I was sailing on a friend's boat one weekend for one of BCYC's monthly cruises. I use the word "sailing" loosely. My friend had sails up on principle, but since the winds were only about 2 mph, the engine was running.
He had put me at the helm and was giving me a variety of useful tips, so I wasn't surprised when he periodically walked by the helm on his center cockpit boat.
I didn't notice that his engine temperature gauge was installed on the side of the binnacle (the pedestal that holds the wheel), but one of the things he was doing was checking the engine temperature.
On one pass, he said, "The engine's overheating. Shut her down, and you'll have to sail her while my friend and I go below to see what's going on. Can you do that?"
His boat was 37' while mine was 25', but I assured him that I could sail the boat and that I would come get him if there was a problem. He and his friend went below.
Forty-five minutes later, he and his friend came back up. His friend looked as if he didn't feel at all well -- in the US we have s saying, "a bit green around the gills," for feeling nauseous. Well, he'd had his head in an engine for 45 minutes, smelling all those engine smells, while the boat gently rolled, so I wasn't surprised.
My friend held out his hand. There was his old impeller, broken into eight pieces.
My friend had been smart. He put down a paper towel on the cabin floor, and put the broken pieces of impeller on the paper. Then the two of them put it back together like a puzzle. That's how they knew there was still one piece of impeller somewhere in the cooling system, and they hunted until they found it.
Well, that was a bit of bother, wasn't it? What if he had been the only person on the boat? He still could have done it, but he would have had to put the anchor down, get to work on the engine, come up periodically to make sure the anchor wasn't dragging, etc.
Your engine manufacturer probably tells you right in the manual to replace the impeller once a year. Most sailors will tell you to "carry a spare in case it breaks."
That's two different pieces of advice, and it's the manufacturer's recommendation you should follow. It was hard to be that diligent on my old engine. You had to do a bit of engine dismantling to change the impeller, including taking the water pump off.
That makes it all the more important to replace that impeller *before* it breaks.
This happened to my friend's boat on a calm day. He didn't need the engine to get him away from a lee shore, or to fight a strong current, or to get through a bridge safely. There was no one injured we needed to get to shore. We were in open water. I had to tack the boat once to get it away from the shore, but that wasn't a crisis.
But it could have been.
Follow your engine manufacturer's recommendations on this kind of thing, because a simple thing like an impeller can contribute to a "cascade event" of things going wrong. Even if you have another person with you, he or she may not have the skills to maneuver your boat safely through a storm while you change the impeller you should have changed three months before.
Here's a good article from BOAT US on how to do it:
http://www.boatus.com/boattech/casey/replacing-impeller.asp
If it breaks unexpectedly, do what my friend did. Lay down a paper towel, put every piece on that towel, and make sure you got every bit of it.
Go through your manual, and make a time table for all these basic maintenance issues. We tend to think of our engines as something to get you out of the marina and on to the water -- but do you really want your boat adrift in a crowded marina?
No, I didn't think so.
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