Fall round-up

It's been a while since I updated, and since we're pretty close to the end of the season, I thought I'd wrap up what's been done and what the current issues are and what expectations have and haven't been met.

• The pump out hose replacement got completed.  It was a chore getting the old hose off the fittings -- a combination of scraping with an old knife and cutting the spiral wire was required, essentially cutting the hose loose.  The old hose had visible dry rot cracking, which I'm hoping the toilet-to-tank hose does NOT have as that hose will be very, very difficult to replace considering its routing.  The new hose is vastly superior in flexibility and ease of use and the first test of pump out was a success.|
  
• The latest "big" problem is the asymmetrical fuel consumption between port and starboard engines.  The starboard engine is consuming 50% more fuel than port, confirmed by a second full fueling that showed 61.5 gallons added starboard, and 41.3 gallons port.
  
  I made a service call to the nearby marine mechanics who couldn't provide an explanation.  They didn't put more than an hour into it, but they were able to exclude any problems associated with leakage or engine malfunction codes from the engine computer.  I don't have an obvious engine malfunction that's causing this problem, but I don't have a very good theory as to why its happening.
  
  The leading contender I have is the deferred outdrive maintenance (mild dings in props and skegs) leading to inefficient prop loading.  The steering wheel is not centered when running straight, either, and this could be evidence of this as well in addition to contributing to greater starboard engine load (or could just be a cosmetic misalignment between the wheel position and the steering mechanism caused by cable stretching).   I plan to get detailed photos of the outdrives and props at haul out and have that work done, steering alignment checked to see if it has any effect, but probably none of it will be done until spring.
  
• The galley fridge failed about a month after installing it.  I replaced it with the same model against my better judgement, but there just weren't many choices easily available or known to fit the cabinetry or cabin entry.   We had a brief panic 3 weeks ago when it appeared to stop working *again*, but we're not sure what caused it as the cockpit fridge was partially defrosted.  The new fridge returned to normal function, so hopefully it will continue working.
  
• Never did any of my battery monitoring projects.  A lot of my labor and money bandwidth went into fixing broken items (vacuflush pump, pumpout hose, refrigerator, new TV).  I'd also call the mystery of fishing wire to the helm a big part of it.   Until we start overnighting on the lake, our use cases seem to make it less useful.
  
• Never overnighted on the lake itself.  I feel somewhat disappointed by this, but it's easy to see why we didn't.  One, the dog.  If the dog is with us, he has to have access to shore for potty breaks.  Two, the slip gives us power for air conditioning.  We could run the generator for that, but it's noisier than we expected and probably not a great idea overnight.  Three, there's a certain convenience to access to land -- groceries, restaurants, etc.
  
• Never got updates maps for the navigation system.  The local "marine electronics expert" has been frustrating to deal with -- hard to get ahold of and worse, hard to talk to.  Doesn't give me options I want and does a bad job explaining the difference between products.

Out of the toilet, into the bilge

If it's not one thing it's another.   During an otherwise uneventful Saturday cruise I began noticing sewage odor.  I kind of thought it was the result of not using the blue formaldehyde deodorant at pump out (I had ordered the sewage dissolving kind from Amazon and didn't apply it until that same Saturday).

Once everyone was off the boat, though, I got the ugly reality -- the septic tank had filled and had discharged into the bilge (I'm not sure how just yet).

I came back early the next morning and brought the boat to the gas/pumpout dock and found out what I had kind of suspected -- my previous 2 pump outs didn't actually pump anything out.  The pump out is drawing air, you can hear it hiss as it tries.  I pulled the fitting normally for the macerator discharge and we managed to get the pumpout hose into the tank itself and drew out about half so it's not totally full.

So the hose between septic tank and pumpout needs to be replaced.  The challenge here is access to the back of the pump out fitting on the hull.  The hose snakes up behind a bulkhead over the port gas tank, so it's not reachable at all from the engine room.

My first idea was to pull the hull fitting and pull the hose out, but after talking with Bob at Bayside Marine that sounds like a non-starter.  The cutout is likely no larger than the fitting barb (about 1.5", the ID of the hose), meaning neither the hose nor the hose clamps would clear the opening.

After looking at pictures, it appears the fitting is behind the wet bar.  The hope right now is that there is an access panel behind some part of the cockpit wet bar setup, either behind the garbage cabinet or behind the fridge that will allow access to the hull and this fitting to disconnect the hose.

If I can get access through there, it should be doable.  If not, off to the boat yard it goes for repairs, which include a variety of options including widening the cutout with some kind of access panel with the fitting over it or possibly relocating it with a new hull fitting.

Of course we're not out of the woods yet with a new hose alone.  Even if that solves the pumpout issue, I'm worried the septic tank itself is compromised somehow via ovepressure, because I don't have a great explanation as to where all the sewage came from.  Leaking from fittings alone doesn't explain it in my mind, so I think there will have to be some post-hose testing with food coloring to check for leaking.

Update:  7/12/2016

I went out Monday and indeed there is an access panel behind the cockpit fridge that allows access to the pumpout fitting and hose.

I reviewed the hose choices and went with Raritan SaniFlex, and I should have a 10' length arriving tomorrow.  I also stopped by West Marine and bought new stainless hose clamps (4) for clamping the hose to the fittings.  I was also cursed into buying the extremely overpriced Sealand vent filter from West Marine -- I've surely fouled the AirForce knockoff I bought from Amazon and Amazon was out of stock until August.  But I plan to rehab the AirForce as a backup, and I wish I had kept the one I tossed when I rebuilt the vacuum pump.

The other good news is there was no new sign of leakage, almost no odor in the bilge (the slightest trace, which I assume is just because the whole thing wasn't fully washed) and a test flush of the head didn't produce any leaks and did produce proper pumping action.

