Mr. Richardson and one of his riggers did a lot of work topsides today. They came early, armed with heavy halyards, and proceeded to tension up the rigging with the new lines so that the mast would be supported when the D3 stays were removed and so that everything else would be slack enough to allow them to work. The old rusty D3 was removed and they returned to their shop to make up new lines. All the while I was working below decks with the A/C running and cleaning up. I decided to do the main engine impeller replacement at the docks rather than somewhere at anchor and proceeded to follow the instructions in the manual.
The VW engine water pump needs to be removed in order to replace the impeller. An engine belt needs to be removed, the intake and output hoses need to be removed, as well as 3 bolts holding the pump in place. The first step in the manual states that the retaining clips on the hoses need to be clicked out of place and the hoses removed. The retaining clips were easy to remove but I could not get either of hoses removed. I ended up removing the upper hose attachment at the opposite end (which had just a pressure mounting) and twisting/turning/pulling/pushing the water pump end until it popped off. That took about 40 minutes but after that I was completely stuck – I couldn’t get the bottom hose removed and was afraid of using too much force and damaging the heavy tubing. I thought I could replace the impeller while the pump was still in place but that was quite difficult as I couldn’t get the right angle to insert the new impeller. So in the end I spent 3 hours in contorted positions getting that recalcitrant hose off. Once the hose finally decided to pop off it only took me 10 minutes to clean up things and re-insert the new impeller and another 10 minutes to put everything back together. The test-run of the engine showed no leaks so that task was done.
By this time Richardson’s had returned with the new D3s and installed them. They then re-tensioned the rigging all around and completed their task just as the sun was setting.
