While some of the items on Madrone’s project list are big jobs, there are also plenty of small ones. The problem with boats is that it’s very easy for the latter to turn into the former.
A perfect recent example was changing the oil and lubing the anchor windlass. Typically a pretty simple job, it’s a task we’ve done in the past in an hour or so with nothing more than a screwdriver, a wrench, and a few towels. The abovedeck portion of the windlass is stripped down, and then the belowdeck oil-filled gearbox is removed so that the old oil can be drained and then replaced.
Just like every other time, the abovedeck work went smoothly – it’s a job we do once a year and we’ve gotten fairly efficient when working on it. But when we removed the belowdeck gearbox, it was clear that all was not well.
The oil smelled bad – like rotten fish – and it was clear that some seawater had managed to find its way past the shaft seal into the oil reservoir. When we investigated further, it was easy to understand why. Some sand and debris that inevitably gets pulled up along with our anchor had clogged the holes that are designed to let seawater and other anchoring debris drain out of the windlass body.
The clogged drain holes resulted in a slurry of sand and salty water sitting between the dissimilar metals of the stainless windlass shaft and the aluminum gearbox housing, which over time created a huge amount of corrosion. This corrosion got bad enough to eat away at the smooth area where the shaft seal sits, which allowed salty silt into the gearbox, which ended up both scoring the shaft and contaminating the gear oil.
The windlass was installed 25 years ago, so of course repair parts are no longer available. And since it’s a mission-critical piece of gear for the type of cruising we enjoy, it was a fairly easy choice to replace it with a new one.
While the decision was easy, the implementation, predictably, was not. The windlass was bedded to the deck with sealant and adhesive that is intended to be permanent. Removing the windlass base (lots of grunting and cursing), scraping off the old sealant (even more cursing), and then sealing and re-drilling the mounting holes took several days of nonstop effort. The actual mounting and sealing of the new windlass to the deck was easy, and only took about an hour.
We’re happy to have a new windlass since we rely on it. And the project was a perfect example of how easy it is for a one hour job to turn into twenty.
