My 1977 Albin 25 Deluxe rebuild thread

[hetek]

Hello All -

Thought it was about time to start a thread to show my progress on my 1977 Albin 25 Deluxe.

Here's what I have so far...

One boat on trailer in my yard. Check!

image.jpg

One Vetus 3.09 3 cylinder diesel - 25 hp / 550 hours - in my garage on it's new engine cradle (the cradle was my first project). Check!

image.jpg

Now before you Albineers ask why I am planning to put a 25 hp diesel in an Albin 25 DELUXE...

Answer: Because it's there. And it came with the boat. And it's about half the weight of the original Volvo 36 hp. I'm hoping for great things from this little bit of kit. And, yes, I watch "Wheeler Dealers".

First plan is to start the engine on the cradle to make sure it is fit for installing. That is planned for this weekend. YouTube video to follow. Hopefully. Finger's crossed.

[kerrye]

Looking forward to this thread. 25hp should be fine.

[DesertAlbin736]

Our boat has a 24 HP Yanmar that pushes La Dolce Vita to 6.5 knots @ 2,350 RPM at average 0.45 GPH. However ours is not the semi-displacement DeLuxe version, but the early full displacement model. In any case, with 25 HP you should expect 0.4 to 0.5 GPH at 6 to 7 knots, giving you about +/-200 NM range on 15 gallons with 5 gallons left in reserve if you ran it down that far between fill ups. I've never let ours get down by more than 9 or 10 gallons between fill ups. This summer we did 573 NM on 44 gallons of fuel.

This season is close to being over for New England boating, but next year you'll have a great time with your 'new' boat.

[JT48348]

This is gonna be good! I can't wait; I thought I was the only one toiling in obscurity.

I think the 25hp engine is a brilliant idea. I've been debating a smaller engine for my A27. Not only would it cut the weight by half but it seems so much more reasonable for boats with this hull shape if your looking for hull speed cruising. I will be interested to hear what you come up with

[hetek]

Thanks All -

You guys are my heros on the boards here. Desert Albin for his travels... I'm jealous. And JT? I've been following your work, even though I sold my 27 FC a few years back. You do good work. I don't think I'll be doing any Taj Mahal-sized head compartment but I hope it will be nice when done.

I've even enlisted the talents of Capt'n Vic! He'll keep me on the straight and narrow and will help keep me focused. He's good at that.

Interesting thing about the "only 25 hp" debate: The original Volvo 36 hp weighed a whopping 640 lbs with gear. This Vetus is a Mitsubishi-based engine and weighs only 270 lbs, with gear! Even though it is 11 hp less, it is a full 369 lbs lighter!

The Volvo was known to cruise in the high single digits and could top out at 10+ knots. I ran the numbers through the Boatdiesel.com calculators and compared the two. Here's what I found...

With Volvo = 10.8 knots max speed and 9.7 knots cruise.
With Vetus = 10.0 knots max speed and 9.0 knots cruise.

Less than one knot difference!

This should be very intersting indeed!

[DesertAlbin736]

I'm jealous too! 10 knots would be nice at times, but 6.5 knots gets us where we want to go, just takes a little longer. Traveling with our friends in their O'Day 25 sailboat with Yanmar 2GM20 sail drive we would often have to throttle back to let them keep up in light winds when they had to motor-sail. In a stiff breeze under full sail & making hull speed they could keep up with us running at full throttle & maybe even pull ahead.

Our cruise mates following close behind crossing Strait of Georgia from Nanaimo bound for Smuggler's Cove on the mainlaind BC

20160709_093818 (1024x576).jpg

[hetek]

My A27FC "Bunkie" had the Lehman 4D61 diesel and would be a 6 knot cruiser all day long. Wouldn't skip a beat. If pushed, she would top out at 8.4 knots, but at 3750 rpm, she didn't like it there.

Even if the A25 with the 25 hp Vetus only cruises at 6 knots, I'd still be happy. That's why I got another Albin - to relax.

BTW, Bunkie is now down in Florida, having taken the ICW south from the Boston area. That's a trip!

[hetek]

Just to state my intent with this build...

First things first: "Runs and drives".

I have to make sure the engine runs or else it would simply be a waste of time installing it. I don't have my doubts, but still, I have to be sure. That's planned for this weekend.

That takes care of the "runs" part. Next comes the "drives" part...

First, a bit of my background: I bought a 30' Pacemaker Sportfish once upon a time. I plunked an additional $6k in upgrades into it before I even heard the engines run. Not smart! Good news, though... They did run, but I now always think... Was it really necessary to install that new water heater before I even started the engines?

Moral of the story: A new water heater does not make the boat run any better. Putting it another way, if I can take it for a ride, then that's a good starting place. I'll take my hot showers on the hook later, but for now it's just fine, running and driving.

That will be my focus for the initial part of this build. "K. I. S. S." Go boating and have fun. Period. Who can ask for more? Sure, I might not have the aft cabin remodel done anytime soon, but for now, again, let's do first things first.

Day trips the first year aren't a bad thing. We'll venture further the next. Then we'll tackle the water heater...

