David’s Voyage Blog

Publish Date: Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Three@Sea was hauled out of the water yesterday to have some maintenance work done by the capable folks at Yacht Tech here in North Palm Beach. It was a very chilly morning, with the temperature hovering in the high 30s and the wind blowing about 20 kts. The haul-out went smoothly in spite of the weather, and we’ve moved into a local hotel while the work is done. It feels very strange to have moved off our floating home for a few days. Although I stay in hotels quite often while traveling on business, somehow this feels different, sort of like moving out of your house while they remodel it.

The biggest item on the punch list is a “bottom job”, which means to clean, inspect, prep, and paint the bottom of the boat. This needs to be done about every two years to keep the bottom protected, and to keep the boat efficiently slipping through the water. We last had a bottom job done shortly after we purchased the boat, so it’s time.

Other items on our list include:

• Inspect and replace all the zincs on the bottom of the boat. We’ve replaced several along the way (while diving to clean the bottom), but it’s easier to do this when the boat is out of the water.
• Fix the Spurs line-cutters that got ripped off when we wrapped a submerged mooring line around our propeller in the Hudson River two summers ago. Yes, we’ve been running “unprotected” from float lines since this happened, and it will be very nice to restore this ingenious device.
• Replace the cast-iron exhaust elbow on our generator with a stainless-steel version so that it doesn’t eventually fail (as most of them seem to do on other boats). I could probably do this myself, but it’s a challenging job in very tight quarters, so I’m wimping out and having Yacht Tech do it for me.
• Drain and replace the coolant on the main engine. This can be done while the boat is in the water, but it’s not as efficient or complete as doing it when the boat is out of the water. With the boat out of the water the coolant can easily be drained out through the keel-cooler.
• Adjust the timing on the main engine valves. Again, this is probably something I could do myself, and I likely will do it myself the next time. But having never done it before, I would like to learn from the experts.

Bad News

Shortly after the boat was blocked up yesterday, the guys started removing the Spurs to see what needed to be replaced. After removing the broken/damaged Spurs, a visual examination of our cutlass bearing spelled trouble. The cutlass bearing is the water-cooled bearing that the shaft spins in as it passes through the hull. Ours looked more worn than it should be, and everybody’s best guess is that it was damaged in the same mooring-line incident that broke our Spurs. Further investigation revealed some movement in the shaft, which means the cutlass bearing needs to be replaced. We could probably run with it like this for awhile longer, but it is more convenient and prudent for us to have the procedure done here at Yacht Tech, so we’re biting the bullet.

My previous blog was about home ownership, and this is another example of the phenomenon of home ownership: unexpected things break or need to be replaced that cost lots of money. A bottom job is a little like putting a new roof on the house. A cutlass bearing replacement is like unexpectedly having to replace your furnace — painful at best. But that’s home/boat ownership, and it’s what you sign up for when you sign on the dotted line.

James and his colleagues at Yacht Tech are trying to get us back in the water on schedule this Friday, but the cutlass bearing may take a day or two longer. They are also being a little hampered by the unusually cold weather: the bottom paint does not dry as quickly or as well when it’s too cold, so that’s slowing them down a little bit. One way or another, we should be back in the water and cruising by Sunday or Monday.

What’s next? If the weather cooperates, we have an exciting holiday cruising plan that I’ll describe in my next blog.