UPS just delivered the new raw water pump I had to buy for Alana’s generator. This small pump, built, or perhaps "crafted" in Sweden, cost over $500, so I was a little surprised to note that the UPS man was not armed. Replacing the pump was not something I had planned to do, but I am glad that I discovered the need now rather than in the middle of Alana’s next trip.
While performing the annual replacement of the pump’s impeller, I discovered that the pump’s drive pulley has been slipping on its shaft. I’m frankly surprised that it continued to work as well as it did, because it was very loose. Alas, I did not discover this issue before the pulley worked its way over against the bronze body of the pump, grinding away enough of the pump body to make replacement necessary. Amongst Alana’s extensive inventory of spares I found another pump. It did not appear brand new, but certainly appeared to be in good condition. Leona, Alana’s previous owner had told me that she never replaced the generator water pump, and as there was a receipt for the pump, I surmised that it must have been purchased as a spare. Anyway, I spent many hours scrunched up in the aft portion of the quarter-berth, struggling to mount the pump on the back side of the generator, dropping washers and screws into dark, inaccessible cracks and crevasses, scraping my arms on sharp hose clamps and cursing frequently. A test run initially looked promising, but soon salt water began to trickle from the bottom of the generator capsule. I couldn’t see the source of the leak, but assumed that it was likely coming from one of the very awkward hose-clamped connections in the system. I again removed the generator from its foundation in order to access the raw water system on its rear and set about removing the pump to get at the fittings behind it. In the course of removing the pump I stupidly dropped one of the hard-to-find, exotium-alloy carriage bolts on which the pump mounts. The bolt disappeared into the dark void beneath the generator, well out of reach. A trip to the local Ace Hardware produced a cheap galvanized replacement which I used to reinstall the pump, telling myself I would soon replace it before it turned into an impossible lump of rust. Have tightened and inspected every connection, I remounted the generator and again started it up for a test. This test quickly revealed the source of the leak, a steady stream running from the side of the pump, a leak which had undoubtedly caused Leona to replace the pump in the first place. Doubtless she had hired someone to work on the generator and simply forgot that the job had entailed a new pump. Anyway, to make a very long story short, I wasted an entire day installing a bad pump, a day that would have been better spent waxing, varnishing or polishing. Perhaps the only good to come from this sorry tale is that the generator engine will now be virtually new, the only major components not having been recently replaced being the case, the crank and the connecting rod. It is also doubtful that I could have mustered the energy to go back and replace that galvanized bolt. The generator is so unpleasant to work on that I might very well have neglected the bolt until it came back to bite me in during some mid-ocean repair, a repair that would have been greatly complicated by a rusted fastener. Ordering a new pump gave me the opportunity to do the right thing and install a proper Swedish bolt.
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