PowerBoats Yard, Chagauramus: Part 2
Plumbing. In 2009, I had to replace the automatic bilge pump switch. As you do.....
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| It pays to be handy |
We engaged a local repairman. I had to remove the stove from boat myself, so I should have recognised a downhill slide in the making! When the stove was returned it was worse than when it had been taken away. Eventually I serviced it myself so that knobs worked properly (removed all the grease the repairman had put into knob mechanisms), fixed into place the sensors that needed to be located up against the burners, and did a bit of cleaning.
This chap was recommended in a cruising guide, and in hindsight, we’ve concluded that what works for one may not work for others. Anyway, it all worked swimmingly afterwards. I still need to repair the auto lighting mechanism – the GS has to manually light burners. (She says that’s not too onerous however!)
Davits. We added custom davits in Trinidad to make dinghy handling a lot easier. When sailing offshore in the Caribbean we’d put our outboard motor on a bracket on the stern (utilizing boom topping lift and block and tackle to raise dinghy) then raise the 11’ RIB on the davits via block and tackle to lines attached to front and back of RIB. Initially this needed two people to raise outboard and one to raise dinghy but I can do it all singlehandedly now. I tie the dinghy down to stop the RIB bouncing around when under sail/motor ie breast lines and springs. When at anchor and using our dinghy, we can raise both dinghy with outboard still attached for security reasons if we have to. Otherwise we use stainless anchor chain with padlocks to lock it all to WJ3. For more serious blue water journeys, we still put the dinghy on foredeck (upside down) using the spinnaker halyard. There’s enough room to lay it down in front of mast. The outboard lives on its bracket on the pushpit. I can’t use the windvane self steering when the davits are in place so especially asked for the davits to be removable/or rotated out of the way when the dinghy is put on the foredeck. We sourced the fabricator through Power Boats and he did an excellent job, even coming out to the boat after we had launched to re-weld a join that we were concerned about.
Autopilot. I had a Simrad installed in 2009. It works a treat; just marvellous until it stops, which a lightning strike will do (and has). We used this constantly from Trinidad up to the Bahamas and across to the Atlantic ICW. It gave us a second pair of hands and kept its course better than either of us could. The guys at Electropics were very professional and had it installed and working so that we could make our departure date.
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| We simply can't fit another thing on the stern |
Steering. I had a defective wheel lock repaired and replaced (it had been removed), again with the professional help of Trinidad Rigging. This required the steering pedestal to be completely pulled apart. One bearing was damaged so I replaced it and also added two circlips (that hold the bottom bearing in place – one on top of the bearing, one on the bottom) that were not actually there. They should have been. So much for maintenance by bareboat charter companies!
Batteries. We had to replace them again in 2009, this time with four golf-cart batteries rather than the two D9s. A new battery selector switch was also fitted at the same time, the battery wiring tidied up to better conform with industry wiring standards and new battery fuses fitted on wall of battery housing. Our mech-elec’s team (on site at Powers) were very thorough and professional.
RIB Repairs. Bruce’s (our RIB) fibreglass hull leaked via several cracks in the hull gelcoat. We had that professionally repaired allowing me to get on with other stuff as our departure date loomed. At the same time, I removed all the headliner internal access plates and had them painted with Awlgrip to match our interior lining colour. Now replaced, it looks 10 times better than the original plastic which must be a different plastic to the headliner.
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