ETERNAUT

Under pressure

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It is end of December, end of the year 2022. The last months we haven’t moved the boat at all. A few reasons why:

Calorifier under pressure

As the weather became colder the water heater remained switched on with the help of shore power. I noticed the engine room bilge wet and soon discovered some loose hose clamps in the hot water system. Next day the bilge was wet again: Culprit had been a different set of hose clamps. Despite tightening them up there was water in the bilge again the following day: Some different hose clamps had become loose.

This cycle continued for a few days. Then, one day, I wandered into the engine room and was greeted with the angry sound of hissing steam escaping under pressure. Following the noise I discovered the O ring of the immersion heater releasing hot water and steam.

Immediately I switched power to the calorifier off. We enjoyed a last hot shower. Not merely due to the prospect of a broken heater. It also served the purpose to replace the hot water with cold water, making my work less dangerous.

To get the calorifier out of the bracket I had to take all hoses off and drain some water. When opening the hose clamps to the hot water expansion tank I was greeted by a fine water mist released under high pressure. I did not dare to open the clamps any further. Thus I threw a towel on top of the leak and gave the pressure a few minutes to disappear.

Do not trust your shipyard!

Next was the awful discovery of what Seahorse Marine had done wrong: They could not follow a simple drawing how to connect a water heater. In my case they had connected the pressure expansion bottle to the over pressure release valve. The system could not get rid of any pressure of the hot water expansion. During half year of usage the pressure must have built up to dangerously high levels. I can be lucky that none of the hoses had burst or worse: the calorifier exploding. In any case: 55ltrs of 80°C hot water pouring uncontrolled out of the system could have caused some serious damage to anybody being close by.

Diesel Heater

I had asked Seahorse Marine to install a Diesel Heater.

Due to the super long boat building process (see building ETERNAUT) the unit was less than six years old already while still being brand new – or better never used.

To keep crew happy puts pressure on me – urgent repair required!

The first start up attempts gave me the fault code “fuel pump”. I ordered a new pump and installed it. Unfortunately the same fault code appeared again.

After surfing the internet and reading other blogs and reviews about the Webasto EVO AIR TOP 55 I came to the conclusion that my unit never completed the self test satisfactory.

As so often neighbor Ed from MV Destiny came to help me. We dismantled the unit and even checked the circuit board visually. But could not find anything suspicious.

I did not give up trying to find the fault as I could not believe the heater just failing without a reason.

Toby from Keto (UK) gave me mental support. His knowledge and his confirmation that Webasto EVOs are very reliable products in combination with my persistency lead to the fault: The circuit board had been damaged and thus the contact to the fuel pump had been destroyed.

If you are UK and in need for any Webasto product I highly recommend Keto (UK) service!

At first I tried to fix the damaged link with simple soldering. But lasted only a few minutes. For my second repair attempt I needed more time and patience: With help of tweezers and magnifying glasses I soldered a small wire on top of the broken link before re-building the heater unit.

The same evening the Webasto Air Heater started it’s duty. Unfortunately not without me anxiously watching the first minutes of starting up. I had with fire extinguisher in my hands already: To witness the unit puffing, burping, snoring and farting white smoke out of all openings was a scary sight.

Again Toby assured me that all is fine… and so it was. And it still is 🙂

While working on the heater I addressed another problem I had discovered: The flexible exhaust hose had been stuck onto it’s overboard fitting without being sealed by the installer. When I inquired with Seahorse Marine I was advised to use silicone. Considering that SHM would have used simple silicone to seal the heater exhaust it was probably better they did not seal it. I still had some JB exhaust weld open. So I used JB Exhaust Weld and now I have better sleeps and safer sailings.

Engine Exhaust

The engine exhaust is back in: The new design is slightly different:

• a large bellow replaces the small insufficient flex connector
• the flange for attaching to the engine has double thickness
• water injection has been moved forward
• distance to ceiling has been increased

Now the hot part of the exhaust is much smaller. This should result in a cooler engine room.

Only disadvantage of the new design is that the passage towards the opposite side of the engine room has become smaller.

Otherwise: at this moment it feels better and safer.

Let’s hope the new exhaust design will last!

