An update to those who have expressed in CW... I'm just going to blast this out.. one and done. No time to craft a work fo art.
At the start of the summer, I announced a date about 6 weeks ahead as the end of life date for Option 2. My intent was to then fix the three entropy-driven repairs (described in the readiness blog) myself with a friend also above-average mechanical/diagnostic experience. Two were quickies... one would merit a little thinking to diagnose. The announcement attracted lots of contacts which is what it was supposed to do. As with most of my announcements here, there was the usual "dispersion of outcomes". A healthy dose of decent, respectful, normal people curious about Clock Work. And unfortunately (for me), the other kind.. which I would pay handsomely to not ever have to pretend to be polite again. That announcement actually appeared to spike the density of that latter category of contacts more than usual, and I moved Option 2 to End of Life on the spot after the burst of those calls.
That was early in the summer, and the items on the punch list all appeared easy. I took my time starting in because of family obligations and also these curious progressing joint injuries (on top of needing 2 new hips... hey.. nobody buries a perfect body). The path to actually getting at the engine room problem required passing thru crap stages that were crap because none of it was about the boat or wrenching or moving life forward or anything else that was was specifically "on me"... no... just tolerating crap. Politely. By August, I was finally down in the engine room beginning to seriously attack the generator oil leak. Initially, I tried to employ these leak assessment/testing principles I got in training back in 81 to have to step in and run a family aerospace non-destructive testing business. I would say none of that helped but did lead to significant studying of the lower end of the Kubota engine, and what I think was a clever idea to pinpoint the location inside that quarter inch gap between the leak-catch and the oil pan in place. There was some prep work to do to run that experiment (mostly eliminate every bit of UV tracer dye from prior experiments) but the joint issue progression was accelerating markedly. I'm "good" now for about 5 min in "the position" one needs to be in to work down there and I'm confident the constant pushing to work like that since April has eaten my body.
I'm clearly forced to surrender and enlist outside help. The two providers that would initially come to mind.... er... how to say this politely... do not quite meet my requirements wrt reputation and my own personal experience.. so my search expanded. I once had SPECTACULAR service response from Cummins (owner of Onan) when I first bought CW after firing the first surveyor (selected by one of the brokers) for stark/observable incompetence and ignorance, including writing up the survey on a standard diner guest check. For real.. still got it. The VP at Cummins services I then went to sent me his "best 6CT guy, with 100's of 6CT service calls". But 3-4 weeks ago, nobody was answering the phone at Cummins. Is it just me or is EVERY GD business out there being operated to at best hot dog cart standards now? Ultimately a severely talented friend who owns a specialist gas-engine shop gave me a local name.. After a meeting with that guy, I hired him to do the diagnosis. My expectations are high.
Farming something like this out was profoundly hard to do, first because all but one marine service provider I've hired in the past 10 years was a rock solid fail. All but one. You learn from your disappointments/screwings and especially the expensive ones. [Crimp, Stain being words race into my mind upon typing that last sentence. Secondly, this was difficult just because this was diagnosis. I have done 100% of my own diagnosis trucks/cars/motorcycles/boat... any machine or electronic system) since the 80's.. well pre-OBD... That kicked off when I decided I needed an approach as informed by thinking and principles and the methodical accumulation and vetting of best practices as I could acquire..which started with a couple of weeks in a local hospital's medical library looking for insight for how medical diagnosis and principles are used characterizing/solving real problems reliably, safely, and effectively. Diagnosis (and design)... both from formalist and practitioner perspectives... became central to my research and how I put food on the table the last 35 years. This epically boring existence/passion, coupled with direct personal experience feeds my conclusion that the vast majority of mechanics I've observed up close flat out suck at the diagnosis phase of problem solving. Though I must also add most every aircraft mechanics I've known are solid. My working practitioner hierarchy*** follows...
Diagnosis, design, decision-overwatch -- Top-of-the-pile smart guys with dense relevant experience.
