I'm not sure if I said this before, but if the solenoid firing problem can be traced to the wire from the switch to the solenoid, I suggest first looking at the connection plug in the engine harness. Eliminate the connectors by making crimped connections for each wire in the harness. If the wire itself is bad, run a new wire. Putting in a relay is a band aid solution.
Rich Knowles Indigo. LF38 Halifax On Sep 28, 2013, at 14:17, "Fred Hazzard" <[email protected]> wrote: Jonathan: Interesting advice on sailing a 44 offshore. I am leaving in 2 weeks to sail to Mexico for the winter. Can you tell me more about the inside tank venting valves? I found 2 caps from the previous owner in a bag saying vent caps. While I could use them how would I vent the tanks? I am also interested in the relay you put in the starter circuit. I have just experienced a starting problem. Wouldn’t start, waited awhile and started right up. What relay did you use and how was it wired? Any other wisdom you can pass along will be appreciated. Thanks Fred Hazzard S/V Fury C&C 44 Portland, Or From: CnC-List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jonathan Boocock Sent: Saturday, September 28, 2013 6:17 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Stus-List Mor Child's Play Richard, Thanks for the kind words regarding the trip. Its great to hear of people who read the blog. For the type of sailing/cruising we were doing I feel as though the C&C 44 is nearly ideal. We like to sail and sail fast where possible. Most people enter the Caribbean from the US east coast in the BVI or St Martin unless you island hop along the thorny path. In any case the other islands are an upwind slog going east. I am shocked at how many people we talked to motor sail for the majority of their eastern passages, clearly because they have boats that don't sail upwind. Like all C&C's our boat is a joy to sail upwind. I have been very pleased with using an old racer/cruiser as a strong, excellent sailing, cruising boat. Clearly we don't have the same interior space as other boats in the same size range but we found the accommodations adequate for the five of us (myself/wife/3 university aged kids). The addition of solar panels over the large dodger (we have a significant bridge deck) and the wind gen. meant we never had to run the engine for power at sea or at anchor. For really rough weather I had an inner forestay (tied into the 2 forward bulkheads) and storm jib ready to go. We didn't need it for storm conditions although I know Turicum (C&C 44 based in Vancouver) have used the same configuration as their offshore sail arrangement for many (8?) Vic-Maui offshore races/return passages. As we are all aware the late IOR era hull shape can be a handfull in large following seas although our Raymarine autopilot handled it well. If you recall from the blogs we actually sheared the Edson aluminum autopilot tiller arm in two in a nasty storm on a passage to St Kitts and Nevis. Next time I need to find a way to remove some weight from the bow for passages. Carrying a 25kg Rocna, 20kg Bruce and over 200 ft of chain in the anchor locker of a boat with not enough buoyancy up front meant we had a fairly significant bow down trim. It never really affected our sailing significantly but it always bothered me. When we sail on the Great Lakes we use 50' of chain on each anchor and that would be sufficient for any of the places we anchored in the Caribbean/Bahamas/Bermuda. Two (of many) hints I got from C&C 40 owner David Risch were to seal the anchor locker from taking on water when the bow submerges and to have a system to vent the water tank internally. I have some valves that allow us to easily switch between venting internally or externally. It was interesting to see not one but two "blue water" Island Packets with salt water contaminated water tanks, the only good water being in jerry cans on deck when we arrived in Bermuda. All three of our tanks were fine. As for future plans, I want to go down south next year although my wife doesn't like the long offshore passages so I will probably rely on a crew to get the boat south.I would like to follow that up with a summer in the Med and the following winter back in the Caribbean but we will have to see..... Its starting to get cold in Canada now, I wish we were heading south right now. Wrt your starting problem. We always had an intermittent starting problem that sometimes resulted in requiring up to 5 tries to get the engine to start. We put up with it because the engine always started but it gradually got worse. In Hampton on the way south I bought a spare starter motor although the mechanic I talked to said that the wiring to the solenoid is insufficient (ie high resistance) on many Yanmars and really requires a relay. We lived with the intermittent starting problem until we got back to Annapolis on our way north when it stopped working completely. I installed the new starter and it made no difference. The solution was to put a relay in the starter circuit. The wiring is not sufficient to drive enough current into the solenoid. Ever since the relay was installed we have had no issues. It sounds like this may be your problem, its at least worth checking.... Jon _______________________________________________ This List is provided by the C&C Photo Album http://www.cncphotoalbum.com [email protected]
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