We are in Torrevieja for a couple of weeks and there are a few jobs to do. A tour of the chandleries is in order…

Firstly the air conditioning units have a bleed valve for the pumps that allows us to get any air out of the water pump that feeds the air conditioning unit. I fitted a proper one in the engine room for the aft unit. The mod unit already had one. Unfortunately, when the balsamo yard fitted the mid unit they decided to leave the bleed valve under the hose that cracked the cold air, so it was very difficult to get to, combine this with an old valve and when I tried to bleed it the handle broke off. So I now have to relocate the valve so it is accessible and replace it. The chandlery at Torrevieja wanted to sell me bronze fittings with a stainless valve – that will be a no then! So order the bronze valve and I will be ready to go. 

Wooden bungs to stop water coming into the boat while I do the swap and reroute and the whole job is done in ten minutes with a new pipe fitted for the output of the valve too! A ten minute job that generally is a ten minute job. 

Next I noticed that the two lights adjacent to the cooker in the galley weren’t working. This will be a replacement unit since these do not have separate bulbs. Finding two the same at the chandlery took some effort but this was probably a five minute job. 

Onto the generator, this works well but fails with an exhaust overheat when the generator is pushed. This points to a cooling problem.

The generator has supposedly just been serviced at balsamo so I wanted to get some professionals in to check everything. We called on Oscar and the team who are adjacent to us in the marina (Oscar Marine Engines – Boat Repairs in Torrevieja, Spain). Oscar is a really nice Dutch guy and they start with an initial review of the generator. The impeller comes out and it has bent veins and rust in the middle – hmmm that isn’t a few weeks old! I have a new one ready (and two more on order through Oscar now!). There could be a problem with the raw water feed to the generator but it doesn’t seem likely when we only came back into the water a few months ago with the entire underside having been redone in copper coat and all through hulls cleaned.

Apart from the generator, Oscar is also worried about the stuffing box, which provides the watertight seal for the rotating shaft as it goes to the outside of the boat.

Although there is no leak from this there is an accumulation of salt on the shaft. We can’t remember when this was last replaced, I thought when the new shaft was fitted but I may be wrong. Anyway, we decide if we are to have peace of mind we will replace it with a new one.  This requires us to come out of the water for a few hours while the shaft is removed from the engine and the new box fitted before the shaft is replaced. It gives us an opportunity to recheck the through-hulls for blockages, check the prop for when we caught a rope on our way from Sardinia and just basically give us some reassurance. Speaking to the yard at Torrevieja, I expected an horrific price but actually it wasn’t too bad with an additional hourly charge for every hour you are out of the water.

It takes a little time to pull the shaft and the rest of the chores so we have a couple of hours to kill. Oscar also notices some minor problems with our auto prop H6 propellor. There is a bit of play in a couple of the blades. I don’t have the grease nipple for these, it wasn’t provided with the boat. I have now ordered the maintenance kit and we will do some work on this the next time we are out of the water. In fact we may look at the bearings too and do a full prop rebuild – you can never be too careful!

However our inspection has revealed that the fridge keel cooler, which wasn’t replaced recently, is not looking good. The anodes for the fridge seem completely worn away, so they will need swapping. I get to work but this isn’t easy as the old ones appear to have seized in place. I have to chisel them out and make sure I have all of the remains before the new ones will fit. After some time I have this where I need it and can for the new anodes. Maria is also not happy with the seal around the old ones and Oscar provides some sikaflex so Maria can seal this. I have seen lots of people do this before, indeed I have done it myself, but I haven’t seen anyone make quite a mess of themselves as much as Maria does. The job itself looks really good but it does look like Maria is wearing almost as much as is on the boat. It takes her some time to get cleaned up!

The stuffing box work is done and we are ready to go back into the water. This is uneventful and we go for a spin around the bay so Oscar can check that everything is good in the engine room, we did this on the way in too. The first time it uncovered some loose bolts around the engine and the coupling for the gearbox. Oscar isn’t happy with those so as part of the job, he has tightened up everything, applied locktite to stop them easing apart again and marked the bolts so we will see if they ever loosen off again. 

We have been lucky with a number of people working on the boat when they have seen unrelated things that need addressing. It’s a level of care and attention that I like to see – Oscar is exactly that type and his professionalism has helped us a lot.

We are back in our berth, November 5 (not easily forgotten if you are English – “remember, remember”). It is now time to find out what is happening with that pesky generator. We have now established that the water coming in is good but there is back pressure on the exhaust. The generator itself seems ok. On Mariadz we have an exhaust splitter which separates the water from the gases so the water goes under the boat and the gases come out the exhaust vent in the port quarter. The splitter itself shouldn’t be an issue but if water has got into the gases half then it could be creating a blockage. Taking the exhaust pipe off allows us to get three litres of water out of it which we think creates a blockage or severe restriction for the gases coming out of the boat. 

This gets emptied using our own wet-vacuum and we can test the generator again. At full load for several hour, the nonna purrs like Bonnie being stroked so it seems we have identified our culprit. We don’t know if this was caused by us using the generator when we were in a heavy sea, which was required when the alternator wasn’t working properly. Anyway we now have this fixed so we won’t use the generator when we are in a heavy sea. However, using the wet vacuum gives us another problem, there is a leak from the metal case! Oscar points out that when we replace it, we should look at one with a plastic housing that won’t rust! I haven’t given up on this one yet, and I go back to the workshop to seal this with sikaflex. I don’t get as messy as Maria and the leak is fixed.

A couple of final things. When we run the engine, the fan in the engine room keeps running for a long time and it is annoying Maria. She thinks we may need to replace the fan but when I go to the vent for it, there is a lot of warm air being pushed out. A quick look at the thermostat reveals the issue. In England, getting the temperature down to 40 degrees centigrade in the engine room with outside temperature in the twenties is not unreasonable. However, in the Mediterranean, where temperatures are in the mid to late thirty’s, it may be a little unfair to expect an extraction fan to take away that much heat! I have adjusted it and we will see if that resolves Maria’s issue.

We have also had some issues with locks on the cupboards. I bought a load of replacement ones a few years ago with different sized buttons. I set about pulling the lock apart, and the new ones are identical. As I take them both apart I can see that the plastic guide for the lock has a broken support – something so simple. I start to replace bits of the old lock with the new ones- don’t ask me why! The shell and lock itself is literally identical but I am enjoying taking the thing apart and putting it back together! I have now swapped along the workings when all I needed to do was swap the whole lock itself. Anyway, it is back in place and working perfectly. We also have a similar issue with the drawer for the sharp knives which occasionally sticks. This has literally been doing this for years! Five minutes later that lock is swapped and works perfectly – why didn’t I do that years ago!

Unfortunately, it appears that someone loosened one of our bow lines when a large motor boat came in – maybe they got caught up in it. We hadn’t noticed until there was a bit of wind. Our pasarelle is down which allows us to step assure easily but the movement of the boat means that this comes off the concrete and then slams into it whilst still connected to the boat. You may recall a few months ago, we hadn’t noticed until the teak replaced here and they varnished this section which meant we then got the rest done. The smashing of the passarelle against the wall has split this piece of wood. 😦 gutted. I will fix it with a glue and some screws across the grain to keep it together which by the time they are covered will just be some extra circles in the wood but it is incredibly disappointing. The culprit is long gone. 

Finally, we check our flares as we start to look at the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers checklist – they went out of date nine months ago, so back to the chandlery and get their replacement.

There is always a list to do on the boat and I have also noticed some areas of the toe rail which could do with similar treatment. Maybe we can combine it with another layer of varnish, we will need to do that regularly to keep the wood looking good.