Galley Pump Works

Yesterday was a good day working on the boat. First thing I did was to remove the plastic that the previous marina wrapped around the mast. Being exposed to the weather and sunlight, the plastic was breaking down into tiny pieces. I didn’t want the pieces to end up flying into the water or litter the marina.

My boat came with a Whale Galley Pump for the fresh water supply. I’ve tried testing it out but the pump would get stuck so I thought I needed a service kit to fix it. Well, yesterday, I decided to take the pump out and as soon as I removed the hoses, water sprayed out all over the place. I quickly grabbed some paper towels to clean it up as best I could. I checked the pump and turned out to be working fine. So, there's $25 I won't have to spend right now. I connected the hoses back to the pump, then disconnected the lines from under the sink. Turns out the water lines were not empty either. I thought the water tanks and lines were empty and dry. I ended up pumping out about 3 gallons out of the lines. Good thing too because there was a lot of nasty looking debris. No mold, algae or anything like that. It looked more like mineral deposits (mostly) floating in the water. No idea how long that water was sitting in there.

As I looked over the system, I discovered that there was a blockage in the system that caused the foot pump to not work properly because there was nowhere for the water to go. It ended up being the PUR faucetmounted water filter that was blocked with what looked like mineral deposits. Once I disconnected that, water flowed out of the faucet. I threw out the filter housing. Those can easily be replaced.

So now, I am looking at the system altogether. Each tank is supposed to hold about 20 gallons. There is only a small port on each tank that is about 1 1/4" so it’s hard to see in the tanks. Easy to see why I thought the tanks were empty. At this point, I’m glad nothing broke from freezing temperatures. With all the debris in the tanks, I’m now looking at flushing the system, maybe even replacing the hoses. It’s been suggested to me that I consider a Henderson TCL4 7” port. While reading the archives of the Nor’sea owners group, it seems others have installed Beckson Deck Ports. Now, the one I’m considering is either a 6” or 8” Beckson access port with clear cover for quick inspection of the tanks and to reach down into the tank to give it a good scrub (apparently needs it too). I'll have to inspect the hoses from the fill port to the tanks and see if those need replacing too. Maybe it'll need flushed too and just a chlorine shock to the system. So long as the tanks hold water, there shouldn't be any other issues to the fresh water system.

Surprisingly, this took up quite a bit of time. I also measured the water lift muffler and seacock fittings for replacements. For the muffler replacement may require more research. Anything I find seems to be larger than the current one and there's not a whole lot of space available. The current water lift muffler is about 5.5" wide and 6 inches tall, not including the hose connections.

I have the boom setup in the garage at the house. Started by taking the gooseneck fitting off. There is two cam cleats attched that have no spring action. Went to remove them and one bolt didn't want to be removed and ended up getting stripped off. So I now need to drill it out and see if I can replace the cam cleats. The black paint on the overall piece is falling apart. Some of it has corrosion on it that will need to be sanded off a bit and I might get some rustoleum to repaint it.

Home Sweet Home

Rhapsody now has a new home.

I got up and left the house around 7:30 this morning. Just in time for rush hour traffic. I knew that but didn't want to wait half the day for traffic to clear out. Still, it took a little more than an hour and a half.

I got to Deale, Maryland and talked with the owner of Rockhold Creek Marina, Jon. Jon showed me around and they had some space where I could put the boat/trailer.

I first backed it up into an open spot in the yard. Then they brought a small tractor around to put it in place. So, at the moment, this is Rhapsody's new home while I work on her and get her ready to go sailing again.

Backing into place

Unhooking from the tractor

Home Sweet Home

View into the rest of the yard

 On another good note, the replacement wheel studs came in today so I should be able to get those on the trailer during the next visit.

70 MPH to Windward

Nice long weekend for Labor Day.

I decided to go get my boat. I drove to Clarksville Tennessee, cleaned up and put away everything in the boat and drove back to northern Virginia all in two and a half days.

Thurday (Sep 3rd): Drove 700 miles to Tennessee. (11 hour drive)

Friday: had breakfast, checked out of the hotel my wife and I stayed at and went to get the boat ready for the trip.

Checking Tires

Wrapping Mast

Wife: "Where is the mast held up at?" Me: "up there."

Cleaned Up / Organized For The Trip

We went to the scales at a local truck stop to weigh everything. The truck, boat/trailer came out to 19,520 lbs. We hit the road around 1:30pm (CST). I wanted to drive past Nashville to get away from the city and get to a rest area East of the city to look things over. 1.5 hour drive, I stopped to check things out. I found out two lug bolts on the front right wheel and sheared off.

The trailer wheels have 6 lug bolts. The middle and rear axles have surge breaks but the wheel with the broken lugs doesn't have anything else on it.

I made sure the lug nuts were tightened all around and drove for another hour and a half to look things over again. No changes. By now, I was almost at Knoxville, TN. Decided to drive and see how far we would get. By the way, the road conditions on I-40 between Nashville and Knoxville was not pleasant at all. Things improved a lot once we got to I-81.

We got up to around Roanoke, VA by the time we stopped. Towing the boat used up a lot more fuel than I would have thought but understandable since the engine needs to work harder to pull all that weight. Stopped at another hotel for the night that thankfully had space to park the trailer without any issues. As I was looking things over on the boat, a guy stopped by and we chatted for a few minutes. He complimented on how nice the boat looked and talked about his time sailing out of San Francisco.

Saturday morning was a late start. But, we drove the rest of the way without any issues and got to the house around 2:30pm (EST).

So looking at Pacific Trailers website, it seems they do have parts for replacing the lug bolts. Which is good, because I was starting to think I had to replace the whole hub. Big difference between spending $50 for a hub or $2 bucks each for new lugs.

A nice lady in the neighborhood saw me and commented to me how nice the boat looks when I dropped it off on Saturday. I was messing around the boat and she came up to say hi and told me she saw a police car by the boat Sunday afternoon. She explained my situation that I just moved to the area and I'm going to move the boat somewhere else soon. Apparently, someone called the police and they gave me a warning ticket for having a trailer parked in a residential zone. If it was a paying ticket, the fine would be $40 bucks.

People sure do like their stupid rules around here.

Overall, I'm happy that I finally got the boat moved and I can move forward with my refit. First thing, is getting the lug bolts/nuts replaced, and a storage place for DIY work.

Lug Bolts Knocked Out

Broken Lug Bolts

Hope everyone had a good and safe Labor Day weekend.