Refit in San Diego

Week two of the refit has been encouraging with progress on most fronts. The bills are going up as well but we haven’t reached our budget yet. I think it will be close.

We have had a lot of progress this week. On Tuesday, Alberto, the mechanic arrived and spent the afternoon disassembling the exhaust elbow and the oil cooler. Once removed the leak we suspected during the test sail was obvious. There were several pinholes in the iron pipe just below the mixing elbow. That was sent to the welders to have a new stainless unit made up. The oil cooler was badly corroded and will need some major surgery or replacement if a suitable replacement can be found. The leak in the injector system may have been a loose connection that was found after some of the equipment was removed. If that is the case I won’t need that injector pump rebuild estimated at $1500. Replacement of the engine mounts will have to wait till next year. After an exhaustive search Alberto thinks he found some but cost was prohibitive at $400 each. Since then I received an answer to my query to the Camper& Nicholson archivist indicating a manufacturer and model number of the replacement items. He is also sending me a copy of the original plumbing and wiring diagrams for the boat. No doubt it will have little semblance to the existing arrangement after 34 years of alterations but it may answer some questions about some of the wires that don’t seem to go anywhere.

Alan Katz (alias Dr. Electron), the electrician, did his magic yesterday and all is well power-wise and I am now much more knowledgeable on the boat’s electric and electronic systems. We got rid of the starting bank of 4 group 27, 12V batteries, as they were at least 5 years old and one or 2 were defective, thus the boiling off I experienced last week when I turned the systems back on. We replaced them with 2 similar batteries and added 2 more 6V golf cart batteries to augment the house bank. The solar panels are now fully operational with the addition of a 20-amp controller. It was nice to see current going into the charging circuit even on a dull day. Alan also reorganized the charging circuits to optimize the system’s capabilities. He also gave me a short tutoring on the Furuno Nav-net system comprising the radar, GPS, chart-plotter, depth/fish-finder and knotmeter functions. The former owner wanted redundancy so there is also a Simrad wind/depth and knotmeter system as a backup.

The tracing of the plumbing system discovered some interesting aspects. The supply tube of the water-maker, which was not used by the former owner, ended just above the bilge. Had it been turned on it would have supplied purified water to the bilge pump! A few other lines had been cut as systems were added or changed over the years and I was able to pull out about 20 ft of old clear plastic tubing. I also found that the manual bilge pump discharge hose was not connected. It is amazing what you can find by pulling up the deck boards.

The mast work has been delayed till next week. Hopefully the engine will be back running so that we won’t need to be towed to the crane site.

Fran arrives tomorrow from Puerto Vallarta tomorrow afternoon. The laundry is done and I even bought groceries. All is well aboard GOSLING.