11 Oct-9 Dec 2022, HHN: Planned 4 weeks, took 2 months, with several surprises and frustrations.
Arriving back to Cloudy Bay in Herrington Harbour North yard in early October, as usual, we had a long list of maintenance to do before departing to Columbia. Also as usual, I over-ran the time estimate! And mid-November, when we were finally ready to launch, there was not enough depth of water and we had to wait for another 2 weeks! Then this was followed by yet another week of delay due to a Mastervolt lithium battery failure. All in all, rather frustrating.
Oana flew back home as planned mid-November and Ray and I were supposed to sail away at the same time. But it ended up another 4 weeks before we departed on 10th of December.
So, what was left to maintain on Cloudy Bay? I hear you ask. The biggest jobs were as follows:
Replaced all the interior hydraulic and water maker hoses. Sadly, the original hoses were poor quality and had already started to shed their outer layer even when we purchased the boat, just 8 years from manufacturing. Thankfully I had already done the messy part, getting all the old hoses out, early in the summer. Hence installing the new ones, procured from Hydraulics Megastore in UK, was relatively easy, even if I did have to remove half the interior to do it.
Then all the deck hatches had to be removed, cleaned up, trims stripped and revarnished, then re-bedded back down. This time using butyl. May gods grant me one last wish, that they don’t leak again!
And on the theme of leaky deck fittings, the windlass also required removing and bedding back down, again. I had only just done this last year. But the rubber deck-seal Lewmar provided had already failed. So this time it’s also bedded down with good ‘ol butyl.
After just 200 engine hours the cutlass bearing needed replacing, yet again. Clearly there must be some shaft misalignment, which I duly discovered. With cutlass removed, I observed the shaft about 25mm off-center in the empty P-bracket, and to the same side as the cutlass had a wear groove. The shaft clamp in the Aquadrive could only align the shaft but one direction so it had to be the Aquadrive itself that was misaligned. Adding appropriate thickness shims to the Aquadrive mounting bolts finally did the trick, in that the shaft was then perfectly central in the p-bracket before installing a new cutlass. Fingers crossed this cutlass lasts 1000 hours, as it should do, and the propeller vibration at high revs is now smoother.
The small day fridge has always been painful. Lots of condensation, corrosion and constantly fighting to improve the door seal. So we decided to replace it with a new one. Sure enough, the old one came out totally covered in rust. Its pathetic 15-20mm insulation and sheet-steel exterior had meant constant condensation and rusting. And the result below it was a damp mess of semi rotting carpentry. After cleaning up I decided on several modifications.
I discovered there was plenty of space to add extra insulation. Not only in the cavity the day fridge slides into, but also around the box fridge below, to which I now had access. I was frankly shocked at just how much air gap there was around these fridges with no attempt to add any extra insulation during manufacture. I guess that would take time. And time is money.
I also added a small PC fan to help ventilate the area behind-the fridge. It switches on when the compressor operates. Below the day fridge also I constructed a drip-pan with piped drain into the bilge below. On the new Isotherm day-fridge unit, prior to installing I epoxy-painted all the steel exterior and added 1” of silver foil backed insulation on top.
So overall, a job planned to be 3 days ended up 1 week! But I’m sure it will be worth the effort. Especially when trying to keep the fridges cool in the tropics.
Last season one of our Raymarine plotters (ES127) had failed, again (the second one to have touch-screen failure). But this time Raymarine could not repair it. They instead offered an upgrade to the latest 12” AxiomPro at 1/2 price of a new one. But then our 2nd plotter, another ES127 (a previous model to Axiom), would not pair with the new Axiom. Hence we had to purchase yet another Axiom! Such equipment obsolescence is really infuriating. I mean, these screens were only 5 years old 🙁 To add to this theme, we were also caught out a few weeks later, with Mastervolt. One prematurely failed battery, yet we had to replace the whole battery bank – see lower down).
Over the summer I had the 2 water pumps on the Volvo rebuilt so these had to be reinstalled including a new main engine belt and new coolant. This was a rainy-day job, mostly lying on top of the Volvo. Tricky job too because there is just a 6” (15cm) gap at the front end of the engine to work with. As it often does, Oana’s Revlon vanity mirror came in handy for me to actually see what I was doing down there!
While doing this work, I noticed we had a minor raw-water leak (seawater) on the end of the heat exchanger. But a quick study of the Volvo manual it was clear everything on the port side of the engine needs to be removed to enable the damned heat exchanger to be extracted from the engine. It is literally buried behind 2 fuel pumps, 1/2 the turbo, the starter motor, and even entails removing one of the 4 engine mounts!! Pfff, time for professional help I decide. But all local marine mechanic shops seem to be overwhelmed with winterization work right now and not available or don’t even answer.
Hence I decided to have that work done with Volvo Columbia and was very pleasantly surprised by super quick and very professional response, and their very favorably priced quote. Including drawing schematics of every part they would purchase and replace during the maintenance in January. Quite the contrast to the US marine industry which seems to generally fly by the seat of their pants than anything I would call professional. Not confidence inspiring.
Then there was a plethora of other small jobs:
New starter AGM batteries. 4 cockpit winches to service, upper and lower ends of the vang to rebuild. Keel to hull seal to be redone. Keel bolts torque check. New bilge level sensor and the list goes on …
We also received a brand-new genoa from Elvstrom. Last year we received 3 new sails from them, but the genoa never furled without major creasing. After several complaints and only with the engagement of Elvstrom’s CEO, they finally agreed to make a new genoa for me. And I’m pleased to say this one furls beautifully. Thank you Elvstrom for professionally correcting the original design error … even if it did take some persuasion!
And lastly, on the same theme of replacing equipment that had failed before time, the MOST disappointing failure: the Mastervolt lithium batteries. Just 5 years old, less than 200 cycles vs the advertised 2000 and zero abuses. I was pissed 😡! And not least by the way it happened.
It’s been over a year now since I noticed they were no longer charging correctly. But Mastervolt support gave me no answer why nor a solution. Then comes the day we finally attempt to sail away, Dec 5th. We touch the mud exiting the shallow marina entrance and while using the bow thruster to reverse out we have a total electrical power-out. No instruments, nothing. All DC powered items totally dead. Only thing left operating was the main engine. And without bow thruster we were soon blown harder onto the mud. Eventually we wriggled our way off and limped back to the marina, tail between our legs.
It turned out that the lithium batteries not only have a charge issue but now also a discharge issue. Using the bow thruster or any high current device caused the batteries to operate their safety switch which in turn stopped all DC power to the boat systems.
Mastervolt logged-in on the Monday and declared we need to get the batteries back to Netherlands for repair. But this would be a 3-month turnaround because they cannot be flown. Or buy new ones in the USA. So that’s what we had to do. Splash out big $$ and buy new. Despite only one battery having a problem we had to replace both of them because the newer models are not comparable with the old ones like ours. Aaagh! That old obsolescence trick catching us yet again. Sooooo infuriating!
Considering the situation, our recovery was pretty quick. New batteries were ordered and delivered from Rhode Island in 3 days and we had them installed and tested ready to depart again just 1 week after their total failure. Not bad going really.
So despite being a long read, this is just a very short summary of this autumn’s maintenance on Cloudy Bay.
Next blog, Ray, me and Cloudy Bay do actually depart for Columbia. 2 boys, each with little fear, out into the winter Atlantic. Cloudy is going to be in for the ride of her life!