Way back in November, we took advantage of Black Friday sales to stock up on personal floatation devices, tethers, a life sling, and portable VHF with GPS and distress signal. The most money I’ve ever spent on something I hope to never use.
In these pictures, we’re just testing the PFDs to check for leaks. Then they fold back up into a low-profile vest that self inflates when in contact with the water.
…. the clumsily named “pneumatic / manual oil changer vacuum fluid extractor.” Made performing an oil change on our diesel engine and transmission MUCH easier. And no electricity required. Now we just need to do an oil change on the outboard motor to complete the cycle.
One of the projects on our task list when we made it to Florida was to service the winches. Or, as our friend Nathan says, “SERVICE THE WINCHES!!!”
When we tried to turn the winches by hand, one was frozen and wouldn’t turn. So we figured we’d do them all at the same time. I had no idea what this entails, but luckily there are manuals, and YouTube videos, and lots of instructions. The tricky part, is even the vocabulary of winches is not strictly regular English.
Do you have any idea what a collet is? Or a pawl? Or gear spindle? Since I didn’t know any of these words, it made interpreting those instructions a little bit tricky. And who knew those winches would turn into such a gigantic pile of small parts?
Mike was in charge of taking the winch apart and cleaning all of the parts. I was responsible for applying oil and grease, and putting them all back together. Eventually …… we actually succeeded in getting them all back together. But not on the first day we tried.
Remember when I told you about the diesel fuel in the bilge? Well, we finally tried to pump all the fuel out. But … apparently petroleum products kill the rubber diaphragms in the pump.
So, R.I.P. to the 3 pumps that we killed trying to extract the diesel from the bilge. And we still ( by we, I mean I) bailed the rest of the diesel out manually with a cereal scoop and some paper towels.
Final step of reclaiming the black water holding tank of tool box storage consisted of several coats of bilgekote; a very thick paint. This did a good job of sealing the hold surface after sanding, and removed any remaining waste odor. It worked so well here, that I continued to paint all of the hold storage compartments and the entire bilge. A mask was key! At one point I think I came very close to passing out while upside down in the hold, breathing in those fumes!
And just for fun, a few gratuitous boat / tool chaos pictures! I’m grateful that we decided to rent an Airbnb instead of trying to live on the boat during these initial project stages. It gave us a place to escape to every evening to shower, eat, sleep and then start all over again the next day. PLUS, we had internet access to research all of our questions about the next step in each project.
What Floats Our Boat 