Back in the lovely Argyll weather and fixing stuff

After enjoying the BA lounge, a short flight, a night in the Holiday Inn at Glasgow airport (no public transport to Oban in the evening), a bus, a train, a walk, a train, a taxi we were back afloat. Felt kind of good too. Of course, we took the opportunity to raid Tesco in Oban and the Yamaha dealer there to get some bits for a big outboard service. OK, 20HP may not seem big to you but compared to our little 3.5HP egg whisk, it is pretty impressive. The Yamaha dealership people were delightful by the way. Almost a pleasure to spend money with them - go try out Stoddarts if you are up here. http://www.stoddarts.co.uk/

As the weather was forecast to be grim (= heavy rain and force 7) we opted to spend a couple of days doing a tidy up, maintenance and generally chilling.

Maintenance news for the tekkies: The Kilmelford Yacht Haven folks had kindly looked after the boat again for us, checking on shorepower to make sure the fridge and freezer kept going. They'd also fixed one of the Nordhavn 47 irritants. The windows are powder coated aluminium - not a great idea with all that salt around. Most of them survive sort of OK, but the curved windows in the pilothouse were made by a different manufacturer and relish throwing off their original coating. This means you either dismember the interior timberwork to remove them and then get them anodised properly or paint them every three years or so in-situ.

The few people that have tried the removal method have horror stories of getting the timberwork right again so, we stick to painting. It was due this year but with all our unplanned trips away from the boat we had decided to get the yacht haven team to do the work for us before the weather got really wet. Means serious abrading, etch priming, epoxy filler on the corroded bits, more primer then a two pack topcoat trying to get some protection on the sharp edges. Simple really..... The other trick is to refit the rubber seals with some silicone grease behind them to try and help protect the bits you just cannot get to.

Of course,  new build boats now have plastic window surrounds. Almost worth the cool £1.1 million one would cost?

This is why removal is tricky:

The nice curved mouldings (each in 4 pieces) are almost impossible to remove and refit nicely...




For any budding Nordhavn owners, always check the windows carefully!

DIY maintenance news:

The genset is supposed to do 200 hours between oil changes but as we give it intermittent use, it gets fresh stuff a little more frequently. As it had run 150 hours since the start of the season service (low for us - the unexpected 5 weeks away from the boat make a big difference!) it was treated to fresh oil and a filter. A 10 minute job - the built in electric oil change pump makes it simple. We tend to carry around enough oil for a main engine change, genset change and some spare for top up if needed so there was plenty of Deere 10/40 on board. The genset was also treated to a new air filter and the old foam one was washed out. Strangely, the wing engine uses a foam block filter twice the size of the one in the genset. Of course, it is way way cheaper to buy a wing engine filter and halve it than to buy two genset filters.....

Access to the genset oil filter:

The hydraulic oil in the steering system also needed a top up and re-pressurising. This, is trickier as the canister is under the helm position and the filler is too small to properly pour fluid in via a funnel. The easiest way to top it up is to use a small syringe  So, the captain had fun a while ago, getting a free drug addicts' syringe kit from Boots in Falmouth. Just don't ask..... A winter job is remaking some of the fittings onto the autopilot pumps in the lazarette. There are two pumps (fully redundant system with two autopilot control heads, two computers, two pumps) and a couple of the fittings loose a little oil over time. The joys of hydraulics.

The offending article duly topped up and re-pressurised:

For the boaters, the instruction manual says run the reservoir at 20-25 psi. Experience and other owners say don't. Stick to 5-10 instead, even with a flybridge helm high up, it is enough. Some folks have blown out the seals when pressurising the system above 20 psi, very very messy...

As you can see, boating is all very relaxing. Remember the line from trolley shopper Bob "live aboard cruising is doing boat maintenance in exotic places"? Well. we just have to find the exotic place now.

So, maintenance work almost done, we might update you on our cruising plans and Patrick next. Check back and see.