First Post of 2017

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a new post. My last one was Looking Back at Our First Bahamas Trip, on October 8, 2016. The post before that was Ten Years, on November 2015. I will try to do better than one post a year.

Statue of Liberty on way from Maine to Florida

We haven’t been completely idle. We spent some time on other boats. In October 2015 we helped Fran’s uncle deliver a boat from Boothbay, Maine to Cocoa Beach Florida, with a week stop over in Boston, Massachusetts. In March and April of 2016, we helped our friends, Gary and Ellen, take their boat, Gypsea, from Marathon, Florida to Chattanooga Tennessee. We also helped deliver a boat from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to Sandusky, Ohio in May of 2016. The boat broke down and we had to leave it in Wilmington, North Carolina.

M/V Gypsea
M/V Gypsea Moving to Chattanooga TN
Tow Boat taking us to Wilmington NC

Most of our traveling has been by RV. See our RV Adventure pages for more details.

We take a break from the RV in September 2016 and drive from North Carolina to Marathon, Florida. On September 4  we try to take Questeria to Newfound Harbor. The engine overheats. We stop,  let it cool down, and barely made it back to the marina.

I don’t know if Questeria is mad at us, but we now have a list of things to fix:

  • Engine cooling
  • Starter solenoid not working
  • Tachometer is erratic
  • AIS is not showing other vessels on chart plotter
  • Anemometer is not working
  • Transmission is leaking fluid

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Besides the above, we have to fix deck leaks, repair deck cracks and paint the topside.

It is time to descale the  engine. We drain the coolant and take off the heat exchanger, the coolant tank, and all associated hoses. Next we put it all back together, except for the heat exchanger and thermostat. We borrow an air-conditioner pump from a friend and run Barnacle Buster through the engine via the heat exchanger hoses. We also soak the heat exchanger in Barnacle Buster. We finish by flushing with fresh water.

While we have all the hoses off, we replace the starting solenoid and an old oil line. We also replace the impeller and clean and tighten the alternator contacts. We tighten up the transmission coupling and add Lucas transmission fix to it.

On September 20 we have everything put back together and we are ready to test it out. We go to Burdines fuel dock and get 45 gallons of diesel. Then we go to Newfound Harbor for a few days.

The engine does fine at first. It stays below 170° until we leave the fuel dock. After that it creeps up to 180°. The starter, anemometer and tachometer mostly work, but the AIS doesn’t work at all.

We anchor in Newfound Harbor for three nights. It is very hot and we run our A/C using our Honda 2000 generator. The power for the A/C is near the limit  of the Honda 2000. Occasionally the generator goes into overload and we have to restart it. We lower the inside temperature a few degrees at a time and get it from 91° to 75° with two tanks of gasoline.

Newfound Harbor Sunrise

We also have problems with our refrigerator. The yellow light blinks, which indicates that the voltage is low, but our batteries are above 12 volts. We use our Honda 2000 generator for charging the batteries and running the refrigerator and freezer.

Trip to Newfound Harbor
Trip to Newfound Harbor

We leave on the fourth day. The engine gets up to 185° and we notice there is no raw water pumping out of the exhaust. We drop the anchor and let it cool off. The raw water starts pumping out of the exhaust again, but it is still running hotter than is should. We run at 1800 RPM and get home, but the engine is just below overheating temperature.

When the engine cools down we notice the coolant is gray. We drain it, fill it with distilled water, run the engine and drain it. We repeat this until we get most of the gray stuff out. The gray stuff looks like fine sand.  We guess it is from the descaling. We remove the coolant tank and heat exchanger and flush them with water. We put it all back together and fill the system with 50/50 coolant and distilled water. It seems better now.

With the engine running cool, we now can start working on repairing deck cracks. These are many stress cracks in the old gelcoat. We start with an xacto knife, then widen the crack with a chisel and bevel out each end with a drill bit. Then we fill it with West System G/flex. Next we sand it smooth. We work on this some each day.

The National Hurricane Center is predicting Matthew to go up the east coast. It looks like the Florida Keys are not at risk, but our RV is in North Carolina and it might be at risk. So we pack up, leave Questeria, and drive to North Carolina.

We have fixed the engine overheating problem and the starter solenoid.  The AIS and anemometer are still not working. The transmission  still leaks, but is a little better. We have started deck repairs,  but this will take a lot more time.

We did get one boat trip to Newfound Harbor. We return to Florida for the rest of the year, so that will be our one and only boat trip on Questeria in 2016.

 

 

 

 

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