Well... That's Not A Good Noise !

Añadido: 2026-05-05

[00:00:04]Look, I appreciate that more people are watching the YouTube channel now. That's great. And if I can be a conduit for knowledge that has been passed to me and passed down from the great masters, lovely. Be safe, be conservative, enjoy your sailing. But if I have to have loads and loads of incense on board the boat to make YouTube videos, I'm not sure that's a fair deal. So, I've just put the jib down again. And we are now I guess technically lying a hole.

[00:00:31]Basically, we're we're we're parked at the moment, I would say. Look at the conditions. It's not stormy. It's strong. It's not stormy, but have a look. It's quite quite nice actually.

[00:00:40]You don't smack your head on anyway.

[00:00:44]Right.

[00:00:55]So, it's very windy, but for a big boat like this, it's not overly windy.

[00:01:02]And we were sailing until about 20 minutes ago, heading not exactly to Nova Scotia, but more to like Newfoundland, which is definitely on the way there.

[00:01:13]I have mentioned in other videos that uh I normally sleep um about 2 and 1 half hour sleep period just at dawn because stay awake during that period from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. when most accidents occur where watch keepers on a vessels might well be a bit drowsy where I am prone to making mistakes if I get up in the night and have to do something. So stay awake during the bit where it's high risk. go to sleep now at dawn when other people are waking up and maybe they'll dodge around me whilst I'm not quite exactly looking where I'm going.

[00:01:46]Okay, rule six, keep a good lookout.

[00:01:49]We've got alarms going. We've got the AIS, but for a short period I can doze, keep my ear open for the alarms and should be fine. At this time, I normally start the engine. Okay. Uh lights have been burning through the night. I have my spread lights on all through the night and I uh make sure that I've got um as much visibility for the boat again so people can see me. So at dawn we need to charge. So I came down and I went to start the engine. Now uh if you're an engineer um I'll give you the symptoms and then you can we play a little game and you can work out what you think it is. Uh start the key. Get the key.

[00:02:30]turned the key and the engine said back back and then stopped immediately.

[00:02:39]So, what do you think that is? Sorry, don't worry. It's not like I'm asking you for, you know, sending you there's no post box for me to receive your uh your hints and tips here. Um, if you're a non engineering type person, uh, internal combustion engines work like the mob basically. It's suck, squeeze, bang, blow. Okay, they're the major components of what's going on in both both things.

[00:03:06]The engine on a boat is subject to environmental forces and to operator forces. Whenever you're trying to diagnose something wrong with a piece of machinery, you know, I I elicit a lot of loyalty from the machinery that I work with. when I term it like that cuz I'm not like on it with the maintenance all the time, but I've done a lot of miles of diesel engines and they're very loyal to me cuz I basically don't mess around with them. I don't get in fiddling with every little bit of a thing. I watch them, I use them, I listen to them, I'm cautious, I'm careful, and I do the things that need to be done. So, yesterday, uh, I went to the engine and it vroom vroom vroom vroom vroom vroom vroom vroom vroom vroom vroom on the starter key on the startroom vroom vroom vroom vroom vroom vroom vroom vroom vroom vroom vroom wouldn't startoom vroom wouldn't start. Now, what's that?

[00:03:52]Well, that's secondary fuel filter, isn't it? Because suddenly can't pull any Can't pull any fuel. No problem.

[00:03:59]Change the secondary fuel filter, change the primary fuel filter, cleared out the sediment bowl, started straight up. Bled bled it all. Start it straight up. No problem at all. This one, clack, clack, clack, and then immediately stop. Hm. On a boat, environmental issues. We've been slopping around a lot. The exhaust coming out the back of the boat goes quite low on this boat. and then it goes high through the lazarette which remember my lazette's like got 5 foot um uh height on it but then it drops down to the stern. We have had a lot of waves coming back up but there is also a a water separator um after that first drop down from the boat. So is it possible for water to get back to the engine? The suck cycle requires a valve to open. The squeeze cycle requires both valves to be closed. the bang part of it. Definitely both valves close there. Piston flies down and then the uh blow cycle, the other valve open, the exhaust valve opens and the gases get pushed back out and then that cylinder starts again. The other valve opens, suck, squeeze, bang, blow. When the engine stops of the four cylinders, one or other of them will have the exhaust valve open. That means that the internal components of the engine, the cylinder, the piston are suddenly got like a little way that they could get water in them from the exhaust if the water was able to get back inside the engine, which engineers will know is hydraulic lock. Right? The other way it can happen is that the uh you've got the raw water, the engine's pulling in seawater. I'm going to make my coffee while we're talking to you. The engine could pull in um uh the engine, sorry, the engine does pull in raw water. Obviously, your impeller, all that stuff. It it it uh takes it round. It goes through the heat exchanger. Uh the heat of the engine is being transmitted by fresh water, which is better for the engine because it's not as um corrosive. It's not sea water.