I suspect the replacement task will be putzy, but not hard in any sense.  As I see the biggest wildcard will be removing the old hose from fittings and the boat and getting the just right length of new hose.  I'm not sure how exactly to cut it, I think I will need to use a hacksaw.

Generating some anxiety

One of the desired features I wanted in a boat was a generator -- it makes long anchorages more practical from a power perspective and provides power for higher power accessories like air conditioning and normal 110 volt appliances.

We got lucky and our 310DA has a generator, a Kohler 5ECD, but it didn't come with the generator noise shield and we're finding it to be louder than we'd like.  From what I can tell, the noise is actually engine running noise and not exhaust noise.  The noise from the exhaust is muffled by the "wet" exhaust system which mixes exhaust gasses and raw cooling water and is generally acceptable.

From what I've been able to determine, there's two solutions.  One is an aftermarket sound shield, a custom-sized "soft" frame-based structure that surrounds the generator and muffles the noise.  The other is the Kohler OEM sound shield.

The aftermarket solution is $1250 plus my labor to install it.  It has a number of challenges, mostly correctly marking the openings necessary to accommodate the inputs and outputs and then the challenge of mounting it.  The manufacturer also says the generator should be mounted on a separate base to effectively isolate noise.  While there is a pan underneath mine, I don't think it's mounted on any separate mounting point.

(As an aside, I often find myself wishing I had photos of these things when I don't, and think to myself I need to just take a 5 minute detailed video of the engine room, slowly panning over everything.  This way I will get at least a glimpse of something I'm thinking about if not a decent still I can extract.)

As it happens, the OEM sound shield is still available from Kohler but it's extremely expensive, over $2000 and probably half that to retrofit it to the boat.

Finally done fixing?

Are we finally done fixing?

The new fridge went into the cabin last weekend.  It was pretty simple and straightforward, with the most complex part finding which orgami-like orientation would get it through the cabin door.  It fit, but I mean barely.

It also fit the cabinet opening...kind of.  Width and height wise it was a perfect fit, however it's "too deep" by about an inch.  The fridge ships with flanges meant to secure it to the cabin opening (the parts saved from the old fridge were not needed), and these stick out about an inch, maybe a little less.  I just used longer screws to secure it for now.  I will probably make some kind of trim pieces to fill in the gaps.

What's annoying about this is that there doesn't seem to be a standard for marine appliance sizes.  The old fridge (Norcold DE0051) had a sloped bit at the back of it, and it's like Sea Ray designed the cabinet to fit the fridge, taking into account the slope, as if all fridges ever made would have this kind of unusual shape.  It'd be nice if Norcold recognized this kind of variation and made the flanges adjustable in some way front-rear to take into account variations in depth.

Anyway, at this point EVERYTHING in the boat works, with the caveat that we haven't used the hot water heater and my son broke the coffee maker carafe.  How long will this last?

Anyway, now I can move on to either just using the boat or tackling some other more minor items.

• Replacing the factory CO detector.  It's expired, and while I have two home models in the boat, the factory one needs to be replaced to be legally compliant and for general good sense.  The cover comes off easily, but's not obvious how the rest of it is removed.  No visible screws or attachments.
• Need to get the all-around light fixture bulb replaced with an LED so we don't drain the battery if we anchor out all night.  This will require a ladder or collapsing the bimini to get to it, or maybe both.
• The stereo needs some investigation.  Previous owners added some weird dimmer control that does some weird fading which I think has altered the stereo output, and a side effect is that aux in doesn't play in the cockpit.  This is a big job involving pulling out the stereo and sorting out the outputs.
• TV reception is pretty crappy.  Need to sort out where any amp is, is it working, and other mysteries of RF cabling.  Like the stereo, this may involve MCP loosening and pull out to see what's behind there.

The electrical front specifically:

• Still dreaming of Balmar Smartguage battery monitoring and possibly ammeter setup.  I think the wire route to the cabin goes through a PVC pipe (helpfully foamed up with expanding foam).  Need to confirm this (and the viability of punching through the foam without wrecking anything).
• I'm feeling newly enthused about adding solar to the top of the bimini, with a partial attachment for structural integrity to the radar arch.  Some challenges include the right panel with the right dimensions, enough output to be worthwhile (I'm thinking 5 amps), how messy wire routing would be, panel weight, and the Lego mess of mounting frame and hardware.

Fantasy projects -- these are things that I'd like to do, but complexity and cost make them more challenging:

• New MFP/chartplotter and sonar.  Found a local guy who knows it all and have talked to them.  Need to narrow down brands and how much junk I can afford to add.  I will probably be selling off my reloading gear to finance it.
• Tapping the air conditioning raw water supply and adding a washdown pump plumbed to the fresh water spigot.  This would make a lot of boat washing tasks much simpler. The challenge is finding the right fittings to split the supply.

Mechanical projects:

• I think I really do need the prop and skeg work MarineMax recommended.  I find that my steering isn't as true as it could be, although some of this may just be never being able to perfectly balance engine RPMs.  It's not really an issue until you get to planing speeds.  I'll wait on this until the off season.

Anyway, I guess we're never done with stuff to do.  I'm sure the cockpit fridge will eventually crap out, for example.

It does highlight my bargaining problems.  I probably should have bargained higher when I bought the boat, asking for another $10k in concessions to offset the $7k I put into it and the other unexpected stuff (most of which has been relatively cheap and easy).  Live and learn, I will add this to my book of knowledge if there's a next time around.

This fixing business is getting silly

Last Saturday we had our first real summer day on the boat -- it was hot, the water was warm enough for swimming, and it was like you want it to be and at the end of the day I noticed that the VacuFlush head had no vacuum.  After double-checking the obvious, I went into the engine room and sure enough the vacuum pump motor is running...and not stopping.

