48 ° North Fisheries swap meet

Today was the annual boaters swap meet at Fisheries Supply on North Lake Union and Mandy and I drug ourselves out of bed early to go tromp around through the rain and see what deals there were to be had. Conventional wisdom is that all the good stuff is gone by six AM but there are deals to be had all day long if you don't mind doing a little digging and have fairly conventional requirements. We weren't looking for anything in particular--deals are where you find them--but I had an eye open for dinghies and there were a few there, including an intriguing all metal job that looked like it wanted to be an inflatable. Big crease on the port bow where it had run into something nearly as tough as itself; but metal doesn't fold up well nor is it likely to tow easily behind a sailboat under sail!

The others were all just okay, but not particularly good deals. I've seen better on Craigslist recently, although none in our size range. One of them there happened to be something I had seen on CL, but thought it was still overpriced in the current market. I told the guy if he didn't get rid of it today, I'd be looking for it on CL tomorrow, at a discount.

We ran across a few anchors that looked good as well, and I kicked myself for not having measured out some dimensions on our pulpit... our current ground tackle has served us pretty well, but I wouldn't mind going a size up on the Danforth. But those are usually in abundant supply at Second Wind so there was nothing urgent about it.

I was also on the lookout for cruising guides for the west coast but didn't see many, and no charts to speak of... odd, in that last year there were charts aplenty. Maybe its cyclical.

There seemed to me to be fewer people selling overall, although the dismal weather may have had something to do with it. Even Fisheries themselves had a lot less out than last year. We ended up picking up a dry box from them however, a bit cheaper than the cheapest deals I've found online.

Apart from that, all we got was a spare water pump (which, depending on whether or not our current water pump can be easily resurrected, may become our primary water pump). It's nice, frankly, to not need a lot of stuff... we're still pretty well fitted out from last year, and I didn't wander from vendor to vendor this time around wishing I had hit another cash machine on the way there to get over my withdrawal limit.

Edit: Inserted degree symbol appropriately

REAL spring

It may not be here for long, but it's here now: real honest-to-god spring weather, almost 70 degrees according to my weather widget today.  Nice and warm, and a good 10-15 knot breeze out of the north.

Unfortunately we weren't out on the water enjoying it, but instead sweating and swearing at the boat tied up at the dock watching other boats going by.

Still, I rate it a pretty successful day.  Without the foreboding possibility of rain (or snow!) we were able to get the bowrail re-wired and re-mounted, so now we look like we have a real sailboat again instead of a random derelict.  It took longer than we had planned, mostly because I made a stupid mistake when I was getting it off last fall (you may or may not recall it was damaged in a storm up at Port Hadlock; the stanchions tore from their mounts on the deck and I had to yank it to prevent further damage to the forestay and lifelines); I cut the wires to the running lights in the wrong place, necessitating re-running the wiring through the rail.  Fortunately, this is the sort of laborious, minute, fastidious task that Mandy excels at, so I left her to it and went back to figure out what was wrong with our water pump that it wasn't pumping water.

That turned out to be a Mandy-task as well, however; I was able to determine that the pump was getting electricity, but it is in a tight little compartment in the cockpit locker that is too tight for me to get my fat hands in easily.

By the time I got that far, though, Mandy had the wiring done, and we positioned the bowrail back at the bow.  It had been bent slightly out of shape by whatever tore it off in the first place, though, so we had trouble getting it on.  After a couple of false starts trying to decide which bit to screw down first, we got the two screws on the chainplate locked in and then used a line led back to a halyard winch to haul the stanchions back into line with the mounting holes.  After that it was pretty straightfoward to bolt them down.  I didn't connect up the wiring however; I need to get some good waterproof connectors to use so if the thing has to come off again, the wires don't have to be cut at all.

After that, we moved on to the transmission, which has been shifting hard for more than a year.  I read somewhere that draining the oil, filling the case with diesel, and running it in forward and reverse alternately for ten minutes or so could sometimes clean them up and improve the shifting.  My plan was to go run around the Sound for a half hour or so to warm up the oil, which makes it much easier to pump out (on a boat, there is nowhere, or at least no access, below the engine to drain oil... you have to pump it up and out of the case, which is always messy and difficult but moreso when cold), but after leaving it to sit for the winter I wanted to make sure there was still oil in it at all.

When I pulled the dipstick, I got more bad news: it came out dripping a milky pink.  Emulsified; there was water in the transmission case.

I had checked the transmission and crankcase oil immediately after we put her back in the water last summer, guarding against the possibility that water had gotten into the engine sometime during our misadventure.  They were both a healthy normal color, and figured the water hadn't been able to intrude.

I fooled myself, it appears, and in retrospect I think I understand why; the engine hadn't been started or the transmission engaged, so any water that had intruded hadn't mixed with the ATF yet.  The dipstick showed a normal purple, because it hadn't emulsified yet.  I reinforced the impression by checking the engine oil several more times on the way back, finding it normal at each turn.  But the crankcase oil was free of water; only the transmission had any in it, and I didn't check that again, as it's typically less maintenance intensive.

At any rate, it didn't seem wise to run it around like that, so we drained it and flushed the case with diesel until the diesel started coming back clean.  Then we filled it with diesel again and ran it for the ten minutes, shifting back and forth, as advised.  It didn't shift any easier than ever, but hopefully it got a little cleaner in the process.  We drained the transmission for the last time and filled it up with fresh ATF and called it a day without heading out on the water at all.

I'll probably drain it and replace it again after the next time we go out, just to be sure.  I'm not holding out a lot of hope that it improves, however; if it was bad before then I am sure that running it around with water in the tranny for a month didn't improve the state of the gears.

In other bad news, the key no longer cranks the starter... the starter itself is fine, I can jump the terminals and the engine fires right up.  The panel lights up when the key is on, so it's getting juice, but when the key is turned to "start" nothing happens.  I'll track that down another time; I've been wanting to do something else with the starting system anyway, since the key itself is on the verge of snapping in half... one misplaced boot by the helmsman and it's done for.  I checked with the local Yanmar dealership last year though, and you can't just get another key (and it's too bent up to duplicate elsewhere): you have to buy a whole new instrument quadrant, to the tune of $160.  So I've been meaning to come up with something else and this is good motivation.

Finally, I hooked up the chartplotter and made sure it still plotted and such, which it does.  The radar, however, gives me a "No Data Source" message when I try to light it up... not sure yet at all what's going on with that.  The plug on the back of the unit was a bit difficult to jack in, so it could just be that the contacts need to be cleaned or something.  I didn't feel like digging into it today.  The unit on the mast is both new and well-sealed so I doubt there is a problem at that end and feel pretty confident I can get it going again without any major difficulties.

I really need to remember to bring the camera along sometime and get some pictures of all this stuff, it's a lot easier to look at than describe.