Our First Oil Change

Our new (to us) trawler has overall been VERY well maintained, however she was in need of an oil change ASAP as it had not been done since January of 2009.  (It should be done once a year).  So we went to Kragen for oil filters.  Which they did not have and they sent us to a different Kragen.  Then we had to figure out how much oil we needed.  And go to Kragen for oil (and a BIG box of disposable shop wipes).  Then we had to borrow an extractor to get the oil out of the motors.  And then we were intimidated by the fancy electric oil extractor we borrowed so we borrowed a simpler manual one.  Then we were ready to get to it.  Oh except then we borrowed a five gallon bucket so we could transfer the oil from the extractor to the bucket so we only had to make ONE trip to the used oil shed, not four (each time we filled the extractor).

Ok, SO, the event itself...  We have two engines, so when you drop down into the engine room from the hatches in the center of the saloon floor you are standing between the two gleaming blue beauties.  The engines are identical to each other, so what you are looking at on the left side of the right engine is up against a fuel tank on the left engine.  And vice versa.  Basically, only one side of each engine is accessible.  The manufacturer WAS nice enough to put both dipsticks towards the middle.  The engine extractor goes into the dipstick hole and sucks all the oil out through it....

BUT FIRST!  The oil must be warmed.  This is to make it flow more easily AND to hopefully stir up any particles and "what not" and suspend them so they will also be extracted.  Of course the obvious way to warm your oil is to run your motors and what better thing to do while your motors are running than GO SOMEWHERE in the boat????  Since we only have a 9 gallon holding tank, the most obvious place for us to go was over to the pump out station to pump out the holding tank!  Once we were done there, and heck, since the motors WERE running and all, we took the boat out on the bay for a brief spin and to give me some driving practice.  By the time we got back we had done SUCH a good job warming up the oil, engines and engine room we had to take a break and go have lunch while it all cooled down a bit...

Ok BACK TO IT.  So, we have everything assembled, but of course word had gotten around we were changing our oil on the new boat so we got some onlookers.  One of them was nice enough to hop down in the engine room with Matt so I only had to sit in a chair in the saloon and hand them things as requested, or make trips out to other boats to borrow things (oil filter wrench, sharpie to date the new filters).  Also the person helping's wife came by and gave me some pointers on the stove, as she has the same one... 

"We" got all the oil out of engine number one and our friend set about filling it with nice fresh oil.  I was handing him the oil (by the gallon) and he was pouring it in.  After about a gallon and a half it occurred to him that my husband COULD go ahead and remove the oil from the second engine while we were filling the first.  :)  The first engine took 2 and a half gallons of oil and then was reading full on the dipstick. 

After "we" got all the oil out of the second engine, the gal was showing me the stove and all the sudden our smoke detectors went off.  They are all wirelessly linked together so when one goes off they all go off.  The beauty of this is if a fire (or CO) leak starts in the engine room it will set off ALL the alarms right away and hopefully alert everyone more quickly.  These things are so loud we attracted quite a crowd.  The alarms first said "smoke detected, evacuate" then "CO detected, evacuate" --what the heck were those guys doing in the engine room??? Come to find out Matt had bonked his head on the "test" button in the process of trying to shimmy around to the oil filter on the motor with the outboard filter.  Well, they definitely all work! 

Wouldn't you know it, the oil filter that was EASY to get to didn't leak a drop of oil when he unscrewed it but the one that required crazy Cirque de Soliel-esque contortions of course had oil gushing out the bottom of it.  *Tsk* so typical of all things boat related.  :)

Our friend filled the second engine with oil by himself, putting in the same amount as he had in the first one, and then he said the dipstick was showing overfull.  He held up the half empty gallon and said, see, I put in the same amount.  (If you are thinking this through, he put two and a half gallons in the first one, and had a half gallon left over.  How does he STILL have a half gallon left over????  You see what happened here right???)  He seemed mystified that one engine held more oil than the other.  It was time for cocktail hour on his boat by then and he had guests gathering already so we sent him on his way without pointing out he'd put a half gallon more oil in the second engine than the first.  Hey, he spent an hour helping us, we were NOT going to complain.  We removed the extra oil with the handy extractor! 

After we had everything cleaned up and put away we realized we should have changed the oil in the generator while we were at it.  Oh well, there is always next weekend!

New Trawler

Be closed on our new trawler last Thursday.  It is a 1984 PT 35 made by Tawain Overseas Industries.  It was a sundeck, flybridge, two cabins, two heads, a nice large saloon, inside steering and galley down.  Oh, and two 220 hp turbo diesel Perkins motors (ST 6.3544Ms). 

We went straight from closing to visit the boat at the boatyard where she was awaiting one last repair before being refloated Friday.  We spent a few hours climbing up and down a ladder loading her with things we'd need for our Labor Day weekend cruise.  We came back after work Friday and spent the night on her (in a slip) and headed out early Saturday morning for our first trip!  We picked her up in Sausalito and took her to the Marin Yacht Club in San Rafael.  It took us about and hour a half to get there and we had no issues.  It was a beautiful morning and lots of our friends were already at Marin on their boats as this is one of our club's most popular cruise outs each year.

We had quite the revolving door of visitors and it seemed like as soon as one group of people left another arrived.  We arranged to take Matt's brother out for a ride on Sunday and soon other people were asking to tag along as well.  Since Matt's brother was bringing his wife, kids and in-laws we tried to limit the other riders.  We ended up taking out a total of 12 and had more that wanted to go but we felt like 12 was more than plenty!  We wanted to leave by 10 am to make sure we were back before it was windy but didn't get out of the slip until noon.  It was an uneventful trip until we were back in the slip.  We had mentioned to one of the passengers that our ice maker was acting up so while he was on the floor asking me for a screw driver my brother and sister in law started hollering from the galley that the refrigerator door had come off and could I bring THEM a screw driver. 

Last time I'd seen the tools they were in our stateroom but they were not there.  My sister in law was afraid the fridge door would rip out on the bottom if they did not replace the top screw so she was quite adamant I find her a screw driver ASAP.  I finally tracked down my husband obliviously chatting away on the flybridge and sent him into the din of chaos to deal with all the people clamoring for tools.  :)  we easily got the fridge door back on and got everyone on their way other than the friend diagnosing the ice maker.  We settled into the saloon to trouble shoot with him.  We ultimately ended up taking it off the boat and we will do some more trouble shooting at home.

Sunday we got underway around 10 and headed home at about 8 knots (more or less depending what the current was doing in the part of the bay we were in).  It took us about 3 1/2 or 4 hours and again the trip was uneventful.  We then spent a few hours cleaning and fixing some little things, like getting the flybridge speakers to work. 

It looks like one of our friends is going to give us his old dinghy with motor and trailer.  I hope that pans out. 

I hope to post pictures later!