[00:06:06]It's being transferred, that heat's being transferred to the raw water, which is passing by in the heat exchanger. And then that water gets injected into what's called the elbow, the injection elbow at the exhaust of the of the engine. So again, there's water right next to the open valves.

[00:06:26]Okay. Okay. So water can get the other thing can happen is if the head gasket the top of the engine where the valves are and the bottom of the engine where the pistons are obviously two separate parts and you've got a gasket between the two and that gasket if it does start to break down a little bit you can have it where that cooling water that freshwater cooling water inside the engine is now got some exposure just a little bit to the um to the inside of the cylinder. And then when the engine cools down, it creates a slight low pressure and it can pull water out of the cooling jacket into the cylinder. So there are three ways that you can get water going into the cylinders of an internal combustion engine on board a boat at sea. So, one of the things you're very highly conditioned to if you're in and around boats, uh, is that if you go into a startup sequence and it goes clack clack clack and stops immediately, it could be that the pistons as they're going up and down, there's water inside one of the pistons and if you push it uh, by continuing trying to start it or god help you if it actually starts the um, the connecting of the pistons going up and down inside the cylinder, but obviously it's not just flying around willy-nilly. It's got a a rod, a piece of metal, a connecting rod, a con rod that goes down and connects to that funny crankshaped thing which transmits that vertical power uh into the rotational power you need to go through the gearbox and go to the prop.

[00:07:59]So, if there's water in the cylinder, however it got there, one of those three ways or or wizards, whatever it was, that has enough force. Remember, liquids are incompressible, that when the piston goes up, there is only one relief for that pressure, and that is to bend the conrod. And if you bend the conrod, you've got a lot of problems. Now, is that what's happening here? Possibly.

[00:08:28]We have to deal with the situation immediately now as though we've got a hydraulic lock. And because we're optimists, we're going to believe that I didn't trash it just by turning it a couple times. But the fact that it went clack clack clack clack and then stopped immediately tells me something was making it stop. Whether it's bust or not, I don't know. But we have to now work on the principle that it may well be bust. So, we have to immediately start thinking about how much power we've got on board and how we're going to get to Nova Scotia without the engine, without its production of power.

[00:09:01]And you know, in the immediate, we have to say like, is there any way of relieving the hydraulic lock? If there is no problem in this situation, we always got like the four box rule, right? Box one, there is no problem and you take no action, everything's fine.

[00:09:17]That's 25% of the possible options. Box two is there is no problem and you take action and that's called maintenance and that's no problem as well. Box three, there is a problem and you take action which is our optimistic way forward with this job. Um and then you relieve the problem. Now you've covered 75% of the options ahead of you. Box four, there is a problem and you take no action. That is a problem. And box four problems are the ones we must avoid at sea at all costs. Right? So we do maintenance that is there is no problem and we take action. Brilliant. We do careful operation of box one which is there is no problem we take no action. Great.

