One of the issues with an older boat is that when things fail they need to be replaced and trying to find a like for like replacement can be difficult. This is particularly apparent with lights and switches or pretty soon the boat starts to look like a mish-mash of switches. We found this when we needed to add some switches into the stateroom and a double switch into the forepeak with our recent lighting changes. This was relatively easy with the double switch from the state room being moved and two new matching switches being fitted.

However, there have been a number of issues with the old downlighter lights which have springs to hold them in place. A number of these springs had broken in the past and electrical tape had been used to jam them in place. I discovered this when I changed all of the halogen bulbs to LED. With over twenty lights on the boat, this significantly reduced the electrical draw of the lights which could drain the batteries quite quickly if a lot were on. I wanted to find something that was as similar as possible to the existing light fitting and after scouring the internet and various chandleries came up with the Aquafax Arisaig as a halogen replacement from aquafax which I could order through fox’s chandlery in Ipswich.  I could then fit my 24V LED replacement bulbs.  By replacing all of the lights in our stateroom, I freed up enough spares to replace the faulty lights in other parts of the boat. We now have working lights everywhere which don’t fall out of the headlining and the new ones look pretty good too.  Maria seems to like them too….

It’s that time of year again and time to work out what to get the girl who has everything she wants…or more precisely if she wants something, she goes out and gets it!

When we replaced the TV in the saloon, we moved the TV that was there into the bedroom which means maria gets to watch the omelette challenge on Saturday kitchen in bed. Unfortunately, the remote control on the old TV didn’t fully work and none of the universal controllers work with it so the TV has to be switched off on the box itself.

Now the boat may be quite large, but from my side of the bed it is one step to do this. If the cats have taken up residence and have me pinned down, it is a maximum of six steps for Maria to get there. However, this was considered unsatisfactory by her ladyship.

Therefore the valentine’s present was an upgraded TV, and by upgraded I mean one with a working remote! This is because I do not see the harm in one or even six steps so therefore this is a Maria focused present. 🙂

There are a number of options:
· Go for a small TV, which would normally have a transformer to reduce 240V AC to 12V DC, cut the transformer out and wire it into a 12V supply.
· Go for something slightly larger and plug it into the 240V circuit, since the inverter will provide the power from the batteries (not particularly efficient since you are converting 12V DC to 240V AC to 12V DC again!)
· Buy a cheap 12V/24V TV from a little known manufacturer (or even the smaller equivalent of the Cello that we have in the saloon)
· Go for a 12V/24V TV designed for use on-the-move (much more expensive option)

No prizes for guessing which way we went and I’m sure there are people who would have gone with a different decision. Our decision process was driven by the experience we have had with the motorhome which came with an Avtex TV fitted. The Avtex L218DRS 21.5-Inch Widescreen 1080p Full HD Super Slim LED TV with Freeview HD comes with a DVD, freeview HD tuning and satellite tuning (the later not quite as useful for us on a moving boat!). We decided to go for a similar size to the old TV but the new technology meant it was smaller overall and a lot slimmer. Since this TV supports 24V, which is the main voltage on Mariadz, it meant no need for any voltage adjustments. I was even able to do all of the wiring in to the existing setup. The alternative would have been to spend a lot less money on a TV that may only last a few years (assuming quality is meant to last longer!) and would then need replacing, if we chose to do so, when we were on our travels, which would have been more expensive and would reinforce the old adage of “buy cheap, buy twice”.

We have had a few months without any major works on the boat so I should expect something to be needed….but it has to be one of the worst jobs on the boat, and is apparently classified as “blue” job by Maria….

When we first got the boat, the first thing we had to do was to refresh all of the toilet pipes because they were blocked. A few years later and we knew it was getting to the time when we would have to service everything. Unfortunately we decided this and then the fun and games happened.

Firstly the main toilet stopped emptying….oh dear. So we went to shut off the seacock so that we could do the required maintenance. Nothing…. The handle wouldn’t budge. We are due to come out in August to have some work done but there was no way that we could survive living aboard with no toilet for six months. So an emergency lift and hold was organised so that we could change the through hull and then get to work on the toilet. On inspection it seemed that the pipes were blocked with calcium and, erm, solids… not quite sure how these hadn’t been flushed away but it had jammed the diverter valve (that allows you to switch between tanks and outside. We decided that the safest recourse was to fully change the pipes and diverter valve although I decided to refurbish the diverter valve, by cleaning it up and keeping it as a spare.

