Coolant, backs, paddleboards and another little trip

Upon our return to the boat, the captain wandered into the engine room and discovered a little pool of coolant in a place where it should not be. So, this post starts with boring maintenance stuff. For normal human beings, there is other info later on so skim read the next bit. For folks who like the captain to be involved in anguish, press on.

Naturally the errant coolant could not be from a leaking spare coolant container, life does not work like that. It was traced to the top of one of the hoses that lead from the main engine thermostat housing to the calorifier. A quick fix would be to just turn off the two isolating valves fitted before the hose and leave it but that would mean no domestic hot water is produced when running the engine. Something to do if we were in the middle of a sea trip but....

So, the first challenge is getting to the top of the hose that was causing the trouble. It is very close to the gearbox oil cooler hose fitting so that had to be removed first of all. You can see where the two hose clips had been fitted in the factory and the hose had a small split underneath these, just below the hosetail it was pushed onto:

You can also see how the cheapo hose clips had cut into the hose, were probably overtight and a trace of the infuriating black sealant goo that some idiot in the factory had applied when installing the hose. Grr. We've moaned before about the liberal use of sealant in areas where it has no right to be. This made removing the hose from the hosetail a real challenge. After a few bad words and some violence, it surrendered:

You can see the oil cooler connection (and the pad catching any drips from it!) that had to be removed first. 

Luckily there was enough free hose to allow the damaged part to be cut off and then for it to be refitted. The angle of the oil cooler elbow that you can see in the picture above was changed to allow easier access in future and the whole thing rebuilt:

Such excitement. Now, for folks with a more normal set of interests here is an update on the goings on, or lack of them.

The crew, she of the poorly back, had a fruitful appointment with a consultant spinal surgeon who told her that there was nothing wrong with her scan and that if his spine looked like that when he was her age, he would be very happy. Kind of a compliment and gentle put down in one accurate but not too carefully worded comment. So, she headed to an expert physio lady who gave her exercises and some homework. The homework was probably unlike any that had been set before - to take the boat out for a run. Seems that lifting those big fenders is good exercise.

Being an obedient type (well, for certain people), the crew then decided that we needed to burn up and down the bay a few times on a lovely still, blue skied but chilly day. The usual confusing track resulted:

and we made plenty of hot water with no coolant leaks this time. However, the repositioned oil cooler hose looked as though it might have a weep where it attaches to the fitting on the cooler so that will need redoing. The old "fix one problem, cause another" game.

To add to the annoyance, the wing engine exhaust elbow which had some suspect dark marks underneath it before, decided to show that it was unhappy - a little pinhole must have opened up as a tiny black stain appeared.. Time to renew it. The current elbow is a stainless steel version that replaced the original cast one in early 2014. We were not too impressed that the more expensive factory supplied stainless offering had lasted only a little longer than the cast iron original.

It hasn't been swapped out yet for the spare that we carry as we will wait until we have another new one shipped over from the USA. Just in case the identical elbow on our genset decides to fail too - replacing that during the winter is way more important than fixing the wing engine. This time we have gone for stainless again but a pattern part from a supplier that many Nordhavn owners have recommended. They produce good quality castings at way lower prices that the original equipment part. Have a look at HDL Marine website - they also seem to ship much more quickly too. Wrestling the exhaust hose off and getting to the one hidden bolt will be fun for another day.

Xmas seems to be setting in and despite the freezing temperature around 40 stand up paddleboarders braved the weather and dressed up for a Santa paddle event to raise money for the lifeboats. Impressive sight:

and they all paddled past us in various outfits and with various levels of stability on their boards:

You can just see the inshore lifeboat that accompanied them on their travels so it looked pretty safe.

The marina runs a "best illuminated boat" competition at Xmas time., As professional bah humbug types we didn't take part. You would expect nothing else from us of course.