided to look into it. And, you gotta love Google because I found this little gem. Enjoy:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/celebrities/a/richard_gere.htm

Richard … you old dog, you! And, to add icing on this glorious cake (and this will be my last mention of ole’ Richard, I swear), Phillip got a big kick out of the fact that I had never heard this “gerbil rumor” before and had to conduct an independent investigation. I guess my age is showing. As several of you reminded me after my last post, I am, in fact, younger than MTV (http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Music/9807/31/encore.mtv/).

So, the angry birds did deny us a nice, leisurely rousing that morning, but it wasn’t too much of a sacrifice as, if you recall, we had planned to wake up early and get under way before sunrise. Gerbils, or birds or angry roosters, we were ready to jump out of the v-berth regardless and get our beautiful boat a-goin’.

We checked the fluids: gas, oil, coolant and transmission fluid (of course!). Like I said, we will never again, until our little sailing hearts stop beating, NOT check the transmission fluid before we crank the engine. Whether it’s been a half hour or four days, we want to see that dipstick coated in sweet, pink nectar before we’ll even thinking about turning the engine over. So, with the fluids in check, we readied the sails and tossed the lines and headed out into the Carabelle River. We puttered along (knowing full well this time which side of the river to stay on http://havewindwilltravel.com/2013/07/08/april-17-23-2013-the-crossing-chapter-seven-right-of-the-river/) and made it out into the Gulf right at sunrise. And it was like she rose just for us:

Or it seems that is how sailing can make you feel sometimes. Like the world is spinning just for you.

And, this time it was just Phillip and I. Me and the captain, off on our first couples cruise. I was feeling like one incredibly lucky gal. I mean, could life really get any better?

Perhaps just a little, with a warm mug of heavenly hazelnut coffee I suppose, but just a little.

We brewed up some coffee and enjoyed the sunrise, and the sail, and the feeling of finally having her back out there in blue waters, headed home. There wasn’t much wind, so we were motoring most of the morning, but I could have spent all day in that cockpit, holding the helm, or curled up with a book (or my laptop!) just watching the water float by. I was perfectly content. But, that’s why I’m only the first mate and Phillip is the captain. Thankfully, he had the wherewithal to think to check on the engine. I mean, she had been sitting for a month, she just had a new transmission put in, and we had been running her for about an hour and a half.

Phillip gave me the helm and went down below to see how things were looking under the “hood,” which in our boat, is akin to looking under the sink. In order to access the engine on the Niagara, this “L-shaped” piece that houses the sink pulls back to give access to the engine, like a-so:

In place:

Pulled back:

And, the cool part is the sink hoses are all long enough and run in a manner that doesn’t require any unhooking, etc. to pull the sink back. You just pull it back, lean it gently against the table (we put a pillow in between to cushion it), do your business under the “hood,” then tilt her back down gently in place, and the sink is none the wiser. It’s really quite handy and, unlike many other boats which require removal of covers, plates, hatches, screws, etc. to get to the engine, this little “flip-top” contraption makes for very easy access when you’re underway. I tell you all of this because it was a feature we were about to become incredibly familiar with and incredibly thankful for.

As I held the wheel, I could hear Phillip down below pull the sink back, set it against the table and click on a flashlight to take a look at the engine. I saw his light moving in and around the engine and I could hear him wiggling some things and tinkering around. I wouldn’t have thought much of it had his silence not continued for just a little too long. Minutes passed and he he didn’t pop his head up and give me a thumbs up, or say “Everything looks great,” or “Good to go,” or anything like that. He was just quiet. Too quiet. I wanted to ask him how everything was going, but I knew he’d tell me when it was time, and a part of me didn’t want to know. I was perfectly content to sit up there at the wheel, watching the water dance by, pretending we didn’t even have an engine, or fluids, or any of that.

