One of over 20 boats that participated in our annual boating safety check program

Several weeks ago, (May 4th to be exact) ABYC held it's annual boating safety check at Port Annapolis Marina. The idea here is to offer a free safety inspection to any and all that choose to participate. ABYC and some of its member surveyors and technical specialists as well as the local Coast Guard Auxiliary work through a series of checklists and create a report for the boat owner's that give them suggestions for improvement to bring things up to compliance. This year we had 21 boats participate, 16 sail and 5 power boats in all.

What I found particularly interesting about the program this year was that Brian Goodwin, ABYC Technical Director did something this year that we hadn't thought of last year, he actually compiled data on some of the common faults found. This is useful to me because this list gives me plenty of material to work with and harp about for many weeks to come!

For our part at ABYC, we were focusing on some key areas that our standards address, electrical issues, fuel systems, exhaust systems, seacocks, proper labeling, and LPG systems were all on our radar for each of the boats that attended. Most all of the items on our checklist were things I've talked about here on Eds Boat Tips before. That said, because of the frequency of non-compliance found in our relatively small sampling of boats, you're going to get reminded yet again on some of these items. Compliance is important to ensure on board safety!So, here we go, let the chastising begin!

For this week's most common non compliant issue we have GFCI's that either were not installed or not working. As a reminder, these little guys are the electrical outlets with the "trip and Reset" buttons on them. Keep in mind that most boats will have one or maybe two of them that supply downstream outlets in other areas of the boat. It's common for example to have one of the outlets in the galley that supplies an outlet in the head or perhaps up on deck or in an engine room space. All areas of the boat that are required to have GFCI protection to be compliant with ABYC Standards. These outlets also have some fine print on their face, sound advice that nobody ever follows. Take a close look, it says "Test Monthly" somewhere on the front of these outlets. NOBODY DOES THAT!!

I've experimented with this and by tripping and resetting these devices, you actually exercise the mechanical mechanism inside the device. I think the reason they fail so regularly in the marine environment is that the trip mechanism gets corroded and it can't respond as it should. By testing and resetting regularly, I believe that you actually keep the corrosion at bay and the free movement of the parts in good order. The bottom line on our inspection group was a total of 11 out of 21 boats had either faulty GFCI devices or were not compliant in the first place! This is not a good batting average.

Remember these outlets are the thing that's going to save you when you are standing there in wet bare feet and you grab the metal case on your coffee maker some morning that has an internal ground fault. For the price of a new GFCI its just not worth taking a chance.

Stay tuned, we've gathered enough data at this year's safety inspection to offer up several months of chastising and sound advice.

Wayne wrote in last week describing what can only be described as a scary situation (I know its happened to me.)  It seems the water pump on his nearly 30 year old Universal diesel finally had a bearing failure. What happens when this occurs is that the impeller inside the pump housing begins to scrape on the inside of the pump housing and depending upon the design clearances, maybe even the front of your engine block. Wayne wrote in I think because he probably remembers that I've talked about what I describe as "black fairy dust" all over the front of your engine being caused by alternator pulley alignment due to missing shims on the alternator mount. The fairy dust is actually the fan belt(s) on your engine slowly grinding away due to the misalignment situation. It's powered rubber. Well, Wayne wanted to remind me that this observation may not always be caused by alternator misalignment. Wayne's right, it could also be water pump pulley misalignment. The bottom line here is that this sort of failure can really spoil an otherwise great cruise if it happens when you are far from home. Don't count on finding a new water pump quickly or easily, and no it will not be inexpensive!

So, what pulley am I talking about here? Check out the photo below. The red arrow is pointing to the pulley to check:

You really should grab this pulley and see if it rocks from side to side at all, checking for any radial run-out in the bearing. You may also want to remove the belt temporarily and give the pulley a few spins so you can feel for any roughness in the bearing(s). Better to find these things out while you are making ready than underway. If you do feel roughness, or there is a lot of radial run-out of the pulley, you should order up a new water pump asap. That way you'll be ready when it does fail. If you are already seeing the fairy dust, get some new belts too because they are effectively worn out if they have already begun spewing rubber dust all over the front of your engine. Oh, and don't try to cheap out here; trust me, it is not cost effective to try and rebuild these pumps

Yesterday I went down to the boatyard to check some things on my own boat, Hooked UP and I got queried immediately about something I always forget to write about. The question is, should you apply anti-fouling bottom paint to the transducer for your depth sounder? My answer was sure, it won't hurt anything. I've been painting my transducers with anti-fouling paint for well over 20 years and I've never had any problems with my transducers or the accuracy of my depth sounders.

