A day down below

In sharp contrast to Wednesday and Thursday, Friday was pure miserable, the forecast rain arriving much sooner than expected and the wind several knots further up the Beaufort scale than it should have been.

Up earlier than usual I showered the bonfire out of my hair before heading south for work and the Loch Striven. With the annual docking just on the horizon and the weather cr4p it seemed like the ideal day for drawing off oil samples from all the boats machinery and fuel tanks to send away for analysis.

Done at regular intervals throughout the year and always before the annual dry docking in December, oil analysis can provide a valuable indication of potential problems like bacteria in the fuel that can lead to filter blockages and worse. High levels of tin, copper and lead can indicate bearing problems in an engine and tiny water droplets may indicate a faulty seal in a Voith unit.

It was also a good opportunity to replace the oil in the huge ‘Norgear’ 2.161:1 main engine gearboxes, a once a year job that we always do just before the boat heads south for dry dock. At 40lts capacity each and with oil as thick as treacle, taking the top off, sucking out the oil with a pump and tipping the new stuff in straight from the 20lt container makes for more sense than messing about with filler and drain plugs

That was about it really, I don’t think I stepped off the boat all day and wound my way home to spend the rest of the evening catching up on the blog