Trying to Get Ahead of the Game

Things are always breaking on a boat.  The boat must supply all of the services necessary for comfortable living (e.g., electricity, heating, potable water, waste disposal) plus be capable of propelling itself and offer sufficient information for safe navigation.  The fact that you are floating in salty solution that encourages the corrosion of everything it touchs only adds to the opportunities for failure.

As part of our annual pre-cruise work list of fixes and enhancements, we decided to replace some items that had not failed but, based on their age, were likely to fail soon.  Wanting to have the work down right and in a timely fashion, we decide to pay people more skilled then we are.

We left Sunday, April 9 and motored up to Port Townsend to begin our journey of spreading money around the communities of the Salish Sea.  Port Townsend Shipwrights Coop did the lions share of the work.

One item was the generator exhaust elbow where cooling water from outside the boat is sprayed into the hot exhaust gases from the fuel’s combustion.  When it was removed, it showed some minor external corrosion and had buildup of “gunk” which can lead to exhaust back pressure and more serious problems.

After leaving Port Townsend, we headed up to Prevost Harbor on Stuart Island in the San Juan Islands for a couple of nights at anchor.  We crossed paths with Peter Geerlofs the owner of “cousin” vessel Diesel Duck, SeaDucktress.  We encountered Peter frequently during last years SE Alaska cruise.

We headed into Anacortes on Sunday, April 16 where the next day, we were having a new water heater installed by Marine-Tec, the folks who installed our furnace.  When the old water heater was pulled, corrosion was starting to eat away the inlet pipes so we were glad we had acted. The new water heater, a 15 gallon Solaris, is certainly a step up from the old unit (an 11 gallon Kuuma) and we are looking forward to long service and ample hot water.

Our last stop was a swing down to Des Moines Marina where we topped off our fuel tanks in preparation for departing the following week.