Thursday, October 29, 2009

Billy Mays said it best, "But WAIT! There's more!"






Ok so today we left Sunbury in great spirits because the stbd engine's raw water pump was installed and running fine. There was a bit of knuckle bashing but it went in smoothly and is operating fine. Off we went at around 8:45 AM after I spend about an hour cleaning out the salt water from the bilge. So I have a good sweat going and as we enter St. Catherines Sound for the second time I went into the bilge to check on things. The stbd engine was fine, but there was a new drip from the port engine. As it turned out the raw water pump on this side decided to let fly also. But this was different. It decided to puke a couple of the small bolts that hold the cover plate in position over the impeller. The heads of the bolts sheared off! Dang. That's looking like a new pump also. Not another 1200 bucks.... We were devastated.
So I said let's continue on to Fla. on one engine picking our weather. She said fine, but the Bahamas is out. I said I would scale back on going to Exuma. So we sat on the bridge a bit at the break neck speed of about 5 knots when I said, ok. Look. Maybe I can drill out the cover bolts and salvage the pump. She, knowing the boat was moving (the water was calm thank God) thought this was folly.
 As you can see in the above photo, I was able to drill out the bolt and ram an allen key up it's butt and back it out. While the boat was moving, with ear protection and a pencil flashlight in my mouth.
 So what happened? This pump developed a small calcium stalagmite on the inside at the perimeter of the pump. This pushed the impeller blades out so they hammered the cover plate. That popped a couple of the small bolts.
 So I scraped that out, put in a new impeller (always have spares) and used bolts from the old pump (never throw out old hardware until it's replaced). The result is success. We even had Freedom up to 18.6 knots at the end of the day with a heavy load of fuel and water.
 Deb was happy on the day. She said that she enjoyed the day on the water because driving the boat through some narrow passsages at low tide was challenging and made the day pass quickly. Normally I do all of this. I was glad this all made her day.

 The sunset photo really doesn't do the image justice. The sun was "like a red rubber ball".

 GPS data is updates also.

 By the way Jeff here are some shots of the transom. Let me know if you need more. We bought the boat and the davit was installed. It is plywood backed on the inside and I use an ATV winch controller to drive it with a key fob. It's ok until you have to back into a slip.

1 comment:

bbbeebop said...

Glad to hear all is going well considering. Sis is doing Okay still a pain in the k---e. I just got our MH back from the shop water leak --- $1000 repair oh well FL in Dec.