can you say overheating - or my trip to st martin 23 to 24 oct 2014

so after getting seth and jaimee of to the airport i got tom and i another Gatorade.  we tried and failed again to find darcy in the crewed yacht office to talk about work and then i decided it was time to get out of dodge.  i was exhausted after a week plus of parties but i figured i might as well be exhausted under way as exhausted sitting on the hook in road town



i got the hook up got the boat out of road harbor, got the anchor hosed down and was settling in for a nice motor when again the over temp alarm went off.  the temp gage had only lasted about 3 days so now i only got the buzzer for over temp.  i anchored behind this massive catamaran in 50 feet of water and then went down to check on the engine.  first thing i noticed was green coolant all over everything.  this i took as a good sign as something i could fix.  i found the leaking connection on the hot water heater heat exchanger.

however the hose clamp was completely unaccesable it looked like they had dropped the engine in and then put the floor in.  there was no clearance between tho hose clamp screw and the bottom of the floor (sole for you boat people).  i ended up getting an open end 8mm in there and tightening from the side.  i topped up with the last of my radiator fluid and i was done.



the wind was ten to fifteen knots and the swells mostly under  one meter  so it was a pretty smooth motor.  i even took a nap waking up just before sunset.  alas after recycling a leftover half slice of pizza from tom and my trip to st thomas the over temp alarm went off again.

this was really crappy as i had to shut down the engine and now the sub meter swell was on the beam rolling us around quite a lot.  i pulled the cap off with a rag and started adding the last of the fluid.  after this i started adding water.  got everything toped off fired up the engine and then i could see water spurting out of another hose.  i got out the wrench tightened the hose clamp on this and thought problem solved.

i logged all this and then resolved to check the coolant in 3 hours.  3 hours later i added a bit of water but all seemed good.  at 4am i had sighted st martin and again the alarm went off.  i added a gallon of water fired up the engine and after checking it water was again spurting off the last hose i tightened.  so shut down the engine again cut the hose reinstall the hose clamp add water fire up again .  this time i stayed at 2000 rpm and 4 kts because i was getting a bit tiered of this.

all worked well i got into simpson bay at sunrise dropped the hook and went to sleep :)

cheers
roger