Everything Grows Here

Posted on March 3, 2019 by Melissa

We’re growing barnacles on our hull. When we left San Carlos in December we had a brand new bottom job. Naturally we had hoped that this would see us through the year, at least. But we’re just ignorant that way; and also still accustomed to the colder waters of the Pacific Northwest, I guess. I mean, why else would we have what has turned out to be unrealistic expectations? Friends here in this anchorage with us left San Carlos with a new bottom job at about the same time as we did and they, too, have barnacle growth to attend to. Maybe that’s normal in these waters.

My hull scraping cutting board and suction cup handle. I have plans on how to make this cutting board work even better.

It’s not that there are big huge creatures attached to our precious hull, it’s that they are small and numerous and I know we cannot leave them to grow. So I find myself in my snorkel gear, earplugs firmly intact, using a flexible cutting board as a wide scraper, swimming along the side of the hull removing hard growth and attracting myriads of smaller fish who are pleased with the growing smorgasbord in the water. I was using a smaller putty knife but it doesn’t remove enough material at once. I’d be there until Christmas that way. I’m kind of ready to hire someone to do this for me, actually.

Such a clever fellow, blending in as he does. These iguanas live close to the marina and like the shrubs next to the walkway. I wish he’d let me give him a pat. He looks so nice and scaly and dry.

One of the many things about this lifestyle that has taken us a little by surprise, because we just didn’t think much about it, is how you have to constantly adjust to new environments. I don’t mean the usual ‘finding the grocery store here’, or ‘which place has the best tacos’. I mean the change in climate, water temperature, air temperature…all that stuff.

The difference between our lives here in Banderas Bay (because it feels like we live here now) and our life in the Sea of Cortez is profound. We are dealing with humidity, increasing heat, and we are enjoying the warmth of the water, which means we swim almost every day. It’s a whole different world. This, apparently, has exposed us to new and exciting organisms that, while invisible to the naked eye, find hospitable purchase to grow in our bodies. Everything seems to grow here with wild abandon.

Here are our two lessons we’ve learned the hard way so far: always clean your ears out with hydrogen peroxide after swimming, and always wear a full mask that covers your nose when swimming. In other words, keep the salt water out of your orifices. Who knew? Well, I guess we do now.

We had been here about 2 weeks when Mike began to feel ill. He actually had a fever, which is pretty rare for him. Lethargic and with a painful jaw on one side he wondered about an infected tooth, but none of his teeth hurt. I wondered about a sinus infection, based on my considerable experience with those. He felt like crap and slept a great deal.

Giving him the once over I discovered increased blood pressure for him, and an increased pulse. Hmmmm. No bueno. I decided to take a look in his ears. In what turned out to be a prescient move, I had invested in a cheap Dr. Mom otoscope when we were back in the states. It was an impluse purchase that I felt would come in handy. I checked the ears and found, to my horror, that he had what appeared to be a bulging, red and purple weepy area on the ear canal. It was not behind the ear drum, but it was definitely not something that belonged anywhere on a human body. Something alien was in my beloved’s ear. This meant a definite trip to the doctor. Immediately.

There are two places to see a doc here. One has an office attached to the pharmacy in town. I understand the fee there is extremely reasonable (read: cheap) and you can get your prescriptions filled right there. The other is a 24 hour clinic that is more focused on the tourists in the area and is quite a bit more expensive. We went by the pharmacy doc’s place first, but he was out to lunch and Mike felt too ill to wait for him in what was turning out to be a very warm, humid day. He was fading fast. We went to the emergency clinic. Mike was seen immediately.

Lots of water here, making a good place to see this painted turtle. There were about 5 of them right there. He’s a good sized turtle.

About 100$ later the doctor had given him antibiotics and some steroid drops for his ear and told him that an organism had found its way under the skin probably due to some tiny scratch in the ear canal. It had created an ulcer. He said it happens frequently and we should wash our ears out with hydrogen peroxide on a regular basis, and especially after swimming. Huh. We aren’t in Washington State anymore, I guess. Although you could never have paid me to swim up there.