That all worked fine for about a week before the pump that brings water to the toilet was pumping very little water. This pump comes with a filter, which I hadn’t cleaned previously (looking sheepish!), it was a mess. Cleaning this up worked a treat. However, then there was a leak from the filter unit. A quick visit to a shop to buy a new o-ring (50p! – cheapest thing I have ever bought for the boat) and now we are back to new 🙂

Boat jobs seem to go that way though. A blockage in the toilet has required us to do a lift out, change a through hull and valve, change all of the pipework, a new diverter valve and clean/maintain the pump filter. Always the way!

Winter is coming and unfortunately we are still both having to work for a living so that we can fulfil our dreams in a few years time. That means that we are now getting up in the dark (and the cold 😦 ) to get to work, well at least so Maria can get to work – I am working locally but being a gent get up at the same time to drive her to the station when she needs it.

As part of her getting ready for work, Maria needs to dry her hair and put make up on, which is not best put on in the dark. Clearly the Moody 54 wasn’t designed with this requirement in mind and lighting is dim to say the least.  So as part of her interim requirements to live on the boat prior to our journeys, Maria needed some decent lights in the aft stateroom. These have now been fitted and I think it resembles a make up table in a theatre, but it is much better. It also has the added advantage that if “someone” is still in bed beyond when they shouldn’t be, it is possible to put enough lights on in the aft cabin to overcome their reticence to get up. At the moment, I have been the only recipient of this particular treatment 😉 .

At the same time, we had some new “mood” lighting added to the forepeak cabin for when our guests say. We stole this idea from the only other Moody 54 we have ever been on when she visited Ipswich.  These lights are LED and adjustable.  This means they can easily act as background lighting or the main lighting as required. This shows how much more considerate to our guests Maria is than I.  I would never have got this done, thinking they have lights in there and it’s not as if they will need the lights on for long but I have to admit that they do look good.

The engine saga continues but as Lindsey at Seapower told us, it is lots of small steps that get us closer to the goal and improves the engine.

We started this process a little while ago by adding sensible lighting into the engine room so that you could see what you are doing.  The LED strip lights are brilliant and really let you see what is going on in all corners of the engine room.  This revealed the full horror that was the engine room floor with a mix of old oil stains etc so this was cleaned up and made spotless so that we will see if there are any problems with the engine.  In the interim we had run the engine and found some oil back in the bilge so clearly a proble that needed to be investigated some more.

The next stage of the engine improvement programme was combined with an education for the crew.  In the future, when we are travelling we will have to be as self sufficient as possible and that means being able to maintain the engine.  We had not personally serviced the engine and so Lindsay agreed to give us a course on how to maintain the Yanmar engine.  This took nearly all day since Adam did most of the work himself under the watchful eye of the engineers and this was the first stage, more advanced engine maintenance will be covered in a subsequent day.

The stars of the show on this particular day were:

• Lindsay, “The Master”, main role seemed to be telling everyone else what to do while chatting up the other skipper, a certain Mrs D 😉
• Callum, “The talented apprentice”, actually did the guiding and was hands on
• Adam, “the untalented apprentice”, got all the scrapped knuckles!
• Maria, “the supervisor”, able to chip in “useful” comments from the safety of the navigation seat while chatting up Lindsay.

Lindsay started with a quick explanation of the various elements of the engine and a high level view of what we were going to do.  After this we set to work by draining the oil from the engine and the oil from the gearbox.  This was replaced with fresh lubricants.  So far so good, access and visibility are good.

it was then time to start to attack the filters.  The oil filter was quite simple and not too messy with a screw on and a screw off and then we were onto the fuel system.  Firstly, we had to shut down the fuel lines with “lobster” clips, I have no idea what they are called but they looked like red lobster claws to me :). The first stage filter mounted ahead of the engine looked simple enough and had a drain at the bottom of it.  We opened the drain and expected fuel or gunk to emerge, nothing. We loosened off the top bolts of the fuel filter but still nothing.  At this stage, we realised that the work was going to be a little more onerous than we first thought.  We would have to take apart the fuel filter and understand what was going on, and it was likely to get messy.  Having loosened off the top plate bolts we set to doing the same to the bolts lower down that hold the lower part of the filter to the case.  We also removed the fuel filter that needed to be replaced.  On inspection, this was filled with black gunk which was clearly part of the problem.  The lower half of the mechanism was also filled with black gunk and hence why the drain wasn’t working.  All of this needed cleaning up and then reassembling with some of the bolts being “fun” to access unless you had the hands of a five year old.  We eventually got this resolved and with a new filter we were ready to move onto the second fuel filter.  This was a simpler job, similar to the oil filter (I wonder whether this was the only one that had been changed on previous services).  Bleeding the fuel system was a lot easier than I had expected, I had heard stories of having to bleed each injector and had thought we may have to do that at sea if there was a fuel problem.  Actually on the Yanmar it is a lot easier with a single bleed screw at the top of the fuel pump above the fuel filter. So gearbox is done, fuel filters are done so onto the impeller.