Otherwise skilled mechanics -- conscientious guys... more directed by BKM's than following the logic of how a problem presents. Not even slightly knocking adherence to BKM's.
Wrench turners/blacksmiths/rookies with a YouTube connection -- useless on anything beyond well-defined procedures with oversight.
From long experience, I break these tiers down approximately.. 3%/40%/~50% (see Fig 1) with the air getting thinner still near boats. I really do not want to farm this out, but I have to, and I have. So the oil leak problem is under contact to repair with a mechanic who will be starting work soon.
*** Note... You should rightly ask, who maintains a fricking hierarchy of this stuff? I do because of my job finding bad design decisions.. one of many quick assessments on whether the guy you're speaking with is good enough or not, which is especially critical on multi-man design teams (to isolate which haystack full of millions of design decisions to search first). Which ultimately bled into my off-line/decompression activities... fixing/making/designing things. And it's already in a book I'm finishing up on technical decision making in the face of unknown/unknowable risk, with an emphasis on spotting, and critically, interrupting third-party harm from deciders you may hire and rely upon. That includes designers and fixers/maintainers (and doctors and tradesmen and law-makers and product-makers and accountants and etc.) There will be case studies. Sounds like a mega-boring subject to people outside the ranks of those who make consequential decisions about complex problems, and especially those decisions that affect innocents. But actually a monstrously significant category of everyday deciding based upon the daunting frequency of occurrence of such decisional situations. That is, clear up third-party harm on consequential decision and life gets way way nicer.
So two trivial fixes and one indeterminate but in the works by someone else with an actual working body. And the rest of the boat in excellent condition. Thus, Clock Work is back out on to the market once I press PUBLISH. Here's my first pass at how I'm going to price it... first an inventory check, which will be bounced off my need to NEVER ever do boat ladders or crush my ass into an engine room again. Of course, my former favorite place on the boat. I see YW seems to show zero 42's in inventory, east or west, which I do believe that's the first time none on either coast. And not to beat a dead horse.. it's got the good engine you can't get anymore... and 80%-plus of it's service life left, though one broker added "a lot more than that!" while sitting in Clock Work's saloon (about 2 weeks before he got himself fired). $525-550k is more than in the ball park for something you can't buy anymore in excellent condition... I'll provide a reason to buy it. . I see three paths forward..
Commit before generator diagnosed/repaired - $400k - Same rules as Option 2. [just about too late as of 9/21]
Commit after repair/replacement - $475k though if I see a significant response it may transition to something competitive.
I reduce the price significantly if no takers. Christmas present to myself.
If for some reason the current generator needs to be replaced (very low probability), I get the Onan... I will transport. IF I could have pulled the GD thing out and put it on the lift table in my garage, without any need for a Fantastic Voyage miniaturization-type trip to inject my decrepit ass into the engine room. it would have been repaired in less than a week.
At this point, I see allowing buyer's brokers at 4%. I MAY quickly transfer this to a broker if I start to encounter "that kind of person" (entitled/knows everything/done nothing). I tried to use brokers before and it failed to work (the phrase "competing harms" lingering in my thoughts right here.
Be sure to look at least at the blog entries listed below. Thanks again for coming by. Also, I will try to let the people who expressed interest over the summer know CW is back out but I was less than scrupulous about managing this gmail since they stopped supporting Outlook and also declared war on people with smart security. Not worth the grief. All my other mail has moved to Switzerland and can't wait to retire this account too.
I did go down to CW with my wife (THANK YOU!!!! ) prior to the hurricane to prep the boat... I'd want to put things back into position again before any visitors. I'm in a run of medical appointments for a few weeks but they're not every day. Frankly, I'd like to clean up the cushions on the flybridge too... got dirty under the canvas. I taped some lockers on the flybridge closed too, so I should Goo-Gone the adhesive those will leave behind. More GD ladder work.
That's it... once again open for business and a chance for someone to get a well-cared-for and popular trawler with both desirable and popular features and which is literally the only available one in the US right now. Thanks for looking.
- Clock Work