These posts have become simple maintenance-done lists. But, I still find it useful to catalogue everything. I keep the “official” record in a spreadsheet, but I often refer back to these posts for the notes.

After a two month cruising hiatus, we took a weekend trip to Langley. We haven’t been there for a while and it definitely didn’t have the same charm (for me, anyway – the family liked it). These little sea-side towns are all similar. In this case, I found the difficulty getting a table in a restaurant really irritating (a two-to-four hour wait for a table at Saltwater. Seriously?). It was nice to go back, but we are definitely becoming anchor-out people. The last sea-side town I really enjoyed was Friday Harbor, this past summer. I also still really enjoy Poulsbo, but that’s our home port now, so we spend a fair amount of time there by car.

Slip D5 2016
D5 2017
D5 2022

Impeller

This was the first time I’ve changed the impeller on this boat. It was a pretty straight-forward operation, but it took a fair amount of wiggling to get the old one out and the new one in. Also, the service manual says to drain the seawater via the forward anode on the aftercooler. It had a fair amount of wear (oddly, since I only changed them three months ago) so I just changed them all.

Draining the sea water from the forward after cooler anode port
The raw water pump assembly
Old impeller
Had to remove a hose to get access
No leverage to pull in the small space
Took a lot of wiggling to work it out
Empty impeller housing
Old impeller seemed to be in pretty good shape for 360 hours
New impeller with zip ties to hold the fins down
Used plenty of silicone lubricant
Working the new impeller in
I eventually used the puller tool to wiggle the new impeller into place
The zincs had a fair amount of wear for three months
I love my torque wrench

I used a torque wrench for the cover on the raw water pump and tightened it to spec. I tried not to over-tighten the zincs, like I did the first time. Though, on our cruise to Langley, I did find a small amount of water under the inside heat exchanger zinc and beneath the raw water hose, where it entered the after cooler. But, it could have just been from expansion and contraction since I hadn’t gotten the engine to temperature since I’d performed the service. There was no additional water after we cruised home.

Hydronic pump

The domestic hot water loop on the Chinook stopped working. I called ITR and they told me that pump runs continuously and is a failure point. Sure enough, when I diagnosed it, it was just clicking and not whirring (easy to compare to the main circulation pump, since they are identical and right next to each other.) ITR sent me a new one under warranty and I replaced the busted one. I’ll probably order another one of these as a spare, but they’re $250 new, so I held off for now. Not pictured below, I used vice grips to clamp the hoses leading to the pump and one of them wasn’t tight enough, causing coolant to spray all over the engine room. I spent most of the repair cleaning that up. One bonus of that mishap was it forced me to do a deep inspection of all of the hoses and fittings inside and around the unit. I did find a small amount of coolant along the stringer beneath the unit, but no signs of a chronic leak.

The domestic hot water heater pump is on the bottom
Relatively simple to pull out, though I need to be more careful about clamping the hoses.
Simple cabling
New pump installed. Some remnants of the coolant spill
The stringer underneath the front of the unit has a little coolant – probably from my spill
Behind the unit was dry
Need to use non-toxic coolant in the hydronic system because it handles domestic water. Found the stuff I like at a local auto store.

Gelcoat

Got Infocus Marine to give us a wash and repair our gelcoat. North Pacific is covering the gelcoat under warranty. Though, in the process we found a few more cracks. It’s very hard to find a reliable boat detailer out here. Infocus was really affordable, but wasn’t particularly detail-oriented. They did a solid-but-basic wash-and-wax. I got quotes from a couple other companies and learned about ceramic coatings as an alternative to wax. A ceramic coat can last up to five years (as opposed to six months for wax), but it’s over twice the price to apply (triple compared to the basic wash-and-wax I got from InFocus). Ceramic also requires some care in the application – and is best applied under a tent or shed. Also, the company quoted me about $500-a-month for maintenance washes to maintain the ceramic, which would quickly add up to the cost of a wash-and-wax anyway.

The gelcoat repairs were stymied by the cold weather and color-matching challenges. They’re coming along, but we found a few more cracks in the process. The flybridge is done at this point and looks great. But, we’re still trying to color match the aft deck repair.

Flybridge repair in process
Aft starboard upper deck repair in process
New cracks discovered where the cockpit meets the superstructure

Other stuff

The new propane leak detector in its new location went off again. I can only assume that the varnish or fiberglass is outgassing and causing the issue, since it is happening too much for a false positive. I disconnected it again since I could not get it to deactivate, even with ventilation, fanning it, etc. It seems to react to temperature changes (e.g. when the boat is warm and we open the fridge).

I also broke the trim off one of the cabinets by hitting it with the couch when I was sliding it in and out. I need to do a better repair.

The trim knocked off by moving the couch
My horrible wood glue repair
The new case ground on the inverter / charger. I mentioned this last post but did not post a picture.
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