We had recently had an overheat problem, which we think may have been related to us not double checking the coolant levels after the hot water system had been changed.  We made the mistake of checking the expansion tank which wasn’t being touched because the coolant level was so low. As part of our investigation of this we had spent some time looking into the cooling system to see what the problem was.  Again, in retrospect we should not have trusted the expansion tank to tell us the water level but that was a lesson learned.  As part of the investigation we had taken the cover off the impeller to check that it was working properly.  So this was familiar ground even if the access under the bottom of the engine isn’t perfect and it doesn’t give a good angle to see what you are doing. The plate coming off was easy and it was time to use the impeller remover, something to be added to our setup.  I couldn’t get it to bit on the screw and subsequently discovered that the central extractor bolt was too far in and was stopping me getting it attached to the impeller, another schoolboy error.  We got the impeller out which was consistent with being a couple of years old and in good condition.  In the past I have been clear where in the past things haven’t been done to the standards I would have expected.  One thing I have to say was that the was a fine selection of spares for impellers, oil filters and fuel filters (just a shame some of these had t been used….sorry couldn’t resist 🙂 ).

We were able to get he new impeller in placealthoug hat first it didn’t seem to want to go in without a bit of “jiggling”.  Lindsay had noticed a flaw in the impeller plate that was looking damaged, and for lack of a replacement, had filed down the reverse of the plate so that this could be used.  Clearly not a long term solution but certainly better than the part worn plate that was there.

The final step of the engine service was the fan belt change.  Our Yanmar comes with three fan belts which includes an aftermarket setup that appears to be bolted onto the front of the engine.  The two alternators had different ways of attaching to the engine and adjustment so this provided good experience.  We had also noticed that the fan belt and indeed alternator that had been added later were very loose and needed tightening up.  This could have been part of the reason that the engine seemed quite “rattly” although we had put that down to being an old diesel.

Callum and Adam set to work on these and we able to get everything changed.  We also tightened up the big aftermarket alternator to hopefully reduce the fan belt movement and alternator movement.  At this stage we saw what we think is the cause of the oil leak. One of the bolts securing the big alternator seems to have oil coming from it.  This will take a little more investigation but hopefully means that the oil leak can be resolved quickly. The proof of all this work of course is restarting the engine and this also went smoothly and I’m sure it is quieter and purrs a little more than it used to….

So next steps are to resolve the minor oil leak so our engine room floor can stay spotless and replace the older pipe work on the engine which with age combined with the slight overheat look a little worse for wear.  We will get them done and then hopefully the engine will feel it is being looked after properly.

This blog has been requested literally once. But I am not one to ignore the clamour of my only reader.

When we had the Dufour we had looked into this and decided to go with the RedBox from mailasail with the wifibat extender, an expensive solution that promised a lot. I thought I would be able to pretty much automatically switch between WIFI, 3G and satellite. This is a real techy solution and I don’t think it is as intuitive or simple to use as I would like (and I’m IT literate).  I also had problems using internet explorer and was told that the way to avoid these problems was to not use internet explorer!  Not great customer service.

So when we bought the Moody, I wanted to review what was available again and see if there was a simple solution to my problem. Preferably at less cost than the mailasail setup which although functionally rich is not cheap by anyone’s standards.

After some investigation, I came across the wifigear website which had been recommended on a number of forums and their Wifigear for boats product. Unfortunately, wifigear subsequently decided to stop offering this package. This package joined together a number of industry standard products to form an integrated solution for wifi and these can be bought individually.  This included a Bullet M2 Titanium wifi receiver, an Antenna, Power over Ethernet and a Ubiquiti Networks PICOM2-HP PicoStation M2-HP Router which allows the signal to be shared wirelessly.  
Clearly this all works on 12V/24V and so we have access to this system without using the inverter.

With the inclusion of a MIFI (which allows up to 4G download), I am able to use WIFi where available and switch to a phone if needed.  I also need to understand where satellite phone technology is because I would expect that it would be possible to feed this into the setup at some stage.

