ETERNAUT

Sea Trial

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Sea trials are an important part of yacht commissioning.

Usually they are undertaken with shipyard personnel and before yacht acceptance.

Seahorse Marine had performed two Sea Trials and fooled me that everything was fine… more or less.

Well, so far I have taken the boat out of the tight mooring in Aberdeen West typhoon shelter only twice: Once to load the household equipment and outboard engine for the tender, and once for a real Sea Trial.

The shocking truth

The two times I took the boat revealed the shocking truth about Seahorse Marine. Forget about my praise in a previous post about the foreman. I have to say, they have done ****!

The expressions “Frustrating” and “Disaster” do not even come close to my feelings about Seahorse Marine!

I do not know where to start, but here a few of recent findings:

• Leaking Refueling Inlet Valves
• Wrong labeling of fuel manifold
• GPS heading sensors installed off boat center line beyond calibration
• All GPS sensors not aligned with boat center line
• Wind direction sensor installed off by +300 degrees (or -60 degrees, sounds nicer)
• Cable link to forward looking sonar broken
• Dangerous setup of Hydraulic Steering system
• Charge Controller for alternator charging engine start battery missing!

Leaking Fuel Inlet Valves

After topping up 1,600ltr of white diesel (non-taxed diesel is diced red, white diesel is taxed… just in case customs comes for a check) I went below to close the fuel inlet valves. There was a slight spill of Diesel. Not a lot and for sure not worrying, but something that will require my attention before the the next refueling.

It is only that I do not have such large spanner as I will require for that job. Another item on the growing shopping list for Mong Kok.

Fuel Manifold

My Diesel Swan -or skinny Diesel Duck 😉 – has five underfloor fuel tanks and a large stern tank. Knowing that the inspection port gaskets from Seahorse marine are of inferior quality I had changed the gaskets of the underfloor tanks.

During my first refueling trip I made the Day Tank nearly full (1,000ltr Diesel into tank with 1,200ltr capacity). Another 600ltr in the forward stbd tank (1,000ltr capacity) should be used for an initial cleaning of the fuel system (hoses) through fuel transfer pump with an SMX Double Filtration System in supply line for the pump.

So far I did not dare to remove the stern tank inspection covers as they are heavy and straight on top of the hydraulics for the steering. Until I can foresee needing the 1,800ltr stern tank this job has to wait.

Topic Fuel Tanks brings me to the Fuel Manifold. Now, if you should own a Seahorse Marine boat and your fuel transfer pump runs dry, your engine runs out of fuel or you overfill one of the tanks it might be because of the labeling of the panels.

I do not know how and why, but labeling the fuel valves appeared random. I can thank Seahorse Marine by sending them my Diesel soaked clothes which directly resulted of their wrong labels and subsequent Diesel spill.

Update: Cleaning Diesel soaked clothes

Dr. Google had it right. Here is how I cleaned my Diesel soaked clothes:

1. Soak clothes in detergent/hot water mix for 2 hours
2. Rinse and soak clothes another 24h in a mix of 5ltr hot water, 1ltr coke and 200g baking soda
3. Wash clothes in washing machine with high quality washing powder with as high temperature as clothes allow
4. If still smelly: Wash a 2nd time in washing machine with washing powder, add 1/2 cup of Listerine

Now my clothes do not smell Diesel anymore… but my pants have a distinct Listerine odor 🙂

GPS Heading Sensors

I have started aviation before the age of GPS Navigation. I know that GPS is a really good tool to help with navigation, but one should never rely on it completely. Especially these days with war raging in Ukraine you should be aware that any satellite based navigation system can be jammed, disturbed or shut down completely.

As a result I am not too happy to see my boat having no less than six GPS sensors including two GPS heading sensors installed.

While it is amazing that a couple of GPS antennas cramped in a housing of a few centimeters plus appropriate software can provide you with position, heading!, track, speed over ground, variation,… all neatly displayed on a chart plotter, never ever forget that all information will be gone (or worse: wrong!) in case the satellite system is jammed, disturbed or shut off!

But to start with, the system has to be installed correctly. Seahorse Marine managed to have five out of six sensors installed wrongly. One antenna was off by 180 degrees. That’s high score, no more offset possible. As such:

Gold Medal for incompetency is awarded to:

SEAHORSE MARINE

Scary part: Steel hull and electronics cause interference that the magnetic compass in the pilot house is off by up to 55 degrees and thus completely unusable. I will have to put effort into finding a way / location on the boat to get a reliable magnetic heading!

Forward Looking Sonar

We searched and tried to follow the wiring from the forward looking sonar. We do not know where the link is broken, but somewhere between the forward looking sonar in the front of the boat and the helm station the wire must be broken. The Simrad system does not detect the unit. Finding this fault will require a lot of boring days which I do not have at this moment.

Hydraulic Steering System

Having a second autopilot system is a good idea. Together with a second GPS heading sensor it runs independently, ready to take over anytime should the primary autopilot and/or navigation system fail.

Having this second autopilot running on an independent hydraulic system is even better as this means redundancy in steering control should there be a major leak in the primary hydraulic system.

All well thought through, you believe. Until you inspect the setup closer: The way the shipyard designed and set up the hydraulics: When the primary system fails you are able to switch to the second autopilot system. But: with changeover to the secondary system you loose control of steering through your steering wheel! This setup is dangerous and number two on the list of items important to be fixed… straight after the engine mounts.

While trying to understand the SHM setup I also discovered a small hydraulic leakage in one of the steering actuators. Just a few drops… minor priority.

Engine start battery not charging

As we found out the hard way: Seahorse Marine had fired their head electrician during the construction process of ETERNAUT. And this man was not only the head electrician, he was the only electrician SHM had employed.

How we found out: During the Sea Trial the engine start battery was not charged. Trying to figure the reason we found the charge controller for the 2nd alternator not only disconnected, it was missing entirely!