Monkey and Bear

[derekja]

Hi,

I'm the new owner of Lizji, about to be renamed "Monkey and Bear". A 1972 Albin 25 that I'm tremendously excited about! I am based in Victoria at Goldstream Marina, and am working on a number of projects:

-- replacing most of the exhaust and raw water intake hoses
-- re-wiring the boat
-- building a trailer (I have a 7500 pound trailer but need to redo the brakes and build bunks to hold the boat)
-- building a hard top (I have a ton of cedar strips left over from some kayak building projects so I'm going to treat the hard top as a kayak hull.)
-- some interior work
-- putting in a 2m radio and some electronics improvements (recently discovered the vancouver island trunk system (http://www.islandtrunksystem.org/cms/) which has allowed me to talk from victoria to the Broughton's on a handheld, so emergency communications have another channel! I'm KE7FYX, btw.)

The boat has a nice 1000 hour Sole diesel, and is generally well kept. I'm just coming in from the wooden boat world, so maintaining a more modern fiberglass boat sounds wonderful.

I'm excited to be part of the group and if you see me cruising around Washington and BC please say hi!

Thanks,

Derek (and Andy, my partner) - I'm the bear, he's the monkey

[WillieC]

Welcome, Derek and Andy!

Can't wait to see your projects. (Pictures required, please note.) I am intrigued by your plan for the hardtop. We have a one-off fiberglass BC hardtop on the WillieC and I live with it. In a love/hate active aggressive sort of way. Just saying there is room for improvement. With each passing year, it slips on the todo list.

Take special note of where your exhaust manifold on the Sole is, in relation to the water line. Some of the replacement engines out there end up in trouble without proper exhaust installation. We still have the original Volvo Penta and stock exhaust set up. (Even this arrangement has been known to waterlock the engine...knock on plastic, so far, for us.)

We have seen plenty of A25s in Washington and BC but not, to my recollection, Lizji. Seems like we would remember that name.

Look into the Albineer's of BC group too, if you haven't already. Lots of A25s there and great people as well.

We'll let you know when next we head that way!

[DesertAlbin736]

Welcome aboard! Ditto everything WillieC said. Albineers of BC is a great group. Highly reccomend looking them up & joining. We attended one of their rendezvous in Ladysmith last summer (actually both in 2018 & this year), 8 A25's attending. A wealth of knowledge & great group to socialise with.

[DesertAlbin736]

Let me add Victoria is a lovely city. We've visited Victoria three times now, first as a port of call on a Princess Lines Alaska cruise in 2007, the second time by car in 2011, and again this summer. However we've never actually docked there with our own boat, instead this year we left our boat docked in Port Of Sidney marina & took the city bus down and back for a day trip. Among other things we were greeted by "Plaster Man" at the waterfront, shown here posing with the Admiral (click on photo to rotate) and ate lunch at the dockside outdoor crab shack.

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Also that day we strolled through Chinatown and Beacon Hill Park & watched some of the other buskers at the docks. On previous visits we walked through the Empress Hotel, although we didn't spring for high tea.

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Oh, and of course this year we spent a Saturday at Butchart Gardens, including the evening fireworks show, having anchored in Tod Inlet and dinghied over to the landing dock at the rear entrance.

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As much has we love the area and have cruised Gulf Islands, Sunshine Coast & to as far as Desolation Sound with our own boat four times over the last 6 summers, we're not planning to return for at least a couple more years. Next summer we're hoping to trailer our boat East to New York state, "loop" the Erie, Oswego, and Rideau Canals to Ottowa, thence down the Ottowa & St. Lawrence Rivers to Montreal and on to Sorel & the Richelieu to Lake Champlain, on down to the Hudson to Waterford, NY and back on the Erie to our starting point. So half in NY and half in Ontario & Quebec.

[DesertAlbin736]

Got to wondering, we spotted this A25 under wraps in Maple Bay marina while stopped there back in 2014. Didn't see any names on it, & it had a Livingston type dingy hanging off the back. Check the registration numbers (click on the picture for full screen view, then click again on the full screen view to zoom in further), note the two anchors, one Bruce & one Danforth on the foredeck & lack of bow roller. Any chance this one could this be yours? Otherwise it's another unknown mystery A25. One clue is that unlike most of the other A25's we've seen in BC it does not have the typical BC hardtop, nor in fact even the stock canvas cockpit enclosure.

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[derekja]

Thanks for the welcome WillieC and DesertAlbin!

I'm afraid the Albin in Maple Bay was not me. Here are a few pictures of Monkey and Bear (although the stern still reads Lizji.)

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I have been working on the exhaust a bit. The exhaust hose from the mixing elbow was rubbing against the fuel filter and was down to the wire, so that piece had to go. I've got a bit of clogging in the mixing elbow, so I'll probably try to either hunt down a spare to carry around or figure out how to clean that up.