The antibiotics helped over time and I kept a close eye on that ear, checking it everyday. It took about 11 days for the thing to heal enough that it didn’t look like an open wound. We feel like we were lucky to catch this because his ear didn’t hurt and it was only because his jaw was hurting that I thought to look in the ear. The doctor made it clear that had we waited much longer, this would have been a serious infection and much more difficult to treat. Damn. Way to put the fear of the gods into us.

I don’t know what this little guy is, but he was clearly too pretty to swat and made no trouble.

So Mike is fine and back to swimming and practicing standing up on the paddle board. Thank goodness for good medical care that is affordable. In the states, we probably would have avoided going to the doctor longer due to cost. The freedom of not having to worry about the financial implications of treatment is considerable.

Soon as he was well, I got sick. What?? I feel sure that my bottom-cleaning antics are to blame because I made an unwise decision and wore swim goggles, which do not cover your nose, rather than my full face mask. Even as I was sideways against the hull with organism debris all around me, that little voice of wisdom in the back of my head was telling me this was not a great idea, that I needed to keep the salt water/debris out of my nose better than this; that keeping air pressure in my nose wasn’t cutting the mustard. I hate when that little voice is right AFTER the fact. I got a nasty sinus infection, which I fortunately had antibiotics for on board the boat. I’m better and back to swimming (WITH my face mask, thank you very much), but between Mike’s illness and mine, we’ve been kind of growing attached to La Cruz. It’s not a bad place to be stuck, but I’m wondering if we need to check our own bodies for barnacles, we’ve been here so long.

I finally found my piece of Huichol art. I’m kind of in love with it. That’s the ocean Goddess on the right side.

One of the good things about being in a place too long is you make more connections with the people who are here. And that leads to some opportunities. In our last post we talked about how we realized we were looking at inflatable dinghies with longing. (Well, it wasn’t actually the dinghy we wanted, it was the ability to move faster and with more power. Frankly if we could do that with our Pudgy we’d be happy.) But anyhow, if you are following us on Facebook you’ll already know that very shortly after that post Mike was chatting with a guy at the dinghy dock and somehow it came up that we were kind of thinking we needed to be looking at other dinghies. People always ask about our Pudgy and admire her, so these conversations about dinghies are common. This guy had a dinghy he was selling for 100$ but it was deflated on his foredeck. His woman was seriously ready for it to be gone because it was taking up space. He was feeling the pressure.

Mike took a look at it but was pretty unimpressed. It looked like it had seen way better days and as a rule, we believe you get what you pay for, although we are completely open to gifts from the Universe, as it were. While not really interested in the dinghy, Mike kind of felt for the guy and realized he was under pressure from the wife. So he offered to come the next morning during the calm water time to help the dude just get the thing off the deck, get it in the water; just cruisers helping other cruisers. That would at least move the situation along and take the sting out of his complete disinterest in moving forward with that particular dinghy.

That afternoon the guy pulled the dinghy up to our boat and said, ‘Here, give it a try. Don’t worry about paying me. Just see if you can use it.’. Well… OK. I guess that was a bit of a surprise, but why not?

A sad looking vessel, to be sure. And filthy.

It was a sad looking boat, let me tell you. Filthy, no seats; it was like my first bicycle that I pulled out of the trash at the tender age of 5. It only needed everything to be just perfect. Still, it was floating, it had a fiberglass double floor with a drain, it was hypalon (not PVC), and it was the right size. Having invested nothing, we had nothing to lose by trying it out. It was made by Avon, which has a really good reputation for lasting decades if cared for. We went down the research hole on the interwebs and determined that based on what we found, and on the feedback I had received on the Women Who Sail forum, we would see if we could save this apparently worthy dinghy. Hey, if you know S/V Rubicon, this used to be their tender long ago.

