Category Archives: Maintenance

Teak Cleaning

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Teak deck before

Teak on boat deck…before cleaning.

Teak after

Teak on boat deck…after cleaning.

We have a bit of exterior teak decking on our boat that we leave natural…but it has to be cleaned periodically. Even though we have our boat washed monthly over the winter, the exterior teak still accumulates dirt in the wood. By spring the teak is ready for a good cleaning. There are a number of different products that can be used to clean teak, but we like the Star brite brand.

Today was dry, so it was a good day to clean teak. While Jim worked on installing the overflow reservoir for the heating system, I got busy with the teak. I clean the teak in two steps…first by applying Star brite Teak Cleaner and scrubbing it with a stiff brush. This cleans the dirt out from the grain of the teak. After a good wash down, I let the teak dry and then apply Star brite Teak Brightener. This sits on the teak for a few minutes and then is washed off.

It always feels good to see the natural color of the teak!

Webasto Repair, Winch Replacement

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Webasto Expansion Tank

A new cap on the Webasto expansion tank fixed most of the problems of leaking coolant.

Manual winch on boom for hoisting and lowering dinghy

The self-tailing manual winch mounted on the boom has been used for hoisting and lowering our dinghy.

Boom with mounted manual winch

Jim removed this manual winch from our boom, and will be installing the new electric winch in its place.

Yea! We are able to use the Webasto heater again. Heat is a good thing! But when the system got hot yesterday, some of the coolant leaked. Turns out that the pressure relief cap on the expansion tank has worn, so we replaced it with a new cap. That helped the bulk of the leaking, but today we noticed that there is still a bit of coolant overflow, which we will have to address by adding an overflow reservoir…another project!

The first step in installing the new electric winch on our boom is removing the existing manual winch. Jim got the manual winch off yesterday afternoon, but work time was cut short today due to rain. We’ll resume this project when we have a bit of dry weather.

Webasto Repair

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Webasto plumbing in the engine room

Webasto circulating pump and associated valves in the engine room. One of these valves was the culprit, and was turned off when it should have been on.

Cap Sante Commercial Fishing Boats

Commercial fishing boats moored in Cap Sante Boat Haven

Anacortes Fixup House

Small house in old downtown Anacortes…ready for some TLC.

Last March when Jim came to the boat to check on things, the Webasto diesel circulating hot water heater started, ran for a while, and then quit and wouldn’t restart. So fixing the heater when we got to the boat has been high on our list of repairs. This morning it was 42 degrees, windy and cloudy. It was 56 degrees inside the boat. Wow, did we miss the warmth of the heater!

We have small, electric space heaters mounted on bulkheads in the two lower cabins, so we weren’t completely without heat…but it takes a long time for the electric heaters to warm the boat. This was a good day to get the heater working.

Jim discovered that one of the circulating pump valves had been accidently closed. This caused air to enter the system, thereby causing the heater to overheat and shut down. So today’s task was to bleed the air out of the system, add coolant as needed, and restart the heater. It took a while, but by mid-afternoon the air was out of the system and coolant had been added. Since the sun came out later in the day, the boat became too warm (go figure!) to test the heater, so we will test it tomorrow morning.

While Jim worked on the heater, I walked to the post office. I headed north along the waterfront, past the nearby Cap Sante Boat Haven and back through some of downtown Anacortes. It was windy and cool, but sunny…so it was a nice afternoon for a walk.

New WiFi Bridge

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WiFi bridge mounted in hanging locker

Rosie checks out the new WiFi bridge mounted in the hanging locker in our forward stateroom. The bridge is the small white box held in place by a black velcro tie.

One of our first maintenance projects after getting settled on the boat was installing a replacement WiFi bridge so we can connect to the Internet. We access the Internet from our boat at the marina using a WiFi connection provided by an account we have with BroadbandXPress (BBX), a local provider of WiFi for the boating community in the Pacific Northwest.

Our previous wireless bridge died over the winter, so we bought a replacement and brought it with us. It is an Air802, model AP-G250, Ethernet to WiFi bridge with a 250 mW radio. Jim mounted it on a bulkhead in the hanging locker in our forward stateroom, and has run cables to a connection box in our main cabin where we use our computers. The bridge works through a previously installed marine antenna—an Air802 ANMA 2412, 12 dBi antenna—which is mounted on our flybridge.

New bottom paint

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Under the swim step, Diver's Dream zinc on the right

Under the swim step, Diver’s Dream zinc on the right (before new paint)

Starboard bow with tube opening for thruster

Starboard bow, showing the tube opening for the bow thruster (before new paint)

Phoenix in boat yard after new bottom paint

Phoenix in boat yard after new bottom paint and zincs

Port bow, after painting

Port bow, after painting

Side view, after new bottom paint

Port side view, after new bottom paint

Marine Servicenter picked up Phoenix last Saturday and took her to their boatyard to haul her out for a fresh coat of bottom paint and new zincs. Good weather helped get the job done. They told us that the bottom paint from three years ago has held up well, with only a few areas where the paint came off during the pressure washing. Having a diver come each year to scrub down the bottom definitely helped preserve the paint. Now Phoenix is back in our slip and ready for us when we arrive next week.

We’ve arranged for Dana Bower to wash the decks and house early next week so that Phoenix will be cleaned up when we arrive. Dana operates Dana’s Boat Detailing in Anacortes, and we’re very fortunate to have her wash our boat each month when we can’t be there to do it ourselves, which really helps during the winter months!

Early season preparations

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Still working on selecting and styling a WordPress theme for this blog…but think I’m getting closer! I haven’t moved last year’s blog entries from blogger.com yet, but that’s on my list to do soon.

Phoenix is scheduled to be hauled out in Anacortes within the next couple of weeks. The boatyard people at Marine Servicenter have hauled our boat for us in years past and taken good care of her, so we have asked them to come get our boat from our slip at Anacortes Marina and haul her out for us while we are at home in Bend. It’s great that they’ll do that for us! They will put on a fresh coat of bottom paint, replace zincs and clean up the underwater metal…then they will return Phoenix to our slip. We plan to travel to Anacortes in about 3 weeks, and it will be nice to have that work done when we get there.

For now, we are focusing on getting house projects wrapped up and organizing the stuff we want to bring with us for the summer. It’s always a challenge! We’re also beginning on our first boat project…or at least gathering up the piece parts. We’ve decided it’s time to replace our hand-cranking operation for launching and hauling our dinghy on and off the aft deck. The manual winch is just getting to be too much! Jim has been researching electric winches that will fit on our boom, and has settled on a Superwinch Terra 25-SR that we can order from Amazon. He plans to set up the system to run on an Optima D34 55A battery that will be charged by a Noco Genius 10A marine battery charger.