In this episode of Sailing Nandji, we hear the first breathes of our NEW Engine Fang. After running the final hoses and connecting the power, we fill up the engine with all the oils and liquids required before kicking Fang over for the first time. Lets hear this baby Purr! This was a monumental day for Nandji as all our hard work is really starting to take shape. Installing this new engine has been challenging but so very rewarding at the same time. We have never tackled a task this big before, in fact we had never installed an engine into anything before, so it was a huge task and a massive learning curve we have nearly completed. Wait til you hear this baby purr... Beautiful.
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In this episode of Sailing Nandji, our new engine Fang is finished off. We finish of the drive system installation installing the PSS Shaft seal, align the engine and install the Sigma Drive. The Sigma Drive in our eyes is a genious piece of engineering allowing and compensating for any alignment issues and protecting damage to our gearbox. We run our new 3 inch exhaust and this involves cutting a new hole in the sides of Nandji. There are 2 types of people that own boats... Ones that drill holes in them and the ones that dont! The PSS Shaft seal is what keeps the water out of Nandji. It was very easy to install and will last a very long time. The seal is created by the smooth stainless rotor that is attached to the shaft and rotates. This applies pressure to the carbon bellow that is stationary and attached to the stern tube. The Sigma Drive is an engineering genius. This replaces the need to have a coupling joining the shaft to the gearbox. The Sigma Drive allows up to 3 degrees in variation therefore adding a good sense of security of never doing damage to our gearbox or cutlass bearings. We aligned the shaft to gearbox with the normal coupling, then removed and installed the Sigma Drive. As Nandji is a wooden boat, normally we would have to realign the engine in the water as the boat takes her shape once again, but with the Sigma Drive, no need for that!
In this episode of Sailing Nandji, we install our NEW Autoprop onto Nandji. We are very excited about this upgrade to our sailboat. In our eyes, this is the second most important upgrade we have made to Nandji behind the new engine. The Autoprop from Bruntons is specifically designed for cruisers at it can give an extra knot of speed under sail! That is a massive difference for us slower boats! To install the Autoprop onto Nandji, we have to make a few modifications to the sweep area of the prop. As the new Autoprop has a little larger blades than our previous fixed bladed prop, it also is a feathering prop requiring a larger sweep area as the blades rotate 180 degrees giving the vessel the same power going astern as forwards propulsion. When under sail, the self pitching blades pitch to a degree where up to 85% of drag is reduced allowing the boat a much higher speed under sail! Stop it you say, well I agree my friend...
In this episode of Sailing Nandji, we arrive back to Langkawi with a boat full of NEW gear to install onto Nandji. Upon our return to the boatyard, we had a special delivery from Australia, our NEW Stern tube! We had been waiting on this to arrive for weeks as we need to install the stern tube, to then install the shaft so we can align and position the new engine correctly. We have had a trickle of water though the hull on the outside of the stern tube since we burnt out a bearing on our journey to the boatyard and created a hole in the old stern tube. We take you through the installation process of the new Stern tube and solve our water leak for good! The old stern tube must have been the original stern tube first installed onto Nandji when she was built back in 1996. It was made of Stainless steel where factory boats have bronze. We removed the thin old stern tube and replaced it with a thicker walled bronze stern tube. Good to go for another 20 years!!!
In this episode of Sailing Nandji, our refit is moving forward in leaps and bounds. With the engine room overhauled and the bow rebuilt, we have run into a wall as Chinese New year fast approaches and majority of the businesses in Langkawi shut down for 2 weeks. The lead up to the New year everyone was in holiday mode already and we could not get anything built. Uncle Kevin to the rescue!!! We load up his vessel with everything needed to be remade and a list of items needed to be purchased and off we go sailing to Thailand!
In this episode of Sailing Nandji we are held up from the engine install and start on another repair project of attending to the soft spots on the bow. We remove the old windlass to install the new but discover a little more rot than expected! Yosh takes to the soft spots with a chisel and hammer and uncovered wet wood under the fibreglass. Like most boat jobs, things must get worse before they can get better and before you know it, a huge portion of the bow is ripped up and wood taken out. We take you through the steps we used to repair, replace and restore the area. We had been carrying around our NEW windlass ready to install for months now, but the thought of removing the old and knowing there was a problem that lies beneath had been daunting to do not in a boat yard. I had grit my teeth and pulled the anchor by hand for another few months to reach this point. Finally the day is here to discover how far the rot has spread! We hope you enjoy the video! Please understand we are in a hot environment and outside, we take good care of ourselves and try our best to be as safe as possible. Sometimes we do forget to put on safety gloves or wear glasses as we are trying our best to complete the job as fast and efficient as possible. We are exposed to substances for a very short time and are not doing this everyday. We understand the consequences completely.
In this episode of Sailing Nandji, Nandji is high and dry in the boat yard. With a looong list of jobs we plan to complete whilst on the hard stand, we are busy in renovating our engine room ready to install our new Yanmar "Fang." We have been lucky to have a fellow Salty sailor wish to help us install the new engine, Uncle Kevin is also a guru fibreglasser after glassing surfboards professionally for over 30 years. This man knows a thing or two about fibreglassing and he takes us through the types of matting we use to reinforce the bearers ready for the new engine mounts to bolt on too. After two weeks on the hard stand our engine room has gone form a oily greasy mess from our old engine to a glistening white solid room ready for our new motor! Nandji is slowly transforming from a tired old vessel into a beautiful new boat! There has been hundreds of man hours invested into Nandji, not to mention every last one of our dollars, but to see the changes everyday is very rewarding and a great feeling knowing our boat is going to be better than new soon. We are working tirelessly into this refit to be able to accomplish our goal for this year of crossing the Indian Ocean. We hope you enjoy the vid! YEW!
In this episode of Sailing Nandji, with Old Smoky now a thing of the past, it is time to get busy into the installation of our new engine Fang! Old smoky may be gone, but she left us with quite the mess to clean up. As we had been concentrating so hard on reaching Langkawi, cleaning the bilge turned into a job that was forgotten and with Old Smoky now gone, the oil and grease remains. Along comes Bilgy Bonita! We have been extremely lucky to have a fellow Salt rock up to Nandji everyday to share his wisdom and help us not make the same mistakes he has in the past. With a wealth of knowledge and a willingness to put a solid days work in every day, we have been blessed with the help from Kevin. He first wanted to help us install the new engine and before we knew it, he adopted the mammoth task of filling and fairing the topsides of NAndji ready to paint. What a bloody legend! We hope you enjoy the episode legends, lots of boat work to share with you all! Yew!
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