So I shut it off and dived into the Internet to sort out what to do.  I'd known, sort of, that the system's rubber "duck bill" valves were wear items and could cause vacuum problems.  My research suggested both duck bills and pump bellows (they can dry out and crack over time).  I ended up ordering a rebuild kit with duckbills, bellows, and O-rings and tracked down some decent exploded diagrams so I'd know how it all went together.

The repair was easy enough, although it took about 2 hours to do, mainly slowed by the difficulty in separating the motor from the eccentric crank and removing the bellows bolt.  The motor shaft and eccentric are held together with a set screw, which was really tough to loosen.  The bolt wouldn't budge at all without being put in a vise to allow enough torque.  I think the motor should have a keyed shaft and the eccentric a matching key slot; this would simplify removal.

It was also less messy, so I'm assuming the system worked well, longer than I thought, before it quit.  No goopy solids, although enough residual crud to make it kind of gross.  Lots of nitrile gloves and shop rags.

I will say this fixing business has gotten out of hand, though!   The good news is the VacuFlush is fixed.

I also took out the broken fridge.  Came out easy, but there was a moment of panic until I realized I needed to remove the door to get it out of the cabin.  I set aside the "feet" it sets on the and flange assembly, they may be added Sea Ray parts not on the fridge from the OEM.

The new fridge is in at West Marine, so with any luck I'll have it put in this weekend.

Then will we be done with fixing for a while???

First weekend of summer

It's been a month and a half since the boat went in and there's a lot to update.

Fixes complete:

• The spotlight -- I finally got it fixed.  When I dug into it the first time, I learned a few things.  One, there's an inline fuse for the spotlight, a 10A automotive-type tube fuse, which I managed to blow by shorting out the power leads.  Two, this thing is poorly sealed and the connections were pretty corroded.  This did fix the up motion on the spotlight, so I at least had both axis of rotation working.  After cleaning the connections, I thought I had good voltage at the light itself, but since there was still no light I assumed the bulb was bad.  I tracked down a replacement cheap on the internet ($30 vs. $85 for the same bulb from Marinco).  Still no light, and when bench tested (why didn't I do this first?) the old bulb still works.
  
  The second time, I finally had the brains to short the hot lead directly to the spot & flood circuits and the light lit, which meant the switch was bad.  Tracked down a replacement switch and got it replaced.  The replacement is lighted like the old one, but required shorting power and the illumination lead with a jumper since the original control package has no separate power lead for the switch light, as the OEM switch is connected internally.
  
• Water system -- That's fixed and works fine now.  I was sucking air on the input side.  The pump had been replaced in about 2010 or so, based on the manufacture date of the pump.  It has a mesh filter inline on the suction side to keep tank silt out of the lines.  It's integral to the fitting, but the way the pump was mounted you couldn't fully tighten the fitting without the filter getting in the way.  I moved the pump about 1/2" so the filter could clear the mounting surface and once tightened water flow returned to normal.
  
• Squeaky Belt -- this was a dodged bullet!  We lost a bolt from the bracket on the belt tensioner pulley.  I retensioned the belt with no effect on squeaking.  My marina owner came out and listened and found both the bolt missing and found the bolt.  We got it back on and the squeak went away.  I'm glad this was easy, because we could have lost a belt and had some real problems.
  
• New TV installed -- I put in a new 32" flat panel TV.  This was mostly straightforward and I was pleased that we generally get broadcast channels, although reception can be dicey.  Sorting out reception means seeing if we have the amplifier the parts diagrams says we have and what kind of shape the cabling connections are in.  It may be that the existing antenna (and amp, if it exists) just aren't great for DTV broadcast, but sorting this means getting behind the main panel which is not trivial and right now is a lower priority.
  
• Rug life extension -- Our poor cockpit rugs are kind of gross, and when I lifted them to clean some dead bugs discovered I'm suffering from the dreaded disintegration of the backing.  I took them off the boat and coated the backs with 6 cans of white Plasti-Dip rubber spray.  This should encapsulate the backing and provide a more durable wear surface.  6 cans should be workable coverage, but just barely.  I discovered too late that I should have used the "paint on" variety for thicker coverage, and more likely, I should have used a white elastomer roof sealant.  But what I ended up with seem decent, and the rugs got a good scrubbing with a hose and detergent, so they are about as clean as they will ever get.  We'll get at least a season out of them before eventual replacement with SeaDek or some other flooring.
  
• Grill element replaced -- this fixed the grill, and we have enjoyed burgers off it at anchor. It works slick and will be a great way to make hot food on the boat.
  
• Pending fixes -- the icebox/fridge in the cabin had the door fall off.  The door pin sockets pulled out of the door.  I think I can fix them with some epoxy.  I ordered a replacement fridge for the cockpit, which ought to be an interesting installation.  In theory it should fit as the dimensions are identical to the original and its from the same vendor, but I suspect some fitting will be required.
  

Overall, it's been a good experience.  We've been mostly cruising at about 9 mph, which keeps fuel burn low.  This speed was impossible in the Yamaha, especially on open water.  It was kind of a plowing speed on that hull, and we got beat up bad in open water.  But this boat's size, power and hull make that speed stable and easy to manage, and I generally prefer cruising slow for the scenery and lack of noise/wind.

This weekend it's projected to be in the high 90s, which means the lake should be warm enough for swimming and give us a real taste of what summer on this boat should be like.

Shakedown cruises

We finally had some free time and good weather and got to do a couple of "shakedown cruises" to find out what it's really like.   The TL;DR is that it's a BIG boat to run, the slip is tight, most stuff works but some needs troubleshooting.

