Well, it’s been a few days since I’ve made a post about the boat. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve been down there working every day, but not a lot has actually been accomplished. We keep running into little things that need to be fixed and parts to be ordered and wait another week for. I started this weekend with a very lovely and well thought out to-do list and pretty much none of it has even been looked at because Jason and I operate like squirrels on cocaine and just scurry around the boat with reckless abandon. Excellent.
The boat had a lot of thru-hull fittings and valves due to the removed air conditioning and generator. We’ve plugged most of them, but there were still a few stragglers that needed a little more attention. Most were above the water line and just needed to keep the water out. There were a few located behind a shelf out back that we just couldn’t get the fittings out of to plug properly, unfortunately.
We’ve been getting a lot of rain due to the tropical storm working its way across Florida. Because of this, I have a list of places where the boat leaks water. It’s an impressively substantial list… Some are things that we know about and will fix later, like the windows. However one thing that I wanted to fix now while the mast was removed was the aluminum coaming piece that bolts to the deck and supports the mast where it goes through. There was a bolt missing entirely for some reason (common theme with this boat…) and the seal was leaking pretty good, so there’s no better time to fix it than now!
Unfortunately the paint was in terrible shape and needs to be removed and the entire thing needs to be repainted. I’m going to get a quote for the shipyard to do it because they’ll have a sand blasting machine and way nicer paint that they can spray on. Will have to report back on this one!
Another place that had obviously been leaking for a while was some of the rigging up forward that the staysail attaches to. It was rusty and gross and since we had all the rigging and sails down I thought we might as well take it off and clean it up!
Once morning while it wasn’t too hot, Jason and I went out to the mast that’s still sitting out on the pier and replaced some of the lines with fancy new ones. We also replaced some of the bulbs and tested the lights to make sure they work. (they did!). Jason also installed his fancy new antenna!
For a few weeks it seems like it’s been an uphill battle with trying to finish a very easy task and then getting thwarted by something breaking or being done incorrectly. Yesterday it was the coolant in the engine. I went through the entire system and cleaned it except for what was in the engine block and one part of the coolant pump. Jason and I did the research and bought the correct red coolant. However after thinking about it for a while… I kind of remember the coolant I drained not being red… Unfortunately when you mix red and green coolant it will turn into a gel and clog your engine, so that absolutely can’t happen! I drained a little more out and found that the color looked like orange beer with mountain dew poured into it. I’m pretty sure the coolant was already mixed (I found both red and green containers in the boat) and it was rusty and dirty. So now we have to flush the freshwater side of the cooling system. The problem with this is that the boat is out of the water so we can’t run the engine… time to improvise! I pulled the thermostat out of the housing so the water could circulate and then rigged up a way to spin the pulley on the water pump using a hole saw (without the bit in the middle), duct tape, and our cordless drill. Works pretty well!
We fought with the coolant situation for longer than is reasonable with really no resolution. I ended up with a gallon of coolant to mop out of the bilge and I still need to add a few more gallons to the engine to flush the rest of it out and get a new thermostat gasket to replace the one I broke getting the thing out. Awesome. Another day I guess…
Jason and I did the boat equivalent of “procrasti-cleaning” (something I do often…) and instead of fixing any of the other things that are torn apart, we worked on the bilge pumps… The wiring was complete mayhem. After staring at it for a while we finally understood what the previous owner was trying to do, but he was running all of his power through 2 tiny wires to the pump. Those wires got super hot, so that wasn’t a safe situation. Also, the main power wires for both pumps were damaged to the point that the wires were bulging with corrosion and about to break in half! I don’t want a boat fire and I don’t want to flood the boat, so it is necessary to fix these pumps! Eventually we got it figured out. The factory pump had 4″ cut off of the power wires, everything reconnected and then tied into place and reinstalled. The second pump that the PO added needs a new switch at the panel and a new float switch, so we have some parts to order.
The last thing I did today was some more work on the fuel polishing system. I had it all set up and functional with the diesel pump off of the generator and the spare fuel filter/water separator. That little pump didn’t flow enough fuel to really be of any use, but I found a second pump that we had laying around that we took off forever ago. Winning! So I got that installed, wired, and everything hooked up. It was a pretty clean install that I was rather proud of!
BUT
We tested it and the fuel never flowed. We took the pump out and tested it on the deck with one end shoved into a fuel can and still… nothing. Turns out that this pump is only rated to be gravity fed and located underneath the fuel tank. Dangit. So I’m not sure if the previous owner ever used it, because it shouldn’t have ever worked where he had it mounted either… But now I get to remove it, source another pump, and install a *third* fuel pump. This is starting to get irritating as I’d like to be done with this project someday.
Now we have another week to wait for parts unless I can find the right pump at the local auto parts store.
It’s been a frustrating couple of days with setbacks. I’m ready to button all of this stuff up and start working on paint and making the boat look awesome!