Day 296 Boy!!! What a day!!!

Boy, what a day we had yesterday!!  It doesn't get much better that yesterday!

After doing the blog and having a great breakfast, we started in on replacing the bad fresh water pump that pumps all the drinking water aboard Zephyr.  The nicest thing about this companies pumps is that installing the hose to them could not be easier.  They provide a screw on cap that goes into the water line.  One to the hose from the water tank and one that comes out of the pump.  All you have to do is unscrew the old ones and screw them onto the new pump.  Hook up the wires and you're done.  Most other pumps, you have to cut off the hose where it goes into the old pump since it was held on by clamps and won't come off easily.  It tends to conform itself to the barbs of the pump.  With this baby, unscrew and screw on.  A piece of cake.  I made sure to use connectors that once crimped on,  you heat with a heat gun and it melts a small piece of tube that surrounds the fitting.  This tube then shrinks and makes a moisture proof connection.  No water is getting to the connection.  All boat wiring is to be done this way.  Moisture is the enemy.  After the installation, all we  had to do was bleed the air out of the system by turning on the faucets around Zephyr so it was full of just water--no air(it won't pressurize if there is air in the hoses) and we were done.

Off to install the last replacement end on our electrical cord that connects us to the dock power.  This was the original that had come with Zephyr when we bought her.  The cord end was corroded enough that it wouldn't make a good connection.  While out on the dock, the Sun was shining and it felt great to be out there.  I didn't even have a coat on it felt so great.  The fur people came out and joined us on deck.  Snowshoe just plunked himself down and took a bath while sunning himself. 

I found one of our dock lines whipping(twine that is wrapped around the end of the line to keep it from fraying) had come loose.  I grabbed my whipping kit and re did it while I was out there.  It just felt good to be outside on such a beautiful day!

One of our neighbors came by.  Bonita and Jay live on a boat a few slips down and have been out cruising for several years.  Bonita invited Tracy out on a walk.  Off they went.  I stayed behind and stuck my head into the engine compartment to inspect one of the fittings on the engine.  The picture shows the "anti-syphon" valve that keeps water from flowing back into the engine after you stop the engine.  Water passes through the engine from a through hull valve.  Once through, it goes up through this valve and mixes with the exhaust gases to  

cool down the exhaust before it exits the rear of the boat.  If it gets clogged with mineral deposits, water can flow back into the  boat and literally flood the engine.  Take my word for it, this is a BAD thing!!  I called the factory since I wasn't sure on how to dismantle it to check the valve on top.  I talked to a great guy--I think one of the executives--who gave me the entire story on how to service the valve.  It unscrews from the top and you have access to the valve there.  He told me how to test it to make sure it works and offered to send me the schematics of it.  Today, we'll start the engine and test her.

Next stop, install a new 12 volt outlet in the main cabin.  There was one under the port side settee but it didn't work.  I checked the wiring and found that it was wired to incorrect wires running through the boat.  The wires that come off the plug are white and black.  Some electrician had taken these wires and crimped them onto two strands of white wires and run them to the circuit panel  During the rewiring, no one could identify what these two white wires did so they got clipped at the panel.  Today, I'll be installing new wires to a new plug.  The old one needed replacing.  I installed one of the fitting like you find in a car.  These are the standard plug on search lights and other things that require 12 volts to operate.  

Once these tasks were done, I took off on errands.  What should have taken no more than an hour ended up at two.  I didn't get back to Zephyr till after 5.

Shortly after dinner, we received a call from Ben Smithers.  Ben is the original owner of Zephyr!!  Tracy had tracked him down on the Internet with just the information that he was a dentist and lived in Texas.  I'd called and left a message on his answering machine back in December but never heard back.  We thought it had to be a different Ben Smithers.  It ended up that he wrote down the wrong phone number and finally figured out the correct number to get back with us.  I spent almost an hour taking to him.

Apparently Zephyr has had quite a history.  She was almost sunk!!!  Ben had done the same thing I have done several times shortly after moving on board.  The heads(toilets) on boats have a switch on them for flushing.  You turn it one way and it pumps in water--normally seawater.  Turn the switch the other way and it pumps it out and into your storage tank.  If you happen to leave it to the pump in water mode, it will just keep sucking in water from outside the boat--more and more and more.  The only way to stop this from happening is to install an anti-syphon valve like what I discussed above(only smaller).  This breaks the suction and stops the water from coming in.  Well, Ben had left it "on"!!  He got a call a short while after leaving Zephyr that she was sinking.  When he got to her, she had enough water in her that the floor boards inside were under water and the bottom of the engine compartment had flooded covering the alternators.  He got her pumped out and spent God knows how much getting her put right again.  I got lucky in that when I screwed up the head switch, I had stayed on Zephyr and could hear the water flooding out of the toilet.   

At some time, Zephyr had run into the super structure of a bridge.  When Ben was going under the bridge, the autopilot malfunctioned and swung Zephyr over and into one of the girders of the bridge.  He smacked the top of the mast.  This is probably the reason we found the mast head cracked when we had the mast off.  Apparently, it damaged the forestay and he had it replaced.   This is what also made the "stem fitting"(big metal bracket that holds the forestay as well as the anchor at the bow) tweaked.

While out sailing, he ran into a sunken boat that wasn't on any charts as being there.  That's what made the damage on the forward edge of the keel that the surveyor had told us about when we were buying Zephyr. 

It was great talking to the original owner and getting many pieces of the puzzle of Zephyrs history.  He said he would look and see if he could find any of his documentation of when he bought her and forward it on.  As he plans to be in Oregon in late July, we may change our plans to see if we can meet up.  We would love to meet him and I'm sure he would love to see "his baby" again.

That's about the way the day went.  Just about perfect from start to finish.  More projects done and all during an absolutely beautiful day.  Plus we got to talk to Zephyrs original owner.  Now we know two of the three.

Off to the next project.  Have a great day!!