Pre-season maintenance fun and frolics

It had to happen. Reality struck when we had to wash off the boat and start those little maintenance jobs that had been put off for a while, mainly because we had been very busy since late November heading off to various places and having fun. That all stops now....

This little lot might put you off boat ownership for ever of course. If so, sorry. No, not sorry because if you are not prepared to do such things on a regular basis, don't go and buy a boat! The reality is that boats are complex things with many different systems and points of failure. You can design them to keep the boat seaworthy and running through all sorts of weather, poor fuel etc etc but stupid stuff like light switches will go wrong occasionally.

The kick off was that a new fluorescent light had to be fitted in the engine room to replace the one above the genset that had given up the ghost. Not a huge task but it was a start on the pre-cruising worklist.

Next, we found the cause of the slight coolant loss from the heating system. How? By opening a drawer and finding some soggy books in it..... The expansion tank had started to weep from the bottom fitting. Of course, it couldn't be as simple as tightening up the hose fitting that goes into it. Oh no. The threaded fitting that is moulded into the bottom of the tank was leaking and there is no way that you can get into it to either melt some plastic around it or "bodge it up" with epoxy for a while.

Here is the old style tank (this one is fitted to the smaller Webasto water heater that we have on board as a separate system for heating the two heads' compartments. controlled from the main cabin. Why get chilly doing your morning ablutions after all!)

So, we ordered a new tank and found that they have done away with the pesky moulded in fitting. The downside to that is, of course, that the new style tank needs a much bigger hose to push onto the inlet fitting and the fixing holes are in totally different positions.... So, one short piece of 20mm ID pipe and a reducer later we  had a solution. Stuff is never simple.

What else? Well, one of the bulkhead reading lights had packed up - the switch was kaput. Finding a new switch on-line was easy enough. Of course, the UK supplier will only ship it to your home address for your first order to avoid credit card fraud. Hum. It should get delivered when the crew's parents come to visit next week. Again, never straightforward.

The trusty Yamaha outboard on the RIB coughed and spluttered a bit on start-up this week. Think the carburettor needs a clean out - after a good blast around the bay it was fine again. So were we, the hooligan smile came back. The only adjustment needed was to slightly increase the idle speed as it has dropped over time . We do love that 20HP outboard though.....

The most annoying thing was a spurious alarm on the little wing engine. The alarm started to "click" a little and then get louder and more like a full blown alarm noise at higher speeds and when the engine was hot. Of course, the engine was running just fine - no overheating or oil pressure issues at all. Diagnosing the problem was hard. Disconnecting the senders that are designed to set off the alarm for high temperature / high exhaust temperature /low oil pressure made no difference. So, they were not faulty. Disconnecting the wiring to the senders at the control panel also made no difference. No sign of a short circuit in the wiring either. Tracing the wiring diagram and testing a couple of diodes in the system drew a blank too. Time for an email to "Lugger Bob" the brilliantly helpful  Lugger / Northern Lights engine guru to see if he has come across this teaser...

However, refitting the bimini cover and the flybridge cushions on a nice sunny day felt so good. A hint of spring really cheers things up.