Maintenance? Hey, I can do that

By Tom Snyder
I have always assumed that I am not as thorough a person as I could be. Look, everybody has an area of self-doubt, and that is mine; along with a terrible visual sense (red-green deficient), a hellacious memory (I forget what was supposed to go in these parentheses) and supernatural laziness (I tell people that I don’t have tools so I won’t have to fix sash weights, etc.)

Having a boat with passengers who entrust their lives to me has suggested an opportunity to improve myself. It came to me over the winter while reading an article about boat maintenance. The author of this piece was obviously a good, reliable person with excellent memory, superb work habits, and let’s throw in good color sense, too. His exact statement that would change my life was this: “Anyone who calls themselves an ocean cruiser should be able to repair and maintain every system on his or her boat.”

Wow! This sentence was perfectly designed to throw a self-loather into despair. Several things came immediately to mind that I probably can’t repair – my radar antenna motor bearings; my refrigeration compressor governor; the blades on my macerator; the buffering circuitry on the motherboard of my chart plotter. So I hate myself. Or I did, until I decided to become the kind of guy who knows how to maintain every single system on his boat.

I did it and you can do this too! It’s all right there in the manuals for all of those things you have installed on your boat. Let’s start with something easy. Look under “maintenance” in the booklet that came with your ship’s barometer. You will find a handful of things that you must do once a month, probably involving warm soapy water, a soft cloth, acetone, electrolysis inhibitors, and a pocket compressed-air tool. In this example, just a few hours a month and you will satisfy the manufacturer’s maintenance recommendations. Then you will be ready to go on to the next system, say, the pump in your head.

For head pump maintenance, simply remove all of the O-rings located anywhere from the thru-hull valve to the head itself to the waste storage tank. There should be 80 O-rings if you have been thorough. Be certain not to touch them, as the oil from your fingers may depress the nylon’s natural resilience. Soak all of the rings in a bath of canola oil for 24 hours, but, of course, keep them from settling to the bottom of the bath. Rings that settle to the bottom may lose their natural resilience. Later, when returning the O-rings to the system, try not to breathe on them. That’s right – natural resilience issues. Here’s another tip: Your manual will tell you to perform this maintenance every two weeks, but you can probably get away with a monthly canola bath. Shhh. You didn’t hear it from me.

Next, let’s spend a few hours on routine maintenance of your bilge pump. This should be done just prior to leaving the mooring every time you sail. Essentially, you will be undoing the windings on the electric motor of your bilge pump to check for short circuits. The trick is to lay out the approximately four miles of unwound wire in such a way that it does not cross over itself. Don’t worry – it gets easier each time. Next, using a magnifying glass inspect the wire for areas where the insulating lacquer has worn away. Mark any trouble spots with a length of rotted Italian marlin. You will return later to paint on a fresh coat of lacquer where needed.

I read an account of a captain who jumped aboard his boat, gassed it up and cast off for a distant harbor without unwinding the bilge pump motor as part of a pre-cruise check. When his boat was sitting on the bottom of Casco Bay, hopefully he realized that a short circuit is everyone’s problem. And what if an important state senator had been aboard? It is simply not worth playing bilge-winding roulette. (Thankfully there was no senator involved in this case.)

Some kinds of maintenance need be addressed only once a season. Your depth sounder will serve as a good example. The dreary month of March, when you believe that summer will never arrive, is a great time to unsolder all of the components on the controller card of your depth sounder sending unit. The trick here is to get your soldering iron extremely hot so that the component stems do not break as you tease them off the board. Be careful that your soldering iron is not extremely hot as you will likely damage heat-sensitive components. Obviously some judgment is required.

When all of the pieces have been removed, examine them under a powerful infrared light source to check for “boiling-off blisters.” They will look like craters with a smallish ridge across the center. If you spot such a blister, order a replacement. By the way, a crater with a largish ridge across the center can be safely ignored.

I cannot tell you how much better I have felt about myself since giving up my regular job to perform routine maintenance on my boat. What a wonderful way to spend all of one’s time. My honest feeling is that anyone who calls themselves an ocean cruiser should be able to repair and maintain every device on his or her boat. It’s just common sense.

Tom Snyder sails his Island Packet 350, Blue Moon, out of Hingham, Mass., and Peaks Island, Maine.