That moves me onto the MIFI setup. I wanted something that would be fast so that we could stream TV if required.  This sounds a good idea but with a 15GB monthly limit, it is very easy to blow that watching TV over a weekend! The MIFI needed to genuinely achieve 4G where available, apparently some marked as such do not do it. I thought the 4G would be a form of future proofing :).  We went for the Huawei 4G/LTE E5786 300 Mbps Wi-Fi Wireless Router – Black which has worked brilliantly.  With the “3” SIM card, you can travel aboard for up to thirty days and not pay any roaming data charges which also works very well for us, even though we also use it for the motorhome. You just need to keep an eye in usage, which is shown on the screen.  However, we do travel abroad a lot and these things are changing all of the time.  We have now moved over to EE who offer up to 15GB abroad a month as part of their 30GB plan. Post blog update…….the European usage is unrestricted within your plan since June 2017, so if you go for the 60gb plan you have that much data in Europe, at least until Brexit!

And all this means that Maria can post pictures of the gorgeous food she has prepared 🙂

Then Lindsay said, “Let there be light”; and (after Olly had done his magic) there was light. Lindsay saw that the light was good; and separated the engine from the darkness.

So the Seapower marine double-act have continued to give the engine room some much needed TLC.  It was impossible to see anything in the engine room, no matter what time of day, without additional lighting.  We agreed that if we really want to know what is going on we will need some LED lights to brighten the area and show up the dark and sinister secrets.

In the last two weeks, the engine has also been run for approximately 10 hours with no overheat issues which has been reassuring.  With a clean engine room floor, we would also be able to see if anything was coming out of the engine and so far we seem to be in a good place.  It now means that Maria is confident again

Step 3 is a thorough going over of the engine itself which will replace old and wearing pipe work and check that we are in a good place for the future and our dream trip.

We were taught early on in our sailing career that it was best if we had a clean engine and engine room since any problems would be obvious. We were lucky with our first boat, the Dufour, since it had 2.5 engine hours when we bought her and was spotless. It was easy to keep this clean.

When we bought the Moody, the engine had a shade over 3,000 hours on it. The engine room floor was also not clean. This of course means that it is difficult to see if we have fresh engine problems. So we decided that we need to make sure we have confidence in our engine before we go on our great adventure. Step one is a clean up of the engine room before we review the engine itself.

Before

After

Now with a clean engine room floor at least we can see what is going on. Our job is to spot any problems and keep it clean.

When we first got Mariadz, we wanted to spoil her with a little pressie that made her look pretty. This was before we understood the full extent of the refit required when we thought everything we needed to do was in the survey!

I decide to push the boat out, so to speak, and bought acrylic yarn fenders with the boat name on.  Unfortunately two years later, we had rips in the fender covers, we had lost one of them and they were looking worse for wear. Maria wanted to get some new ones. When I explained how much the last set cost, she decided to do a little more research and see what she could get.  Having done some research Maria wanted to try polyester fender covers to see if they wore better. They were certainly a lot cheaper. 🙂

The winter projects were complete and we were keen to get back out on the water having got a bit stir crazy for not being able to take Mariadz out for a sail.  We also had a lot of new toys to play with (calibrate) and we were keen to do some of the basics prior to our commissioning trip with Olly from Seapower.

After the engine checks when I added some water to the fresh water expansion tank, we start the engine and had it running for about 30 minutes prior to leaving our berth because it was low tide and we had just missed a lock out.  We cast off and Maria eases Mariadz out of her berth.  The Allan Gardiner is also leaving at the same time and is in the lock first.  However, we are confused. The autopilot indicator seems to be showing the opposite on its rudder indicator. When we turn to port it shows the rudder as starboard! It is amazing how disconcerting that is, especially at low speeds when you may not have much steerage anyway. And we now have to line up against the pontoon in the lock with Allan Gardiner taking up half the lock….

Like most people we have a system on approach to berths and pontoons. I am at the gate amidships with three lines: bow, stern and mid lines. On approach I call out the distance from the pontoon in metres and suggest minor course alterations. Now Maria isn’t sure where the centre for the rudder is and is having to feel her way, and this is the first time we have been out for nearly nine months (the longest time we have ever gone without sailing somewhere). Of course, Maria brings Mariadz in like a boss! At just under 50cm from the pontoon, I step down and walk alongside with the mid line in hand. At an agreed point, Maria gives a burst of reverse gear and stops Mariadz, I tie off the mid line short and take the stern line to tie off.  Mariadz is now mine (“all mine”, cue evil laugh). Maria has control of the bow on the off chance something goes wrong, she can bring that back in but as I stroll to the bow and tie us off there is no drama. A couple of springs, the water at low tide comes into the lock fast when you are near the gates, and we are ready to go.