We soon found a leak on one side, so that would need fixing. We took it in to the marina and talked to Horatio, the local dinghy repair chap. He looked it over and came up with a plan to fix that leak, then we could determine if there might be more, smaller leaks that would show up after this one was fixed. He said after he fixed the leak, we should use it like that for awhile and see whether it held air and if we liked it before spending more money on restoring it further. I liked this guy. He was clearly looking out for our interests as much as his own and I felt he was honest about what he could do for us. He didn’t want to see us invest a lot of money in a dinghy that turned out to be a poor investment. If we decide to keep it, he can replace all the seams for us. It also needs a new rubrail, but we will have to get that from the states.

Checking the bottom.

So we played with it a bit and we enjoyed how big and comfortable it was. We put the Octopus engine on the thing and even though our engine is a 2.5 hp baby, it pushed that dinghy along much faster than the heavier Pudgy can go. It cut our time to get to the dock by at least a third. It’s a way wetter ride, though. Maybe with a larger engine that can get it up on a better plane, the ride would be a little drier. But inflatables have a reputation for being wet, something we had not appreciated about our Pudgy as much as we should.

Mike, testing the speed. See how his hair blows in the wind? What a feeling.

At this point we are not ready to give up the Pudgy, but we’ve got Andrew and Jill (check out their cute blog) coming to spend time on the boat in September and if we are lucky Claire and Dan may make an appearance this spring. This dinghy will be grand when they are here. That will give us enough time to use it and see if we want to invest in a larger engine with this dink, or if we need to look at other inflatables once we get to the states. Storage is the only issue, but what else is new? We think we have a plan but we haven’t tried it yet. I mean, we’re already well into the Beverly Hillbillies vibe on our cabin top, so what do we have to lose? We’ll see.

Our current look, minus the shotgun, of course.

While we had planned to spend the summer on board, once more that is not happening. We need to go to Tennessee to visit Mike’s family. And since we’ll be in the states we will go see my family as well. We plan to get our car in San Carlos, pray it still runs, and drive that to Tennessee where we will stay for a few weeks. We’ll then need to drive the car back down to the southwest and store it somewhere, probably near Tuscon I’m guessing, so we can fly home to Washington. We will leave the boat here in Banderas Bay at Paradise Village Marina. It’s a good hurricane hole.

We think we are almost ready to go exploring now but I hesitate to say that out loud. We plan to spend a few days in Paradise Village Marina before we leave as they have potable water. Have I mentioned here that a water maker is high on our list of requirements for going further with this whole cruising gig? Hey, mentioning the dinghy paid off in spades, even though that guy has never heard of this blog. I have nothing to lose by throwing it out there that we need a water maker, especially for when 4 of us are aboard. Bring it, Universe. Bring it.

S/V Galapagos, standing by on channel 22a.

We’re in Hot Water!

Posted on January 23, 2019 by Michael

When we first took over Galapagos, Melissa and I felt as if we had just bought the Queen Mary. Stepping up from our sweet Cal 34, Moonrise to big ‘ol Galapagos was intimidating and exciting all at once. To paraphrase Bernadette Peters in The Jerk, It isn’t just about the waterline, its all the stuff.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfug0oN1Jt8[/embedyt]

Of all the stuff that came with Galapagos, nothing could seem as luxurious as a hot water heater. Hot water from the tap? Just like home? What a time to be alive!

It wasn’t hard to slide into such decadence and when I began to re-plumb the whole boat with PEX tubing and new faucets, I knew that I wanted to update the old water heater and get it out of the engine room. So in January of 2017 after much perseverating, measuring and no doubt boring Melissa to tears with technical minutia, I bought an IsoTemp SPA 15 Marine water heater.

For the uninitiated, marine water heaters have an electric heating element, just like the units you have at home. But they also have a small heat exchanger that connects to the cooling system on the boat’s engine. That means you can have hot water just by running the engine for half an hour. The SPA 15 is tiny, only 4 gallons, but that is more than enough for Melissa and I to enjoy showers, wash dishes, and do all the usual domestic chores that can make living aboard a sailboat seem almost normal.