Engine? What engine? I’m just sailing along up here. Doop-de-doo:

But, Phillip finally raised his head in the companionway and gave me the exact look I was fearing. Something was wrong. He told me to put on the auto-pilot and summoned me down. I came down the stairs, and he handed me the flashlight without saying a word, which worried me even more. Although after the initial leg of The Crossing, I was certainly far more familiar with the engine than I was before, I was no diesel mechanic. If the problem was obvious enough for me to SEE with my naked eye, it was probably bad. And … it was. Underneath the engine and slithering on down to the bilge was a bright, pink trail of fluid.

Phillip and I were hoping it was just some of that famous Westerbeke Red paint Mechan-Eric had sprayed on the transmission to make it match the rest of the engine.

No, big deal. Just some paint. Surely that’s it. But, as it always seems, life can never be that simple. Having run the old transmission slap out of fluid the last time, we were all too familiar with that pink viscous liquid to be pretty darn sure what was trickling out of our engine was more likely than not transmission fluid. Phillip showed me what he had found during his wiggling and tinkering,

The leak:

Little red drops kept forming, one after the other, under the shifter arm, and falling to a grey grave below in the bilge. There was no denying it. Our brand new, bright red, painfully expensive transmission was leaking. We were two hours from Carrabelle, twelve hours from our next stop, with little wind and only a half quart of transmission fluid to get us anywhere. I felt like I could have cried too, a little red trail of tears right down to the bilge.

April 29, 2013 – Oh the Irony!

July 29, 2013December 30, 2013anniedike

While I could easily entertain you with what we did that weekend, the food we ate, the movies we saw, all with cleverly-timed quips and supporting Google images, this is, in fact, a sailing blog, and I imagine (scratch that, I know – because several of you have pestered me about it) you all are far more curious about the boat and what the heck is going on with the engine than anything else. Well … join the club. The boat was our main concern too.

Thankfully, Mechan-Eric called on Monday and said he had found the problem. It was the transmission. Of all things. Turns out we had run it completely out of fluid and it over-heated and locked up. While we certainly appreciated the news, it was not well received by the lawn mower focus group. We were still standing around scratching our heads:

The transmission?!? That thing ain’t got no transmission!

(And, just for fun – check out this creative bunch of eligible bachelors):

Some people clearly have too much time on their hands. They must write blogs or something.

We really were surprised by the diagnosis, though. I mean, like a car, the transmission fluid is not something you regularly check on a boat. At least not as much as the oil or the coolant. And, we’d had a survey done just a few weeks prior (which we assumed had entailed checking the fluids). We had also had no problems with the transmission – no issues shifting gears – no sign at all that the transmission was struggling. Like I said before, that engine ran perfectly, up until the moment it didn’t run at all. So, needless to day, it was incredibly irritating to find the reason we had to call The Crossing and leave the boat docked up at a diesel mechanic’s marina in Carrabelle was a lack of transmission fluid because: a) it’s super cheap, like a buck forty-nine a jug or something, and b) we had some on the boat anyway.

What’s worse – and this is Mitch’s ultimate redemption – when Phillip was checking the fluids that fateful morning (the oil, the coolant, the gas, etc.) he asked Mitch to hand him the engine oil so he could top it off, and Mitch had inadvertently handed him the transmission fluid instead.

Yes, irony – the opposite of wrinkly. And, when used in a sentence:

No, Doug, I don’t think your elbow handshake is awkward at all, I just want to know how Ted here got his shirt so crisp and irony.

While that usage is fun (obviously I’ve had a little too much fun with it), I meant it just as Alanis intended, like rain on your wedding day. When we looked back on it, we couldn’t believe Mitch had almost saved the day. Almost. But, more so, we couldn’t believe we had run the thing slap out of fluid. Really?? Thirty-eight cents worth of that pink nectar dumped in there and it would have saved us? But, we learned a very valuable lesson. Always, ALWAYS, check all (and I do mean ALL) of the fluids before you crank the engine. We do it every time now – even the transmission fluid.

Of course, that is now. This was then. And, we were looking at shelling out another $2,500 for a new transmission (not to mention the labor to have it put in). Kind of sucks, don’t you think?

And yeah I really do think.