On our visit to York over the Easter break we discovered Moonshine's anchor winch was seized, having unbolted the motor/gear box unit at York it was this that was found to be at fault.
The work we did to the anchor winch last year which was the through deck assembly was still rotating freely.
Once back at base at Goole Boathouse the anchor winch was removed and taken home for repair on the bench. We were not sure what to expect as the Simpson Lawrance Anchorman is no longer in production but certain spares are still available. The only way to investigate the matter was to split the motor from the gear box (bearing in mind the winch wasn't working anyway so we had nothing to loose).
We found the gear box to be working correctly and that the motor was seized. As you can see from the above photos the motor was jammed due to lots of rust/iron filings etc causing the motor to stop rotating. It was given a thorough clean with the brushes checked etc, new cork gaskets were made and the retaining bolts were replaced. Everything was bench tested and proved to be working as it should.
Obviously due to the harsh environment anchor winches live in and are subjected to, this is another thing that will be continually monitored as equipment such as this need to work at short notice reliabily. To be fair this is most probably the first time it has had a complete strip down.
Whilst at Naburn pumping the diesel tank out we used our Whale Gulper 220 bilge pump. The gulper was indeed our saving grace but had started leaking from the tell tale hole in the drive section. Therefore, when we arrived at Hull Marina we purchased a service kit which enabled us to service the pump when back at Goole. It now works faultlessly and was given a good test with hot soapy water to flush all the pipework out, however with any luck this will never be required for that type of job ever again!
When we purchased Moonshine, what was really missed was a good quality dash mounted clock. Cash was tight at the time so we bought a cheap lcd clock from Maplins. It has never kept good time and has proved to be a complete waste of money. So before we went away to York over Easter we ordered from Ebay a Kus stainless steel bezel clock, which we collected from the post office upon our return. This was fitted earlier in the week, and we are really pleased with the quality for £29.99. The red back light is superb and on a par with modern car dash lighting.
A few weeks ago we blogged about the poor starting of the port engine. We finally found the root of the problem which was the battery isolation switch. After a lot of searching to source a new Hella switch we found York Marina to have several in stock. Copy switches look the same but have smaller 8mm terminal studs instead of the 10mm on the Hella switches.
On Saturday afternoon after all the jobs had been completed, we had a pleasant trip to the New Junction Canal to Sykehouse Road Bridge. There were quite a few craft moored at the entrance of the New Junction, however we opted to moor further up towards the road bridge on our own, which gave us the opportunity to run the generator without annoying anyone.
We hope very soon there will come a day when we are no longer rectifying years of neglect due to lack of maintenance, but fortunately for us this has resulted in very little expenditure so far...look after your boat, and she will look after you!
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