Okay, we only were able to put the registration sticker on one side because the marina has a car parked right next to the boat; too close to get the ladder in there. But, they'll move it soon. While we were up there, we removed the boat name and applied and extra one we had from last year. The fact that it was crooked always bothered us. At least now it's straight.
Next it was time to take a look at the zincs. We have one on the bottom at the end of what could be called our keel, a big one on the transom, two on each shaft and one on each trim tab. The only ones that showed even a little disintegration were the ones on the shafts. We could have squeezed another season out of them, but we decided to buy four new shaft zincs ($10 each) and install them.
The curtains that close off the open side of the shed were finally open so installing the zincs was a little easier. It's nice to have light in there again after that long winter.
The cutlass bearings felt nice and tight and it looks like we'll only have to touch up the back ablative bottom paint. Luckily, we have some left from last year.
We needed some stuff from the storage box in the engine space and while we were down there, we checked the coolant level in the engines' heat exchangers. All fine there, too.
The last task for Saturday was the one we weren't looking forward to and that was to change the fuel filters. For us, that means shifting the furniture around in the cabin, pulling up the carpet and opening a large hatch. Before we unscrewed the first filter, we staged the new ones upside down in their boxes, and filled them with fresh gas. We used a filter wrench to remove the old filters and put them upside down in those same boxes. We ran a film of motor oil around the filter gaskets before tightening them down.
No pictures here as we were trying not to spill any gas and we needed both hands for that.
We really wanted to see how the old filters looked since they have been in place for three seasons. That's a couple of thousand gallons of gas and with all of ethanol concerns, we really thought that they'd show some trapped material. But, no. After carefully pouring out the gas (both were full) there was not as much as a grain of sand in the bottoms of the filters. They looked brand new. Granted, we couldn't examine the filter elements themselves but they sure looked clean.
The boatyard was full of people and vehicles, almost to the point of not being able to drive out. We've noticed something about those vehicles each spring. Many of the owners of the bigger powerboats drive large turbo-diesel pickup trucks and sailboaters drive the smallest little economy sedans. We guess that tells you something.
Sunday: Taking down the bridge enclosure
This is another hateful job but we have to take the enclosure down so that we can clean and waterproof the top. Our enclosure is built so that the side curtains (all 12 of them) are fastened to the top, so they all have to come down before the Sunbrella top can be removed. We've done it many times before but all that practice doesn't seem to improve our speed. It took us about 30 minutes to get them all laid out in the cockpit on a bed of towels. We've attached a video, but to keep you all awake, we compressed that 30 minutes down to about 90 seconds.
Not that it should be news, but the Connecticut River has risen quite a lot. It has now gone above the well where they launch the boats and has begun to creep up into the yard. We've been through this many times and we don't think there will be much of a problem beyond slowing down the launching schedule a little. We shot some video of the water level and of Wayne, our boatyard manager, moving his crane up away from the river to make sure it doesn't end up in the river.
For you gearheads, the crane (it has pulled four engines from our boats over the years) is more than 45 years old. The reach with the Gib arm that you see in the video is 80 feet. The engine (a GM 6V53N diesel) has been rebuilt just once. Nice to see older equipment like that still operating.
Here's the video.
One other thing: You may see a commercial run before our video starts. We allowed YouTube to do this because it just might mean some income for us, although with our small viewership, that's not very likely. If it annoys you, just hit "skip ad."
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