• Really a huge watercraft to operate.  Much more intensive to dock/drive at the slip.  Getting back in the slip Saturday was not so bad, but Sunday had a cross-wind that made aligning with the slip a challenge.  The channel at St. Alban's Bay is so narrow I need the whole thing, which led to some waiting/station keeping.  There's a little bit of playing chicken, but because I'm bigger than most others they seem to back down...so far.
• Sucks a ton of gas  We must have used 20-odd gallons this weekend on some fairly low-intensity cruising.  Planing speed is a gas guzzler!
• I now see why prop/skeg work was recommended, the boat doesn't track true at speed, but I'm not sure if this is just drag/alignment side effects or more or less normal compensation to wind, current, etc.

Pretty much everything works as expected, but there's a list of shit that needs sorting out already.

• This shouldn't be my main obsession, but the dumb spot light is still bugging me.  I cleaned the switch connections and got the down control back, but the light won't light.  I checked the power at the light and it was OK on testing, but with a bulb won't light.  Replaced the bulb same thing, checked the power yesterday and get no light.  Back to more intensive testing.
• Water system -- leaking air in the lines and making water flow irregular.  This will be a PITA to sort out, but maybe it's something simple like a leak in the filter or a clogged filter.  Have to pop the hatch to investigate and that's not possible on the water with people.
• "New" (as of Sunday) belt squeak on the port engine, need to check the belt tension.  Hopefully it's not a pulley or a water pump.  My uninformed guess is belt tension adjustment "break in".
• Galley main fridge is dead.  The replacement model is $750, which is steep, kind of holding off on that as the drawer fridge works, but need to keep DC fridge on as it is DC-only.  Trying the marina out as a replacement source just for the PITA part of it all, but it looks to be a dead easy swap out.
• Center isinglass zipper that was fixed is backwards.  There's some small chance I just put it the overhead canvas piece backwards, but the snaps align when the side glass is in and I don't think flipping it 180 degrees is possible or will help.

The good news stuff:

• Generator works fine -- ran it quite a bit this weekend for testing.  Louder than I'd care for -- "annoying" my wife says, but it is what it is.  She thinks we should be able to run it all the time, but doesn't understand the power load on the batteries and the need for microwave, AC and grill. Really will need to sort out the battery monitoring stuff long term.
• AC works fine -- ran that as well.
• Replaced the cabin lighting with new LEDs.  All very bright and run cool. Dumped old LEDs and two halogens in the process.  Much improved.
• Stereo works acceptably.
• Added two battery powered CO detectors (one is supposed to be AC/battery backup).  No CO detection at anchor with generator running.
• Dash electronics all work, including the smartcraft gauges and sensors, including GPS speed, air and water temp, and depth, although depth doesn't seem to sample that fast.

Still on the radar screen:

• Main cabin TV replacement with something DTV compatible.  50/50 the antenna setup works for DTV, but it's worth a shot.
• Battery monitoring -- ammeter and Balmar gauges.  Kind of pushed back due to complexity of wire runs, mounting and the generator.

Right now the water, belt squeak and the dumb spotlight are the priorities.

Longer term, thinking seriously about a custom screen enclosure with a sun shade top/extension, possibly with a screen front.  The camper canvas will not be practical due to lack of ventilation.

Splashdown!

Splashdown!  The boat is finally at the marina!

I was with the crew from the brokerage yard when it went in, and we piloted it to the marina and got it tied up.  Some random observations:

• It hauls ass!  I didn't think a 33', 5" boat that weighs 13,000 pounds could go so fast but it did 35-40 pretty effortlessly.  Smooth and quiet.
• Shifting was remarkably smooth.  I have little experience in a stern drive, but this had none of the clunky shifting I associated with a stern drive previously.
• It feels really big and seems high on the water.
• Learning to slip it will be kind of challenging.  Close-in maneuvering and figuring out how to use the twin engine setup will take some practice.
• There's less storage for "stuff" than I would have expected, stuff like boat canvas, spare lines, life vests, etc etc.  I think some of this is just lack of time to explore and plan organization.
• As much as I've read the manual, etc, sitting in it makes me feel like I have no idea how it works.  Always an interesting contrast between reading about something and actually doing it.

The brokerage/shop removed the old boat vinyl name and graphics from the stern.  This was unexpected but kind of nice, as it saves me some manual labor.  They also did the summerization package, which flushed and filled the water system so I didn't have to wrangle with the marina on that.

A month away, countdown to launch

It's now one month or 31 days until launch of Thanks Sweetie.  There's not much to report on other than the boat being out of the shop (covered last time) other than some minor items.

I spent my first dollars on boat related accessories this week -- fenders, screw-in snaps and some more water saddles, which aren't boat specific but proved to be a popular floating accessory last spring.

The fenders I told myself were a necessity and they sort of are.  I bought 6.5" fenders the first year we had our boat from Costco.  Fenders are strangely expensive and the no-name ones I bought from Costco were fine for our old boat which was much smaller.  But the new boat has both fender holders on the bow rails and it seemed natural that we would put fenders in them, and I bought a set of 6 8.5" from Overton's which had a 15% sale going on.  They were priced reasonably as fenders go, cheaper than the very expensive Taylor Made models that seem to dominate most retailers.  I also bought them in a cobalt blue which sort of matches the hull color.  The white ones tend to scuff and look dingy, so I figured a slight color mismatch was better than dingy in the long run.

I don't entirely know if I will really need them longer term -- we don't really dock many places, and transient docking or rafting doesn't seem all that likely for us, but they will probably be useful for the first few dozen docking attempts with this big boat.  I think tied up properly in the slip they won't really be needed -- the right rope lengths will hold the boat away from the slip and pilings.

I only need to replace one snap for the cockpit cover, but of course you have to buy a bag of 8 minimum.  I opted not to buy the needed epoxy for filling the spot where the old one pulled out, I need to see what the stripped hole looks like and whether I need to ream it out and then fill it and whether I should use a putty or a two-part liquid epoxy.

The water saddles (also from Overton's, 15% off) were kind of an impulse sort of thing but we have one I bought last year and it proved *ideal* for floating in the water.  It keeps me floating with just my shoulders at water level.  Now we'll have two others for guests.

