Wed 21 Apr, HHN day 8: Take life-raft to service center, receive Santa’s gifts from HR-Parts, replace Volvo intake gaskets, paint engine room bilge area.
The morning is fully taken up with driving the life-raft up to Baltimore with Ray’s pickup. Same as the anchor chain galvanizing place, Vane Brothers Marine Safety is situated in a very dodgy area of Baltimore port. Super grubby. But yay, before me lies an oasis! …. ornate gates take me into manicured lawns and trimmed gardens of the Vane Brothers workshops. What a contrast to the surrounding area. And the workshop itself is immaculate. I breath a sigh of relief. I really wanted a quality place to service this vital piece of safety equipment. They say it will be ready for pick up in 4-6 weeks. Let’s hope so.
Excepting minor detours to Lowes hardware store and a treat visit to Starbucks for a grande-double-chocolate-chip-frappuccino with added peppermint, I head back to the yard where I find my shipment from Hallberg-Rassy parts has arrived. Wow, it only left Sweden on Monday and it’s here on Wednesday. Amazing! Getting parcels from Amazon or Ebay is always fun, but somehow deliveries from HR-Parts is something special. Maybe because it comes from the birthplace of Cloudy Bay? Or maybe because anything I get from there I know will be perfect.
I’ve been building up this order throughout the winter and frankly I’d forgotten about several of the items. The list is too long but needless to say I now have zero excuses for being idle in the coming weeks. I have everything needed to finish the rigging hydraulics service, and many many more projects. Thanks again to Ludvig who took all the pain of my non-stop emails and put this order together while I changed my mind almost on a daily basis. He really is a gem.
The largest and most expensive item on Santa’s sleigh from Sweden, was a new Raymarine linear drive for the autohelm. 2 of these worm-drive pistons fit onto the steering quadrant in a push-me-pull-me fashion. So far, they have proven to be very reliable, but we want full back up. A functioning autohelm is absolutely vital to us, given we are sailing Cloudy with just 2 people. With that in mind, I did install a backup autohelm system in 2017 and we can switch from one to the other with a flick of a switch. But, both systems use the linear drives to actually turn the rudder. So not a true full redundancy.
Over the winter I had considered buying a Lewmar Mamba drive, which bolts onto the Lewmar gearbox, as the drive system for the backup autohelm, but I got the feedback the Mamba is not as good (response time in big waves) as the linear drives. So, I decided instead to purchase an extra linear drive. We already have 1 extra, and now we have 2.
So, my plan is this: when it comes to servicing the linear drives, I will simply switch them out, and the serviced pair will become the backup. If there is a failure at sea, it’s pretty easy to swap to a new drive. They are just plug’n’play. Plus, the autohelm will still work fine (in an emergency) even with only one linear drive functioning. While I may be on over-kill here, I will sleep much better when on passage now. There, that’s me out of excuses for spending so much …. And I’m sticking to my story!
With all these parts at hand, just where do I start?? Something simple I decide. Replacing the rubber seals on the Volvo raw water filter.
In essence a very simple job, except that I had not yet cleaned the remains of the old and now disintegrated rubbers off the strainer and its perspex lid. That took one hour to do. But at least I get to tick-off another job done. My motivation is ALL about ticking off jobs as completed. But, as I constantly remind myself, a job cannot be ticked off unless it’s done to perfection. Meaning the “thing” needs to both function and look like new.
Next, I get the PSS shaft seal kit out which is essentially a new bellows. But I decide to first inquire to PYI Inc if they think I should also replace the carbon sealing piece. Normally this does not need replacing but mine came out looking pretty ropey. With a photo sent, and a discussion on the phone, it’s decided that I should replace it. So the PSS seal will have to wait till that part is delivered. Plus, the area around the stern tube, where the PSS and aquadrive reside, has been bugging me.
Before I replace the PSS seal, the area really needs a coat of bilge paint to brighten it up. While my brain is screaming, “Noooooo! Come on, gimme a break”, my heart says “paint it, PAINT IT!” So the rest of the day is degreasing, sanding and painting the first coat of grey “beautification” (as Oana would call it).
Talking about Oana, she would die if she knew I opened and stirred the paints in her galley. But in fact, I was super careful and didn’t spill a drop. Not so the GoPro camera. To film what I was doing, I had the tripod positioned on top of the Volvo engine … directly above the pot of paint in the bilge. All of a sudden, for no apparent reason, the camera decided to do a high dive with double summersault, aiming directly for the open pot of paint! Luckily, Captain sharp-eyes caught it just before the plunge, but not without scratching the new GoPro housing. Well, scratches are better than full immersion, right? Or so I tell myself. Remember what I said about me and paint? Not a great track record, frankly. Some rightly accuse me of being clumsy.
I go to bed to the sweet and rather pungent smell of drying paint. I would open the hatches, but a cold front came over today and sent the temperature plummeting from 25 degC down to 5! And I’d rather have a paint smell to go with my dreams than icicles on my nose.
