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.