It's been very overcast over the past few weeks so we took the opportunity to give Spray some maintenance and improvements. Mike from Boatyard Electric installed a new Rule automatic 1,100 GPH bilge pump, a new fuel gauge, and replaced the fuel gauge sending unit. Spray didn't have a fuel guage when we acquired her. Now we no longer have to guess how much fuel is in the tank (more than we relly need). Although the original bilge pump worked OK, Charlie wanted a higher volume pump for the extra margin of safety. The original diaphragm pump is still in place to serve as a backup, if needed.Last weekend Charlie replaced the wet exhaust hose clamps in the port stern locker. The original hose clamps had broken free and the hose was moving around a bit while under power.
Charlie took the day off work today and changed the engine oil (~6 quarts of Chevron DELO 400 15W-40), relaced the oil filter (Westerbeke 36918), and replaced the sacraficial pencil zinc (0-A) even though it had minimal wear. At a total of 81.5 hours on the engine, it had been only a little over 40 hours since the last oil and filter change. Charlie mainly wanted to see how much effort it would take to change the oil. He was pleased that the job was rather easy with minimal mess using his maunal oil changer.
