Home – Refit – Refit 2022 – Continuation items

Replace the Depth Transducer and Sonar

Both devices have met untimely and premature deaths – we discovered this just before leaving Annapolis which didn’t leave us time to recover. Knowing we had updated charts and were going to be offshore for the most of the trip, it was worth getting underway and sorting out the cause later. With the weeklong stop in Moorhead, we were able to sort this out there.

The sonar appears to have a factory defect as when we pulled it out, the lower O-Ring was bulging out and that allowed water to enter the device shorting it out. That accounted for the whole circuit shorting and tripping the breaker. Garmin honored their warranty and sent me a rapid RMA. All good.

The depth gauge on the other hand did not have such a happy ending. The yard painted over the depth sounder with 2 layers of bottom paint – in this case Trinidad – which has an extremely high copper concentration. This created a reflective surface on the transducer itself and likely caused it to burn up the electronics. We have contacted the yard to see if they will help cover the cost of the replacement, as it is not repairable. In the mean time, we have the new one installed and it’s working just fine.

Raw Water Leak in the Engine Bay

This has been a problem since shortly after we bought the boat. I looked in all the usual places and never found the source. My crew for the USVI trip decided they wanted to take it on as we had time in Moorhead City. We got a lead from the company that sold us the heat exchanger to look at the anti syphon valve and we went so far as to start sourcing a replacement, only to discover it was working fine. The next indicator was the water muffler might be cracked. Well further investigation showed that was not the case. Finally we found the rear exhaust hose fitting was leaking. Turns out the hose was a 63mm hose on a 60 mm fitting. This had been installed w a spacer to make up the difference, but with age, that was not working anymore. We ended up replacing the exhaust hose from the engine to the muffler with the right size hose and used some Gorilla Leakstop tape with some heavy duty bolt based hose clamps to make the 2nd fitting tight. That should lesson the amount of water the bilge pump needs to remove from the boat. I now need to rebed a bunch of the deck stanchions but that is another project for another day….

Water Maker

The new watermaker control panel was made by a friend (3D printed) and delivered while we were in Annapolis. This was the final piece we needed to finally commission the water maker that we started a year ago. Unfortunately, there was not time to do the install prior to leaving Moorhead City and the install had to wait til we were settled in St Thomas, USVI.

The panel was designed to be installed under the seat in the Salon in the plywood. I was under the impression that the panel was delivered ready to be installed, but unfortunately it was only dry-fit. This led to a 5 hour ordeal to disassemble it and reassemble it plumbed and properly tightened.

The figure below is the schematic of the final version of the watermaker.

Auto Pilot

We received the new autopilot while in Moorhead City and attempted to install it just before leaving. However, the wiring requirements were very specific and we did not follow them as required and it failed to calibrate.