Winterizing

Seas The Day is finally on the hard...

We stopped over at Hans Pedersen & Son's Marina the other day and found her in her cradle.

Today, I took the day off from work to meet up with Jim, our Yanmar guy who was going to service and winterize the diesel engine.  We have a 3 cylinder Yanmar (model 3YM30) that sits under the companionway stairs.  Basically today he checked it out after running in the first set of "hours" (they don't refer to "miles" on boats for some reason), and prepared it to hibernate for the winter.

He checked the valves, shaft alignment, then we started it up (I wasn't expecting that... we're on land). But the reason for that was we needed to flush the engine with fresh water (get all the salt out of the cooling system).  He then filled a bucket with biodegradable anti-freeze and ran the engine until that was all sucked into the innards, then finally he changed the oil.  It was cool to watch this take place and see some of the bits of the engine - though I'll probably never see it again.  (Yes, should we ever decide to take off across the seven seas, I'll need to learn a lot about diesel engines.  Right now I have a Yanmar guy and a BoatUS towing policy.  If the engine doesn't work, we sail and then call for a tow & repair.)

At the end, I took a few photos of Seas The Day's bottom.  There seems to be a "weird" (to me) discoloration & pitting on the lower half of the rudder and the leading edge of the wing keel.  So I sent a note off to the dealer to see what was up with that.

Seas The Day's cradle. Below, you can see barnacle growth on the propeller & zinc.

This is the pitting on the lower half of the rudder (above) and on the leading edge of the wing keel (below).

Hey, there are holes in our boat!  These (above) are water intake to flush the head (toilet) and grey water outlet from the head sink.  Those (below) are the macerator (toilet holding tank pump - "black water") outlet and the grey water outlet from the galley sink.

Above is the famous "speedometer" wheel (the thing that was changed in the video a few weeks ago). I spun it by hand and a bunch of dead creepy crawlies fell out.

Soon it will all be put to hibernate for the winter...