Cruising the Pacific Northwest

With the weather finally warmed up above freezing, the water had been turned back on, so I was hooking up the water hose when I noticed a big pile of anchor chain jammed up in front of the windlass. Hmmmmm, it had me wondering how the heck that had happened and a quick check showed the windlass wouldn’t turn either direction.

I pulled up the floor panels in the Guest Stateroom and Guest Head and eventually located an 80 amp fusible link that had failed. It was well hidden under the lip of the floor over the bow thruster. I checked my spares and didn’t haven any fuses that small, so checked West Marine ($20) and Amazon (2 for $5), and I’m sure you can figure out which one I ordered.

Then I went around the boat, checking the windlass control stations and discovered the aft station (in the cockpit) was engaged by the weight of a dive tank fill whip that had been draped over the canvas cover for the control station. Damn It Scott!!

I rectified the issue with the fill whip, then spent some time and brute force to get the chain unjammed from the chain stripper and windlass. Eventually, I was able to get everything put back together like it should be and I replaced the 80 amp fusible link. Fortunately, that restored windlass functionality and taught me two important lessons.

1. I typically leave the power on to the Windlass as a safety measure in case it needs to be deployed or recovered in an emergency. Now I’m thinking I should disconnect the power when I’m here at the dock (even though the breaker is hard to get to).

2. Don’t set things on top of the aft control station unless you want a big pile of anchor chain jammed up on the foredeck. All I can say about that one, is DOH!!!

Bilge Pumps are important safety features on boats that can help to keep them from sinking. Sea Eagle has three bilge pumps and they all work very well, but I noticed water collecting in the high bilge well just forward of the engine (during a routine check). A quick taste test of the rather nasty looking bilge water confirmed that it was fresh water (condensation from the Air Conditioning) and further investigation revealed that the high bilge wasn’t draining into the low keel bilge.

A quick check of the excellent Nordhavn Owner’s Manual confirmed my suspicion that there was an open drain line from the high to the low bilge and an inspection revealed that a wet oil absorbent pad was effectively blocking off the drain. I removed the now slimy pad and most of the water drained out, but there was still about an inch left. Hmmmmm? I made a couple of trips up to the pilothouse, turning the High Bilge Pump on for a minute, then returning to the engine room only to find the water level about the same. More Hmmmmmm?

I turned the pump on again, left it running and returned to the Engine Room to find that the High Bilge Pump was working great, but water was flowing OUT of the drain to the lower bilge! After a few seconds of OMG, we’re sinking… I checked the lower bilge and it was full of water too. DOH! Hence the post on the Bilge Sensors.

Nordhavn uses very high quality bilge sensors (Ultraswitch Senior float switches), which are pretty idiot proof, but they need to be tested and cleaned periodically. I removed the sensor (see photos), cleaned the crud off the float that was preventing free movement, reassembled the unit and it worked like a charm. I also took the opportunity to replace the pair of 9 volt batteries in the high water alarm panel that Jeff Merrill had told me about many moons ago.

Have you tested your bilge sensors and pumps recently? 😉

During our sunrise departure from Hunter Bay (Lopez Island) I had noticed the anchor roller was squealing and making a gawd-awful noise. I’m sure it made our boat neighbors in that quiet anchorage wonder what the heck was happening at Oh-dark-hundred in the morning. Sorry folks!

The anchor roller hangs out over the water as part of the anchor pulpit, so there is reasonable access from the top, but if you drop something, it is going straight to the bottom! I tied a spare mooring line to the crown of the anchor and lowered it until the weight was on the line, then picked up the now-slack chain and transferred it to the port anchor roller.

The cotter pin and nut came off the anchor roller bolt very easily and then the bolt slid out and I was able to pull the brass roller up with minimal effort. I was surprised to find that there were no bearings and the pin was completely dry (no grease), which explained the squealing.

