Boat Maintenance

It wouldn’t be a sailing post with out some boat issue. Our stuffing box still leaked but not quite as much. Researching we learned that we have a Volvo lip seal stuffing box and that it requires attention every 200 hours or so. We are to be greasing it. The next mission became finding the Volvo stuffing box grease. I won’t belabor it beyond saying that our first Marina couldn’t help us on a Sunday – the service people didn’t want to sell the grease but the service to grease it. The chandlery didn’t have any grease and didn’t want any more to do with us once they realized they weren’t selling me anything. We kept looking and eventually found a well stocked chandlery in a very nice, quiet marina in Funtana so we’ve started to service the stuffing box. It still is leaking but less. We’ll keep at it.

The other running topic has been dealing with the holding tank. We did find some magic juice called “Aqua clean green” which purports to have environment credentials but essentially liquefies the waste to facilitate emptying of the tank. So far so good. It is expensive but seems very effective.

Batteries are always interesting. You may recall we replaced the engine battery. The service bank for everything else is relatively new but we watch carefully so we don’t drain it too far. If you drain the batteries too low their life is shortened and they are expensive to replace. We use a generator to recharge unless we are in a marina connected to shore power. As we’ve been in Croatia we spend more time away from Marinas so the generator is used more. We keep the freezer off to preserve power and only recharge devices when the generator runs. It seems if we run it a couple hours a day it keeps things generally OK. Batteries are also charged when the engine runs but the alternator is slow to charge. If we keep the boat we’ll get a bigger alternator as well as a solar chargine system to supplement the generator. In addition to engine and service batteries we also have batteries at the front of the boat for the bow thruster (moves the front of the boat right and left) and one for the generator. It’s a long story but we think the bow thruster batteries may be wearing out so we’ll be examining that further. They are of course very buried and hard to reach. [Update: So far so good - no issues with bow thruster]

The bilge (bottom of the boat where all water goes, hopefully) before it is pumped back out had some unexpected extras yesterday. We check it often to ensure there isn’t more water than expected and that the pump works (if water came in unexpectedly you’d want to know your bilge pump will pump it out again. When I checked it there was an odd growth in the bilge. Closer smelling revealed it was mould you’d smell in rotten milk. I was transported back to a morning a few days before when I found the milk on its side and leaking through the opening. I had cleaned up the mess but likely not before some milk went through the fridge drain. So I scraped the layer of growth from the bilge and poured a couple buckets of water through to clear it. When we next got to a marina, I cleaned the fridge out, purged the drain line from the fridge to the bilge, and then ran water through the bilge for some time to clean it. No more rotten milk smell!

An interesting and somewhat embarrassing note (because it shows we haven't thoroughly cleaned the fridge before), when we found the fridge issue, we decided on a more thorough clean and did a full defrost of the fridge. When all the ice buildup went away, we found we had a freezer at the top of the fridge - since we started sailing the fridge has been on and this door was not obvious to us. Exploring during the thorough clean we were surprised to find this new place to keep ice. it also means that we don't need the big freezer going to have ice. This may sound like a small thing but the freezer is the biggest power hog. we've been using it to freeze large bottles of water when we have shore power and use those in the fridge to reduce electricity consumption when not on shore power. When it was 30 plus celsius this made a big difference for us. So we have a more serviceable fridge and ice!

We also recently found some water in the forward bilge which is unusual. It is under our bed so we don’t pull the access open too often. We cleaned up all the water so we could determine the source. I thought maybe it was from when we used a bilge cleaning liquid because the water was soapy. We found some water, however, on a higher area. Since the weather was rough we though perhaps it had just sprayed around. As always with leaks, we taste to see if sweet or salty (fresh water or sea) and then try to find the source. We figured it was either from some spot in the deck that was leaking, a pipe leak from when we refilled water, or perhaps something in the deck when we wash to boat.

We had a rocky, wet trip to get to this marina but the bilge was dry (good news). I washed the boat after we arrived and was going to check for leaks but got distracted talking to some people on the dock who had spent time in Canada. We had a great little conversation but I then filled the water tank. Water was back in the bilge. It is sweet so it is from either washing (leak somewhere forward) or from filling the tank. Stay tuned for more.

When we were diagnosing this issue, we found a whole area of mildew in our forward cabin that we immediately addressed.

On other topics, seawater combined with urine forms calcium. Our toilets flush with seawater so you are constantly seeing calcium buildup. We’ve learned that vinegar works best to clear it so right now both heads have the bowls full of vinegar.

Today we are Marina bound due to 35-50 knot gusts today so we pulled cushions out to air in the breeze as well as Theo’s soft toys. The boat hatches are also letting air through so hopefully this strong breeze will refresh the boat and dry things a bit. After all the humidity we’ver had, sheets and fabrics can get a bit clammy on a boat.

In other boat maintenance there were lose bolts to tighen, a floor compartment to clean, vacuuming to remove crumbs and debris, and other minor chores. There is always something to do on a boat!

We did a brief sail to Cres in Croatia and the log wasn’t working. Further looking and our speed wasn’t showing up either. Today I pulled the transducer which is under the boat and found 2 tiny barnacles as well as other growth on the device so it has now been completely cleaned. We’ll see tomorrow if it all worked.

In other good news, the stuffing box did not leak at all and we were under motor for about 4 hours. It is good for now!