[00:09:57]We've gone into a box three situation now which is identified a problem as I did yesterday when it wouldn't start and I changed the primary fuel filter, the secondary fuel filter and purge the uh sediment bowl. That's box three. Box four. Now box four would be there is a problem. We take no action. That would be continuing to try and start the engine. So, literally, I've gone clack clack clack and that's it. I went and dropped the sails and now it's time to work out what happens next. Yesterday, that's not a problem. I don't mind to hear that sound because uh that just means it's not getting fuel or if in a car if you've got a spark plugs, it's a petrol engine, gasoline engine, it means it's not getting spark. If you have a situation where it goes click click, okay, that could just be flat battery, stuck bendix on the starter motor, the solenoid's not working properly, starter motor seeds cuz you went through a river yesterday when you were foring to get to grandma's house, whatever. Sure. But the one you don't want to hear is clack clack clack clack clack. This is not some oversquare Japanese interference engine where you know the the timing belt's gone and now no. This is a long stroke cast iron block medium uh marine diesel engine. And so when I hear that sound, I immediately think hydraulic lock. So I went to start the engine. The engine made that sound and I immediately went into one of the scenarios which I play what if with. I the last time I had hydraulic lock on a boat, it was on Muk's Luck, which was 110 ft Hatterus with two V16 two-stroke diesel engines. Okay, it was quite the boat. And so we got the engine serviced at that time and it cost $300,000 in 200 in the year 2000. No, that's not right. 2007. Yeah. So, uh, I don't think we quite got that problem here, but we need to understand like the scale of the issue when when reacting to this problem. It's not that I'm going to like turn the key and show you the sound it makes cuz that could be a very expensive demonstration and a very complicated demonstration. Now, one thing I'll also say is I'm not like some crazy YouTuber like I'm in the middle of the ocean having fun. Like if you're a pilot and you're landing the plane, I don't think you're playing knock-knock jokes as you're landing the plane. You might be playing knock-knock jokes whilst you're flying along. This is still inside the bounds of what we can deal with.

[00:12:30]Remember, with auxiliary engines, auxiliary engines on a boat, the main motive force is still the sails. Now, we have an issue with the main sail. It has some damaged batters. We can fix damaged batters. It's a bit windy now, but when the wind's gone down, we can fix damaged batters if we need to. But I'll tell you right now, I was doing 8 knots on course upwind. Maybe not at 50° apparent uh true wind angle, but at 60 upwind quite happily until 20 minutes ago. So, we can sail this boat no problem at all with the jib. We can definitely sail it with the main sail. We have not lost our main motive force, but we have for the second lost our power generation unit, right?

[00:13:12]Because this boat at the moment is kind of relying on the engine. We have a bit of solar, not very much solar. I see a lot of people asking in the comments, "How's my solar? What's it doing?" And people saying, "Oh, your solar's underneath the the the lines that are on the deck there." There is nowhere else nowhere else to put it on this boat.

[00:13:27]Remember, another mode that this boat goes into is 20 people on deck. What are you going to do? Like, where are you going to put the solar on the deck?

[00:13:34]Anywhere that's operational with the crew can't have solar. So, it goes there. And the solar panel, let's have a look. The solar panels are quite um slippery. So under the ropes actually although we take a hit on the solar power um you tend not to I'll try not to hit my head this time you um stand on the rope not the panel right so see that okay and the reason there's five is cuz I haven't fitted the sixth one yet now the function of it has been mostly for maintenance on the batteries when we're in in port something like that so a little bit of power can come in that way let's have to see what the power is right now on our batteries. See, I was just about to charge. Okay, we're at 26.24.

[00:14:20]Charge at 26.2.

[00:14:23]Okay, I was I was on it. I was on it. Um the reality is that it means we've got 50% left on the batteries. Okay. Um on Yeah, on the batteries. So, that is massive capacity in terms of running the instruments, the AIS, all that stuff.

[00:14:39]The AS is still on. Uh that pulls like 2 amps. I think at the moment literally just the um AIS is on. Yeah, look at that. The AIS is pulling.88.

[00:14:53]And then my little lights, which I'm always joking about, are providing light for a couple of AA batteries. Right.

[00:15:00]Other things we have going on, there are 24 torches on this boat because every crew member must have a torch when you're at sea.

[00:15:09]We have lights up here. Woo. We have also Oh, he's not in there right now. We have our big suitcase battery, right? We can maybe Can we see that? I'm telling you this. Look, here's a torch. The torches that I use are these ones from Energizer. And these are brilliant because they are floating, right? So, in the event of somebody going off the back of the boat in uh nighttime, um what I do is get people to grab these. They are in every tool bag. They're in every emergency bag. And when we're at sea and working with crew, they're literally clipped by every bunk. So all moments people have these. But then what we can do if somebody is has gone into the water, um you can't just stop a boat like this instantly. We can if we've just got a jib up, we can crash tack and stop the boat. Sure. But you got a spinner crop, this is a problem, right?

[00:15:59]But these thrown into the water will float this way up and they got little retroflective things on the side of them. You can make a line of them in the water and something like this is hydraulically locked into the water in the same way that the casualty in the water is. So you can then turn find a torch and then go and find the next torch and the next torch and the next torch and that should be your breadcrumb trail. But inside here is remember this guy that big battery there. It is not connected to anything.

