Sailing lession: What to do when water leaks
Have you ever been in a situation that you entered the vessel and flooring was flooded? If not, you’re lucky. I tell you, is not pleasant. First tought to go through your mind is that you must be sinkingif . This is partly true, but only if you stand around and do nothing. Most of the causes of water intrusion into the vessel is completely banal. Therefore it is necessary not to panic and fix the problem as quickly as possible.
What to do
First of all you should start by pumping water out from the hull. If you have an electric blige pump, switch it on. Even better, if you have the engine through a belt-driven pump. These are very strong, but you should check if there are no obstacles for starting the engine, of course, to the extent not already switched. The worst thing is when you do not have any electrical alternatives and you must do all your pumping manualy. But even this will be better than nothing. Define a member of the crew that will be pumping the water out of the vessel. You will have to examine all the possible points of water invasion but if the vessel is large you will also need a assistant. Skipper must, for safety reasons, turn towards the nearest port or peaceful bay, where if necessary he would beable to strand the vessel and thus save the vessel from sinking.
Searching for the point of water leakage
Your next step is to find the cause of water leakage. As I mentioned, it is usually very trivial, and quickly solved. I suggest that you first go trough all of the toilet facilities. It often happens that the toilets without vacuum valve installed tend to return water through the outlet pipe and the water then flows through the vessel shell. Send your assistant to check the engine compartment. Read more…
Categories: Sailing lessions Tags: boat, boat manual, boat tutorial, boating, diy boat, diy boat repair, diy boat service, engine maintenance, marterials, repair guide, sinking boat
Sailing Lession: What to do when your boat engine controls fail?
Belive it or not but this faliure is not very rare as you might think. It happend to me once, but I witnessed a lot of faliures on other boats. So what is it all about? Read the whole sailing lession to find out.
System description
The control levers are connected via two strips with your boat’s engine. Each of the strips is running in a special, very strong bouden and both end with a strong attachment mechanism made out of stainless material. The faliure is likely to occur when one of the final elements is to be broken due to oxidation. This faliure occures very rarely becouse of strand break. Every engine needs two cables because on operates a shift in the ship’s gear clutch and the other regulates the amount of fuel flowing inside the engine and with this the engine speed.
Controls don’t seem to work any more
If a faliure occures there is allways at least one of the commands that failed. Usualy it’s only one. Gas lever or control lever for controling the direction of rotation of the propeller. If we lose our Gas controls the situation is not so critical, because we still have the abbility of traveling back and forth, but we are very slow at it, but still fast enough in order to land our boat safely. The major problem arises if the control of transmission fails. Especially since most of the gears are set that when you want your boat to move backwards you move your lever backward and so you push the gear lever inside the engine backward. But when you want to move forward you push your lever forward and so the gear lever inside the engine moves forward and that is where the most faliures happen. Especially because when skippers try to precisely land their boats to the pier they shift gears a lot. Read more…
Categories: Boat motors, Boats, Sailing lessions Tags: boat, boat manual, diy marine engine service, engine faliure, engine maintenance, faliure, marine engine repair, repair guide, throttle lever faliure
Yamaha outboards impeller change manual
Impeller is a crutial part in marine engines. It is the main part of the water pump and is used to pump fresh and cold water to the engine cooling system. That is why it is so important to check its state very often. If your impeller is broken you may damage your engine becouse of overheating. There is an unwritten rule that says that you should replace your impeller on your Yamaha outboards every two years even if it’s in good condition.
Replacing your Yamaha outboard impeller
- First we unscrew the four screws that are visible on the side of the yamaha outboard heel.
- Next we have to remove the rubber plugin on the narrow end of the outboard motor and we unscrew the zinc protector that is located above the proppeler
- We remove the zinc protector and we unscrew the number 12 bolt from the bottom side
- Next we have to remove yamaha outboards heel and remove it from the outboard motor
- We have to buy original Yamaha outboard impeller
- Next we remove the four bolts from the water pump housing
- We use a hammer to gently tap on the water pump housing to remove it (Warning: Handle with care!!)
- What we see in front of us is a Yamaha outboard motor shaft with a small rubber proppeler attatched to it => that is impeller
- We take the impeller of the shaft (if it won’t go of we use a knife on it)
- We put our newly bought original Yamaha outboard impeller on the shaft and put a small metal plugin inside a little hole in the shaft to hold the impeller in place
- We put the water pump housing back in place and we have to wrap the impeller blades to fit inside the pump housing
- The blades must be slightly bent inside the water pump housing
- We than screw everything back in its place, and before you put your screws in you might consider lubricating them with a water resistant lubricant (YamaLube)
- You should also lubricate all the movable parts of your Yamaha outboard