I also picked up a spool of 1/4" bungee cord to make lanyards and retainer lines for them.  It dawned on me that instead of drilling a hole and using a short stub of ABS for a grommet that I could just make a loop of bungee which would fit over the notch of the saddle.

Escape from the shop and ready for launch

When we bought Thanks Sweetie we had a mechanical inspection that showed a laundry list of things in need of repair.  Most of them were wear-and-tear/periodic maintenance items that would need to be done sooner or later -- annodes, burned out light bulbs, worn bottom paint, impeller service, etc.

This all came to us thanks to a $995 maintenance inspection we paid for, which was given to us as a repair estimate by the dealership's shop who was providing brokerage.  We got a 10% price break when the seller accepted our initial offer and because most of the items were kind of wear and tear, periodic maintenance we didn't use it as a basis to try to negotiate more money off.  I assumed up front that something would need to get fixed and that it wouldn't be in like-new condition completely.

So we ran through what needed to be done and what we thought could be put off or done ourselves.  It's always a complex internal negotiation -- paying someone else to do it is easy, but it's also easy to bite off more than you can chew or not have the boat ready to run when we dunk it.  I spent 20 minutes on the phone with the shop accepting and rejecting the itemized estimate schedule and off it went.

Last week I got a call from the shop -- your boat's done, and since you won't launch for a month or so (actually 36 days from this writing, as if anyone's counting..) we'd like you to pay now.  I told them to email me the itemized invoice and I would call back with authorization.

Wow!  It was way more than I mentally expected.  In my mind, it was a little over $4000 but came to over $7000.  What the heck...  So I sat down and built a spreadsheet with columns for the estimates and the actuals for all requested repairs and the over/under of parts and labor for each itemized repair.  The tale of the tape was that parts were nearly $1000 over the original estimate, with three repair orders having parts overages of $250-$375.

I called the service contact back and complained about the gaps.  One overage was the result of data entry error on the invoice (charged for more parts than they used), two parts were completely mispriced on the estimate, and another was a "hidden" part not visible until disassembly.

After some back and forth about liability for erroneous estimates and concern that the estimate was deliberately misleading to enable the sale through their brokerage, the shop adjusted the invoice down by about $700, although in a byzantine way but cutting out labor charges for the most part -- ironically, the one item they came in UNDER the original estimate on.

I mostly felt like this was a victory, if a pyhric one.  Had they followed good shop procedure and just called me about the deviations, they might have gotten away with charging me more and in some ways I think I walked away with a better deal than had the estimate just been accurate.

I'm still somewhat perturbed by the process, though.  Having the brokerage and shop under one business umbrella is a huge moral hazard for them and allows them a lot of information asymmetry that can be used against me, and I kind of wonder what they didn't tell me to unload the boat and whether the inspection was all that comprehensive.  I'm not going to use this shop for any further maintenance -- they're 30-odd miles from my marina, and I have options closer with a shop the marina has a relationship with.

But I'm not on a campaign to bash the shop, either.  They did give back to me pretty easily (even if they had to) and it's not impossible a lot of it was just honest mistakes.

But regardless, we launch in 36 days and I can't wait.  It's going to be pretty early in terms of seasonality.  The lake is nearly ice free now, but it will still be dubious weather for active boating.  The good news is I will be able to get after the small-scale stuff like lightbulbs and the new boat name vinyl without bumping into actual boating season.

Project list

I need to start compiling a project list for the boat.  I got something of a head start last week on it, but there's a bunch of minor stuff.

• Batteries -- I gave in and decided to let the shop install new batteries.  I had planned to do this myself, either buying the batteries from Interstate myself or buying them through the marina (negligible cost difference).  I let MarineMax do it because the existing batteries are crap (old, wrong size, not AGM) and I decided the extra money would be worth not jumping into the engine room immediately.  Buying from the marina would have taken some of the DIY hassle away, but they may have wanted to install them (the owner is always looking for helpful labor service add-ons).
  
• Canvas repair -- the center panel front isinglass and the trip piece it connect to have a broken zipper connection.  I picked these up at the shop Saturday and will drop them off sometime this week to get fixed.  It looks like a simple repair for the canvas shop.
  
• Grill heating element -- the grill blows the circuit breaker, and from what I've read and had verified by the OEM, there was a design flaw in the element that causes moisture infiltration and shorting.  $75 and 10 minutes, or so I'm told.
  
• New Fenders -- The fenders for the old boat are pretty small.  The new boat has fender holders for ~8-9" fenders and needs larger ones.  I just looked at slip photos and don't know if I will need them other than one side of the slip, but I should probably have them for any docking or rafting situations.
  
• LED lighting replacement & Spotlight -- I want to replace all the lighting with LED bulbs.  Supposedly the bulbs exist for nearly all the lights.  Cuts battery consumption a lot, less heat in the cabin and probably superior light.  The spotlight needs a spotlight bulb (non-LED, sadly) but because that will be used so little it won't matter if its not LED.  This will probably be the first real DIY job besides the grill element.
  
• Battery monitoring -- I'm likely to go with the Balmar Smartguage, but it has the significant disadvantage of being kind of large and I don't have a great place to mount it.  There's no room on the MCP or the dash.  I did find a plastic enclosure that could be mounted to the MCP side face, but it's not very cosmetically appealing, but burying it elsewhere doesn't make a lot of sense, either, although perhaps inside a cabinet would make sense.  Cable routing from the engine room also seems intimidating, too.
  
• TV Replacement -- the existing cabin TV is an LCD analog set, which won't get digital TV signals.  It seems to be wired to AC, which make replacement simpler and cheaper.  But I couldn't see how to get it down to replace it, and it will probably require a new mount as well.