I'll bet the painted transducers you see above which I took photos of here at the boatyard this morning work just fine!

So, in my never ending quest to learn and dispel any urban myths that exist in boat land USA (and there are many) I went right to the source for most all of the depth sounder transducers used here in the US,  Airmar Corp. Here's what they have to say about this one:

"Use water based anti-fouling paint only. Never use ketone-based paint, since ketones can attack many plastics possibly damaging the transducer. We recommend brands such as MDR, Woolsey, Pettit, and Sea Hawk. These water-based anti-fouling paints can be found at your local marine supply store or contact one of our distributors."

Well, there's the answer as far as I'm concerned.

There may be a lot of storage space surrounding your bow thruster, but beware!

In keeping with my theme as promised last week, we are still considering and looking at spring "make ready" issues. In the case above a reader has recently discovered that under the v-berth in his forward cabin is a cavernous space surrounding his bow thruster that he can use for additional storage for things that aren't used on a daily basis. He's certainly right about that, but beware, potential horrors are possible if this space gets used without taking some precautions. If you look carefully at the photo above you'll notice in about the center of the photo an electrical terminal where one of the high-current cables for the power supply to the thruster motor. Look very carefully and you'll notice that there is no protective cover or boot on the terminal. In this case, if a heavy object were to hit that unprotected terminal and bend the lug on the positive side of the motor circuit it could cause a really profound case of DC stray current (electrolytic) corrosion to the lower leg of the bow thruster.

So, your spring checklist mission is to now look through your own boat and see how many DC electrical connections like this you can find without protective boots on the terminals. Typical locations are anywhere is the engine(s) starter circuits, bow thruster circuits and anchor windlass circuits. In the case of the starter circuits, they are the only circuits on your boat that are not required to have fuses or circuit breakers installed. So, if a short circuit does occur at one of these un-covered terminals, a fire could start! In the case of the bow thruster, it could simply be the reason for the entire lower leg of the thruster corroding away in a day or so once you launch the boat.

What to do? I recommend building a wooden cover over the motor assembly that can be removed when service is required, but it ensures that all the stuff you are intending to jam into this new found space doesn't foul the electrical terminals and induce a low level short circuit to ground. Once safely protected, load er up!

It's spring, its in the low 50's here in RI and that means its time to start getting the boat ready for the summer. The whole getting the boat ready thing has very different meaning to a lot of people. To one friend of mine Spring get ready means getting into every nook and cranny on the boat with a tooth brush to clean. To others it means pulling the cover off, slopping some anti-fouling bottom paint on and getting it launched. For me, it means a careful inspection of all systems to make sure everything is absolutely up to snuff and in top mechanical and electrical condition as well as a good cleaning, but without the tooth brush....

For people with older boats you need to spend some time looking for things that have worn or that perhaps were not done properly in the first place. But, the question becomes how do you know? That's where I come in. My plan here is to offer up a series of things to look at or look for over the next few weeks to help you get a handle on the good and the bad and to offer up some advice on how to make things right. So this week let's get a look at a photo a reader sent in of a battery charger install....and its not a very good one either.

So today's exercise is for you to get to your boat and access as much of your electrical gear as possible for a good visual inspection. In the photo above, we're looking at a battery charger installed on aboat. The green arrows are pointing out two, no actually three major flaws in the installation. The top arrow is point to two wires pulled through the metal case on the charger. One is a grounding wire that does not appear to have ever been connected to anything. If a short circuit were to develop inside the battery charger case, it would go unnoticed until someone got zapped! Remember that the green wire in the boat's AC electrical system is there to protect people against shock hazards. That only works if the green wires are actually attached to the boat's grounding system. Missed that little nuance on this install.

The white wire is the AC neutral conductor for the shore-power supply to the charger. Its rubbing pretty hard against the nice sharp edge of the metal battery charger case, it'll chafe through the insulation sooner or later, causing that short circuit I just mentioned. Touch the battery charger case when that happens and you;ll know exactly what I'm talking about here.....There should be a chafe bushing around the perimeter of that hole in the side of the charger case.

The bottom arrow is pointing to a pair of my favorite things, wire nuts. The kind used for residential and commercial land-based wiring that uses single strand solid copper wire, not multistrand boat cable. These are guaranteed to have damaged the stranding on the cables used and will eventually just fall off. You need to be looking for things like this on your boat as you get it ready this spring. If you are unsure or afraid to mess with electricity, get a trained individual to do it for you. Its just plain worth paying someone to correct things like this if you don't have the skills to do it yourself. Make sure you use an ABYC certified technician for this kind of work.