[00:16:30]Okay. There is also a spare 12volt battery and the engine start battery. So if I wire the engine start batteries, I get 24 volts. Remember this boat's 24 volts. There is 50% in the main 100 amp battery and there is full charge in the spare 110 amp battery. So I have lots of power as long as I'm not running the autopilot. Now, you'll see on the channel, I'll put a link in the description below, how to steer the boat with a sail tight. We can steal this boat with a sail tight. I've done thousands of miles. Why? Because uh previously I had a situation in the Southern Ocean on an open 60 where the batteries failed and I was 1,000 miles from anywhere and trying to race from what was just south of uh Western Australia across to uh New Zealand. And um I had to come off the racing line which was way south in the southern ocean and then come up close to Australia where there was sun where my solar could then do a little bit of work and um keep the keep the batteries at least topped up enough that I could then make my way across the Tasmin Sea and into New Zealand and not have to stop racing. I'm pretty stubborn person. So um it seems to be that uh people like to hear how decisions are made. I think that's something that's not taught. I don't want to say I'm not teaching, I'm sharing, but it's not it's not shared enough by people who have experience, which I guess is what teaching is, but um I want people to understand the decision-m process. As soon as the engine made that noise, previous Chris had a learned about engines. My dad was a brilliant mechanic and uh I'll get choked up if I talk about this. I won't talk about dad in this kind of situation.

[00:18:20]There's a part of me that would still really appreciate to be able to phone him and say, "Hello. Uh, so it made this noise." And to hear someone go, "Right, what you need to do is you need to just take a breath. This is probably what's going on. You need to do this. You need to do that.

[00:18:51]See, I'm tired." And that's where you have to be very careful with your emotions. So, we fight back by sugar first. Okay.

[00:19:02]He would say to me, what would he say? It'd say it wants to run.

[00:19:10]Was it running 6 hours ago? Yeah, it was running 6 hours ago. Well, then it wants to run. Something's changed in 6 hours.

[00:19:18]Okay. What could have changed? Did you touch anything? Did you touch anything?

[00:19:22]I didn't touch anything. Secondary fuel filter. No, no, no, no. I did that yesterday. Is it anything to do with the secondary fuel filter exchange? I don't think so. I don't know how they would be connected. All right. What did it sound like? But it sound like back. Really?

[00:19:36]Like super loud? Yeah.

[00:19:38]Is there any way water's got in the cylinders? Are you in rough weather? I am in rough weather. It might be hydraulically locked. How long did you turn the key for? About a second. Did it start? Nope. Okay, you might be all right.

[00:19:55]So, this is the first video because we've talked through the decision-m process.

[00:20:02]What I immediately did when I heard that sound was get the jib down, lie a hull.

[00:20:08]I could have hoved two if I had two sails up. No, no problem at all.

[00:20:14]Immediately stop the autopilot, which pulls 10 amps. Immediately turn off everything apart from what's required for safety. Um, immediately check everything else I've got. The other thing I've got on board is also the uh these kind of batteries. See these? I have a couple of these which means that it, you know, the the chart plotter pulls like one and a half amps.

[00:20:37]The phone is actually uh emergency communication, AIS on its own through traffic, um Navionics to get me home, Orca to get me home, the phone and the tablet, believe it or not. Okay. So when I did my when I did my STCW um uh 30,000 ton watch officers training in South Africa in 2007, it was just the beginning of electronic charting systems coming in.

[00:21:06]But at that time uh for a ship to completely dispense with its paper charts, it would have to have two completely separate electronic databases of charts with their own separate power supplies and their own separate antennas. So there's redundancy. 2007 2026 two phones or my phone and my tablet are the equivalent of that. I also have sex sounding le all the charts for the area all the chart instruments and as you've just heard obviously enough training to be doing my 300 ton watch office qualifications watch officer qualifications okay so I'm not worried about doing the nav VHF handhelds three of them signaling flares signaling flags you name it it's on here because we do this all the time so I am encapsulated by uh equipment here that can keep me safe. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to release this video. That's the decision- making process. And then with next video, we're going to go in and find out what's up with the engine and see if uh we can divine uh maybe kind of act as a conduit for a bit of Daddyo's uh sense and uh and knowledge on these things and find out what's going on and see if we can relieve the hydraulic lock before it becomes a problem. See you in the next one. Cheers.