Engines and Sails

Monday 18 June saw me zip off to pick up the sails from NovoSail in Southampton where they had been cleaned.  We have not used NovoSail before but I was really impressed.  They have a special computer controlled sail washing machine, about the size of a tennis court, which soaks and cleans the sails followed by passing them though several gentle brush and coating treatments and finally onto a hot plate to fix the chemicals.  If all has worked as advertised them we have not just clean sails now but also mildew and UV resistant ones too.

De-coking the exhaust elbow

I spent the afternoon following up the advice from the Marine Engineer's inspection of the engine.  The tube which supplies lubricating water to the cutlass bearings was replaced because it  had some deposits on the inside of it with the possibility that there might be a restricted water flow as a result.  Replacing the tube was easily done and hopefully the new tube will continue to supply water to protect the cutlass bearings for many years to come.  I also removed the exhaust elbow to both inspect it and de-coke it.  No problems discovered there which was reassuring.  Fortunately the bolts all loosened reasonably easily and when I reassembled them I soaked them in copper anti-seizing compound to ease any future work on them.  The photo highlights the superb engine access we have when all of the covers are removed; it makes working on the the engine very easy and really helps checking that there are no leaks.