Saturday
Another weekend, and another car rented and a one hour drive to Malahide. Went via the toll tunnel this time, learning from my mistake from the lift-out. The task list for this weekend included
- Get the diesel tanks out, or at least accessible
- Get the linear drive out
- Pull out old cabling from the helm
- Pull out old nav equipment
- Replace the toilet hand pump
- Replace the main anode
- Pull the radio remote cable
The yard had been unable to schedule the removal of the diesel tanks, so I opted to get as much of that done as possible; it’ll reduce the labour and time charges from the yard. A hot air gun came in quite handy, as did K – she was able to bend over and into the locker far more easily than I can, and got out all of the screws that hold the on the panels around the tanks.
It turns out the tanks are actually resting on a platform, which is good to know. I also really need to build a cover for the joining pipe between the two tanks, as it’d be really easy to drop something on the hose and break the joins to the bottom of the tanks – diesel would flood the bilge at that point, and I don’t think I’d ever get the smell out.
I was able to disconnect everything except the supply and return pipes. It turns out they’re pipes, not hoses, and I didn’t have the knowledge, skill, or possibly tools to try to disconnect hard pipes and then lift out the tanks (with ~30 litres of fuel) without damaging anything. So this job will be handed over to the yard to complete safely and properly.
Replacing the hand pump on the toilet was a pretty easy job, but I’d forgotten to leave the seacock open when lifting the boat out of the water, so the anti-siphon coil was full of sea water (that’s been soaking in a waste hose). Some water came back out when we disconnected the joker valve assembly, but nothing that a diaper sheet couldn’t handle. Both of us wore gloves for this operation, and everything got a dose of disinfectant afterwards – toilet, surfaces in the heads, tools etcetera.
As for why it got replaced – you can make out in the photo of the new handle that there’s a stain on the wood above the silver bit (hinge plate), and on the teak drain grating. Even with a replacement set of valves, the hand pump had been leaking every time it was used. This replacement came from the north of the country, and arrived in under 48 hours. Quite happy with that service.
We also swapped out both anodes – main and shaft. Easy to do, and K was able to confirm that the bolt for the main anode didn’t move when I moved the nut, so the repair job done by the yard last year is good.
The main anode doesn’t look bad at all – I’ve seen fair more white crusting on it before. However, it’s cheaper to change it out every year than worry about whether I’ve cleaned it properly to re-use it.
The last bit of work for the day was pulling out dead power cables, old NMEA/SeaTalk cables (from the helm), and digging out some of the nav bits.
It may not look it, but that bay behind the engine has fewer cables than before, and even when the new nav system is in place, it’ll have fewer than before. With the old SeaTalk, there were multiple data cables running from the nav electronics to the linear drive and the helm position. This led to a very full 1 inch pipe running up to the helm. With the new setup, I need one power cable (already there), one data cable (to be run), one radio cable (just done), and one signal cable (windlass relay, already there). The old setup had at least two more cables than that, including a cable that wasn’t connected at either end (which ran all the way to the electronics space behind the chart table)!