The main reason I chose this particular water heater was that it could fit, just, beneath the sole of the aft cabin. Getting the water heater off a shelf in the engine room not only freed up space for storage there, it placed a fairly heavy container down low, where heavy things should be on a boat. This allowed me to secure it in place; confident that it would stay there in the event of rough weather or, heaven forfend, a rollover. It also simplifies the design and use of the the engine’s cooling system with the heat exchanger since no external header tank for coolant is required.

This area beneath the aft cabin sole made sense as the center of our water system. There was room to locate the water heater, water pump and a simple manifold for the hot and cold water. The PEX tubing and fittings have proven to be quite reliable and really easy to use and modify.

For almost two years we have enjoyed what would have been an unheard of luxury when we first started sailing. In fact we may have grown a little complacent about having hot water and I suspect that Galapagos, like most boats, can sense when her owners are taking her, and her stuff, for granted.

In hindsight I shouldn’t have been too surprised when one night, lying in my bunk, I heard the water pump come on for half a second. Three minutes later, the pump bumped on again. Checking the faucets on the boat yielded nothing. Finally, pulling up the sole in our aft cabin, I could see a small trickle of water. Just an innocent little trickle. It could be anything. A loose PEX fitting, probably. In two years of cruising with lots of bumpy weather, things are bound to jar loose. I would have this fixed in no time I thought.

Sadly, all the easy things were ruled out and I could now see that the water was coming from under the water heater. If I wanted to learn anything more or have any hope of fixing this leak I would have to remove the tank from my super snug location under the cabin sole. I began to question the wisdom of locating the water heater there and was dreading the process of disassembling the bracing and fittings.

But bitching and moaning wasn’t going to stop the leak. And if I didn’t stop the leak we would lose precious water and, quelle horreur!, Melissa wouldn’t be able to have a hot shower. That was a future too smelly to contemplate for long. Onto my belly I slithered and an hour or so later, I had the tank out. It got a lot easier after I had reinstalled and removed the tank a few times as I tried and failed to understand where the water was actually coming from.

The water tank removed and in the shop. In trying to locate the leak, I had thought something obvious might reveal itself without too much effort. I filled the tank with water and looked for air bubbles. No such luck.

This is the heating element and the associated controls that I removed while trying to locate the leak. The electric heater element is mounted through a plate that has a rubber gasket that acts as a seal on the tank. In conferring with the manufacturer, the gasket was mentioned as a point of failure and replacement gaskets are sold on the IsoTemp site.

After disassembling the tank’s electrics and eliminating the rubber gasket, a failure point suggested by the manufacturer, I had nothing left but the stainless steel tank itself. As you can see in the photos, the SPA tanks are encased in a hard plastic case with a foam insulation. Since I really had nothing to lose, I carefully cut the outer plastic casing and started cutting away the foam insulation so that I could see the steel tank.

Here you can see that I am well and truly committed to finding this leak. By removing a hard plastic band from the middle of the tank, I could remove the bottom half of the cover. I then had to cut away the foam insulation that covered the steel tank. At the bottom, you can see the pin hole leak.

But even with the steel exposed and the tank full of water, I couldn’t find the leak. No, the tank had to be under pressure. Fortunately I was able to pressurize the tank without having to put it back under the sole by using some spare PEX tubing, fittings and a hose bib in the engine room. Voila! the leak finally revealed itself. I had suspected that the weld had somehow failed but as the photos show, the pinhole leak is actually a little above the weld. It is troubling that the tank failed after almost exactly two years and we are wondering if another leak will develop at some point in the future.

Finally!

In researching how best to repair the tank, a few of options were presented. Some people have had good luck with JB Weld and if we were far away from services, we would have taken the epoxy repair approach. Melissa has never seen a problem that couldn’t be solved with epoxy and was ready to go that route.

