Routine Maintenance

Sadly there have been no exciting travel adventures to photograph and show you. Nicky spent last week revalidating her dinghy instructor qualifications and I took the opportunity to spend 2 days on a Rigid Inflatable Boat (RIB) getting my RYA Powerboat Level 2 qualification (Lots of fun on a 4.5m RIB with an 80 HP engine on the back).  Both us then spent a day in the classroom renewing our RYA First Aid qualification so that we are up to date for our commercial endorsements. That was the out on the water 'fix' for us, so this week we have spent a few days down on BV completing some more mundane maintenance.

Our Pela oil extractor in action

Since owning BV we have always changed the oil in her engine twice a year. Fresh oil just prior to winter and then another change around Easter ready for the heavier summer use. Probably overkill but marine engines are very expensive to replace so hopefully our regular oil change regime will prolong the life of our engine. The first task this week was therefore an oil change for the main engine and the generator. It's difficult to put a drip tray under a boat engine to drain out the oil so we make life very easy by using a Pela vacuum pump to suck the old oil out through a thin tube we put down the dipstick pipe; a brilliantly simple and very effective bit of equipment we will be taking with us on our travels.


Next we turned our attentions to the fuel system and replaced all of the fuel filters and a  new air filter seemed to complete the oily work.



However, changing the fuel filters puts air in the fuel system and diesel engines don't run too well on just air so we spent what seemed to be an hour head down repeatedly pressing a small lever on the low pressure lift pump to prime the fuel pipes and filters getting rid of the air. It was very satisfying when we fired up the engine and it ran smoothly without missing a beat.

We've found that our Duogen wind and water generator needs its bearings replacing regularly. In our experience it's pretty much the only bad bit about the Duogen. At some stage I'll get around to asking other owners if they have the same problems with theirs, but in the meantime we just accept that every year we have to completely strip down the generator and replace the two main bearings and the shaft seal. Not too difficult to do but you need to make sure that you keep your fingers clear when you are putting it back together as there are some big magnets that always seem to pull together sharply potentially nipping stray fingers (mine!). Seems a fair price to pay for the free energy whilst we sail along.

Our mini NMEA 2000 network

When we weren't tinkering with the oily engine and generator we carried on with the task of fitting the new chart plotter display. The best way of getting the AIS data to the new chart plotter was by adding an NMEA 2000 network. This is made up of a backbone cable which theoretically runs the length of the boat to which you add in a T-piece wherever you need to plug in an NMEA 2000 compatible piece

of equipment. It seems to be well thought out and is very expandable by separating the plugs and adding in more T-pieces or longer cables as they are needed. At the moment we just have two electronic gadgets that need to talk to each other on NMEA 2000 so our 'backbone' is as short as it can be. It's made up of just three T-pieces (one for the plotter, one for the AIS and the third for the power cable). End caps which contain resistors have to be fitted. It is definitely 'plug in and play' with none of the foibles of the older NMEA 0183 network; I just wish the components weren't so overpriced!

Along with the wiring we had to do a bit of carpentry to mount the display and we took the opportunity to revarnish the wooden panel whilst it was pulled apart. Lots of work but the end result looks good and we now have our navigation station updated and ready to go with all of the separate components 'talking' to each other properly.