Water pumps, RIB service and Coronavirus time

A morning was spent in the sun (yes, sun!) changing the oil and filter in the Yamaha outboard on the RIB. The gearbox oil also got changed. The RIB gets suspended in mid air by the crane for this little job:

The one benefit is that you get to take it for a burn around the bay afterwards to check all is well. Hooligan time indeed. On the way back, the Captain had a diversion up the river Ely and found Simon and Nikki sitting outside on their lovely timber yacht. As everyone is conscious of "the virus" we kept the regulation 2 metres gap, in fact a bit more.

The new fresh water pump duly arrived from Italy but as it had been in transit for 4 days we felt pretty safe touching the box. Plenty of hand washing afterwards mind you:

Refitting it was a challenge - another example where the 90 degree elbows for the inlet and outlet go tight 3/4 turn after you want them to. Another job for Leak Lock as normal PTFE tape would not bulk the thing out enough. We had to leave the stuff to cure so could not test it straight away:

So here it is without the wiring tidied up and protected.

A day later, firing it up and bleeding it was another highly amusing job. There is a bleed screw on the front - as soon as the pump picks up some water you get a serious shower. Luckily it is fresh water. Way better than #headgate which we went through when replacing the joker valves in both loos. However, things did not go to plan at all. The position of the pumps is pretty much at the maximum height above the water tanks that is allowed and the new one would not prime. No air leaks, no blockages, just not enough "oomph" to prime. Even when pre-filled it would not drag water through. Grr....... Well, something like that was said, quite forcefully really.

What to do? Have a coffee, calm down, look at the plumbing and realise that it will need some serious surgery to drop both pumps down a couple of feet into the space where the stabiliser is housed. We didn't have the fittings needed to do that so a shopping list would have to be made up. Wonderful. Just made the captain's day which didn't improve when he stuck a screwdriver into his thumb whilst replacing a 240v socket that was misbehaving.. Frequent hand washing to avoid the Covid thingy with a plaster on is not simple.

Our plans were getting a bit messier. Coronavirus was causing restrictions in some harbours so it was time for some agile planning (roughly means that like 99.9% of the population we have no idea how this will all develop so we will just wait and see).

If we have to isolate then the boat isn't a bad place to be. Plenty of diesel (might need a little top up), big water tanks, watermaker but that is not commissioned, big fridge / freezer, plenty of power even if the shorepower fails thanks to the generator. Let's see what happens but we guess that this summer will be short on cruising time.....

Preparing for some cruising (when the gales finally abate!)

After the relentless rain and wind and grey miserable weather this winter, there has to be a break soon. Please! So, in preparation we finally got busy. The list was huge and had to be trimmed a lot with some planned upgrades just postponed as although the sniffles were getting better, we were not back to full power yet.

The fuel supply tank fitting was first on the list. If you have a good memory / are incredibly sad you might recall the annoying first go when we discovered that the fitting ended up 3/4 of a turn from tight in the tank to get the valve in the right position.... So annoying. Thanks some so called engineer who thought that was OK to assemble. Hence when removed the first time, it was refitted and sealed with gloop (Leak Lock) just as the factory cowboy did.

This time the plan was to refit it with washer(s) to pack it out and allow the thing to be properly secure and not relying on the gloop.  It meant draining about 35 litres of fuel out, 350ml at a time into a jug. A real fun job but as the captain's sense of smell was still non functioning it wasn't as bad as the first time.

The valve was refitted, this time using normal Wurth pipe sealant on the threads and all was well:

Just a little "Leak Lock" overspill from the first rebuild to clean up. Hardly a priority.

Once completed, the annual fuel filter swap ritual could be completed. All 9 of them. The worst is the big Webasto boiler as it has a real old school CAV 296 filter like this one:

which is messier to swap than any of the others owing to where it is, the wiring around it and the need to dig out the O rings that stay in the top casing after you take it to pieces. Memories came back of a pair of old Ford Sabre engines in a Broom motor cruiser that we owned which had two of these on each engine. There you had to hang upside down to replace them and it was always amusing. The one positive about the old technology CAV device is that the filter elements are as cheap as chips.

The genset had the normal 6 monthly oil and filter swap and then some fresh water pump fun ensued. The "backup" Marco UP12/E pump refused to fire up so we were using the original Jabsco unit. The little lights on the Marco pump suggested that it was either drawing too much current or the input voltage was too low. Checked the latter - it was fine.

