A new season and a new engine

Belatedly I am updating the blog with a few of the adventures we have packed into late May and early June, starting with a mechanical update.

In September I contacted Lindsay from SeaPower Marine, who over the years has done most of the engine work on Kalessin. Lindsay had suggested that he might be able to find a reconditioned engine suitable for replacing the now very old and tired Volvo Penta 2002, which was originally raw water cooled, converted to indirect cooling some time around the year 2000, and converted back to raw water cooling after the pump failed in 2015.

The debate continued at snail-like speed for most of the winter. Finally in February Lindsay convinced me that given the labour costs for putting in any engine, it would make much more sense to put in a new engine with warranty rather than a reconditioned engine where we didn't know the history. He told me that a new Volvo Penta D1-30 would cost marginally more than the Beta he would normally recommend, but that Volvo provide a conversion kit when any Penta engine is replaced by any other, and the kit would save at least 20 hours' labour. Also, all modern engines turn the other way from the 2002, but fortunately our Darglow Featherstream propeller could be sent off to Darglow who could pull out the middle, flip it around and reassemble for vastly less than the cost of a new prop.

We needed the engine in place so that we could join an HPYC cruise to St Katharine Dock at the end of May. What a good thing we had the deadline as otherwise I suspect Kalessin would still be on the hard at Suffolk Yacht Harbour. She was launched on Friday May 17 but the electrics were't quite finished and Lindsay had to rush off to Spain for work. We did sea trials with a substitute engineer, Travis, and Lindsay's admin lady, Jules, on Wednesday May 22. There was a funny noise on tickover, but fortunately it was fixed by raising the tickover speed a bit.


On Friday May 24 we took Kalessin upriver with Sam, Guy (older son), Kai his partner, Ivy aged five months (first sail) and Jenson the dog. We motored a bit and got the sails up and down, enjoying the clarity of the new cockpit hood. All was well, and we were almost ready to head to London the next day.

New engine in place with all hatches open

Points of note:

• The new engine fits very neatly in the engine compartment.
• The D1-30 with its 28hp allows us to motor steadily at 6 knots at 2000 rpm instead of 5.5 with the old engine, and also to push wind and/or tide much better than with the old 18.5hp.
• It uses more fuel: about 2 litres an hour instead of 1.5 or so with the old engine.
• We don't yet have hot water as the coolant header tank needs to be higher to prevent overheating in the calorifier.
• All the replaceable and checkable bits are accessible, but in some cases only just.
• We also have new battery switchgear as it seemed a good opportunity to tidy the wiring - the old cables to the dedicated fridge battery which we dumped in 2013 were still in place, as Ben had just taped them up.

Also updated this winter, for the record:

• New cockpit hood
• New LED lights in galley & forecabin
• New bit of carpet in the aft cabin
• A new Raymarine Evolution tillerpilot is bought but not yet fitted - it took a month to arrive instead of the promised three days