Fuel starvation

With the new exhaust in place extensive testing was planned. But, as usual on boats, plans had to be changed and priorities in repair work swapped. This time the engine kept dying after a few minutes of idle run.

Fuel starvation appeared the obvious reason… but where was the blockage?

I have SBMAR double fuel filters with suction gauges installed. Disappointingly, most suction gauges have failed. It is very unusual to find them all in disorder… and in this case could not help narrowing down on the blockage.

So I changed all primary and secondary fuel filters. Still, the engine would not like to run longer than a few minutes. Ed suggested to isolate part by part from the fuel supply, until finally feeding the engine directly out of a jerry can. Actually that had been a brilliant idea: We found the AIC fuel counter blocked the fuel supply. After removing all fuel hoses to and from the unit I gave it a few blows / sucks with help of the electric pump for the tender.

The new connections I made with bypass valves: In case emergency I can now bypass the fuel counter and have the engine return run straight back into the day tank.

Bilges are finished

Finally, with many interruptions due to other jobs taking priority, work in the bilges has been completed.

Critical areas have been addressed and should give us years of peaceful cruising. Old paint removed down to primer and damaged areas down to steel. Two layers of rust converter, two layers of epoxy primer and three layers of specific bilge paint should protect these areas of rust.

Cheap Chinese shower sump pumps and bilge pumps have been replaced with reputable brands of higher quality.

The bilges also house a lot of storage after modification. The space which Seahorse Marine claims was too small to connect a 19 gallons holding tank to a shower now contains storage for:

• 6 grey water holding containing 85 gallons in total
• 12 x 20ltrs Jerry cans for oil
• Zinc anodes for three years
• industrial style wet vacuum cleaner
• pressure cleaner
• all spare hoses
• empty oil drums for used oil
• bulky sheets for oil absorption

All shelves are made of hard high density plastic and can be cleaned with the high pressure cleaner should the necessity arise.

Tools and spare parts

An ever increasing number of tools and spare parts accumulate on the boat.

Together with Ed we could open a hardware store 😉

Initially I had only an electric drill and soldering station on board.

But the list of electrically powered tools I had acquired and strongly recommend every cruiser to have on board is ever growing. I would not like to miss following items:

• drill
• dremel
• multi tool
• angle grinder
• heat gun
• circular saw
• impact driver
• soldering iron
• industrial wet vacuum cleaner
• pressure cleaner
• … the list will probably keep growing

Other jobs

So many other jobs had been accomplished in between. Sometimes they took priority, sometimes they were done when we needed a change of work.

• Water maker membranes were changed with Ed’s help. The old ones were still good… and they are stored in a pickling solution as spare. I am happy that Ed shows me how it’s done.
• The standard water hoses feeding the water maker were changed to food grade 16bar rated hoses. Watching the old hoses blowing up like a balloon under 5 bar feed pump pressure was scary.
• Bypass of sand filter for flushing water maker installed.
• Water manifold. I can transfer to the opposite tank, feed from opposite side, discharge water maker product water over board, read PPM value, take water out for testing… all with simple handling of valves.
• Filter housing for the water maker has been changed from white to clear plastic.
• Engine, gearbox and generator had oil and oil filters changed. Most helpful tool: the flexible “form-a-funnel”. Strongly suggest to get a set of medium and large units for any yacht.
• New chain arrived. I had ordered additional 150m of 13mm chain, and so did Ed. Wasn’t too easy to get the combined weight of 1,100Kg onto the dock. Now the new 55Kg Rocna Vulcan is the primary anchor connected to 150m of 13mm chain.
• Bilge pump fuses were upgraded where necessary. SHM had used 10A fuses while (even their SeaFlo) pump manuals demanded 15A fuses. I found out during extensive testing of bilge pumps.
• Mastervolt contactor for shore power gave me a hard time. The first time OBMG swapped the contactor sides for me, the second time I changed to the spare unit. Two failures within half year. Hope it won’t continue like this.
• On the warmer days Rita cleaned the fittings with the Dremel. All worthwhile to keep for spares.
• Used angle grinder to widen groove in stainless anchor roller (took days)

Christmas

There had been just too may projects which required our attention during the last three months.

Lastly a few images to show that despite all work we managed to get a small amount of Christmas spirit onto our boat and into our hearts and stomachs.