DC Power Monitoring

One of the first projects I need to take on with new boat (and one I always assumed would be necessary) is replacing all of the batteries.  There are four batteries on board, two parallel groups of two, roughly delineated as port and starboard batteries because one pair is the start battery for the starboard engine and one pair is for the port engine.

Beyond that distinction, my general understanding is that the cabin DC items (lighting, televisions, stereo, refrigeration) draw from the port battery and that the starboard battery supplies start power to the generator.  After that you have to decipher the electronic schematics which are engineering drawings in the manual, spread over about 8 pages and difficult to follow as uplinks and general logical layout aren't easy to follow (it would help if it was color coded and had some kind of block diagram of major segments).

It's not clear at all to me where navigation lighting, cockpit lighting, helm accessories or other dash power is derived from.  I have a vague understanding that it's split between both batteries.

Obviously good DC power is critical on a cabin cruiser -- at a minimum, you need to be able to start the engine.  And with all the accessories on board capable of running off DC power, monitoring battery status becomes kind of important.  We have the advantage of a 5 kw generator, but obviously in many cases we don't want to run it or run it all the time.

I've been looking into adding DC power monitoring.  One basic solution is adding an ammeter to monitor instantaneous DC loads.  Knowing the general battery Ah capacity you can guesstimate runtimes off straight DC power by knowing your load.  This is a crude method, though, so I've been looking at more sophisticated state of charge monitors that will tell me how much life the battery has left as well.

Most SoC systems and all ammeters require a shunt, an electronic component that produces a tiny bypass voltage the meter actually monitors.  The shunt needs to be inline with a cable from the battery (most use the negative side).  This is all fine until you look at the cabling associated with a shunt.  

Shunts are basically bare, surface-mounted terminal blocks meant to be mounted on a panel with the pass-through power and monitoring leads attached.  The battery cables, however, are "optimal length" for the existing install and don't include the extra length for shunt mounting and require you to make up or buy the second leg of the cable if your mounting location isn't right near the DC bus.

Of course on my boat, there's not really space close to the bus for this or enough extra battery cable length to locate it where there is is space without making up and running a new cable.  At $12/ft for 4/0 tinned cable, plus connectors and paying someone to crimp them for me (my hydraulic crimper won't do larger than #0), this gets expensive not to mention frustration inducing.

I'm actually surprised nobody has made up either an inline shunt that could be mounted on the battery side.  No mobile DC system built *without* a shunt will easily accommodate one without substantial rewiring.

There are two interesting alternatives, though.  The first is a very slick Maretron system which uses a ferric ring called a Hall effect transducer that just slips over the battery cable (no splicing or re-cabling required).  The downside is that it's an expensive system, probably running in excess of $1600 for the required components and cabling, although it is NMEA2000 compliant, meaning it can talk to other boat systems -- which I don't have anyway.

The next I just found out about, the Balmar SmartGauge.  This requires no shunt or transducer, just leads to the battery posts.  Nobody seems to know exactly how it works, but my condensed wisdom is that it probably samples voltage and pulses the batteries for internal resistance and has an algorithm for determining battery state of charge from models of these values.   It doesn't show instantaneous amperage, but nearly everyone says its as or more accurate than a shunt SoC meter and is self-calibrating/learning over time, including as the batteries age.

This one is likely to be the winner for ease of installation and accuracy of the most important information -- how much battery is left, and the bonus is that it can monitor two battery banks.  Everyone else's requires multiple meters, multiple shunts, etc.

It's an open question whether I'll actually "get to it" this season.  Replacing the batteries with proper Group 31 AGM cells is a $1200 check and I also will probably need to replace the cabin television with a digital broadcast model (my family insists), and I want to replace all the lighting with LED bulbs, which will definitely cut power consumption on batteries.

For now we'll just have to be kind of cautious about DC power consumption and be slightly more aggressive with generator usage, perhaps running it at anchor more often or for longer periods at night.  And we'll have shore power at the slip to run the battery charger to keep the batteries optimally charged when start out.

In an ideal world, much of this would already be in place and/or automated, including automatic generator start so you'd never have to think about it.  When the batteries hit 60% charge, the generator would kick in and run until the batteries were charged.  I don't think that's warranted for our use, but definitely something on a wish list.

Submerged in paperwork and mechanical realities

Paper everywhere

We closed on the boat two weeks ago and the marine documentation finally came in the mail.  Or at least the preliminary documentation, as the Coast Guard won't process the registry change for something like 120 days with their current backlog.  But the good news is this batch of marine documentation included something missing from the actual "closing", a notarized bill of sale signed by the purchaser.

The closing process itself was really strange in my mind for an asset of this size.   We met the lender (whose office is about 40 miles away) at a halfway point and signed her paperwork and she handed over a check made out to the seller's bank.  We then sent that check along with our signed copies of the broker's purchase agreement AND two more checks, payable to the broker and the seller's bank....and waited.  Two days later we got the same purchase agreement back with the seller's signature on it.

What was strange to me about all this is that it was so unlike a house closing, despite the money changing hands being house-scale, not "recreational equipment" scale.  I had expected something like the experience at a title company for a house closing, where buyer and seller sign paperwork simultaneously and money is held in escrow until the "I"s are dotted and the "T"s crossed.

I had worried the process was leaky, and with the settlement visible to us, the fact that the seller was $10,000 in the hole could have meant he used our money to whittle down his debt and then walk away from his debt -- possibly low enough that his bank may have just seen it as a write-off and not collectible from him but collectible from the asset owner.  Leaving us with an asset of potentially uncertain title.  I actually went so far as to bounce this off a friend who happens to be a bankruptcy attorney and he said not to worry about it -- we had signed purchase agreements and money had changed hands, so there was no doubt we owned it.  And more importantly, the lender would have required a lien release from his bank and a senior position on the asset, rendering his remaining debt not our problem.

