Water Pump Fails!!!! Arghh!
Hi there guys. Sorry I didn’t post yesterday. Been a bit busy of late with a new problem onboard. Azimuth like all boats has a pump that gives us tap pressure on the fresh water system, without it the taps don’t work any more. You can have a 1000 litres of water onboard, as we do right now and there wont be any way of getting at it!
So thats what happened yesterday. The pump started making a high pitched noise, and no water was coming out. Its the not the first time I have had to attend to this pump. But generally it has been pretty reliable for the last 5 years, and its original to the boat, so 26 years old. Well, this time the problem was a little more tricky. Inside the pump is an impeller that does the pumping. This had sheered off its mounting in the middle. Out comes the epoxy to attempt a fix. I left it to cure for at least 12 hours, and then tried to reassemble the whole thing at about 4 this morning when I came on watch. There hasn’t been much wind for the past couple of days, so we have been moving very slowly, but still the boat is rocking around and that makes fixing things extra difficult.
So fingers crossed, having spent 3 hours reassembling the thing, I turned on the pump to prime the system. It sounded good at first and then after a couple of minutes, the sound changed again to its high pitched whine, and lo and behold, the fix was a FAIL!
Arghh! That’s not good. Not sure what the hell to do now? its a pretty serious problem to have no easy access to water. Our friends on Coral Moon on the radio told us they had a spare, but it was very different to our current pump and also 12V too, where everything on Azimuth is 24V. So I am sitting there trying to work the problem, when it comes to me. We have a deck pump onboard. I could try that?
It took me all day to dig out all the stores to put together all the right fittings to replace the old pump with the deck pump. It involved a lot of replumbing and also some create fittings repurposing, but I managed to cobble it together. We switched it on and voila I could see water flowing through the hoses and the system pressurised properly!!! I am so relieved and happy. I class this as one of my all time greatest fixes at sea to date! First thing to do was have a shower!
Well for some reason, I cant get google earth to work today, so no picture of our location. Sorry.
As of 1138 local time, our position is:
3deg 46.666 minutes N, 82 deg 52.021 minutes W
Catch you again tomorrow, and fingers crossed nothing else breaks!
Good gracious … it’s a great relief to know you have managed to fix the pump and your water is now running through the pipes. Can’t imagine what you would have done without yr skill and persistence… I guess you would have had to return to shore as no way can you travel such distance without water!
Keep positive and stay safe.
Love you. Mumxxxx
It was touch and go for a while there!
We’ve got a spare bike pump if that’ll help?
It was looking bad at one point, I would have tried anything!