Marathon - High winds and I finally get the impeller into the genset

Marathon, nice and warm but windy

The winds came up last night to 20 to 25 kts and continued all day long. Marathon is such a protected harbor that all we felt was the wind, no wave action. The first order of business today was to get the genset working. I got a call from the Volvo dealer in the northeast, Brian McDonnell of the dealership with the same name (he had been reading the blog), and he gave a few suggestions that proved valuable. As you know from previous posts, the problem is that the half moon shaped key sits in a slot on the shaft, rounded side down. Any pushing of that key will cause it to slide up in back and block the impeller insertion. While trying to compress all the vanes manually, it's very hard to exactly mate the key and slot without nudging the key. I have a pump on the Volvo that does not use a key, it has splines that mate to the impeller. You can push it on any which way and there's no problem, takes 5 minutes.

Wrapped tight

Brian advised to take a tie wrap and run it around the impeller to compress the vanes so you're not fighting the vanes for alignment. The tie wrap keeps the vanes away from the sides of the pump so all you have to worry about is the impeller to shaft alignment. Well, it worked like a dream. I got the impeller in on the first try so now I have a working genset. It's an important piece of equipment on a boat that spends a lot of time at anchor going north. A general cheer went up from Fleetwing when the impeller finally gave in to the latest technique.

Almost a good sunset, getting better

For the next few days I don't think anyone is leaving. There's a small craft advisory out until Monday night but on Tuesday the weather is supposed to break and if it does (we don't always believe these reports anymore...) we'll take off for Rodriguez Key and then Marine Stadium by Miami the next day for a few days.