Cooling It Down

During the week we visited Moonshine to remove the studs that would originally of held sun pads in place. The sun pads are a very distant memory in Moonshine's history and were probably disposed of years ago, we are now left with a series of unsightly studs which have now been removed and gel coated over. 

The strainer covers have both been replaced with new ones obtained from Keypart after realising last weekend the port one had cracked causing water ingress. We thought we may as well replace the other also before the same fate befell that one, however the old starboard cover can still be kept as a spare. 

Last weekend we also had serious engine overheating issues on both engines which we believe were caused by an obstruction around the out drives, this coupled with the cracked strainer cover was initially a very scary situation whilst out on the fast running tidal river with busy shipping movements. 

We have been experiencing some overheating issues recently on the starboard engine but this has always been when running at higher revs, but we have never had problems with the port one. Once everything had cooled down and the cracked strainer cover taped up to reduce water ingress we made Ocean Lock safely before the ships arrived.

When we owned our previous boat Luro our Hardy Seawings 305, we had very similar overheating issues on the same starboard engine (the calorifier side). This was rectified by purchasing a rebuild kit for the raw seawater pump and we didn't encounter any further problems with her, however this issue cannot always be rectified this way due to wear to the pump body, so in this instance for Moonshine we also ordered a new raw water seapump from Keypart which Peter installed on Sunday. We will still keep the old pump as it is still serviceable as a 'get you home unit' in an emergency as it doesn't leak from the shaft.

We plan to do sea trials out on the river next weekend and hope that this will resolve the problem.