I’ve probably said it before, but it’s always top of mind during maintenance projects: if you’re going to own a boat you better love boat work, and not just in a theoretical sense but in a visceral, in your bones sort of love, because it’s going to hurt in a visceral way when you’re doing boat yoga and struggling with the projects.  Also, it’s extremely fun to learn new things and perfect the way you perform them so that each  time goes more smoothly than the last and every project makes the boat safer, smoother and increases longevity. In short, boat work is awesome.

Over the last year I’ve been making it through the list routine maintenance and I’ve almost made a whole loop for all the yearly and some of the longer term items.  I’ve created a spreadsheet now that has everything broken down to daily, bi-monthly, yearly, every other year, every 5 years, every 7 years, every 600 hours and every 2000 hours.

On the longer list, I hired Hatton Marine to change the timing belt on the Volvo Penta MD22P-B which our boat has.  Given this is a job that’s done so infrequently it wasn’t one I was going to tackle.  Messing up the timing would be almost guaranteed for my first time and I chose the checkbook method on this one, but all the other maintenance has been done by Rachel and I so far.

We had our turn at changing all the fuel filters earlier in the year. I learned a few lessons there as well, specifically, how to prime the fuel filters.  It really wasn’t as messy a job as I thought it would be, and getting diesel on my hands it’s anywhere near as offensive as getting gasoline on my skin, so changing the fuel filters really isn’t too bad.  Actually finding the right filters was incredibly difficult, and I had to deal with some air in the lines for a bit until I could get it all sorted out, but it really wasn’t bad.

Last week I changed the raw water impeller for the first time.  The broker had changed it for us before we took delivery of the boat.  This was a pretty straightforward job, but there was still some learning curve.  I also gave the sea strainer a good cleaning with this. Easy preventive maintenance to keep the motor happy.

This weekend the last remaining task for the summer was the oil change. I hadn’t been able to get to this because we’ve been using the boat so much, but it was really started to bother me, it had been almost nine months since I changed the oil at the end of last season.  That time, I struggled for hours to get the oil filter back on which was a borderline nightmare.  I can’t get both my shoulders through the narrow opening of the front of the engine so screwing the filter back on requires some insane yoga (you can read all about it in a previous post).

This time went really well though.  It turns out Rachel can fit both shoulders through the opening and get both her hands in there.  This is amazing and awesome. Curse my broad shoulders.  Or, curse the narrow opening of the front of the engine. As great as access is to this whole motor, that front side is real nightmare.  In any case, we got to the marina around 4 o’clock in the afternoon. I ran the engine and brought her up to temperature and used the handy manual west marine extractor to suck up all the oil  The MD22P-B has a great oil extraction tube, so getting 5 liters out is a breeze. Then Elliot Bay Marina is awesome enough to come get the oil, dump it and bring back the container (I love those guys).

So with Rachel’s ability to get both shoulders in I thought we were home free, just unscrew the filter (which was super easy the first time), get the new filter on, fill with oil, check for leaks and go drink beer.

Well, the best laid plans.  I made another pretty rookie mistake last time, after struggling for three hours to get the filter on, when it finally went on I got a little aggressive on tightening it (the filter had gone on, and I had said to hell with it, I was giving it a full extra turn, with the oil filter wrench).  And I knew this was perhaps not the best of ideas, but I did it anyway.  And yeah, so that little landmine came back to bite us. We could not get the filter off. Ach Nein, as they say.

After some more boat yoga, some cursing, taking turns trying different things, I consulted Ye Olde Internet.  The very first link Google brought up had two great ideas: 1) a razor blade slipped into the filter to break the seal and 2) sand paper between the wrench and the filter. Sandpaper!! Brilliant.  I got out a sheet of 120, we slipped it between the wrench and the filter, and I positioned myself down there and bam, the filter relented and opened.  We didn’t have to resort to the dreaded screwdriver method.  And now that I’ve done that, I’m never over tightening an oil filter again. Trust the gasket.

That cost us about an hour, but after that, Rachel was indeed able to get the filter on in about 2 minutes, because she could use both her hands down in the hole. Sweet.  Fill up the oil, check the levels, run the engine, check for leaks, top it off, clean everything up and call it good. Huzzah!!! I predict that the fall oil change will go even better. Such a satisfying feeling.

During the cleanup process we were doing some vacuuming, and like one of those dreams where you find a hidden room in your house, I noticed a panel on the cabin sole with a latch on it.  I had never noticed this panel before, and I’ve thought I have opened every panel on this boat. One of the things that’s been bothering me ever since we got the boat is that I have no idea where the emergency bilge pump is located. There’s a switch for this pump and I can hear it when I manually run it, but I’ve never been able to find it.  So yeah, you guessed it, behind this panel we found the emergency bilge pump. I have no idea how I’ve missed this panel.  I’d come to the conclusion that the pump was buried under one of the fuel tanks but no, it’s located higher.  And it’s really frustrating that as well as the boat is documented, there was no indication in any of the manuals of where this pump was located.  So, that was highly satisfying as well, finding the darn emergency bilge pump.

There you have, an afternoon of maintenance, the whole process took 3 hours.  Last time was closer to 6 hours.  Next time, I think I can get it down to an hour and a half.  Can’t wait.