But still, a lot rode on the seller's good intent and follow-through and we didn't really know what his life circumstances were.  Desperate people can make desperate choices, but it looks like none of this is the case now that we have a notarized bill of sale.

Mechanical realities

Once I was reassured of the paperwork issues, I ran through the list of items on the mechanical survey to have some of them completed so we're not competing with a million other boats wanting pre-season service.

Among them was impeller service -- replacing both engine sea pump impellers and the generator sea pump impeller.  I knew this made sense from following another blog of live-aboard boaters.  I've followed their blog for close to two years and they have had more than one minor panic due to failed impellers causing engines to shut down.

Unfortunately I got a call a couple of days later from the service department that while removing the sea pump to replace the impeller that the housing had failed and needed to be replaced, to the tune of $400.  Ugh.  I was dreading a call like that with "...well, when we got it apart..." needs for more money and parts.  I pressed the service people on this and they said it wasn't apparent when they had tested the engine and that it had good water flow.  I gave them the go ahead (what choice did I have?) and made myself a sea pump "expert".

From what I read and online conversations, this is almost normal.  In fact, an aftermarket company actually designed a replacement sea pump to prevent this from happening.  The impeller itself is a hard rubber piece that looks like a gear -- the flexibility of its vanes is what creates suction.  But due to the design of the impeller housing, it wears against the housing and if the water its pumping has a lot of sediment, it creates a grinding action against the impeller housing.  The aftermarket one, besides being 316 stainless steel, has replaceable wear plates against the impeller faces so the impeller can't wear on the housing.

The whole design is kind of problematic, as the pump has to be removed to change the impeller (not enough access to just pull the housing cover).  And the impeller is hard rubber which can "give" or degrade from wear (again, faster with abrasive content in the water) so it pretty much has to be replaced regularly (1 to *maybe* 4 years at the extreme).  

The best advice seems to be to buy a complete spare sea pump, and when you change impellers just swap the entire pump, replace the impeller in the removed one (and any other repairs...like a new housing), use that for the other engine, and then at your leisure rebuild this one so you have a rebuilt spare.

I will probably end up buying the aftermarket pump next winter because I think its design is superior and then another a year later.  Hopefully with new impellers and my tendency to avoid shallows and sand bars I will get 2 years out of the engine sea pump impellers and it may take our third year before I have both pumps replaced with aftermarket units.

Overall I don't think we're facing more than the usual wear/repair lists for a boat this age.  The drive units were removed for inspection before purchase and were sound, and given their desire to sell us more stuff I'm (mostly) certain we would have been told of U-joints, bellows or other significant drive system problems.  Right now we're left with mostly a small list of minor items involving several light bulbs (spotlight, cabin lights) and the grill heating element which all have easy solutions.

But generally speaking I'm already starting to miss the stone-axe simplicity of our Yamaha jet drive.  Stern drives are a weird compromise between outboards and inboards with a lot more complexity.  They do benefit from the rudder effect of the lower unit, where jets tend to drift without constant thrust, though.  I'm hopeful though we won't need major maintenance in the next couple of years on the stern drives.

Survey Says

The survey came back and it looks....positive?

I've never seen a marine survey before, but mine looks good considering it was a dry land survey with no actual disassembly involved.  The market value estimated by the surveyor was actually more than we're paying for the boat and far more than we're actually borrowing (although I believe the lender said 80% of survey value was what they would loan, so it's not that far off).

On the good news side, the survey didn't find anything wrong with the boat that the mechanical inspection didn't cover, and it included some structural issues that would be long term problems as well as evidence of other mechanical issues that could be hidden (like oil/fuel residue in the bilge) as well as water infiltration in the interior.

On the bad news side, the condition of the boat only rated fair based on the minor skeg dings and zinc replacement needed.  The zincs are getting replaced and I don't actually see the extremely minor prop and skeg wear as worth the rework costs right now.  They probably would be if the boat was going to be run hard and fast in big open water, but I doubt we will run hard and fast that much and it won't be for a ton of distance, so that work can wait.

The other "bad news" aspect of this was cost of the survey vs. useful information.  This survey was primarily for the bank's benefit for underwriting purposes, not what I would consider a "real" marine survey to be about.  That being said, the survey did cover some useful mechanical condition details, and it's winter and it's on dry land, but I wish it didn't cost what it did.

Overall, though, it's all good news because now we have the go-ahead to close on the boat!

Getting into port

I've started this blog to document our boating adventures in a Sea Ray Sundancer 310, which we don't even technically own yet.

The Backstory

The actual boating adventure started 5 years ago when we bought a new, 2013 Yamaha SX190.  We had never owned a boat before -- my wife's family had an old pontoon, but my family had never owned a boat at all, but we did have a series of motor homes.

We largely bought the boat on an impulse.  Our son was hitting age 7 and we lacked a kind of unifying family activity.  Some friends owned a cabin on Lake Minnetonka (an actual cabin, one of the disappearing ramshackle old houses with lakefront) and we spent a weekend or two with them several summers in a row.

They seldom used the place in the summer and actively encouraged us to use the place, and their boat, a 28' Chaparral bowrider.  This seemed a bit much (and some risk), so we approached them about adding a lift and our own boat at their dock, with no real intention to use the cabin other than for an occasional bathroom stop.  Well, the husband agreed but the wife dissented.  I was so into buying the boat that I ended up finding slip space on my own and buying the boat.

There's an old adage about "buying your second boat first" -- well, we didn't.  We bought the Yamaha, the smallest one they make, first, and new.  In some ways a financial mistake, but in other ways a good risk -- with jet drive, it had little maintenance and new, I wasn't inheriting marine problems I wouldn't understand.  Plus it was a manageable size for learning to navigate.

After about two years it became apparent "we were going to need a bigger boat".  The Yamaha was great for the three of us alone and with 2-3 others, but by then it was really crowded.  We anchor out a lot and with the great swim deck and people in the water it worked even then, but we wanted to more easily bring 5+ people with us and our boat was just too small.

