Mobile Again, At Long Last!

Moonshine has been out of action for the last six weeks, due to the power steering cylinder being removed.


This had been leaking on its piston seal for quite some time and has gradually gotten worse, so prior to our Autumn weeks holiday at the end of October we decided to remove it for repair. The cylinder was taken for repair to a local steering rack specialist, however after trying several seals over the course of three weeks, they were unsuccessful in their attempts at repair. They agreed that this was due to Volvo using a one off seal which you cannot obtain now. After seeking further advice from IVSS Marine, we were advised to either purchase a second hand unit ( obviously we could still have the same problem), or purchase a new one. Therefore, we were left with no alternative but to research the cheapest deal which we found was from a seller in the USA on Ebay. Overall the new unit cost with import duty and shipping a total of £530 and took a week and a half to arrive at our home address. Not badly priced to say that in the UK we were quoted £660 from Keypart who had three in stock, or the main Volvo agents were close to £900 and these were on back order. It was far too windy on Saturday to test due to Storm Callum, however Sunday was a lot calmer but very wet, but despite this we took Moonshine for a trip along the canal to make sure everything was in good order, which it was.

We have also been busy with making protective covers for the cockpit table and dashboard.


We made paper templates, then made the covers with cream vinyl and used a rot resistant thread. Not very easy making boxed sections on a domestic sewing machine, and due to the thinkness of the fabric the machine was just on its limit. Not perfect, but does the job. We would have preferred matching Silvertex as this is a lot easier to work with, but this would have been quite expensive with any errors potentially incurred due to novice workmanship. This has left Helen hankering after a better machine now.