12/22/15
Harbour Cay Club, Marathon FL
Posted by Bill

The rock and roll stopped and the last 2 days have been delightful as the weather goes. Unfortunately, we have not been able to enjoy it with all of the boat work. It took the better part of a day, but I successfully flushed the air conditioning raw water system and got the condensators working again, sucking out the condensation as designed. As earlier in the year, the hoses get lined with silt and dead sea stuff, reducing the flow of water which in turn stalls the venturi effect that the condensators need to do their thing. A quick flush of diluted muratic acid did the trick again. As boat projects always go, it takes several hours to just get all of the tools out of storage and several more putting it all away. This one also involves removing hoses, which always takes herculean efforts, too much time, and much cursing.

Also, as boat projects go, another unforeseen project emerged. The project that we knew about was changing the filter cover for the refrigerator drain pump. When you defrost the refrigerator, some water ends up in the bottom and we have a handy, built in electric pump to purge it out. The filter for this system is in the back of the engine compartment just under an access hatch. We learned the hard way that if you are not careful removing the hatch, you can cause a stress crack in the filter cover, hindering the pump process. It takes about 40 minutes to remove all of the stuff that is stored above the hatch, and about 5 minutes to replace the filter cover. When I lifted the hatch, I noticed that it was wet…it shouldn’t be. So, I thought we had a leaking hose in the engine compartment. I run the engine at various speeds and watched for leaks…none found. After further inspection of the engine compartment, I could see small traces of water droplets in the area above the end of the hatch that was wet, and it leads to the vented tube for engine exhaust water. As usual, it doesn’t leak when I run the engine. I take to the internet and do some research, some saying that a little bit of leaking is normal, but this doesn’t sound right to me. I consult the “cone of knowledge”, a.k.a. happy hour at the Harbour Cay tiki hut, and learn that it should not leak, and that a friend of Eric’s has the same model boat that we have and has had to replace the same part. This whole process fills another day. The next day, Eric’s friend sends me an email with the part number and a place to get it…yay!! A fine example of the way boat projects go, and proof that drinking and happy hour solves problems!

It seems like boat projects have been consuming us this last week or so, but in my last post I forgot to mention our first manatee visit this season. We love it when they come up to our boat and this one was really friendly.

All of the unexpected projects have put a damper on getting Christmas finalized. We didn’t have much to do in that respect, but we are not going to make it. We decided to stay at the marina over Christmas and will try and see all of our friends that live nearby over the next week. I hope you all are ready for the holiday and that you have a good one!