[DesertAlbin736]

Wise philosophy. Even if we had the chance to get a 27FC, and we probably paid as much or more for the 25 than most 27FC's sell for, I would probably still go for the 25. Because we are 360 miles from the nearest ocean, and 280 miles from Lake Powell. We have a couple of smaller lakes around here, the closest one being Lake Pleasant which is 4 miles long and +/- 2 miles wide when full plus another 5 miles or so of river channel that is closed from December through June due to nesting bald eagles. And it's hotter than blue blazes in the summer here. One has to experience 120 degrees of dry desert heat to appreciate it. Other than that there's Lake Havasu about 190 miles from here. Buzzing around Lake Pleasant gets old quick, and we're not big on fishing. If we were I'd have a bass boat. And of course I've posted a lot about our adventures. So trailerability is paramount. We've found with just the two of us the aft cabin is useful mostly for storing luggage, and we use the main cabin for sleeping with the center cushion in, and a table set up in the cockpit for eating. Previous owners liked to sleep in the aft cabin, but for us it's a bit claustrophobic and we don't like sleeping in separate beds.

If you figure where and how to install a water heater, let me know.

ps, we might be driving out to Rhode Island in September next year, without the boat. Maybe we should take the ferry over to L.I. & drop in. Those plans aren't firm yet and are TBD.

[NickScheuer]

We generally cruise our Deluxe with V-P M17C at about 8 to 8.5 mph (GPS measurement) at which point the wake is mild enough to not worry about for any but sailing dinghies and still fisherman.

[DesertAlbin736]

We could probably push our early model full displacement hull to 7 knots or maybe even 7.5 knots, but we'd have to run our 24 HP Yanmar close to 3,000 RPM to do that, and of course that's close to red line. We're happy with (or resigned to) 6.5 knots at 2,350 RPM, the price one pays for getting 12 NM per gallon fuel economy. That's speed measured in flat calm water. GPS measurement is 'speed over ground', which can be affected by water currents. We made over 8 knots SOG at times when running with the tide current, and only 4 knots sometimes with tide against us. That's why in the Pacific NW, especially the coastal waters of the Inside Passage, one lives and dies by the tide current tables.

The early model A25, before the DeLuxe semi-displacement hull mods near the stern were incorporated, has a waterline length of 22 ft 3 inches (22.25 ft). Displacement hull speed is calculated by the formula Hull Speed in knots = 1.34 X square root of water line length in feet. Square root of 22.25 is 4.72. Times 1.34 = 6.32. Thus trying push the early full displacement A25 hull much past 6.5 knots is not very practical. I suspect fuel economy would decline exponentially if one tried to gain an extra knot or two in speed over the theoretical hull speed. Coming from the sailboat world, we're all very familiar with hull speed limitations. Beam has a little bit to do with that, the narrower the beam the faster a boat can go for a given length. That's why old time 1920s speed boats tended to be long and narrow before planing hulls were designed, and why sailing catamarans are faster than monohulls of equal length (wetted surface is a factor there too).

[hetek]

You are correct, Desert... The hull speed is the limiting factror on the older A25's (pre "DeLuxe").

Boatdiesel.com calculators do the math and come up with 6.3 knots for a displacement hull A25. Right on the money with your calculations. But there's more...

It also calculates how much power is needed to obtain hull speed. For the displacement hull A25 it is only 7 hp!

JT was already heading in this direction. If hull speed is what you want, a smaller engine could indeed be used.

I'm sure windage plays a factor in the higher horsepower installations. You wouldn't want to install a 7 hp engine and have a stiff breeze push you backwards!

[DesertAlbin736]

Jon B (wasn't there a song about the sloop John B?)



That's right about hull speed & HP. Our previous boat to before the Albin 25 was a wing keel Catalina 25 sailboat with an 8 HP long shaft 4 stroke Tohatsu outboard. Under power alone we could do close to but not quite 6 knots with that boat, but our displacement was a bit heavier with a 1,750 lb lead keel. That was a sweet boat, and if it wasn't for the hassle of mast raising we'd still have it if we lived somewhere like Bellingham or Anacortes.

Our 1989 Catalina 25 "Orinco Flow" off the Embarcadero in downtown San Diego in front of the Maritime Museum & the Star of India tall ship, circa 2008. We named that boat after the "sail away" song by Enya.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p4_RkQE2L4

O_Flow_San Diego.JPG

[hetek]

It's alive!!!

Test ran the engine today.

Here it is in its cinematic debut. The red carpet is next.

https://youtu.be/4biETfTllOM

Like watching paint dry - if the paint sounds like a 3 cylinder diesel engine when it dries.

Enjoy!

[kerrye]

Cool. I'd say the engine is good to go. Was that the very first starting attempt or was the engine warm? It started very quickly for a cold engine. If you run it again, I'd be curious as to how loud it is with the rubber muffler removed. My rubber muffler exploded and I ended up deleting the muffler altogether and couldn't tell the difference with the engine in the boat and with a memory of its previous sound level.