Progress!

 So all in all, a good day and much progress made

The mystery of the perenially blocking up cockpit drain has been solved. Removing a cut cable tie from the end of the hose at the seacock end then released a load of crud that it was retaining. Now I need to finish off lapping in the seacocks and refit them

I couldn't get the old anode bolts out due to a lack of a 17mm tube socket but Simon "Engines" Dunn saved the day 'cos he had the right tools for the job. I did comment on the fact that I was paying him to watch me undo the bolts with his tools! The anode bolts needed replacing as they were corroding quite badly and, indeed, once we got them out it was clear that the sealant had failed and water was starting to get in behind the plates. Much worse and we would, technically at least, have been sinking!

Then we got back onto the main event - fitting the new intake seacock, water strainer and raw water pump. In no particular order, the new intake skin fitting, seacock and elbow all went in with no issues (other than cleaning up afterwards 'cos Simon and I are both inclined to use far more Sika than strictly necessary - better too much and a clean up than too little and have to start again).

We had a brains trust meeting about the location of the new basket water strainer and implemented Plan B. That meant some wood butchery to make up a backing spacer. Happily, I had a spare piece of Utile left over from previous projects that just needed cutting down to length

The raw water pump is a bit more complicated as I decided I wanted it turned through 180 degrees so that the impeller housing is facing into the cabin. As originally fitted, changing the impeller on a cold engine would have been a right royal pain in the bottom working blind with barely enough space between the engine, the pump and the alternator to get one hand in. On a hot engine, and if you need to change the impeller in a hurry you can bet it'll be a *very* hot engine, it would have been well nigh impossible

So Simon has made up a steel plate to mount the pump forward of it's original position and I made another timber spacer block from a nice piece of scrap hardwood that's been looking for a purpose in life for ages. We're agreed that we need to fettle up a bracing strut to stop the plate bouncing around but we're nearly there

The only problem that leaves me with is that I'll have to relocate the saloon blown air heating outlet as the pump is now in the way. I'm not worrying about that right now, I have options (it'll probably get re-routed out of the engine bay altogether and run through the nav table seat if I go ahead with relocating the battery bank that is currently under the seat elsewhere)

Tomorrow, my mission is to clean up and make ready to fit new anode bolts which will then be a quick job when Simon comes back on Saturday* to finish the cooling system plumbing. That, then, will be him done on Pagan until we're back in the water and can run the engine in.

I'll do some pics in due course, maybe. P'raps.