Autumn
We had an unusually wet October but found a few occasions to get a little
boating in. The click-click-click-start problem showed up several more times. It
usually happened on the first startup of the day and it would start okay
after it had run for a while. It always cranked normally when it finally caught,
not slowly like you might expect from a weak battery.
The weekend before Halloween was warm and provided an opportunity for some good boating. I'd taken that Friday off and spent several hours on the river. Saturday was overcast and a little dreary, but Laura and I went up to Saint Albans and took a leisurely explore up the Coal River through the autumn leaves. Sunday brought rain and cold.
That Monday evening, after work, I looked out the window and didn't see the boat at the dock. I went out onto the deck and still didn't see it. More than a little concerned, I started across the back yard, thinking it had come loose from its moorings or been stolen. About halfway across I saw the top, but way lower than normal. I thought, "this is even worse, the stupid thing has sunk." (If it was gone, I could file an insurance claim and be done with it; if it was sunk, I'd have to salvage the blasted thing.) As I got closer I saw what was really happening: the river level was about eighteen inches below normal. We typically don't see much change in the river level where I live, and this was the lowest I'd ever seen it. Somebody down at the Winfield Locks and Dam must have pulled the plug. Tuesday the level started back up again and by Wednesday evening, after some rain, the river was several inches higher than normal.
There were freeze warnings for the following weekend, and I debated whether to pull the boat out of the water or leave it in. The water probably would have insulated the boat well enough to keep anything from being damaged by this early freeze, but I talked myself into pulling it out, figuring I'd be better safe than sorry. My son, Charlie, and I took the wagon and trailer to the ramp Friday morning and rode back home in my truck. There's a railroad crossing between the Poca ramp's entryway and the highway. As we were leaving, a train came by and got me wondering what would happen if I was waiting to pull onto the highway with my trailer halfway across the tracks when a train came. I made a mental note to stop, roll down the windows and listen for trains before exiting the ramp area with the trailer. Later that afternoon, Charlie and I boated up to the ramp and had a devil of a time getting the boat on the trailer. On top of my inexperience, it was windy, the river was up a bit and the current was swifter than usual. Also, I think I backed the trailer into the water farther than I should have. I'd get the boat lined up and then the back end would drift down stream, right over top of the trailer. Fortunately there was no one else waiting to use the ramp. We finally got the boat on the trailer and set off for home. I completely forgot about listening for a train but fortunately none came.
I was anxious to see how my outdrive repairs had held up. Also, there was
that intermittent starting problem that would need to be looked into. Before
I could get to those things, though, I needed to drain the water out of the
engine in preparation for the cold night. I opened the petcock on the side of
the engine block and located the plug on the bottom of the manifold. Someone had
rounded off the head of the plug so I had to take it out with a pair of channel
locks. Nothing came out of the manifold until I poked a small cleaning brush into the opening.
After draining the engine, I thought I'd try to see if I could make the boat fit
in the garage. I have an oversized two car garage, but in previous attempts I
hadn't been able to get the boat to go in far enough to close the door. I took
the lights off the trailer, since it won't fit through the door with them on,
and pushed the boat into the garage. I found that if I turned the boat after
getting it started in, I could wedge it in diagonally and still be able to close
the door and get a car in the other bay.
There was some white powdery corrosion on the drive, but not nearly as much
as before. I noted that the zinc anodes had taken on the dull gray color of the
originals. I stuck my ohm meter probes on the trim tab and found that it was
electrically insulated just like the original zincs had been. To have any hope
of reducing galvanic corrosion, the zinc anodes are going to need to stay
conductive. I decided that next season I would try cleaning the anodes every week
or two to keep fresh material exposed. I experimented with the old ones and
found that it took some fairly heavy sanding to get through the insulating
layer. Since I have two sets, I can keep one set ready and swap them out
periodically.
My paint job on the lower unit hadn't held up very well. The zinc chromate primer was still intact, but the top coat had peeled in some places and blistered in others. I had used inexpensive hardware store lacquer for the top coat. For my next attempt, I bought some of the $6 a can Mercruiser "Phantom Black" from the marina. The propeller was back to bare metal again as expected. I drained a small amount of gear oil from the drive and was relieved to find no sign of water in it.
I took the battery to an Advance Auto Parts store and had it checked on their test rig. It passed. I had just topped off the electrolyte (it's not a sealed battery) and charged it for a while the night before, so I was still a little skeptical of the test results. While I was at Advance, I picked up a petcock to replace the damaged manifold drain plug. There's probably a reason Mercruiser installed a plug instead of a petcock there, but I decided to give it a try anyway.