REPOWERING S/Y SOLSTICE WITH A NEW BETA 50 MARINE DIESEL

January 12-27, 2015

We spent this time in Boat Lagoon, at B-18,  preparing the boat for lay up on a hard stand, until all arrangements could be made for ordering a new Beta Marine 50 diesel engine from England.  The choice for this engine and repowering at Boat Lagoon, in Phuket, Thailand, was based on the fact that our good friend, Gary Gilbert, was the Beta representative for the Phuket area.  Although he was their acknowledged representative, he had only sold two Beta diesels, one to himself and another to a fellow boat owner.  My order along with  another fellow boat owner would bring the total to four.  He gave us his 38% commission fee and never made anything as a Beta representative.  We spent countless hours, at his home in Chalong, putting this order together.  Many more hours were spent on Skype with Beta Marine in the UK.  The final result was that we ended up with a marine diesel package that would replace the existing Volvo Penta 2003T diesel engine.  Since Gary had repowered his boat with a Beta at Boat Lagoon, he had many valuable contacts and knew who would be the best choice for the job.

What would make this special installation challenging was the fact that in 1990, when Valiant put in the Volvo Penta 2003T, they used the Volvo MS2V 20 degree downshaft angle V-drive gearbox.  In 1995, both engine and MS2V gearbox went out of production.  To the best of my knowledge, no gearbox manufacturer is making a 20 degree  downshaft angle V-drive  transmission.  Everything I  researched came up with a maximum of 15 degree downshaft angle on the V-drives.  Beta was offering their engine with a ZF 15 MIV transmission (15 degree V-drive gearbox).  This left me with having to modify the engine bed from 20 degrees to 15 degrees.  That meant having to cut through the fiberglass beds to the desired 15 degree angle.  This is best done with mechanical drawings and templates to achieve the correct angle.  In Thailand, it's done by trial and error using an angle grinder, hammer and chisel.

"Solstice" was put on the hard on January 24, 2015.  The new engine would not arrive in Langkawi, Malaysia until the end of April.  The plan was to sail down to Langkawi from Phuket (160 nm) on another sailboat and pick up two Beta engines and bring both back to Boat Lagoon.  Langkawi is a "duty free" port.  Having prepared the boat for lay up, we made plans to fly back to the States on January 27th.  I would stay Stateside until March 19th and then return to Phuket to remove the old engine and prepare everything for the arrival of the new one.  Phyllis would remain in the States until the end of April.