But since we were only a short dinghy ride and walk from several welders, I thought it might be a more durable repair to just have the pinhole spot welded. Walking down the streets of La Paz, carrying my leaky, disassembled water heater, I knew that I had arrived as a cruiser. I also felt a bit like a local; no self respecting Mexican would throw away a perfectly good water heater just because it had a leak. Everything can be repaired and made useful again.

A short walk from Marina de la Paz I approached the men at Taller de Soladura el Chicote (Chicote’s Welding shop) and pointed to my little leak. One of the men took my tank and soon a few other guys were gathered round including a very old man that did not do or say much but seemed to have some position of authority in the business. Was he the elder Chicote? One of the guys did a bit of grinding, selected a welding rod and took my tank over to the welding station. The welding machine ran for all of five seconds and my pinhole leak was no more. Total cost: 150 pesos. About 7.50 USD. The shop seemed pretty busy but I think my job was so small they just took care of it while I waited. It took all of ten minutes and I was schlepping my tank back down to the dinghy.

The guys at Taller de Soladura el Chicote look over the tank. It was a quick, easy repair for them.

Once back on the boat, I filled the tank and put it under pressure again to see that the weld was holding. Huzzah! No leak. I reassembled the plastic case as best I could and sprayed expanding foam inside to provide a bit of insulation and to give the bracing and mounting hardware something to work against. It was a glorious site seeing the tank installed and holding water pressure. Let’s hope we get many more hot showers out of this tank.

A phrase that seems to pop up in our conversations chez Galapagos is “In for a penny, in for a pound”. There were moments in this project that made me question how much further down the rabbit hole I really wanted to go. Many of our adventures keeping our boat in good repair seem to involve a decision to push on, despite the evidence that we are in over our heads. But one of the luxuries of this lifestyle is an abundance of time. Time to read, enjoy the beauty of the world around us and time to expend ridiculous efforts where normal people would have just pulled out a credit card and bought a new water heater.

Once again, Melissa and I have proven to be abnormal. What’s the most ridiculous repair you’ve done on your boat?

Dirty Diesel Done Cheap

Posted on January 16, 2019 by Michael

In early December we crossed the Sea of Cortez from San Carlos/Guaymas to Bahia Concepción. Finally, we were away from the boatyard and all the tasks that come with getting a boat ready to launch.

After some initial uncomfortable beam seas, Melissa and I enjoyed a fairly pleasant crossing with light winds. We had the headsail out and the engine running, making perhaps six knots. Evening was fast approaching and we knew that we would be anchoring at night. No one likes to anchor in the dark but we had anchored in Bahia Santo Domingo a few times before and we had our GPS tracks to follow and permit safe entry into the bay.

A few miles out from Punta Concepción The engine slowed to an idle and then just died. I furrowed my brow. Melissa looked at me, waiting for an explanation or at least some calm assurance that this was perfectly normal behavior.

“WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!” I shouted, pulling at my hair. I may have wet myself a little.

No, I did not do that.

Melissa and I swung into action taking the roles we have perfected over years of sadly similar mishaps. I furrow my brow, concoct an uninformed theory on what just happened and then go below to figure things out. Meanwhile, Melissa works out a strategy to keep the boat safe or keep us moving in the direction we wanted to go. That is how we have handled all previous crises. Just check out Badda-Bing-Badda-Boom or How I Spent My Summer Vacation for more examples.

The fuel filter system I installed on Galapagos almost five years ago. The two filters and the fuel valve below them allows me to change filters quickly if one becomes clogged. An electric fuel pump, lower left, pulls fuel from the tank.

So, my ill informed theory on why the engine died was that the fuel filter was clogged with some algae that had blossomed in our fuel tank during the hot Mexican summer in the boat yard. Common wisdom has it that you should keep your diesel fuel tanks full when placing your boat in storage. This prevents water from condensing in the tanks as the hot, humid air cools in the evening. This moisture collects at the bottom of the tank and forms a warm and inviting location for a kind of algae that loves to munch on diesel fuel. Fuel systems that are heavily infected by “the bug” can quickly clog their filters, especially if that fuel is agitated by bouncy seas or heavy weather. I only had my tanks half full when we put Galapagos away back in June and I secretly worried that this might give me grief at some point.

