May 2017 - The Sea Shanti

Q: Under the Engine Bilge

Under the engine is an isolated part of the bilge. There's a pipe that runs from the forward cabin to the aft cabin where the primary bilge pump is. I didn't understand why this was important until I thought about it a while. The engine can leak oil, diesel, and any number of other corrosive fluids which would be good to be isolated from the rest of the bilge. It also protects the bilge pump(s) which aren't designed to pump anything but water. Not to mention pumping crap into whatever body of water we're in just isn't good. It's in about the kind of shape you'd expect it to be in. But the interesting thing is that it's so, so difficult to get to being right under the engine. There's very little clearance fore and aft and the engine mounts are on either side. I managed to get some pictures but still haven't figured out how I'm going to get this cleaned up. There were some absorbent pads in there and it's hard to tell if anything is leaking. So I need to get it cleaned to see if anything is leaking. It looks like the yard drilled a hole in the engine mount to let water drain from the Port side. That would have been necessary since termite nests and other debris had blocked the opening where water could drain into the bilge. That has been corrected so I can plug that hole and that should keep anything from getting into the compartment while I clean and paint it. I did manage to get that pipe mostly cleaned out so water flows fore and aft under the engine without blockage, and it doesn't appear to be compromised since when rain water gets under the engine and I manually pump out the bilge, the water stays in this compartment. So that's good news. More on this when I figure this whole thing out completely.

Q: The Center Cabin Seating Area

There was a bench on either side of the center pilot house that I suspected might have some termites. The center pilot house sits above the engine midships. The seating was in pretty bad shape so I thought I'd check it out and see how much needs to be removed. One of the seats had the LPG (propane tank like a gas grill) under it and wouldn't you know it, there was a bit of termite nest (top left in the picture) but not so bad... Yeah, well, I have a well established way to deal with this kind of situation. Spray them with TalStar and then: [embed]https://youtu.be/NYseLq517y0[/embed]