Boat
Maintenance and Repair
Boat maintenance and repair is all too often considered an onerous chore, something one has to begrudgingly undertake. Unlike the motor vehicle at home, where you drop it off at the shop and collect when done. No matter how much hired help you get to do your boat maintenance and repair tasks, you will still have work to do. As everyone knows the hourly rates can be quite steep for a marine engineer or electrician at the marina to do an oil change on your engine, or any other designated and often simple fault diagnosis and correction tasks.
Most of us can’t really afford the luxury of relying on expensive service people. If you can afford to get people in, more power to you, although these days and post Covid 19 you can wait weeks or months to get someone down to the boat. Hopefully this webpage will enlighten you and stop the service people from trying to smother you with jargon and gobbledegook as an excuse to upsell you something expensive and new. You can mitigate the effects of maintenance or unpredictable failures and at least understand them. Much of this page is extracted from my book the Marine Electrical and Electronics Bible now in the 4th Edition and completely revised and updated. Essential tools for boat maintenance and DIY boat maintenance tips are included.
Boat
Maintenance and Repair
For a liveaboard person let’s look at the range of boat maintenance and repair tasks as well as systems troubleshooting tasks you need to be regularly undertaking to ensure your boat is safe and seaworthy, whether for a weekend or a long-term offshore cruise. The first step is to generate a systems or equipment list that shows what needs maintenance. Many of the tasks are applicable whether sail or power and this is a general breakdown and not comprehensive
1. Engines and Associated Systems. This includes the diesel fuel, seawater and freshwater cooling systems, the exhaust systems and so on. You need to do an inspection before you start up, and daily and weekly and monthly to detect and correct issues before they become big problems. Also include the transmission attached to this and perhaps shaft seals and the propeller on the end of that shaft.
2. Engine Electrics. This includes the electrical and control systems such as the starter motor, the starter battery and all the engine instrumentation.
Boat
Maintenance and Repair
3. Electrical Power. The electrical power supply system including the house batteries, the charging systems that encompass the alternator, solar, wind and hydrogenator systems. This will include system wiring and power distribution, lighting and so on. This also covers the important switch panel, protection and wire terminations.
4. AC Power. These power systems include the shore power system, inverters and generators.
5. Marine Electronics. This includes your instrumentation, communications such as the VHF, chart plotter, radar, autopilots and so on.
Boat
Maintenance and Repair
6. Water Systems. This includes potable water storage and pump systems, shower drain systems, toilets, black water systems, holding tanks, bilge pumps and so on.
7. Hull and Deck. This includes the fiberglass and gelcoat, steel and timber if constructed with that, anti-corrosion measures, anti-fouling, boat varnishing and teak care if you have it.
8. Rigging. This includes standing and running rigging, booms, reefing systems, headsail furlers and so on.
9. Sails. This includes sail care, repair and so on
10. Deck Equipment. This covers deck winches, cleats, anchor handling equipment including the anchor windlass.
11. Boat Steering. This includes wheel and tiller systems including rudders.
12. Winterization and De-winterization. Layup tasks and spring recommissioning program.
Boat
Maintenance and Repair
I have been involved in performing and working up maintenance programs in commercial maritime and offshore oil rigs. Over the years the philosophy for this has changed, mostly driven by the commercial aviation sector. We have a lot to thank them for in this regard as much research on maintenance and effectiveness has been done given that some of the worst aviation accidents are caused by maintenance deficiencies. I have applied the principles to my own boats. For many years we have had time-based tasks on everything from engines to auxiliaries and systems. This hasn’t really been successful and we have also had running hour-based programs which are often not practical to a cruising yacht or even a power boat. I am sure some of you are running spreadsheets to track these tasks. There are common boat maintenance issues to address.
Boat
Maintenance and Repair
Much research and analysis within the aviation industry has evolved the maintenance into what is called Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM). This maintenance philosophy is still widely in use, and is the probability of failure increased over time, and that timing maintenance would reduce or eliminate the failure. The research showed that for at least 70% of systems and equipment this was not actually true. For this equipment which has an inherent probability of failure and constant maintenance tasks, servicing or replacement was pointless. All things degrade over time, and some things degrade at a pace so slow that they are not of practical concern. There are many maintenance factors to consider. Look at performing a boat risk assessment for all your systems.
Boat
Maintenance and Repair
The result of all this research, along with lived and learned experience has introduced what are fundamental truths in boat maintenance and troubleshooting that apply to small boats and yachts. Not all failures on your boat can be prevented by maintenance. It is just the way of the world that some equipment and systems failures arise as a result of events and factors that are entirely outside of our control. Some examples are lightning strikes your mast or being overcome by big seas and partially flooding your boat or being knocked over and dismasting and so it goes on. It doesn’t matter how much maintenance or how you do it, the outcome cannot be changed, although the effects can be substantially mitigated by design factors. You can do all the maintenance in the world but if the equipment is poor quality or the system has been poorly designed with inherent weaknesses and hidden failure points, or simply poorly constructed, then you are on the losing end of the equation. Boat maintenance and repair reliability is possible.