A heady job!
Yesterday was an extremely busy day with several jobs planned. In fact, we ended up working non-stop from our first cup of coffee until sunset.
Timing our departure to dodge an early-morning squall, Rebecca and I began the day by raising anchor just after 7:00 AM, moving the boat to dock over at Spice Island Marine. While we had tradespeople on the boat doing some work for us (fodder for tomorrow’s post perhaps), we tackled the chore of changing out the toilet plumbing in our aft head. This is never a fun job!
Just as we started making motions to raise anchor, we got a bit of a shower.
Of course, with showers come beautiful rainbows. That has to be a good omen, right?
Within days of arriving in Grenada with the new boat, we replaced the toilet and hoses in the forward head. We would have done the same with the aft head but at the time, there was only one of the toilets that we wanted on the island, and we wanted the one that we could purchase to be installed in the forward head for our soon-to-arrive guests. Now with some time, and all of the parts we needed (or so we thought), we were ready to tackle the aft head. This one had an added challenge though… we needed to change the head discharge seacock!
It was obvious just from comparing the two seacocks that the one in the forward head had already been swapped while the aft one looked to be original (32 years old?). I was pretty convinced that the older of the two was not working, and my suspicions would later be proven correct.
This looks to be original.
Looking down through the valve you can see that it is stuck in the half-closed position.
Moving the handle has no affect on this.
The first point of concern: where was the through-hull / valve located with respect to the water line? If the valve was removed, would water enter the boat? I was pretty sure just by looking at it that while the actual hole in the hull was below the water line (just), the valve itself was above it. In spite of that, I still stuck a wooden bung in the hole from outside the boat, just in case.
Note: We were tied up to the outside of the haul out bay so if something crazy happened and the boat started to sink, I could always run over to the boat yard and ask them to do an emergency haul out. 🙂
Removing the old toilet and hoses was a bit of a PITA but getting the old seacock off was a full-on battle! Alternating heat from our new heat gun, tapping with a hammer, and applying force from my pipe wrench didn’t seem to budge it. It was only when I put a piece of pipe on the wrench’s handle to increase my leverage that I was able to get it to move. Victory is sweet, but the job was only half done.
Adding the piece of pipe to the end of the wrench increased my leverage.
I was happy to see that once the valve was removed, the threads cleaned up nicely.
The installation of the new hoses, unfortunately, turned out to be an even bigger fight! Thick hoses are never a pleasure to deal with but I made the mistake(?) of purchasing some deluxe, super-duty hose from our friends, and it was a beast to deal with!
New seacock installed. Woo hoo!
And shiny new toilet. How sexy!
Ultimately we got it all together and working, but not until after the sun had set. And it only took 4 trips to Budget Marine to make that happen. Good thing they are located right next door to Spice Island, where we were docked. Perhaps the most frustrating part of a job like this is doing a task without the proper tools. I needed to cut a little bit of the interior shelving away to make room for the thicker hoses, and the perfect tool for that job would have been a Fein MultiMaster. If I’m a good boy, maybe Santa will bring me one this year.
A pile of tools, clamps, etc. that were used in the job, or removed from the old installation.
Note that the power tools had already been put away!