The Ships Logg

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...

We are well into boating season now and as expected, the traffic on our local waterways has picked up quite a bit. But if your experience is like mine, you may have noticed that boat traffic is even more than it was at this time last year. We can thank COVID-19 for that. In this age of social distancing, people are realizing that spending time on the water is one of the best ways to have your fun and remain safe. It is pretty easy for a family to be out on the water, whether on a boat or a few PWC’s, and keep their distance from other individuals. Statistics have shown that boating has long been one of the best activities for families to participate in. It seems that more and more people are starting to realize that again. Flying across the water on a PWC, a bow rider or raising the sails and gliding across a body of water is not a bad way to spend your time during a pandemic. It sure beats staying indoors. On Lake Lanier, where I do most of my boating traf...

If you have been boating for a long time like I have, you probably already know that no matter how diligent you are about doing the right things, sometimes things just come down to blind luck. I guess you can just say that about life as well. Sometimes your luck is good and sometimes not so good. One thing is consistent though. You can usually learn a lesson from whatever happens. Such is the case with an experience that I recently had on the water. It was February 23 but a nice day for late winter. The temperature was in the upper 60’s and the winds were calm. The Bear’s Den II had not been out of her slip yet since November 2019. That’s not normal for me. But life happens. I was eager to take her out. Two of my friends and I headed to the marina and boarded the boat. I let the blower run while I did my preliminary checks before turning the keys to bring the twin Crusader 454’s roaring to life. After a few minutes of warming up, we cast the lines and headed out...

Myth:   You shouldn’t overuse your boat because the engines don’t last as long as car and truck engines do. The more you use your boat, the better as long as proper maintenance is done. Truth:   This is one of the biggest myths in boating.   For some reason people believe that a gas powered boat engine should not last more than 1000 hours or so when this could not be further from the truth.   For the sake of this argument, we are talking about the typical recreational boat, not a performance boat with high output turbocharged or supercharged engines.   It is quite common for gasoline boat engines to last several thousands of hours if they are cared for properly.   While boat engines are subject to more stress than the typical car engine, they are also built to deal with that stress.   Regular maintenance of your boat’s mechanical systems is just as important as the maintenance that you do on your car.   Often, the problem is that ...

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...