Winterisation part two

Having run out of time last weekend, I managed to pressure wash the mooring tackle on Saturday. The above shot shows the various bits of string that we use to keep our Macwester Malin hooked-up to her mooring chains.

Following that I had a quick first check over the main mast and rigging which is now safely lying on the club’s rack. I dismantled some of the fittings in order to get a solid visual on the condition of the rigging. Nothing jumped out as an obvious problem, but we shall have a full inspection along with some testing carried out before next season.

Then I swapped out the old oil filter for our new Lombardini-manufactured original part. I also put in about 3.2 litres (this should be 2.4 litres according to Golden Arrow Marine comment below) of 15/40W fully synthetic oil as the Lombardini LDW 1003M engine manual specifies. Another version of this manual is freely available on the Lombardini website here [the copyright for both lies with them]. I’ve included a link to the expanded English version above, just so that I know where to find it again …as the manual that came with our boat is in every language other than English.

The shot above shows the mixture of 50% concentrated anti-freeze and 50% water being run through the engine. I only ran the engine for a minute or so until the contents of the bucket had replaced the fresh water that had been in there since flushing out the salt water last weekend. After completion I stuffed a rag into the open end of the hose, which I’ll leave in place for the moment. As I don’t have a replacement impeller yet, I’ll leave the current one in the engine over the winter and replace it with a new one when the engine is being recommissioned in the spring.

Our 32ft Macwester Malin ketch was called ‘Bollebof’ when we bought her earlier this year; prior to being called ‘Bollebof’, she had been called ‘Elodie’. Although we bought her in Naarden which is East of Amsterdam, she had been based in Terneuzen which is in the bottom South West corner of the Netherlands [just 20 miles North of Ghent]. Having removed the very Dutch wooden name plate last weekend, I proceeded to remove the vinyl lettering of her former home port, using a hairdryer to help ease the task. Applying the lettering for ‘Indefatigable Banks’ will wait until next spring.

Finally, along with emptying our Macwester’s water tank and some other small jobs, I removed the anchor to keep it safe from thieves looking for scrap metal, and [after dismantling the cockpit tent], I secured a tarpaulin over the cockpit to offer some protection over winter. While I do have one or two other things to do before the cold weather kicks in, the key winterisation tasks have now been completed, and we can start to turn our attention to other maintenance, remedial, and cosmetic tasks that we want to attend to before next season.