Closed Captions (CC):
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hey guys

welcome back to sv basic we

are now in eureka california

well can we just say that

this last passage was interesting

this was not something that we

anticipated obviously nobody in

ever anticipates issues i mean

it was such light winds variable winds

sometimes no wind

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and right before we go to anchor

the wind has to kick up to 25

knots

but i just feel like

it always happens when i am at the

health

lin's at the helm and we lose steering

the hydraulic ram blows

now we have no steering rudders are

kicked sideways

we have a rock stuck in our anchor not

all the time but if something is to

happen i'm at the helm

the first time was when we went from nia

bay

to westport and what happens we're doing

a nice

sail down the coast and we hit a log

okay we've got a log up under under us

right now

we view this as a possibility

looks like it's caught up on our

sailboat right now

so needless to say

i'm just very happy that teal

is very competent on our boat

and he guided us safely into

port so now we are here

and we are able to get some work done

get some parts in and just kind of

decompress i mean we are in no rush to

go down the coast but at the same time

we still want to

move luckily

england marine which is just right here

down uh the block from us they have

the exact ram that we need at another

location

so we're just waiting for that to come

in

and obviously we're just kind of getting

caught up

on some chores so

today i'm doing laundry it's so nice to

have

the access and the ability to wash on

board without having to schlep

everything

over to a laundromat so i'm very

grateful for that

uh teal now is working on disassembling

the ram

and figuring out a way to get that

rebuilt most likely

it's a seal that has to be replaced so

we'll just do all that

and obviously he is not happy with

the backup tiller system so he's going

to be redesigning that i'm kind of

excited for that

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it's a beautiful day

and teal is down below

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how you doing

is it gonna be hard to get out no it

should come right out i think

i should have this out here in about 15

minutes

i'm timing you

well i told her 15 minutes

we'll see if i could beat that i don't

know

looks like it'll come out quick first

thing i do is take off both hoses

i've put down a little drip tray and put

down an absorbent pad just in case i

make a mess

i'm sure there's gonna be fluid coming

out shouldn't be coming out too much

unless somebody touches the helm and it

starts spinning the wheel and it should

be pumping it out but

i guess we'll see

okay the hoses are off and i've drained

as much fluid as i can

out of the cylinder

so now just a matter of unbolting it

it should slide right out

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teal spent most of the morning removing

our old ram

so here it is right here and you know

it's kind of funny because

he says that it was only going to be 15

minutes it took a little bit longer than

that

but he left in a rush because our part

is in

and so he was a little excited for that

we also picked up an ais

antenna because i don't know if you guys

follow us

on our ais tracking but we noticed the

last couple of passages we've been

intermittent

in our path so it may be because we're

using

an old original antenna so hopefully

this will fix the problem

meanwhile emma is testing her luck

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yeah i already caught a small one she's

trying to catch some fish here in

humboldt bay

gotta get some dinner compass is a

little jealous

that she gets to go fishing without him

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i see you're here i'm here

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let's see if this is the right one

i'm not sure what fittings come with

this that's

what's gonna be interesting do i need to

get new fittings or is it gonna be

compatible

this is the one that i'm anxious oh and

it looks like it's perfect look at this

oh it's a little different

this is a half inch this looks like 5 8.

but the bracket everything else is let

me look at this

yeah these fittings are going to be a

little different i could pull these off

put it on here

i could even pull this off and put on

here i think this is going to work

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so after studying these cylinders there

are a few differences

but the overall specs are identical as

far as

the throw and the mounting brackets

there will be a few things i need to

modify to make this work

i need to get a reducer that reduces

from

a 5 8 down to half inch i'll need to

also get

a few adapters to make it compatible

with our hydraulic lines

so it looks like i'll uh take a trip

into town tomorrow morning

get these parts so we can get this

installed

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good night see you in the morning

okay gonna head on into town there's a

few uh

places walking distance away that i'll

try hopefully i could get these parts

if i can't get the parts i'm not too

worried i could use the parts off the

old ram

and in a pinch swap them back in an

emergency

but i'm my goal is to have two

separate fully working rams that i could

replace

quickly

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so see how things go

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i've been wandering around eureka all

morning

trying to find all these bits and pieces

i need

i did pretty good i think i found most

everything

unfortunately not everything was in

stock

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but the good news is they're being

transferred in i should be able to pick

those up

later today so i think we'll be in good

shape

to get this ram installed let's get back

to the boat

oh need some lunch

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well it looks like all our parts are in

