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.