Under Pressure
30 April 2018 | Dolphin Dock House
Preparations have been underway for many months, and even after the successful shakedown cruise, there was still much to be done.
Life has been maddeningly busy but also satisfying to knock so many lingering items from my to do list. From Mary leaving work, to changing addresses to a mail forwarding service, doing taxes, moving all of our earthly possessions into the garage and attic. I did hundreds of small projects to get the house “idiot proof”, labeling everything, painting, new grill, electronic keypad door locks, spares, and just too many small projects to list.
On the Mombo, I replaced the hailer and anchor light, repaired the nav lights, camera, and applied heat shrink and dialectic grease to many electrical connections, and uploaded new nautical charts for all of the US and Canada. Since I couldn’t get anyone at World Cat or their distributors to even reply to an email, I was forced to improvise, and customize many things. Most items are now more bulletproof than the factory standard. On the UV damaged vinyl cushions, I removed half of them and used the SEM system, a 3 part marine vinyl restoration technique that I’m curious to see how it goes. So far, the new light grey cushions look great. I’m not a seamstress, so the stiching is more functional than fashionable.
The boat was waxed up with a new product called Nano Extract, which cleans, polishes, and puts a nanoscopic hydrophobic barrier on the gel coat. So far, the results are very impressive.
There are many other details of little projects and preventive maintenance things I did to minimize the chances of something going wrong. I thought things were going great. All systems were inspected and ready to go, and all of our gear for the next 6000-7000 miles was stowed and organized in a rational manner.
Just one last job, turn the boat around and replace the stbd propeller, which was 1.5 degree different pitch from the Gulf Steam Incident. I waited a while to do it because there was just so many things to do at the house, getting it ready for short term rentals.
Last week, I went to start the engines, which performed perfectly on the way back from the Bahamas, and the port engine wouldn’t start, and threw a code 4-2, ie neutral safety switch. No biggie, as this is a $20 part and an easy sensor to replace on the motor.
I overnighted the part. When my mechanic Chris and I went to install it, we noticed other problems. Namely, there were hidden areas of the engine that looked like a freaking salt mine. Where was is coming from? Turns out that the thermostat housing had a pinhole leak, despite flushing with fresh water every time I use the engine. It had sprayed salt water all over the power head! Now we need to order a new stator, new starter, refurbish the flywheel, a new neutral safety sensor, new crank position sensor, 4 thermostats and 4 thermostat housings. The engine has also been cleaned and desalted, and will be all sprayed down again with the magical Corrosion Block spray, which saved the damage from being worse.
Hopefully the parts will arrive today and we will be back in action in time to depart on May 2. We have our first renters arriving on May 4, so it’s going to be close.
Fingers crossed, but at least we caught the problem early and hopefully will fix it here with my amazing mechanic, rather than trying to do it in an unknown port of call.
Mary just got back from hiking in Utah, and I’ll be honest. I’m really tired of preparing to go. I’m ready to go. I just want t untie the lines and get making way. At this point, if I overlooked some detail, we’ll just have to deal with it and improvise. Hopefully we can still untie the lines and go on Wednesday morning. Then we’ve got thousands of miles to explore before crossing our wake again.