Two men in a boat

17 Nov Two men in a boat

With just Patrick and me onboard, we spent a few days cruising the Seto Inland Sea, two bachelors island-hopping, more interested in admiring boats than women. One thing you notice about the Seto straight away is how alive it is. Even though it stretches a fair distance, roughly twice the length of Puget Sound at about 280 miles, it’s absolutely packed with islands and boats.

      Cruising the islands, quiet serene beauty and then you come around the corner to Imabari Shipbuilding

Imabari Shipyard established in 1901, a yard that produces more ships in 1 year then America has produced in the last 15 years. it is owned by the Higaki family, chairman Toshi Yuki still flies coach!

                  Imabari Shipyard, they have 7 separate sites  in the Seto sea, all building ships of various sizes

              7 deck high pilot house and crew quarters being towed to the shipyard to be placed on a new hull.

The Seto is home to more than 3,000 islands, with over 600 of them inhabited. And while the islands are beautiful, they aren’t the only things you’re dodging out here. This is a seriously busy waterway. In some of the tighter passages, it’s estimated there can be as many as 700 vessels transiting at once.

       This is only a 60 mile long section of the Seto and there are hundreds of             vessels

                                                                             22 ships on 2 mile radar range

                                                                               15 ships in 1 NM range

For a navigator, it’s both a challenge and a thrill, but definitely not something you’d want to take on in the dark. 

After a while we decided it was time to make some real headway and point Starr toward Ashiya. There were a few projects we wanted to tackle, and with just the two of us onboard we figured it might be fun to mix in some land-based adventures as well. We brought Starr into Ashiya Marina, tucked between Kobe and Osaka, a spot Sharry and I had visited in 2010 & 2011. It is still a great marina.

The exclusive hotel that is designed after a cruise ship. It cost one million Yen to be a member there! 15 years ago a shinto priest was on the edge of this dock giving us a blessing, we wanted to know how long the blessing would be good for and he said 20 miles, unless you paid for more. We stayed with the 20 miles, we seemed to be fine completing the 4,000 nm passage.

                                                       Starr in same Marina Ashiya moorage as in 2010

One of the main jobs on our list was dealing with a leak in the hoisting ram on our crane. It had started weeping while back in Fiji and Ashiya seemed like the perfect place to dig into it since we knew we would be tied up for a bit. Once we were secure at the dock we pulled the crane apart and removed the rams.

                                                 The line hoist ram was leaking. The launch weighs 1500LBS.

Patrick and I gave it everything we had trying to get the end cap off including bending and breaking the gland wrench, using heat and yet still it would not move. After the fact, Brent my son asked me if I had used nitrogen to freeze the end socket by using liquid air can and tipping it upside down so you only got the nitrogen (Good idea brent! we will try that next time!). 

                        The crane boom pulled off and is upside down so we could pull the rams.

All we could manage was to drain the oil and haul the ram down to a local hydraulic shop. Even the technician there had a hell of a time getting it open. He had to bring every bit of muscle and tooling he had to bear on it. It was last apart in 1994, practically brand new!.

                           

                                               Patrick pulling the ram to empty hydraulic oil from cylinder

 

           The end cap pulled off with his notes in Japanese. Note the teeth marks from the pipe wrench.

 

                    He had to use both a pipe wrench as well as weld a leverage arm onto the end cap just to get enough leverage

 

    This is the ram seal. a cam that slides back and forth as the ram comes in and out. It has a seal and bushing which we were able to reuse.

                              The all important failed piston rod seal that should be one piece but is now shot.

 

This was the most critical seal, its holding back 3200PSI of Hydraulic oil. He found a close seal but it still needed to be sanded down from 35mm to 33mm and reduce its thickness from 5mm to 3mm and we were not sure if he could even do this!

 

    Don and our hydraulic mechanic Tomoyuki Nakatani, he was able to sand down the piston seal with success!

We wouldn’t have been able to accomplish any of this without our head translator and dear friend, Yumi Tanaka. Sharry and I had met Yumi and her husband Yoichi Tanaka, and two of their three sons fifteen years ago. Yumi works as a concierge for a large condo association catering to English speaking tenants. We sought her assistance in finding a hydraulics shop that could handle the work we were looking to do. Within a couple of hours, Yumi had already found one, made a call, and was on her way to pick us up. We cannot emphasize her kindness and dedication to helping us enough. The least we could do was treat her and her family to a day cruise aboard Starr.

                                  Yumi, Patrick and I all at lunch after Yumi had brought us to the shop.

 

 

                                        Yumi and her family all piled into the kitchen of Starr taking a selfie

 

                                                     Yumi, Yoichi, his father, brother and sister in law.

Related posts:

1082nm from Los Cabos, 09d 55.00 N, 122d 54.00 W – Friday, 23nd March, 2001 Mainland Coast of Mexico: Puerto Vallerta to Barra de Navidad – December 17, 2000-January 18, 2001 Seattle to Mexico – November, 2000 Seattle, Washington – September, 2000