I polished and cleaned the bolt/pin and the center of roller, greased everything up good and then reassembled the roller in the pulpit. Once the chain and anchor were transferred back to the starboard anchor roller, no more squealing and I’m happy to report that it’s an easy job.

Spring is in full bloom and the warm weather has boaters out cleaning the winter gunk off their boats. Sea Eagle is no exception, and has been thoroughly washed and waxed this week. I also caught up on some annual maintenance chores, including replacing the water filters and the Ultra Violet lamp on the purifier.

I ran down to the Fuel Dock and took on 600 gallons of fuel ($2200), which should last me the entire year. The fuel tanks are now chock-a-block full (including the Standadyne Fuel additives).

I had also noticed the back of the engine room was very dark when I replaced the Hot Water Heater last month, so installed a bright new LED fixture in place of the old 24 volt dome light. It made a huge difference and makes it MUCH easier to see into my tool box and to work on both the Generator and Wing Engine. It was so bright in fact that I changed all the fluids and filters out on both engines.

Sea Eagle did manage to get out and enjoy the sunshine over Super Bowl weekend with an overnight trip to meet some friends. However, with the bitter cold winter weather (9° F this week), I have been working inside the boat far more than outside.

I installed a new AIS trasceiver (Simrad) and really enjoyed being able to to see the commercial vessels and having them see me while cruising through dense fog on Sunday morning. I noticed a crewboat heading to a break bulk carrier that actually altered his course based on the AIS information that I was broadcasting.

The Simrad unit is much nicer than the old no-name AIS receiver that came with the boat. The old unit was only set up to communicate via 4800 Baud (NMEA 0183), which meant targets never had names and would drop off the Nobeltec display for ten minutes at a time. The new unit is hooked up via a simple USB cable and is set for High Speed (NMEA 0183), so displays near real time data, including names, positions, speed vectors, turning, etc. It makes running in the fog much less stressful!

Other recent projects have included complete dis-assembly of the Racor Fuel Filters, cleaning the asphaltenes that precipitated on the water separator and re-assembly with new gaskets, o-rings and filters.

High-Speed Wireless Internet Access was also installed using the free Click! Network Cable that is available at the dock. It makes getting work done on the boat much easier when manuals are just a click away!

Sea Eagle was purchased with two Wallas Diesel Heaters (D40’s) that had been installed by Nordhavn (PAE) when the boat was commissioned. During the purchasing and survey process, I was lead to believe that they simply needed servicing and were functional, so I pulled out both furnaces and took them up to ScanMarine in Seattle for service. ScanMarine inspected both units and informed me that they were not salvageable and in the strongest terms possible warned me to inspect my exhaust system for a splash riser.

Both furnaces had ingested so much salt water through the exhaust that they were corroded into a mass of gunk inside. That meant having to purchase two new furnaces for 6 more BOAT units! OUCH! The forward unit that heated the staterooms only had 27 hours of run time on the furnace and it was now nothing more than a high priced brick.

I returned to the boat, checked the exhaust tubing and sure enough, it ran straight down from the through hulls to both furnaces. There were no drip loops, splash risers or anything done to prevent the intrusion of salt water. I was appalled that the heater installers had failed to even follow the minimum requirement of a 12″ splash riser at the through hull (required by Wallas), so had wasted two $3000 furnaces. It’s hard to get good help these days.

After the shock wore off, I installed the two new Wallas furnaces (40dT’s). Having the power, fuel and ducting already run (although some of the ducting was also wrong) helped immensely, but replacing and re-engineering the exhaust tubing was quite a job. It took me a couple of days to get the new thermostats installed, new exhaust installed/insulated and everything up and running.

The good news is that I like the new Wallas DT units much better than the older D units. They bring in fresh air and heat it, helping to keep the boat dry. I had Wallas heaters on all three of my dive boats (including the Dive Charter Boat) and always marveled at how well they would defog the windows even with 14 dripping wet divers huddled in the cabin.