Sunday 3-Oct, re-launch 2021, HHN day 4: Getting ready to change some thru-hulls when we get quite a shock.
Wide awake and out of bed by 5am today. We are getting into the time zone, advancing by about an hour each day. Looking forward to next week when we might actually wake up to daylight!
First a quick update on our Empirbus dramas. With 6 of the 7 CLC-units working fine by the end of yesterday, today was a day of no more Empirbuss-ing nonsense. We hope to get the problem with the remaining CLC unit solved by a phone call to Sweden support line tomorrow – Monday. I’m convinced this remaining rogue unit is good, but it simply won’t talk to the others. In the world of CAN-bus communications, it’s playing at being very antisocial! Most likely it simply needs a PIN or password to kick-start it. We’ll see tomorrow.
Before getting started on the real to-do list (and not the one imposed by Cloudy Bay) we have a good clear up of the decks. The back door in the shrink-wrap tent has long since fallen off and all the cardboard on the after deck had been rain soaked and disintegrating. Plus, there were already several trips needed to the dumpster resulting from Oana’s on-going purge of out-of-date supplies. So, it was a rather domestic morning.
Then at last, we finally get to start the task that is top on our to-do list: make an inventory for all the fittings needed to change the last remaining 5 thru-hull fittings from brass to bronze fittings, so that I can get the order off to Defender. We had managed to change 9 in 2019, with these remaining 5 left to do.
The first 2 of 5 (sink and scuppers) are under the aft bathroom cupboard. Oana is not so amused when I tell her I need everything out of the cupboard. She had spent all day yesterday going through our vast medical supplies and neatly rearranging them on these shelves. That was the hard part (!), getting the shelving out to access the fittings was much easier 🙂
The problem with doing this plumbing change whilst in the USA is that the only bronze pipe fittings available here have NPT threads (North America Pipe thread, tapered) whereas the original boat piping has BSP threads (British Standard Pipe). Both are sized in inches, but NPT fittings won’t screw into BSP, nor the other way around. So, when replacing the seacocks I have to replace everything from the thru-hull up to the last fitting, where the hose connects. Not a big problem, but you do wonder when the world might standardize on such things. Well, let’s be frank here. When will US follow the rest of the world? And still in inches? There, I’ve said it!
From the bathroom it’s into the bottom of my wardrobe for fitting number 3 (port side scuppers) where, yes, you’ve guessed it, Oana had just neatly hung all my cloths, which now need removing 🤔. Then, same for number 4 (toilet outlet pipe), hidden below shelves of more impeccably folded clothes.
All the fitting are so far showing some signs of “pinking” which is a sure sign of dezincification of the brass. Yes, that is a big word but a very important one to understand for us boaters. Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc. Put brass in contact with seawater and add some tiny voltages over a long period of time and the zinc can get leached out of the brass. This turns it pinkish. But more importantly, to those of us who don’t like our boats sinking, it makes the brass extremely brittle. To the point it can shatter like a China plate, potentially resulting in a lot of water entering the boat.
The age-old solution to this is fittings made from bronze, not brass. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, hence not subject to dezincification and embrittlement. A good bronze seacock should last a lifetime. But the problem is initial cost. Bronze is double the price of brass, so manufactures, who want to make a profit as well as making boats, chose to install brass fittings, not bronze. The onus being on the owner, or several owners down the line, to upgrade their boat a decade or so after it left the factory.
The above sets the scene as I come to access the last brass fittings, number 5, which is under our aft berth. This one is where the generator’s exhaust water enters the sea below the waterline.
Now for this last one, I sat staring at it for a while. It is not pink, and in fact it looks as good as the day it was installed new, 13 years ago. And I think to myself: “come on Glen, does that really need replacing? Give yourself a break and leave this one alone”. And at the same time I give the connected hose pipe a friendly kick. And to my utter surprise and shock, the thru-hull fitting snaps clean off, right at the point where it goes through the hull. And I’m left staring in bewilderment through the resulting 2” hole, to the gravel below! Just imagine that happening while at sea? (the fitting failing that is, not me kicking things). A huge potential for glug, glug, GLUG! And bye, bye boat!
On closer inspection, the entire circumference and thickness of the failed surface was completely pink. A textbook example of dezincification and a big wake-up call that this phenomenon can happen with zero tell-tail signs visible on the exterior.
After the initial OMGs and other non-repeatable expressions, I concluded this had made the decision to complete the brass->bronze seacock project an easy one. Yes, let’s do it.
In the evening, although already dog-tired, we headed off to the marina for dinner with friends Ken and Alison, on their catamaran, along with another couple who own the same type of catamaran – a Fountaine Pajot Helia. 44ft of luxury apartment on the water. Oh boy, what space it has. It’s going to be very hard to resist a catamaran as our next boat, once we finally stop crossing oceans with Cloudy Bay.
Finally, after a really nice social evening, we fall into bed, exhausted as usual.