Boat Chores Before Haulout

Saturday, July 12, was one of those days we’re glad don’t happen very often. TOM-KAT is scheduled to be hauled out on Monday at Essex Boat Works (our first time since starting on the Loop), so we have several “To Do” lists. About the only item that we crossed off our lists was picking up a rental car, which we did at 9:30am……it was downhill from there!

We made one stop at the Essex Hardware Co. to pick up parts to replace the Flo-Scan, which is being sent back to the company to be rebuilt. When we returned to the boat, Bob noticed that the flow of water from the air conditioner was less than usual. We unloaded the bilge and checked the strainer and it was clogged with grass. We emptied out all the grass, but the flow was still restricted. Bob removed the air conditioner pump and it looked fine, but we replaced it with a new one….yes, Bob had a spare A/C motor and pump onboard. Unfortunately, the new pump produced no better results. Bob was in the bilge and I was running back and forth checking the water flow from the outlets. It was hot (no time to check the thermometer-high 80’s??) and we had no A/C, so it was very frustrating.

The wash down pump is plumbed to prime the A/C pump and it’s also plugged with grass. Bob pulled out 17” of grass. We’re starting to wonder where we’ve picked up all this grass. Up until this morning everything had been running smoothly. We had no early warning signs of any water restrictions. There is lots of grass around us, so we wonder if we’ve picked it up just sitting in our slip.

We cleaned the washdown strainer and resealed it, so we figured that we had solved the problem, but the flow was still diminished. ARRRRGH! What next? It’s 2pm, so I run up to Olive Oyl’s, a take-out Deli on Main St. (the galley and refrigerator are blocked by containers from the bilge) and get us some lunch. Sitting in the cockpit, eating our tuna sandwiches, we try to decide what our next step will be.

The A/C motor and pump work, the strainers are all clean, so we decide to run some water backwards through the outlets to backflush. Bob hooked up a stiff piece of tubing to the end of the garden hose and that fit perfectly into the outlet fitting. I went up to watch the front outlet. As soon as Bob starting pumping water through, this great gush of dirt and brown water came out the front outlet with good flow. SUCCESS?? Afraid not! The flow was still diminished when using the A/C pump, so we do the same thing in reverse. Bob climbs into the dinghy, the hose goes to the front outlet and dirtier, brown water comes out the stern outlet, but again no difference in flow, when using the A/C pump.

The diagnosis, at this point, is that the inlet to the A/C pump at the external end of the thruhull is restricted and we’ll have to wait until the boat is hauled to check. Backflushing the inlet hose and thruhull did not free it up. These centrifugal type A/C pumps are very sensitive to inlet restriction. We’ve exhausted all other options and ourselves!!

Before putting the containers back in the bilge, Bob tops off the 4 golf cart batteries with distilled water. The first set of two batteries look fine, but the second set have corrosion on one negative terminal. We cleaned off the terminals, which is much like cleaning tartar off teeth. Bob used a small screwdriver to scrape away the corrosion. Once the terminals were clean and tight, we put Corrosion Block on all the terminals.

We didn’t sit down to dinner until 8:30pm. We’re trying to use up food in the refrigerator and freezer before hauling the boat, so I used some frozen meatballs and made spaghetti, plus we finished off some fruit salad from Olive Oyl’s.

Friday’s blog went up before I went to bed about 10am. Hopefully tomorrow we can get to the “To Do” lists!

Keep Your fingers Crossed.