Theory in hand, I went below and switched the primary filter from number two to number one. I looked at the bowls of both filters and did not see any water but I was troubled by a little sediment that had settled at the bottom of the bowls. Had we been infected by the dreaded bug?

I asked Melissa to try the engine and it started right up. Theory validated! I explained my concerns to Melissa. We would have to keep an eye on the filters but we could proceed to our anchorage safely.

This little box allowed me to install a small relay to run the electric fuel pump when the ignition switch is turned on. I also installed a manual switch to run the pump in the engine room when I am replacing the filters. The switch in the lower center part of the box is for the Balmar Alternator.

After about ten minutes, my brow was slowly unfurrowing when the engine died a second time. My theory was starting to unravel; The second filter couldn’t be that clogged that quickly, could it? And something else was bothering me. Something was missing when I had been down in the engine room but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Some noise… a clicking sound.

With the boat quiet, I went below again. When I had installed the engine, I added an electric fuel pump to pull fuel up from the tanks. Diesel engines are fitted with small mechanical pumps but if the engine is too far above the fuel tank a small electric pump is used to provide additional pressure. This little pump runs whenever the ignition switch is turned on and its familiar little clicking noise was what I was missing.

In a few moments, I found the problem. A connector inside my little control box had worked its way loose. A minute after fixing this issue, we restarted the engine again and were on our way. As we lay at anchor later that evening, I reflected on the pleasure of knowing Galapagos so well that we can hear and feel when things are working well and when something is amiss. Having installed, replaced or at least touched every part of this boat, Melissa and I have a lot of confidence in our abilities to keep her running smoothly.

But visions of algae kept clogging my brain. The fuel filters weren’t dirty yet, but maybe I should have a look in my tank. How old were those filters anyway? Four, five years? They had about 500 hours of run time on them which meant they should be replaced. Pretty soon, I had worked my self into frenzy, certain that if we didn’t act soon, the engine could quit at any moment and maybe even be damaged because I was too lazy to check my fuel.

Melissa documents the process with her Iphone. Some people post pictures of their lunch, or cute cats. We post pictures of hydrocarbon eating algae.

And so once we were settled in La Paz, Melissa and I began to explore the wonders of our diesel fuel tank. Since, as usual, we didn’t know what the hell we were doing, we took an incremental approach. I used a small pump that attaches to our ever handy Ryobi cordless drill and pulled a sample of fuel from a hole located on our inspection port. Looking back, I think all this sampling and filtering was mostly an excuse to delay the inevitable. It certainly gave me time to accept my fate and think about how to pull 40 gallons of dirty diesel from the tanks with as little drama as possible.

Pulled a small sample of fuel before we went too crazy; just to see if there was crud in the tank. Spoiler alert: there was crud in the tank.

Michael examines the fuel sample in his laboratory.

We used a coffee filter to filter out the debris. At this stage we were still in denial about how dirty the tank really was.

With proof in our jar that there was stuff floating around in the fuel, we began to think of how to clean this fuel. At this point, we did not have enough containers to suck the fuel out and store it elsewhere so we could have good look at the bottom and walls of the tank. So we just used our hand drill pump and Baja filter and drained the freshly filtered fuel back into the tank. We did this for a couple of hours and the stuff we saw captured by our filter would curl your injectors.

If you don’t like the smell of diesel, stay out of the kitchen. The access plate to our tank is right in front of the galley sink. That means just about all other boat activities stop while we attend to the fuel. The metal cylinder is called a Baja filter and it contains three screens which provide progressively finer filtration.

