Broken down in Anacortes with cooling issue, help appreciated

[MasterYoda928]

I just love happy endings...Cruise on safely.

[sailingchiro]

I first clean out my thru hulls.

[Heck]

Originally Posted by Cadence

You sound very thorough. I didn't see a swim to check a fouled intake?

Water in Anarcortes was 59F. However I'm storing my wetsuit on the boat from now on...

[Heck]

Originally Posted by MasterYoda928

I just love happy endings...Cruise on safely.

Not to mention it was my first ever cruise, with wife and two small kids. Quite a relief to get the issue fixed.

[BugzyCan]

Do boats generally not have a way to backflush the intake by default? Seems like something that could be easily added.

[exMaggieDrum]

I did this on the raw water intake to my head toilet pump and I don't know if it would be good to to for the raw water intake for the engine.


I put a bronze T fitting onto the output of the thruhull so that the top of the T was inline with the thruhull. I put a pipe plug in the top of the T and put a hose barb on the side part of the T to which I connected the hose to the toilet pump. Used to get little fishies stuck in the hull side of the thruhull. They were hard to "fish" out from out side and the bend in the fittings made it almost impossible to push a wire through there to put the critter out.


When it did get plugged up I would take off the pipe plug and push a wooden dowel down it and it would unplug it. When you take the plug off you have to have a pipe wrench on the T to prevent it from turning when you put on or took off the plug (or cap).

[Celestialsailor]

One thing I had happen was a piece of tree branch about 1/2" in diameter and 2"s long got sucked up into the inlet thru-hull. It stayed there because wood floats. It would act like a check valve plugging up the water before the water strainer. It was the weirdest thing I ever saw.

[topmast]

A cause of overheating here on the coast can be bark . Anchor in a bay with log booms and the little bits are suspended, small enough to get thru the screen in the filter and big enough to accumulate in the transmission heat ex. ( if it's on the raw side) Been called out to trouble shoot this more than once.IMhO it should be in series on the output of the H ex engine water. Another case of refer over heat/shutdown is jelly fish. This is annoying with no known cure.

[Stu Jackson]

Originally Posted by BugzyCan

Do boats generally not have a way to backflush the intake by default? Seems like something that could be easily added.

On my M25, I take the rw input hose off the pump and back pressure it with the dinghy foot pump.

[Stu Jackson]

Originally Posted by Heck

>>>>>>>>>>>
Boat is an 1989 Catalina 36 with a Universal M-25XP engine and is new to me so I have little knowledge of pre-existing issues.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Heck, good for you figuring it out.


You can learn a lot from:


www.c36ia.org


and




Engines 101 - The BIGGEST & BEST collection of M25 Series Universal Engine Information on the Internet, plus some M35, too

http://www.c34.org/wiki/index.php?title=Diesel_Engine

[davidjade]

I had this same type of situation in a remote area of the PNW last year. It short, it was something caught in the thru hull. Because our thru hull had a molded in mesh screen on the hull side it allowed a small piece of kelp to get partially sucked in and stuck. But not always so sometime we'd start with good flow only to have to get worst as we throttled up. We found it by doing what was suggested here - remove the hose and checking the flow (which was low).


How we solved it thought may be useful to others. We took kayak/SUP pump (the upright standing one but I supposed a dinghy pump would also work) and with a wet rag, connected it to the inside side of the thru hole (with the hose removed) and pumped until it blew the stuck bits of kelp free. A neighboring boater had this bright idea and it worked well. We still needed a dive to get it completely clear but it got us moving again in a very remote PNW location. A good trick to keep in the bag.