After removing the pump from the plumbing and wiring the captain started to take it apart to see what was happening. Very quickly he got a bath in rusty water from inside the motor housing. Problem found. It seems that water leaking past the shaft and into the motor assembly is not uncommon with these pumps. The motor innards were toast so a new one was ordered from an Italian supplier who had one in stock for around £70 less than Timage, the UK supplier wanted. Madness. Knowing how difficult it might be to get one ordered from the factory with the Italian Coronavirus problems, we were happy to find a stock unit. Just need to disinfect the box when it arrives perhaps?

There is a bare spot in the cupboard where the second pump is normally mounted for now:

Refitting the flybridge seats and covers on a sunny (albeit chilly) day made us think that there might just be an end to the wind and rain sometime soon. Then we had another gale and torrential rain. Back to normal happened so quickly and cruelly.

Sniffling and pottering

Well despite his dose of man flu, the captain soldiered on. Just not very actively. A trip to the Deere dealer for oil and filters and fuel additive was OK, as was the regulation run around the bay to warm up the oily bits in the engine room. Our usual less than exciting track ensued:

You cannot go too far "left" in the picture as it gets very very shallow.

The nice dose of man flu rather put paid to some other mad ideas that the captain had - like replacing the Racor spin on filter assembly that is used as on the wing engine with a "proper" Racor turbine style unit like the one on the genset. The engine room was too chilly for a sniffling person to work in. Copy / paste outside jobs. So, in reality, not much got done. We did make some progress, but not of our own labours just via our bank account.

The RIB cover (10 years old now) had a split in a seam and as the rest of it was starting to look sad, we had ordered a new one from Josh at Severn Sails.. He duly arrived to fit it and a much better job it is too. Better size, covers the tubes more effectively, straps with the buckles on the side you can get to easily not against the rail etc etc. Here is his handiwork:

The new cover is a way better fit around the stern and outboard and secured with a big strap this time. The RIB tubes at the stern are properly covered and should keep much cleaner. Even the belly straps are nicely reinforced and fitted:

Very pleased with this and also a little cover he made up to protect the FLIR from the worst of the winter weather:

and there has been plenty of that....

Realistically, the last few days felt a bit like a wasted time - there is a huge and growing "to do" list of things that we want to finish before the cruising season starts and we didn't even dent it in the last couple of weeks, bar changing the main engine gearbox oil and filter. Just have not felt up to doing much. Time to man up and get on with things, sniffing gently of course. We did cheer ourselves up seeing Anne and Izzy though. Izzy looked her usual regal, cute self:

Pick your own words to describe how Anne looked:

The good news is that this cold / flu thing seems to have infected plenty of folks in our area and it started way before the current Coronavirus scares. Otherwise we would have to self-isolate on board. Mmmm. We have wine, gin, a freezer full of food and a few tins / packets of edible stuff kicking around. Seeing the mad panic buying going on in the supermarkets here it is so tempting to anchor somewhere in a sheltered bay and just hope it all goes away. Somehow we doubt that it will.

Kitchengate part 2

As anyone who has been through the "modern" method of installing a kitchen knows, you must have so many differently qualified folks involved so you are "health and safety" and regulations compliant. Gas fitter, electrician etc so everything gets certificated. Having seen how some folks do jobs and then issue the "certificate", we are seriously cynical about the worth of this but it has to be done (and paid for naturally!)

The good news was that after the rather good cast of Ben Hur had finished, our little house in Hythe had a sparkly new kitchen in place. The only challenge will be teaching Mrs Toddler how to use the appliances as we have no clue either. Mr Toddler avoids cooking but he might get called upon when the clocks change to synchronise everything. Oh, hang on, the "internet of things" has arrived for us courtesy of Mr Bosch and the new kit so they ought to reset to and from daylight saving time automatically:

The only challenge is getting them to become part of the internet of things. The appliances seem a little reluctant. Perhaps they feel that they are a little too grand to be in our little house. Or they might be upset as we changed the display language from German to English. Or maybe the technology employed is simply beyond the ageing captain - remember that he last worked in IT over 7 years ago when the punched card and Cobol were still pretty sexy.

During the final activity spurt of #kitchengate we continued to cough and splutter and generally feel most sorry for ourselves. All the planned social activities were cancelled too. Eating out was not such a treat when you cannot taste the stuff properly anyway. Recovery was slow, very very slow. However we did perk up enough to make a dash to Scotland to recover the old Victron inverters which we replaced whilst up there last summer. Sheila and Niall had kindly stored them for us and we felt more that a bit guilty about how long their garage had been cluttered with two big blue boxes:

The spluttering and coughing continued upon our return but the pain was eased by having a sparkly new kitchen:

The pain increased when we had to lug everything downstairs again and into the new cupboards. Mrs Toddler will never find all of her things again. We need to emigrate before she blames us.