Funny tour of the fort guided by Timo. He seemed quite impressed with the ingenious construction. Some 20 years ago the Dutch prime minister quoted "the glorious era of the VOC". Leftwing politicians wanted him to leave because of that remark. And today, never speak highly of the VOC in public, you might be lynched.
Nice to follow along with you guys and thanks for all the effort it takes to share. Great update but captains mouth watering cooking didn’t make this episode?? 😂
Thank you for the lovely tour of the fortress. I do hope that Timo's fix works in the propulsion. I like the rubber glove to help the stika say in place.
Hope the gear box is fixed. Can you put a muffler on the microphone? Trying to watch your videos and the wind noise was so loud I had to fast forward through 80% of it
Hey Rainer yeah they’re awesome!! We’d really appreciate you using this link lddy.no/1g12p if you decide to purchase one for yourself :) and use the coupon code SailingNV when making any purchase to get a free tshirt!
Hi, looks like a beautiful place, what an amazing fort! I’m a retired marine engineer, spent time on superyachts and in the wider industry having moved sideways from international motorsports, for what it’s worth. I too have fought the good fight with saildrives in the past. One get out of jail free solution for repeated sealing issues is to drill and tap the fill plug at the top of the leg, fit a hose nipple and run a tube up to a small reservoir bottle a couple of feet above the waterline. Fill the unit and reservoir leaving some room in the reservoir for expansion and make sure that the reservoir cap has a vent hole. This arrangement will maintain a slight positive pressure within the leg and prevent seawater entry via both shaft seal and your slightly dicey drain plug. By tweaking the reservoir height above the waterline you can adjust the amount of positive pressure, so if you find that the oil level consistently drops then you’re losing it to the outside world and can lower the reservoir, whereas if the level in the reservoir increases seawater is being forced in and you can raise the reservoir to increase internal pressure to counteract it. As far as your gear selection issues go, what make, model and production year is the gearbox and what engine is fitted? Even if it’s not a combination that I’m familiar with I have friends in many low places and one of them may be able to assist with identifying a solution. Hope all’s well enough apart from your powertrain snags and that you’re able to make the most of being in such a fantastic part of the world. If I were ten years younger and didn’t have a sheep farm to take care of I’d be offering to fly out and join in the fun, I always wanted a crack aboard a 60 but the chance never came my way. Cheers! Stay safe, R.
Hi Rob, ah it was so nice to read your message thank you! We’d heard about this reservoir setup before but we are worried that we could potentially make the issue worse, eg create too much pressure that we make our leak worse. But reading your message has made us feel more confident to have a go. Our sail drive is Volvo 120sd and we now actually have a spare 2nd hand one onboard! Our engine is md2040 Volvo. We’ve tried replacing the cone clutch and associated discs in the water but haven’t managed to remove the clamping rings so are now on our way to the north coast of Borneo (kudat), just a 1500nm sail away (haha) in the hope that the yard there can haul us out (they’ve refused to guarantee up to now). Thanks again 🙏
@@SailingNV No problem! I completely understand your concern about the possibility of making things worse. If it helps to ease your fears I’ll point out a couple of things about lip seals, of the type that seal the shaft, that are relevant. The way that a lip seal is designed to function relies upon pressure being applied to the inner face of the seal to maintain contact with the shaft. The garter spring applies a preload to the sealing lip and in a normal application, such as when it is sealing a shaft with oil on one side of the seal and atmospheric pressure on the other, it is sufficient to maintain that contact pressure and prevent leakage. Due to the saildrive being immersed in water there is a counter pressure being applied that is greater than atmospheric pressure, which reduces the pressure that the garter spring is able to exert on the lip since it is also counteracting the water pressure acting in the opposite direction. In a perfect world, where the requirement for lubrication were not an issue, there would be two seals face to face. The inboard one would be arranged exactly as per your existing one but the other would have it’s garter spring facing the prop to resist ingress of the briny. Unfortunately seawater makes a poor lubricant and that arrangement would not last long at all! Exactly the same seal type is used to seal the crankshaft of a two stroke engine, where it may be subject to a pressure cycle that peaks at around 2-3bar acting on the lip in addition to the garter spring pressure. They last just fine even though they are also subject to considerable heat as well. In your case we’re only talking about raising the lip pressure a fraction above neutral in order to maintain a positive seal, certainly nowhere near garter spring plus 2-3 bar. The only thing that is less than ideal about the header tank arrangement is that the gearset in the leg will be fully immersed in oil, rather than partially which is preferable, which will soak up a little more power than normal for a bevel-drive gearset. In reality you won’t notice the loss of a fraction of a horsepower through it. In your position I’d give it a go since the presence of salt water in the leg will definitely do damage to the leg casting, gearset and bearings, over a relatively short period of time. The trick is to tune the reservoir height to the point where you’re neither losing nor gaining fluid in the unit. I’ll get onto a thoroughly disreputable friend who’s my go-to for all things Volvo guru-like and let you know what he comes up with for the gearbox snags. Just a couple of questions: 1) is it just a problem engaging gear or disengaging…or both? 2) Is it the same problem in forward and reverse or just one of them….or a different problem for the two gears? Hope that all makes sense to you and helps a bit. Cheers, R.
@@SailingNV One other detail that’s worth knowing about the saildrive reservoir dodge, the closer you can mount the reservoir to the centreline of the boat, the less the variation of pressure in the leg as the boat heels….So it’s worth getting it as close to central as possible. 😎👍🍻
Hi Rob, thanks again for all this. We have now set this up, but we were losing too much oil and still getting water in the oil... however we also found emulsioned oil leaking out into the engine room, which made us think we've got a leak in the system somewhere, so have changed the oil stick o ring as that looked like it was the culprit. Will let you know how things continue. Could we continue this conversation via email? Ours is sailingnv@gmail.com In answer to your other questions. Our main issue is engaging the reverse gear, but we also find sometimes when we've been in forward gear for many hours, we appear to be able to go in neutral but if we then try to go in reverse, we find we're back in forwards (if that makes sense)
