Sometimes We Get Lucky

Pohnpei, FSM

6-57N/158/12E

March 12, 2010

Sometime We Get Lucky

Sharry and I pulled into Pohnpei Friday morning at 0900. We had just come in from Kosrae, with 8’-10’ seas on our starboard beam and it was nice to be in the sheltered harbor.

We cleared customs in less than an hour, very efficient and professional. (The Marshallese Customs, Immigration and Quarantine could all take lessons from these folks on how to become more efficient.) An hour after anchoring, I went into the engine room to find hydraulic oil, which looked like a foaming coffee latte, coming out of the Naiad stabilizer reservoir.

The tank and heat exchanger, which were installed new 6 months ago, has the heat exchanger bolted into its bottom. I had replaced its zinc less than 60 days ago, and it was in reasonable condition. On disassembling the system yesterday, I found that the saltwater feed line was hooked up to the exhaust side of the heat exchanger and the zinc was protecting the water on it’s way overboard, not inboard; however, the Factory experts aren’t sure that the reversed line installation caused the failure. They thought that possibly there was too much cooling water flowing thru the unit, possibly causing cavitation and pitting. The heat exchanger appears to be welded up a section at a time, with about (38) 3/16 inch tubes, which then have a brass casing tube around the cooling tubes through which the hydraulic oil is forced to run to get cooled.

This isn’t a unit easily disassembled for repair. Fortunately, the unit is under warrantee and the question is how long do we have to wait to get the replacement parts.

The lucky part is that the unit waited to fail until after we had anchored.

Don