Bittersweet: Selling the Original Engine
When we bought Calypso, she still had the original Sabb 10 horsepower, single cylinder engine (hand crank, thank you very much). We talked about the need to get her towed from the slip to the boat yard but Mike assured us it would start right up.
After who knows how many years of old fuel? Privately we arranged for towing insurance, smiled and nodded.
He was right. A couple of twirls of that handle, a flip of the compression lever, and putt putt putt putt it purred away.
Getting ready to move Calypso for the first time.
10 horsepower isn’t very much to push a 14,000 lb boat. But Calypso is a sailboat, meant to sail places; the engine was mainly used to get us in and out of harbors or in and out of a slip. Sure, hand cranking her to start meant it was really tough on cold mornings on the ICW, and in an emergency the need to take off the engine cover (for me - Jeremy with his longer arms could reach the compression lever through the opening in the cover) meant there was some adrenaline involved.
That engine never, ever failed us. Not ever.
Sabb engines are designed for use in lifeboats. This is not the Swedish car manufacturer Saab but the Norwegian diesel engine manufacturer Sabb, by the way, and it took me a good 6 months when we first bought the boat to get it straight in my head. I call it the “Sa-Bee-Bee” most of the time when I’m talking about it, just to be clear. The little engines are not much in demand anymore so it felt like we had a little bit of history in the boat.
In 2012, after talking about it on and off for a few years, Jeremy pulled out the Sabb and installed a Yanmar 3YM30. It’s a smaller, lighter engine with much more power, which, as we’re getting older, is a great combination. For 8 years, the Sabb has sat in our garage.
Until a week ago when Jeremy loaded it onto the trailer, took lots of photos, and listed it on Ebay for sale.
Within 3 days, he had a full-price offer, so once the buyer comes to pick it up, the engine will be out of our hands.
On the one hand, it’s awesome. The engine is out of the boat, out of the garage, heading to a place where it can be used and loved and kept in service. On the other, though, it’s a hard set of memories to hand off to someone else. As long as the engine was in the garage, we could think about the possibilities of using it again ourselves. Build an African Queen style lake boat? Resurrect another old boat with the need for a power plant?
This getting ready to go cruising thing is filled with bittersweet progress. Preparing for the future means letting go of some bits of the past.
Next up? Selling the manual windlass. It’ll be my turn to shed some tears when that is no longer in our possession.