ETERNAUT

It was end of January and we had been back in Hebe Haven from a few test runs just in time to witness a Lion Dance.

The lion comes with it’s own band and as such with a lot of noise. Quite fun to watch and hear. Especially the blinking eyes and waggling tail are impressing. Funnily enough this colorful creature is vegetarian: It eats cabbage which we had to buy at the club restaurant beforehand. For good luck the lion vomits the cabbage just for the boat captain / owner to catch. But mainly it survives on red paper envelopes filled with shiny, new, crispy bank notes. In return for the food we provided ETERNAUT and the crew were blessed for safe journeys. All in all nice and cute Chinese tradition and surely not to miss if having the chance.

We had refueled early January and I had wanted to make sure the fuel is clean before transferring any into the day tank. I made a minor but expensive mistake when I re-assembled the unit after it’s first cleaning session. The screws of the housing MUST be tightened in order! Otherwise you risk damage to feed tube, paring disc and even connector housing. Once again the exclusive Alfa Laval dealer in Hong Kong proved useless and it was much easier and faster for me to order spare parts from USA.

Since long I wanted to do this. In my opinion it is imperative to have two (or even more) water tanks which can be selected individually.

Basic and cheap in usual Seahorse Marine manner the two water tanks on ETERNAUT had been interconnected. Only a single pump fed the pressurized fresh water system without any option to separate the tanks.

Worse, SHM had installed tubes and fittings I was not able to source: the dealership in China said they do not sell those items. The dealers in UK and AUS who I had contacted were out of stock with a backlog of several months. At the end I had to improvise the switch from SHM installed tube system to standard 3/4″ sized hose and pump fittings.

For us it is absolutely necessary to have one water tank permanently filled with water maker produce. This is because the water maker requires a fresh water flush every three days. And this water MUST be chlorine free. Tap water will destroy the membranes!

That’s why separating the tanks was such an urgent task. Only then I would have been able to clean the tanks one by one.

But as so often it all came different: I opened the maintenance hatch of the port tank and discovered a considerable amount of rust. So I cancelled the cleaning. Instead new tasks were added into my calendar: removing old paint and rust as well as re-painting water tank.

Just look at the orange colored water. Would you drink that? Thanks a lot Seahorse Marine!

Again the shipyard had made shortcuts: One single layer of primer and one single layer of paint where the worker could reach with the spray gun. The areas the worker could not reach easily as well as the weld splatters were rusted.

Another upgrade was due: more work and more expensive for a better boat.

At first Rita and I sourced primer and top coat suitable for portable water. Then I climbed into the tank to remove the old paint and where applicable the old primer and rust. After two days of work I flushed the tank extensively to remove all dust. Careful drying took another day. Only then the tank walls received two coats of primer and two coats water tank paint.

The top coat required seven days of drying before the first water fill. Even though we flushed the tank extensively there is still a hint of paint smell when opening the tap. Thus we still have to wait with painting the second water tank.

ETERNAUT is equipped with paravane stabilizers. It is an old mechanical technology which fishing boats have been used for decades.

Most Diesel Ducks have paravane stabilizers installed. And, again I might sound repetitive, Seahorse Marine never looked at any sort of improving the system. The heavy paravanes were suspended on a Nylon rope / chain combination. A recipe to break your back and simultaneously dent the hull.

I remembered that Chris and Wayne have a similar system installed on Moebius. And thanks to Wayne’s inputs all my stabilizers are now lifted and controlled with Dyneema lines.

Slipping the boat was overdue. Not many shipyards are capable (or willing) to provide that service to private yards of this size. Our fuel tanks are 70% full and I estimate the ETERNAUT’s weight at a subtle 50tons at this moment.

Harvest Marine in Aberdeen (HK) came to our rescue. Sammy speaks fluent English and has a capable team supporting him. I was most impressed by his professional manner to slip the boats: a diver makes sure all hoisting / slipping supports are in place!

We were very lucky as the anti-fouling was completed on one of the last dry days before rainy weather kicked in.

But there were also bad news:

Our boat has a bow thruster made by Side-Power. The model installed uses two same direction turning propellers. As such it requires two right hand turning propellers.

Sammy from Harvest Marine informed us that one propeller was completely destroyed and had no blades left. The other propeller was chipped. I followed his recommendation and agreed to replace both propellers. Sammy did not know which exact model of bow thruster installed. In any normal circumstance he just would have to replace the propellers with exactly the same model he had removed. And this is what he did. But ETERNAUT was not build by any shipyard, she was built by Seahorse Marine. After a near crash due to malfunctioning bow thruster, extensive study of Side-Power available thrusters and lengthy discussions with Harvest Marine we came to the conclusion: ETERNAUT had been equipped wrongly with one right- and one left turning thruster propeller. Then somebody at Seahorse Marine must have cut all blades on one propeller after discovering the mistake. This way there was only half the thruster power available, but it worked long enough until finding out.

The shifter control box as well as the oil pump of the gearbox leaked oil. Not dramatically, but they did. I counted up to 1 drop/minute. There is a 0.7 liter spread between maximum and minimum oil lever at the ZF-286 gearbox. The anticipated 4 days continuous duty to Philippines would have meant a decrease of 0.5l in oil level. “Too much for safe operations”, I decided.

Foilborne is the local ZF supplier. Special thanks to Paul who arrived with his team just a few days after I asked for help. Within four working days the gearbox was in proper working order again. Shifter had spring tension adjusted and O-rings changed. The oil pump also received new O-rings. Great work!

Last but not least the highlight of the last two months: Poo matters.

We knew that cleaning the hull and Anti-fouling was due. And since a few days we experienced a pretty ugly smell especially after having flushed the forward toilet. I checked the forward bilge, fearing that the toilet hose leaked. But the bilge was nice, dry and free of any disturbing odor.

A few days later while being parked at the guest dock we discovered a small watery spray line across the dock. The location did not match the outlet valve for the forward toilet. And I could not imagine that the toilet pump produces as much pressure to spray from a few centimeters underneath the waterline to the dock. I could not make any connection. Fragrance became more intense by the day.