now we have all our fittings

to make the connection between the

cylinder and our hydraulic lines

we'll put those together using hydraulic

thread sealant

and we'll have two rams that way i'm

still waiting for

a seal kit for this one we will rebuild

this one and

that'll this will be our backup from now

on

i have fluid

and we'll start putting this together

it'll be kind of fun actually so i'm

going to put my best mechanic on it

emma you ready i'm ready let's do this

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it's all done and ready to install my

dad helped me a little bit

but i think i did a pretty good job

well i think we're getting pretty close

now i've cleaned up both the faceplate

and the backer plates

cleaned up the bolts all the hardware

put new butyl tape down

i think we're ready to slide this puppy

back in

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so

you want me to turn it from this side or

do you want it from your side

okay go ahead and put your wrench on let

me turn ready

we're home free cylinders in

i'll have to clean up these hoses

make the connection and bleed the system

okay everything went in real smooth

fittings feel

real tight i feel good about it there's

one last connection

to make right here at the end on the

ball joint

but i'm waiting for that reducer that's

supposed to be here tomorrow morning

and i'll make that but i don't want to

hook this up anyway right now because

with it in the loose position i can work

on my temporary steering and give that

a test before this is installed so i'll

do that next

so before we left seattle

you know i thought about what do we do

if we lose our hydraulic steering

so i came up with a plan in my head

that i'd put a block and tackle on the

tie bar

and i'll be able to manually pull it

back and forth and steer the rudders

well we were forced to implement that

backup system

when we lost steering at trinidad head

and it didn't work and i know why now

i didn't test it before and i probably

should have

but it was only a two to one purchase it

wasn't enough force to

pull the weight of the rudders and the

tie bars

and control the steering but more

importantly the angle that i was pulling

was

bending that tie bar and binding it

in the sleeves so i've come up with a

new system

that has a more direct pull it's a four

to one purchase

and i think it's gonna work pretty slick

come up with all the parts i need i

ordered them through fisheries they sent

them overnight to us

so i'll be able to put that together i

want to make sure that we have a backup

system

that will work for us in a bind

i don't want to go through that again

well here's all the parts i ordered

while i was waiting for these to come in

i made a couple of tight eye splices in

the end of this line

so now it's just a matter of putting all

this together and testing it before we

make that last connection on the ram

okay so here is how our temporary

steering

now works i put a nice

heavy duty eye bolt right through the

tie bar

with this i'm able to pull at the

correct angle

you look at this it starts here

goes through a block through another

block but i'm keeping that pole

parallel now to the tie bar

which is going to be so much better it

keeps it from flexing

as we're trying to steer it actually

goes up

to another block over here and then is

cammed off

over there so we went from a two to one

purchase to a four to one purchase

with that extra power and pulling at the

correct angle

it's gonna be much easier to steer this

in an emergency situation

you know there is one thing left to do i

want to put a transom mount

pintle right here that way i can connect

a tiller to this

and that will give us even more leverage

okay it feels good to uh have a

secondary way to steer the boat

you know we have the the new ram is in

we have a backup ram

but in an emergency situation it takes

too long to

put that ram in it would probably take

an hour and a half maybe hour and 45

minutes

but with this pre-rigged up i could take

the

nut off that ball socket and

have that disconnected in about a minute

minute and a half

and with this rigged i think i could put

this in in about four to five minutes so

five to six minutes we could have uh

emergency steering i think that's pretty

good

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now that it's all rigged up

i'll just uh put this away

in a nice convenient place hopefully

we'll never have to use it

but you never know

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so we've had a lot of people ask why

didn't we have a spare

hydraulic cylinder on board well

you know as we did the refit on this

boat we replaced most

most everything and there was a few

items that

we didn't replace and

in retrospect we probably should have

because those are the ones that are

biting us in the butt now but

it's hard to justify replacing every

single

piece of your boat as you do a refit

and we were pretty close to it a couple

items

uh we didn't and look what happened

you know we did consider replacing that

cylinder

about two years ago right before we left

seattle

but we looked at the price and

you know out the door with the hardware

and the fittings

it's twelve hundred fifty dollars that's

a big chunk just to have a spare

and it looked like it was in great

condition so we gambled

and in this case we lost so

lesson learned you know from here on out

i'm going to have a spare cylinder with

a rebuild kit

and i'm sure there's other items on the

boat that as we go we'll we'll learn

what we need

we do keep quite a bit of spares on

board with impellers and belts and all

the common things

but you know it's these oddball items

that it's a little hard to predict what

you need

and when you need it okay that's about

it for

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we'll see you then

fun actually so i'm gonna put my best

mechanic on it emma you ready

i'm ready let's do this

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it's all done and ready to install my

dad helps me a little bit

but i think i did a pretty good job