Very shortly after beginning to filter our fuel, we sucked up this thing. Sure looks like pond scum to me. The white piece looks like silicone sealant of some sort. After seeing this, we knew we had to empty and clean the tank.

We were getting so much debris from from filtering the fuel that our Baja filters were clogging up quickly. Melissa had some No-See-Um netting that we used as the first filter. This netting is finer than mosquito netting and worked great.

After this initial effort of filtering fuel back into the tank, We were now solidly convinced that a more comprehensive cleaning would need to take place. That meant fuel storage and so our search for inexpensive fuel containers began. Just like the good ol’ U.S. of A, if you put the word “Marine” or “Boat” on a product in Mexico, it is magically much more valuable and therefore expensive. Fuel cans at the nearby chandleries were about 800 pesos (40 USD) each We needed six containers. You can guess that we took a pass on spending 240 dollars on this project, however nice these fuel cans might be.

Instead we went to the Home Depot in two trips and bought six 20 litre fuel cans for 71 pesos (3.50 USD) each. Now it is true that these cans are not as rugged as the nice containers at Lopez Marine. They are also not yellow and I really wanted yellow because everyone knows that yellow cans are for diesel. And we had to schlep These cans back on a collectivo while being warily eyed by concerned Mexican ladies. But at 71 pesos each, I am willing to flaunt social nicieties and use red instead of yellow. We sold half of these containers after this project.

Our Collection of fuel cans used to hold the diesel we pulled from the tanks. The dark red cans we bought from Home Depot here in La Paz for this purpose. With all of our cans and buckets, we had 40 gallons of storage available. After the tank was as clean as we could make it, We used our Baja filter and a fuel siphon to pour the fuel back into the tank. In this way, the fuel got filtered twice.

As we filled container after container with diesel, we could begin to see the bottom of the tank. I used a scotch bright pad to scrub the bottom and sides while there was still some fuel in the tank to loosen any reachable grunge and then pump it out. While we were getting some solids during the whole process, we never saw the horrifying clumps of goo like we did at the beginning of this project. I should also add that I had added Star Tron Tank cleaner to the fuel and let it slosh around in there for a day or so to help loosen the crud from the the tank walls. I have been using the Star Tron Enzyme Fuel Treatemnet on Galapagos since we bought her.

Michael trying to look for bits of grunge to wipe up. We were both stiff from being crouched over this hole for hours.

After emptying most of the fuel from the tank, we could finally see this little sump area where the dip tube stands. This part was very difficult access and we were disappointed that we couldn’t clean it as well as other parts of the tank.

Using a length of Pex tubing left over from re-plumbing the boat, I was able to reach most of the tank’s corners where debris likes to collect and suck it up.

Here you can see the baffle inside the tank and the blue tubing I used as part of our vacuuming system.

The walls of the baffle look grungy but wiping with a rag did not yield much dirt. You can never achieve perfection with a project like this.

After pulling 40 gallons of fuel out of the tank and cleaning it as best we could, we were ready to put the fuel back in the tank. Using our Baja filter again, we siphoned the fuel from our fuel cans back into the tank. We also used those same containers to buy more fuel from a nearby Pemex station and ferry it to the boat. Right now we have about 80 gallons of fuel aboard, enough to last us a few months. Being able to refuel the boat in this way gives us greater flexibiltiy and we can take our time and filter the fuel without feeling rushed at the fuel dock.

This is our Baja Filter. The tall cylinder holds the three filters you see on the left. The filters provide progressively greater filtration in the order shown. In practice, that green filter on the far left gets almost all of the abuse and Melissa had to clean it with soapy water and a brush more than once.

Along with our fuel polishing project, I changed the Racor primary fuel filters, and engine’s secondary filter. At this point I think we are protecting our precious Beta Marine engine better than most boats. We have never had the engine shut down because of a clogged filter and, Lord willing, we never will.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30

Little Cunning Plan

A plan so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Everything Grows Here

We’re in Hot Water!

Dirty Diesel Done Cheap