We also wanted to be able to overnight on the boat.  Minnetonka allows boaters to overnight on the lake, and doing so would require a boat with a cabin and the amenities of a cabin -- toilet, beds, power, and so on.

After some discussion, a bit of soul searching, and an Excel spreadsheet to judge the cost increases, we decided to "go for it" and hunt for a Sundancer-style cabin cruiser that would fit our needs (ok, desires, but they feel like needs!).

Begin the begin

The challenge with boating on an in-demand lake and wanting to upgrade is that you need a slip sized for what you buy.  Our slip space wouldn't accommodate what we wanted, so we first had to go on the waiting list for a slip.  Our marina owner was willing to put current customers who wanted a larger slip at the top of the list, and so in the fall of 2016 we went on it and were lucky enough to get a 34' slip right away, around October.

The current occupant was even selling his boat, a well-cared-for and very clean Formula 31 PC.  It fit all the check lists, but was older (2002) than we might have wanted but priced in our desired range.  It was tempting, but I wanted to check out the market for other options and to sanity check the pricing against what was on offer.

The Hunt

Buying a used boat is a complex process.

Viewed nationally via the web, there are a lot of boats that fit our category.  But buying one out of region is even more complex, and adds a lot of costs -- travel to the existing vessel to check it out (and probably more than once during the process), arranging financing, cross-country delivery, and so on.  I had seen some boats that seemed good values (price, features, condition) in out of state locations, usually mid-south on large reservoirs or rivers and had entertained the idea that a good deal out of state would be worth the extra expense.

Besides the obvious problems with doing this outlined above, there was an added wrinkle that made it even harder.  Our new slip had a hard limit of 34' and the nominal sizes of boats of even identical make and model vary by year.  Bow spits, swim decks, and so on make knowing the actual size impossible unless you get an actual tape measure reading.  One year's 31' would fit, but a previous year's 30' model wouldn't.

I started my actual search focusing on local brokers.  One thing I found kind of disappointing about this process was that no broker I talked to was in the "find a boat for you" business -- they wanted to sell their current inventory under brokerage. The independent guys would act as buying agents if you brought them a boat someone else listed, but nobody was willing to take my list of desired features and price and locate that boat, even among local inventory.

The hunt itself began to seem daunting.  I was left searching online listings if none of the brokers had what I wanted and then "kicking tires" to see if it was worth further effort.

By chance, I had called a broker at Marine Max.  Got his voice mail and didn't leave a message.  He ended up calling me back in 10 minutes and we had a nice conversation.  He had some boats in my area of interest under brokerage, and since they were stored indoors we could go see them in the winter.

My son and I went up there and looked at 4-5 of them.  The one that interested us most was a 2006 Chaparral Signature 290.  It would fit our slip, it was extremely clean and had "bonus" features like a generator and air conditioning.  But it had an offer on it.  We really liked the 2007 310 Sundancer there (the eventual long-term subject of this blog), but it was $30,000 over our target price.

I got a call back from the broker two days later and the Chaparral was now available.  The odd thing about it compared to others was the use of Volvo-Penta VRP composite outdrives.  These were odd ducks, unlike the metal outdrives on other boats (usually Mercury Marine, but there are a lot of non-composite Volvos as well).

I was curious about those drives and I Googled them -- to my dismay, the overwhelming consensus was run away -- they had major design flaws which resulted in lots of maintenance headaches.  Discontinued, hard to get parts for and the only real fix was a $20,000 drive replacement.  This killed the Chaparral, but made the Sea Ray 310 Sundancer seem more appealing.

I brought my wife up to look at it and she was impressed.  By this time, I had worked the math and found that the extra $30k wasn't an issue if the financing worked (more on that later).  I got her to -- reluctantly -- agree on an offer.  I got lucky and didn't have to haggle to get the price down about 10% (maybe I could have gone lower, but I doubt it) and my offer was accepted.

Nail Biter

Now came the nail biting.  A lot of hoops to jump through.  I paid $995 to have it mechanically inspected.  This just made sense, the challenge of course being that if it didn't check out it would have saved me a lot of headache, but I'd be out $995 with no contender to buy.  The summary came back -- $7,500 in recommended fixes.  Ugh!  After going through the list, it was more reasonable.  Some of the stuff was straight-up periodic maintenance, and I had gone in figuring $2000 would be spent on minor items.  My total for needed mechanicals was only $3000, and $1000 was a labor-intensive repair of the cabin door which was very sticky.   All the major systems worked, and the rest of it was unnecessary ($1100 in trivial prop and skeg ding removal), bottom painting (less critical in fresh water), and a lot of troubleshooting for out light bulbs.

The $3k in mechanical I didn't deem worth trying to renegotiate on price, since only the $1000 cabin door repair was the only non-periodic maintenance item.  So it was off to finance.

Financing the boat was the first thing I looked into, and I lucked out getting a referral from an independent broker.  She was very helpful in describing the process and her rates couldn't be beat.  But submitting for financing was a real pins-and-needles thing, because it's where you find out if you're paying too much or if they think you're worth the risk.

Fortunately our credit is great and the loan came back better than I expected.  That was just yesterday, but there's one more hoop to jump through -- the marine survey.   The lender requires a marine survey (and I've been read you should have one) for underwriting purposes and I'm sure it has a lot to do with low rates and a healthy loan book.

We're at the point now where the survey has been ordered.  I don't expect it to change our financing, our price is very market competitive and the boat in excellent condition and we're an excellent credit risk, but there's always a risk that the guy lowballs the boat value, submarining our financing.

On my next entry I hope to detail the survey results and, hopefully, the closing and outline what comes next.  January was a mild month and it feels like I'll be at the slip before I know it.