Sunday we celebrated mine and my cousin Dawson's B-day. Good food, good family, and the Redskins won, so it was a good day!
In boat news we decided to buy The Wirie. After doing alot of research it seemed the most user friendly and we like to keep it simple. We plugged it in and have better internet already so hopefully that carries on while we are cruising. We just have to mount it up somewhere outside and figure out how to not let water in through our hatch.
The bilge is officially finished. It turns out that the bilge pump and switch were working just fine. There was an air leak caused by the wrong sized hose clamps and an old check valve. So I replaced the check valve and the hose where the leaks were, and used the correct hose clamps. The air leak went away and now the bilge pump runs properly.
We are glad we did'nt have to buy a whole new bilge pump. We do have another on board but it is kept as a spare for cruising. Once I got the bilge pump running smoothly, I put cleaning product in there and brought the hose in and gave it a thorough cleaning. I ran the water through about 40 times and got as much oil and grime out as possible, then used the oil drill pump to suck out the last remaining water. This was the third time i've had to do that cleaning procedure but now that the bilge pump works, it will be the last! There is still water that trickles in from somewhere and our bilge pump can only suck water up to a quarter inch deep so the bilge will never be completly dry, owell.
One leak that we were worried about was at our stuffing box. The area where our prop enters the inside of the boat and connects to the engine. It had a steady leak and I finally got the courage to take a wrench to it. It wasnt so bad and after a few trys the leak stopped completly! Ofcourse when I ran the engine, I found another leak at one of the engine water hoses. Trying not to get too distressed, I eventually got that leak to stop as well.
So our boat should be staying pretty dry!
The next project is finding and fixing our oil leak. The engine surveyor thought it was at the lube oil pipe. This was another project that took a weeks worth of courage/research/procrastination. But I finally dived and and after removing the starter motor and some other eninge parts, I got the lube oil pipe out. I can't find a hole in it but it will be getting replaced regardless cuz it was alot of work to get out and its pretty rusty. If the oil leak is somewhere deeper then we will just leave it and and buy extra oil!
Our solar panels and dinghy davits are at a shop right now getting an estimate for the work. We are running out of time to be working on such a large project and I don't think I have the knowledge, skills, equipment, or confidence to tackle such a large project at this time. So we might be outsourcing our first project.
-Joey
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