New Galley Pump
Dwayne took
to the bus again to get fuel filters for our Yanmar engine and the u-bolts and
other items not available at the hardware store we visited yesterday. He rode
on three different bus routes to get what we needed and was gone almost three
hours. At least the weather was nice but a little warm at 87 degrees for a
high. The breeze kept things cool.
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| Ship's Plumber Installing a New Galley Pump |
Carla primed
and painted the jerry can boards while Dwayne was riding the bus. The paint
wasn’t dry enough to handle the boards when Dwayne returned. So, he started to
work on the look-see bucket project. We lucked out because another cruiser was
using a jig saw to cut teak for some deck repairs. He let Dwayne use it to cut
the bottom out of a plastic bucket and trim some plexiglass for the new bottom.
This sure went faster than hand sawing. We learned he and his wife were also
from Missouri and lived in a Kansas City suburb near Lake Jacomo. He was
somewhat familiar with the Jacomo Sailing Club. It is indeed a small world.
When we
finally returned to Foreign Affair we
took a short break for an early dinner and started on our next project – the galley
water pump. Carla wanted to get it done.
So, Dwayne encouraged her to get under the sink and begin her work as the
ship’s plumber. Both the old and new pump were manufactured by Jabsco. The good
news was we would not have to do any adjustments to the water lines other than
trim one line down by about an inch which was quickly and easily done. We had
to drill pilot holes to mount the new pump because its base didn’t match the
mounting points for the old pump. Dwayne made the electrical connections which
proved to be not too difficult. The pump ran fine when we turned it on for the
first time. We were very happy that this project went so smoothly – until we
turned on the pump switch later and it didn’t run. What could have gone wrong?
Perhaps, one of the wires came loose.
Dwayne
examined the wiring and it looked fine but the pump still did not run when the
power switch was turned on. Current was running through the wires. So, we
thought something must be wrong with the pump. We dismounted it and were preparing
to re-install the old pump which ran but leaked some which was why we were
replacing it.
We decided
to take a break and go ashore for showers before remounting the old pump. While
in the shower, Dwayne realized the reason the new pump didn’t run when we
turned on the power switch was because the pump has a built in pressure switch
which turns the pump off once a certain amount of pressure is created in the
water lines. If we had opened one of the faucets, the pump would have started
running due to the drop in water pressure in the lines. We re-installed the new
pump and it ran as designed. Once again, we were very happy to have a new pump
which properly worked. However, it took twice the effort to get the job done which is normal for most boat projects.
Tomorrow we will work on more projects in preparation for our Bahamas sojourn.
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