Always check the seacocks open
20 March 2015
Jackie is scrambling up the companionway ladder in a state of panic, COLIN! Snapped out of my noodling about transferring music files on the laptop in the cockpit, I can see steam and an ominous hissing sound coming from the engine compartment. Jackie stumbles onto deck saying turn off the engine, which I’m already doing, going down into the boat where the kill switch is located. I’m there inside of two nano-seconds and the engine dies. Below deck it’s like a sauna, something has blown. Before I left my seat I knew what the problem was. The raw water seacock that feeds the cooling system to the engine hadn’t been opened. We’d been away for twenty four hours and this had been closed whilst we were off the boat and I’d forgotten to turn it back on prior to starting the engine to top up our batteries. It’s the most stupid of mistakes, and one of the first things we ever learned about boats and engines. Always check the sea cock is open, or watch for the water being pumped out of the back of the boat, and although we always do this, for some reason neither of us had done these simple checks today.
It could be a disaster, and a very costly one at that. We both sat in the cockpit with our heads in our hands imagining the worse. The hissing stopped, but the temperature gauge hovered at around 200 degrees, it’s usually 160. I venture down below and grab a torch, and carefully open one of the engine doors, and peer in. There’s a small pipe hanging down with the thermostat cap on the end, everywhere is dripping wet but apart from this the rest of the engine looks normal except a tad hotter than usual. On closer inspection it appears that the thermostat cap housing has blown clean out of the tank. It had been held in there by some sort of high temperature sealant, which I had never noticed. This had obviously been a DIY fix that had been done a long time ago and today it failed. It may have saved the engine though. We’ll have to check the impeller on the raw water pump, reseal the cap back into the tank and probably an oil change.
Down at JRs’ for our supposed last trivia quiz night we seek out advice from little Ray and Rudolf, both who know a bit about engines. “Was the paint on the engine bubbling” asks Rudolf, “if not you may be OK, just fix the cap back with some metal epoxy and fire up the engine, and see if you’ve got water coming out of the exhaust” Little Ray reckons the raw water impeller may need to be replaced. Their joint prognosis is that it may not be as serious as we’re imagining.
Me, Jackie and Ray, dubbed the ‘Ancient Brits’, come third in the quiz, although tonight the contestants are a bit thin on the ground and there’s only three teams. Of course it’s very biased towards the American cruisers with questions like how many sesame seeds are on a MacDonalds hamburger bun. I ask you, how are English people supposed to know that? It’s not exactly Brain of Britain stuff. We demand a few European questions, but when asked what is the emergency number used in the EU we say 111, turns out to be 112, better not have a heart attack these days.
Anyway, talking about heart attacks I digress, and back to the steaming hulk of our Izuzu. Next day, today, we get hold of some of this special metal epoxy glue, courtesy of Gary, last nights’ quiz master. We clean up the old cap and its surrounding hole. This involves me hanging across a now cold engine, inside its cupboard, with a file, small cold chisel and emery paper making everything shiny. On deck Jackie is doing the same with the thermostat housing and after about a couple of hours we’re ready to glue. You can’t hang about with this epoxy stuff, four minutes is all I’ve got to coat both surfaces after mixing the two compounds together, and just one shot at it otherwise it will all have to be chipped off and start again, it’s a delicate balance.
Over lunch as the glue sets I get out the cruisers bible of mechanical and electrical fix your boat manual by Nigel Calder, or as we have dubbed it ‘ATN’, (according to Nigel). Turning to the section on overheated engines ATN suggests we should check the impeller on the raw water pump that wizzes round at great speed as it’s attached to the engine by a fan belt. It needs water to lubricate its little rubber fins as it wizzes round. Without water it’s likely to get very hot and damage some of the fins. So after lunch I get down and dirty with the engine again to remove and examine the impeller. It’s a job I’ve done a few times now and, although a bit awkward and tricky, I know how to do this. Once detached I undo the screws on the backing plate to reveal the little impeller. What should look like a miniature Ferris wheel is actually just a mangled rounded hub of rubber with bits of debris in the housing. It’s fucked, to use a technical term. It’s a dead impeller, it is no more, it is bereft of life, the chance of it swishing water is less than nil.
Luckily we have at least four of these babies on board all wrapped up in their new plastic packaging, just in case. There’s knack to prizing the thing out with a couple of screw drivers, (not recommended by Jabsco) but shown in ATN’s bible and after a bit of heaving the old one pops out. After a thorough clean-up we put it all back together and re-attach the pump to the engine. We’ll leave the glue to set overnight and tomorrow start the engine once we’ve topped up the coolant that we lost.
The plan of sailing to Cuba on Saturday has been postponed as we now need to test our fix. This puts us back at least twenty four hours so we’ll have to check the weather window tomorrow and see if we can still leave Sunday or Monday.
The whole idea of choosing this life was supposed to be about sailing on a stiff breeze to exotic locations, basking in the barmy tropics, swimming with Dolphins, communing with nature and living the dream. Nowhere in the plan was the grit and grime of dealing the complexities of diesel engines and the myriad of systems aboard a boat.
It’s a constant battle. If it’s not rust it’s blockages, or it’s leakages, it’s loose connections, or worn out bits that jam, or come loose when they should be jammed. Whichever way you look at it, it’s not sailing, it’s not cruising, it’s simply another day of fixing boats in exotic locations. On top of all the gizmos and gadgets that threaten to hijack your idyllic picture of a life on the ocean waves, you have to factor in human error. On top of all that technology and engineering, ready to stop functioning at the worst moment, you place stupid people and what do you get, oh I don’t know, “all part of the adventure”, as one cruising wife described it to Jackie…….
Ran the engine for an hour today and we seem to have a working boat again.