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I am a bit worried about the hydrolock issue. The end of the mixing elbow is a good 7 or 8 inches above the waterline, but when I had the waterlift off every time I'd step towards the back of the boat a bit of water would come in. It's just strange to have an exhaust that's basically at the waterline. Other than sacrificing one of the rear bunks to make room for a gooseneck, though, I'm not immediately sure what to do about it.

I'm headed back out to Powell River on Sunday for a bit of a Christmas cruise back to Victoria. Amazingly there is a few days of nice weather window! Ought to be pretty quiet out there on Christmas day.

Derek

[WillieC]

Check out Hetek's rebuild here:
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=9596&start=120

Page 9 shows what he came up with for the exhaust loop.

There are other links as well to investigate here. Do try to follow the manufacturer's instructions.

Please keep us posted on what you come up with on the exhaust.

[DesertAlbin736]

You are taking your boat to Powell River, or driving up to Comox & taking the ferry? If you'll have a car available, a quick 03 minute ride up to Lund would be fun. Nice restaurants there.

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[DesertAlbin736]

As regards hydrolock, we have a similar though not quite exactly the same exhaust elbow set up on our Yanmar engine, seen here. Ironically, we have the same type water lift muffler as hetek seen in the page reference above by WillieC. Except in our case our engine exhaust manifold is to starboard & the hose has to cross over to port while hetek's later model A25 has his engine exhaust to port and the hose and muffler has to cross over to starboard.

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Not much can be done about that at the engine itself. The waterline is at about the same level as the cockpit floorboards, which also is about the level of the bottom of the holding tank shown in the photo below, which is where the batteries were before I moved them to make room for this larger tank. The engine's exhaust elbow can be seen at the bottom of the picture which shows how high it sits. We've run our engine over 600 hours since 2014 with this set up and have not had any trouble. That said, the exhaust hose does have an inline flapper check valve back in the aft cabin under the quarterberth floor board. It also has a shutoff ball valve in the exhaust house next to the check valve, so it's possible to close off the exhaust hose completely, although we've never closed it because we don't keep our boat in the water full time. I'm not sure, but from your photos it appears your boat might be the earlier full displacement non-deluxe version, in which case the exhaust outlet would be on the port side of the transom. Speaking of holding tanks, the main reason I went to the trouble and expense of going from the 9 gallon (34 litres) tank that the boat came with to a 20 gallon (76 liters) holding tank was mainly because of the scarcity of pumpout facilities in the Gulf Islands & Sunshine Coast.

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Also, it looks like your canvas cockpit enclosure is pretty close to stock, but I can't tell from photos if the sides can be opened up or if they're just outer flaps that can be un-zipped. We had similar issues with ours when we bought our boat, so I made a new enclosure from scratch, essentially copying the stock one but added side windows with flaps & screens and widened the back window with added sun screens and flaps. Also made a fiberglass layup hard top over the wheelhouse roof opening. Long story short, ended up like this

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[DesertAlbin736]

Regarding hydrolock & height of exhaust elbow above waterline, I was over at the boat this afternoon & took some measurements. On my engine the exhaust hose connection at the outlet of the elbow is 4 inches above waterline. Add 4.5 more inches to the top of the elbow. The cockpit floorboards are within an inch of being right at level with waterline. And so far we've not had any problems. I am careful not to crank too much & too long & let raw cooling water coming out of the hx back up into cylinders.

[derekja]

Thanks, that gives good perspective on the hydrolock issue. Nice cover rebuild! I look forward to fleshing out what I'm going to do on that.

I bought the boat in Powell River, actually, and am on the ferry there right now after busing up from Victoria. Unfortunately my weather window has gotten iffy. Really nice forecast for tomorrow but then windy the 24th. So I think I'm aiming for a long day to nanaimo tomorrow!

[DesertAlbin736]

On my engine the exhaust hose connection at the outlet of the elbow is 4 inches above waterline. Add 4.5 more inches to the top of the elbow. The cockpit floorboards are within an inch of being right at level with waterline.

Translated to metric, that's 10 cm & 11.4 cm respectively.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJZmzpRyVoY


BC Ferries in winter, kinda of like a riding roller coaster, eh? BC ferry boats make Washington state ferries look antiquated & 3rd world by comparison.

In 2018 we transited Active Pass on the way back to Blaine, staying out of the way of the ferry. I think I'll stick to summer cruising.

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Down here in AZ we're looking at several days of rain ahead, even some thunderstorms forecast for tomorrow.

We saved a lot of money on the canvas work by picking up a used Thompson Mini Walker heavy duty sewing machine and going on Sailrite.com for how-to videos. Actually, at first we borrowed a Sailrite machine from a friend, then later got our own machine which we've since used for other things like making seat cushions.

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