February 9, 2017
One of the things people tell us they like about twoatsea.com is our honesty. We’re not afraid to complain about the hardships and discomforts we encounter. We do that hoping that it will help others avoid the negatives we encounter. Also, it just feels good to complain sometimes!
It’s not all a box of fluffy bunnies out here. For example, we carry a stack of bibles so that, at least once during every passage, I can swear on them that I’ll never do another passage again. (And after every passage, I forget about my holy promise and we do it all over again!)
One of the biggest hardships for me (Rich) is the broken stuff. It’s not so much a physical discomfort, like passages, but rather a psychological drain. This year the list is pretty short but what’s on it is troubling. Here’s what’s very un-fluffy-bunny-like right now on Legacy.
Raw Water Pump
Our Yanmar 3YM30 engine has a Johnson sea water pump that’s always been marginal. A couple of months ago, it got some air in it and wouldn’t self-prime any longer. I thought I knew the cause – the cover plate was badly scored by a little over 4,000 hours of use. I believed that this would allow water to escape around the sides of the impeller blades. I took it off and spent hours sanding it back to perfection. I decided to check the impeller before reassembling. It had nicks on the blades. I checked the inside of the pump and found that compared to this, the scoring on the cover was nothing. There were deep, eroded pits and valleys on the surface that the impeller blades ride on. More sanding and grinding were called for.
After a interlude with my Dremel tool and some more sand paper, I’d done all I could. The damage was too deep to completely remove, but I reassembled the pump and hoped for the best.
Nope. The pump still won’t self prime. After it gets air in it (and it will if the seas are rough enough), it quits pumping. Luckily, before the engine overheats or the exhaust system melts, the engine gets a throaty, muscle car sound. When I hear that, I turn off the engine, disconnect the hose clamp on the pump, and suck the air (and at least a few mouthfuls of salt water) out of the pump before we’re good to go for another day or three.
Needless to say, the pump needs replacing. I called the $Yanmar$ dealer in Hobart (where we hope to be in a week or so) and inquired about cost and availability of a new pump. They could have one overnight and for just twelve hundred bucks! Ouch. This is especially painful considering pumps online in the US are $360 or so.
OK, I’ll order one from the states and have it shipped to me.
Wait. Since the lovely people at Yanmar have what I consider a price fixing, protectionist scheme in place, I can’t have a pump from the online dealers shipped to our mailing address in Florida as it’s out of their territory. To get one, I’ll have to have it shipped to a friend in North Carolina or Colorado and impose on them to forward it to me. Thanks Yanmar!!! That’s what I might do, or I might look for a better pump by another manufacturer and adapt it to fit our $Yanmar$. We’ll see.
Depth Sounder
The above image shows what our depth reading looks like most of the time recently. I think our depth transducer is going bad. It doesn’t want to read over about 30 feet. “No problem, I only care about it in shallow water” I tell myself. But now it quits reading when we get too shallow as well – 12 feet or less. I’ve tried all the diagnostics I can think of and even updated the transducer’s firmware (what a crazy world when even the depth transducer runs on software!).
In the colder climate here the left arrow button on our Simrad chartplotter stops working (a real problem if you want to change the autopilot’s course to port). After it’s been on a while and warms up, it’ll work again. Maybe it’s the cold water that’s causing the problem with the depth transducer? Whatever the cause, that’s another thing we’ll have to replace in Hobart. Anchoring by feel is hard on the keel.
Other Stuff
There are other things that are eating at me a bit. Our instrumentation has a few other glitches like sudden, infrequent and random disengagements of the autopilot.
And strange, noise spikes that set off our radar guard zone.
We thought after exchanging our radar dome three times, we’d had this problem licked but it’s back. Oh joy!
There are other minor issues as well. Here’s some of our current to-do list…
To do
- fix barbecue hinges – we ripped them off in a not-so-graceful departure from the wharf in St. Helens a few weeks ago.
- Add air drain valve on engine water filter
- New raw water pump
- Outside chart plotter – fix button
- New engine door hinges
- Rebuild engine oil pressure regulator
- Outboard service
- Broken manual bilge pump bracket
- Replace some HF antenna standoffs
- Mainsail repair – two small tears
- Check traveler – why’s it so hard to move?
- Defrost fridge
- Simrad autopilot error
- Simrad radar noise
- Wax red stripe on hull
- Wax and clean hull stains
- Lube steering pedistal
- New shift cable
- Order new battery for computer
- Rebuild small cockpit winches (did the large ones – ha!)
- Install New high bilge water alarm
- Secure companionway
- New toilet seat
- Move gybe easy aft
- New cockpit speakers maybe
- Carpet steps
- Clean clears
- Cockpit rust stains
- Replace cockpit harness bolt
- New Seagull filter hoses
- non-return on galley hot water
- Check Spinnaker pole
- Lube bow rollers
- Add anchor wash down pump
- ……….. Someday ………..
- hf radio noise issue
- Heater fan control relay
- Or Heater fan thermostat
- Deck chip on port by cockpit
- Epoxy overboard pole
- new wikipedia download
- Back up for weather computer
- Autopilot pump connectors
- Better battery hold downs
- Add Main furler drum bearings
- Bonding wire to arch
- Glue old faucet holes
- Chips on bow
- Seal bottom of rudder sensor
Granted, some of these items are just maintenance, but it all weighs on me.
See? This cruising life isn’t all a box of fluffy bunnies! -Rich
