Saturday October 29, 2011

It's been a busy summer as far as maintenance is concerned. It started with replacing the alternator and then the inverter charger. As we were coming up the ICW we were getting overheat errors and the charging voltages seemed off. I replaced our Freedom 15 with a
Xantrex HF 1800. The new unit only charges at 40 amps max as opposed to the previous 70 amps. So far it has kept the battery bank charged but we have been at the dock and under shore power.

Next I had to replace the aft head as it was cheaper to replace the whole head as opposed to buying a new pump and valve system. It is amazing how the builder was able to cram the unit in the platform. The new unit looks and works great so the effort and contortions were worth it.

The cockpit table and teak was in dire need of some TLC. I purchased some epoxy from MAS that is thin and doesn't have an amine blush when it cures and used that as a base coat on the teak as a sealer, The two coats of epoxy were followed by four coats of Epiphanes varnish. The hope is that next spring I will just have to scuff the top coat and re-varnish instead of taking the finish down to the bare wood. The result is amazing as the depth of shine of the finish is really deep and left the teak looking beautiful, we'll see if the durability is there after cruising the tropics this winter.

I had just finished with the teak when hurricane Irene hit. Our slip for the summer is at
Whittaker Point Marina and is fairly exposed to the Neuse under heavy weather conditions. I chose to leave the slip and head out to the South River and up a creek called Southwest creek where I anchored in about 8 feet of water with fairly heavy trees on both sides. The banks of the creek were mud flats about a ¼ mile on each side so I figured if the boat dragged it would fetch up on the mud. I used a tandem anchor with the lead anchor a fortress tied to a Manson with 20 feet of chain. I let our 140 feet of chain from the Manson and 40 feet of ¾ inch three strand nylon. I snubbed to the chain with 40 feet of line from each side of the bow led through chafe protection.

Larry Summers and his wife Julie invited us to ride out the storm with them and we chose to leave the boat and ride out the storm with them. Kathleen and I decided that there would be little we could do on the boat riding through the hurricane and discretion in this case was the better part of valor. The house we stayed in rode the storm out fine and even though the storm surge was about 10 feet here in Oriental and the Eye of Irene passed right through town the water only came up to the hub caps were we were.

On Monday when I took the dingy out to the boat Legacy was riding fine and looked to have come through the storm just fine. The only damage was out radar reflector broke one of the mountings and the windlass reversing solenoid needed to be replaced..

There were two boats that chose to stay in the marina that sank in their slips and there was extensive damage to many of the finger piers so it looks to me that we made the right decision in where to ride the storm out.

When we were able to get back into our slip I decided to replace the raw water impeller as a preventative measure. On most boats this would be at most a 20 minute job, but on our engine the impeller cover faces aft and is covered by the alternator, so to change the impeller the alternator and hosed need to be removed . (I discovered that Yanmar impellers have a thread cut into the hub that accepts a screw with a through bolt that makes removing the impeller much easier.) I also inspected and cleaned the raw water filter. After all that, when I started the engine the raw water steam was very weak and the exhaust note was much louder than it should have been. After much troubleshooting and pulling of hair ( I changed the impeller back to the original thinking that there was a problem with the new impeller) The problem turned out to be the raw water strainer. It is mounted above the water line and in order for the impeller to get water a vacuum has to be developed and the when I inspected and cleaned the strainer I broke the seal. I bought some liquid gasket and once the top was sealed the impeller worked fine. Another lesson learned the hard way.

Another maintenance item was our jib sail. The sacrificial cloth was in tatters and there some rips that need to be repaired. The sacrificial cloth was replaced with sunbrella fabric and the tears repaired. Wally Chapin of Oriental Sailmakers did an outstanding job and hopefully we have a jib sail that we can count on for a few years.

The last item has just been completed as we are now within two days of leaving for our annual trek south. The max prop had a lot of play and we noticed that performance in reverse was getting a lot worse. We had the prop removed at Sailcraft and sent to PYI for repair. The estimate to repair was close to the cost of a new prop. We had the new prop installed and we are now ready to leave Nov. 1 which is this Tuesday. Hopefully we are now set as far as boat repair is concerned.