Return to Crete: Boat maintenance time

We came back to our home marina, Agios Nikolaos in Crete in late September. About a week later Victoria left for a major hike in Spain (the Camino) with her daughter so I was going to be by myself on the boat for awhile.

Time to do a bunch of boat maintenance!

The first thing I did was fix the boat data server (a small RPi4 with a custom board that understands NMEA). This lets me see boat data on my iPhone when I’m not on deck. It had stopped working over the summer and I suspected it had worn out its USB hard-drive. (I saw it in a re-start loop once. USB drives have a read/write lifetime.) I replaced the hard-drive and re-built the software (Linux plus OpenCPM) and it worked again! Success!

The second thing was our primary auto-pilot (we have two) would stop working after about 15 or 20 minutes of use. Error: unit drawing too much power. It connects directly to the rudder at the back of the boat, and the control arm is a 24V DC motor connected to a big pushing arm. I was hoping to find a corroded connection….but there was none. The wiring was perfect. I had to cut the wires to remove the unit. I took the unit apart….it is (maybe surprisingly) not very complicated. All of the internal gears still looked perfect so I didn’t think that was the problem. (People often find these gears worn and need replacing. SV Delos did this on a crossing once!) I took the motor off and removed the brushes (easy to do) and a TON of black graphite dust came out of the motor. I suspected that the motor was just clogged with graphite dust from the worn brushes. This made a big mess on deck and for this once I was happy Victoria was not around she would not have been happy!

I put everything back together, re-wired the unit and it works! At least at dockside for a minute. Next time we are out I will find out if I really fixed it but I think I did.

Next I had to do the oil and oil-filter changes on the main engine and the generator. This is the third time I’ve done this, and every time I become a bit neater….but I still get oil everywhere. Again I was glad Victoria missed this mess! I also changed the oil in the transmission which I hadn’t done before.

I then had 2 repair failures: our small dishwasher had one of the buttons stop working. I managed to take it apart and find the circuit board….but it was glued down and I couldn’t get behind it to see where the button would go. No fix here we need a new one.

The second failure happened a week after Victoria returned. The boat’s freshwater pump that provides water to all of the taps in the boat stopped working!!! Being on a boat without running water is not as much fun. You cannot do dishes, you cannot wash your hands without using bottled water. Victoria eventually used a hose from shore so we had water at the sink which was a bit better but still this was a priority 1 issue.

I took this pump apart 4 or 5 times looking for the problem. I could now take one apart and reassemble it in my sleep. It is called a diaphram pump and they are used for pumping fresh water or chemicals in industry. I was very surprised when I took this apart.

The motor turns and pushes a number of small rubber pistons that pushes fluid around. I looked at all the little rubber parts. They looked fine but I cleaned them anyway. I think either the pressure switch was failing or their was something blocking the water around the pressure switch (the pump would run for a few seconds then stop without generating any pressure) but I couldn’t fix it. Just today we got a replacement pump and we have water again! Took 10 minutes to swap after I had the new pump. I will get a repair kit for the old pump so we have a backup in the future.

The month of October and November so far has been the nicest weather I remember having here. It is still summer during the day. It gets a bit colder at night and the days are shorter, but during the day it could be June. The tourists who picked late October for a cheap holiday really lucked out this year. I hope this weather continues!