So the engine was out in the cockpit this weekend. We had three days to clean up the bilge and get it ready for the Beta. It took a day of scrubbing with degreasers to realize the bilge really needed more than just cleaning. Here's the before picture for reference.
Hiding under neath the drip pan for the engine was the bilge pump, an item we had never actually seen because the wires came out from one side of the pan and the hose came from the other so it was essentially impossible to get to without cutting one or the other.
She is covered in oil -- and yet still worked. No number of oil absorbers could have saved us.
Looks like an old Rule pump to me but all identifying marks had been obliterated. We are replacing with a Rule Mate 2000 - it is an electro sensitive pump and will come on automatically when the water reaches a certain depth in the bilge but it has no float switch to jam.
Here's the man himself looking particularly tortured, trying to sand the last greasy residue out so that he could apply some tinted epoxy to seal the bilge up really nicely. Under the drip pan, along with the bilge pump, was a sizeable spot of delamination. Removing it produced a stream of water into the bilge that we couldn't stop. Unfortunately it kept raining. It did possibly answer the question of how water kept getting into the bilge when all the hoses were sound and not leaking at all. My suspicion is that the teak decking is the source up top of a lot of our water intrusion. Inspection of the seams this weekend lead me to believe that even where there is still caulk in them there isn't good adhesion any more. So the water seeps into the seams, down into the cored decks and then it works its way down the outside of the deck fills, which pass through the teak decks, through the fiberglass and the wet coring, and then down to the hull. Additional leaks come into the bilge area from the seats in the cockpit, which also need to be recaulked. Otherwise we have already re-bedded most if not all of our deck hardware. I mean, what else could it be?
Here's that drip pan out of the bilge. This is just how nicely it cleaned up with degreaser. Crazy.
I had one single tube of this stuff. The instructions are: Cut out the old caulking, Sand the seams down to bare wood, then clean the grooves with forced air. Then wrap a rag soaked in acetone around a putty knife and jam it into the seams, allowing the acetone to soak in rocking the putty knife back and forth . . . then apply a seal breaking tape to the bottom of each seam, then while standing on your head, apply the caulk to all seams. Then run a putty knife over all the seams at a 30 degree angle to force the caulk into the seams and clean it up as best you can I guess?? Wait 48 hours and sand back to clean wood. WTF. Who do you think I am? Also Don't tell me what to do. This is what I did: Peeled the caulk out with a putty knife. Rubbed everything down with acetone on a rag -- then I taped off the seams with painters tape and ran beads of caulk into the seams. I mushed it flat with a putty knife and peeled off the tape. So far the adhesion looks good and it is a marked improvement over before but I was only able to do the foredeck and a couple of the worst seams on one side deck before running out of caulk. West marine sells this stuff for 30.00 a tube. Get real. Ordering more tubes from Jamestown Distributors for 12.99. I am really hoping it helps with the water intrusion, but it's hard to tell because of the way the boat is built. It seems like this shouldn't really effect the bilge but we shall see.
Meanwhile, we also reinforced the floor in front of the weird, badly installed, leaky access hatch in the cockpit. We then cut the old hatch out and put in a brand new bomar hatch with a double gasket. I'm hoping that's the end of my need to duct tape a trash bag to the cockpit floor to keep it from leaking.
We had a number of failed endeavors this weekend as well. The boat has a large manual bilge pump installed that I couldn't get to work. The diaphragm looks to be in good shape to me, yet pumping it would yield no results. Per our mechanic, when he pulled the engine he found that there was no bottom half to the hose, it appeared to have dissolved. He suggested we buy new hose and a strum box for the bottom. We looked at the hose, which is 1 3/4 inch engine exhaust hose, jammed forcibly onto a rusted 2 inch coupler, which was the end of the line. In the bottom of the bilge we found a nice heavy metal strum box with a hose clamp on it and no hose. Weird. No amount of searching hardware stores, west marine, and even the internet (!) allowed us to find a coupler in the right size. So we would have to replace the entire length of hose, which is about 15.00 a foot, and we needed more than ten feet, which is the only length West Marine sells it in. Anyway the end attached to the bilge pump intake is basically welded to it and I can't get it off so it was feeling pretty hopeless. I still don't know what to do so I'm hoping the folks at Dependable can take care of it this week. However I now understand what happened and why it seemed like such a kludge -- Prior owners probably couldn't find the right coupler either, couldn't get a long enough hose readily and just gave up.
One of our other big issues is that turning in one direction, the wheel stops before the rudder hits the spinning propeller (good) but turning in the other direction you can turn until you hit the spinning prop and grinds up the rudder (bad, super bad). We have already had to repair the rudder twice. Luckily that's all that broke. So I climbed down into the cockpit stowage and hunkered down to look at the steering system. Surely there had to be a stopper or something on the cable that is asymmetrical and can be adjusted.
Well there's the quadrant in all its glory with the ancient cables and pulleys. See the weird cut block of fiberglass at the bottom right? That's the stopper. The edge of the quadrant hits that and stops turning. It's not exactly adjustable without adding, what . . plywood? So one side it hits the block and on the other side it keeps turning until the quadrant hits the pulleys. Now we will have a bigger prop and this hazard is going to be more hazardous. Something we will have to figure out next weekend I suppose once the new prop is on.
Poor Mr. Smee looking longingly out over the bilge.
And here she is after the epoxy coating. It took three days to get to this point and we didn't leave the marina until very late last night. Got home at 3:00 AM after a 1.5 hour bridge closure of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Holy cow.
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