March 2017 | MONTH IN REVIEW

Here's quick summary of what we were up to this month. As some of you may know, we hauled out our engine last November. We have been working on it sporadically -- disassembling the engine & cleaning each part thoroughly in the last couple of months.   We de-greased, stripped off old paint, sanded and treated the metal in preparation to be painted which we finally completed this month! We also cleaned the heat exchanger, removed the fibreglass panel in the head to get access to the bolts on the sail track. With our...

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How To Clean A Heat Exchanger

Here's a post on how we cleaned the heat exchanger on our Yanmar 50Hp diesel engine without using the ultra high pressure water jetting method. Method 1 - Soak in Vinegar We were advised by our dear friends that we could soak it in hot/warm vinegar. Unfortunately we did not have a big enough heat proof container to pour the hot/warm vinegar in. So in the end, we just soaked it in a plastic bottle and left it under the hot sun for a couple of days. The heat exchanger after soaking it in vinegar Still grimy in between the tubes A...

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Spray Painting Our Yanmar Engine

As some of you may already know, we hauled out our Yanmar 50Hp diesel engine in November 2016 to be serviced, cleaned and repainted. Oh my! It's a big B-I-G project!  If you're thinking of doing the same, do check out our other posts related to this project or drop us a comment. We are by no means an expert on this, but now that we've done it, we'd be happy to share our thoughts and experiences if you have any specific questions or if you have some experiences of your own, we'd love to hear it. Just be aware that it's a tedious and time...

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Boat Works in Trinidad

19th March 2017 is fast approaching and we've still got a long way to go before we're ready to launch. It looks like we will have to make another visa run, our 2nd visa extension application! A little worried as we've already been here for the last 6 months and we've heard from several cruisers that it's not easy to get a 2nd visa extension. Our appointment at the Port of Spain Immigration office will be at 8am on 14th March. Fingers crossed, let's see how it goes.In the mean time, the boat works continue. Here's what we have completed thus far..*...

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Hauling Out Our Engine

Ugh.. our Yanmar 50 Hp engine; the bane of our lives. The constant problem throughout our journey for as long as I can remember.  If it's not the cracked sail drive leg, then it's the disintegrated damper plate, or the rusted mounts or the misaligned alternator belt, even the sail drive leg cover's a problem. It never ends. I know we have a lot of other issues on-board the boat that cause us to stay at a place for longer than we would like, but the engine (or some part related to it) really takes the cake. Last November, Alex decided to...

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