Just a lover of boating, writing about what he loves. Stop by for interesting articles on everything from buying a boat, boating adventures and engine maintenance.
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One of my favorite views when cruising on The Bear's Den II. Just have to make sure I don't look this way for too long!
Several months ago, I noticed the shower drain in my boat was not removing water as it should. Rather than water running down the drain, it just collected in the pan at the bottom of the shower. Recently, I decided to tackle the job and figure out what was going on. I knew I was going to spend the entire July 4 th weekend on the boat and I wanted to be able to take a shower without worrying about the water building up. If you are not familiar with the workings of a basic shower sump system on a boat, it is actually pretty simple. The drain at the bottom of the shower empties into a box down in the bilge. Since the box is most likely below water level, there is a pump in the box that pumps the water up, out and overboard. Often the pump has a float switch attached to it to cycle the pump on when the water gets to a certain level and off when the box it empty. A Basic Sump Pump Setup In my case, I had already checked the line from the shower drain to the b
If you have ever experienced hydrolock on your boat engine, you may already know that it can turn a great day on the water into a really bad day in a hurry. What is hydrolock? To put it simply, it is when water gets into your engine cylinders. While this can also happen to car and truck engines, it is more likely to happen with marine engines because of the environment that boats operate in and it is more likely to happen on boats that have exhaust systems that release exhaust under the water’s surface. First, let’s talk about how the typical 4 stroke gasoline engine works. There are four steps (hence the term four stroke) that a cylinder goes through for each combustion cycle: 1. First the intake valve opens and the piston moves down which sucks air and fuel into the cylinder. 2. The intake valve closes and the cylinder moves up which compresses the air-fuel mixture. 3. The spark plug fires, igniting the fuel-air mixture, thus pushing the
Over the past several years, ethanol has gotten a real bad rap with recreational boaters. Stories of engine damage and getting stranded out on the water have been told time and time again. One group says that boaters should stay away from it while another group says it is perfectly fine to use. Who is telling the truth? Well, it depends. Let’s take a look at how we got here and what is really going on. In 2005, the Renewable Fuel Standard Act was passed that required a certain amount of renewable fuel to be used along with the fossil fuels that we had already been using. This was done to reduce the amount of pollution that fossil fuels create. Ethanol was chosen because it can be made from a renewable resource that is readily available in the US. Gasoline powered cars and trucks had no problem with the switch at all, but we cannot say the same thing for the boats. To understand this, let’s take a look at some of the characteristics of ethanol. It is i
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