The lock gates open and we are ready to go. We are 100M out of the lock gates and all of th engine alarms start going. The engine is overheating. We assessed our options quite quickly and agreed to aim for the waiting pontoon and investigate further when we are safely tied off. The lines and fenders are moved appropriately and we glide onto the pontoon. I go to the engine room to check what is going on while we leave the engine running on tickover to hopefully get the temperature under control.  This is something I was always told to do with cars when they had been run hard. After a head gasket failure I was told how important it is to have a cool down period. Switching the engine off stops all of the cooling system flowing and the engine continues to heat up  because there is nothing to take the heat away from the engine. I check all of the stop cocks. The engine intake may be slightly off completely open, must have been knocked but it is a small amount off, so I adjust it.  I think that and the tickover is helping to take the heat down, very slowly and the alarm stops.

The next two hours are spent on the waiting pontoon getting the heat under control. It is still running warmer than usual but is back in the green. In this time we have calibrated the autopilot so it does show the correct rudder angle. We have dropped a lead line and checked the offset for the depth. This can also be checked against the new navigation. We also look at the fish finder, radar and the forward facing sonar. No fish 😦 the forward facing sonar is also not showing the depth correctly. Finally the changes to the AIS are checked, we can see everyone else but we don’t seem to be transmitting. I also notice that the main battery bank doesn’t seem to be charging although that may be because of the very low revs.

We don’t seem to be getting back to normal operating temperature and Maria and I agree to abort the trip and return to our home berth. We are obviously being very careful, minimum possible speed and lowest revs. We get into our home berth and as I tie us off the engine alarm sounds again but we are back now and safe.

Unfortunately, it is two weeks later before Lindsay at Seapower is available (bad timing and he is at the start of a major engine project with limited time). In the interim, with assistance from friends we start the diagnosis. The expansion tank still has water in it so we focus on the raw water system. We can see water going through the raw water filter but trying to get the lid off seems impossible, it felt like there was a vacuum holding it fast. Trying to get it off we break the lid, that will be ordering a bright shiny new one from foxes then!

We get the impeller cover off and it looks fine, only 100 hours since it has last been changed. We check the through hulls for the engine intake and the under water exhaust (after it has gone through the water separator), both through hulls are fine and water is passing through them fine.  So we have water coming in, going through the filter and the impeller looks fine. We now can’t do any more testing until the filter cover is replaced. It is almost certain that air is being sucked in through the cap even though we have taped it and put plastic in it to try and secure the seal. I now have a copy of the service manual for the engine high has the best advice I have seen on the fresh water pump…. How to disassemble the water pump….Don’t, it’s too difficult! Within a week we have the new filter lid.  We decide we have probably exhausted our knowledge and should wait for the expert.

When Lindsay comes on board, I am unfortunately away in a meeting in Surrey.  When I get out of the meeting, I hear the results. Lindsay rechecked the fresh water cooling and although there was water in the expansion tank there was little coolant in the engine itself.  He adds six litres of coolant. There are multiple belts on our engine and the one driving the water pump looks a little loose although we knew the impeller was moving although maybe not as fast as it should! The belt is tightened. Maria and Lindsay run the engine under load for 45 minutes and there is no overheating issue. However, Lindsay is concerned that some of the older pipes should be replaced.  The engine now needs to cool down so that we can understand whether we have lost any more water which could indicate problems with a pipe or the cooling system internals.

The next day Lindsay returns when I can be around to discuss next steps.  We check the water, the fresh water system seems to have lost a litre of water. 😦 we discuss what could have happened.  We have recently had our hot water system changed and a new tank fitted, this attaches to the engine cooling system to provide hot water while the engine is running. This change may have caused the water level to be down a little if it hadn’t been refilled but would it explain six litres? We decide to refill the fresh water. The next test should be isolated from the hot water system. I switch off the valves that isolate this part and Maria and I top up the oil to the mid point. Later we run the engine under load for 30 minutes.  The engine at the end of the run, there is more water in the expansion tank, clearly that has worked as expected. The next day when Maria and I check the levels we find water although it may be a very small amount down, but it was filled to the top. The expansion tank has also returned to the level it was at the start.

It sounds like the next step is to test the engine some more and also checking the link to the hot water tank, maybe there is a leak there…. We also want to get the engine serviced and as you can see from the picture, the lighting in there is terrible so we would like to do that too. As you will have seen from previously, it has been a while since we spent thousands on the engine….so we must be due again 😦 the good news is though that once done the engine room will be immaculate and like our engine room on the Dufour.  This will help us in the future and also the experience of working on the engine will help us when we go on our long journey.

watch this space.