Boat Maintenance Weekend
Betsy Kimmel drove down from Philadelphia to learn engines and get some practical experience on diesels. Betsy is working on her “First Mate” qualification with a sailing club I am a member of, “Singles on Sailboats”. So Betsy started by working on a low oil pressure alarm switch. I handed her the manual and told her the indications and let Betsy work through figuring out what the actual failure was. She diagnosed the issues and used the manual to isolate it to the alarm sender switch on the engine… Betsy then had to find the switch on the engine, remove it and then I handed her the replacement. She installed the new switch and we tested the system to make sure it was fixed.
We went over the engine cooling water systems for Ariosa, with her reading the manual and finding each part on the engine. We covered the complete systems, explaining each part. We then went over the engine oil systems and the fuel oil systems the same way. Betsy then changed the oil and oil filter. 
She then checked the oil level and started the engine to ensure nothing was leaking. We went over the fuel system in great detail, talking and walking through the system from tank shut off valve, to “Racor” pre-filter, low pressure fuel feed pump, high pressure gear driven piston injector pump, governor assembly, engine throttle, stop and transmission shift cable. Betsy then went on to check the fuel system and change the fuel filter. She then manually pumped the low pressure feed pump with the filter bleed open until we had a solid fuel system.
We finished by closing everything back up after a 20 minute test run to ensure the fuel system had a “solid” fuel rack. The day finished with dinner and drinks at the club on the patio…. Sunday morning’s lessons started on the battery system, finding isolation switches, going over the charging system belt replacement, pulling out the spare starter and walking through the starter. We took the pictorials in the manual and I demonstrated how each part worked. We discussed and Betsy found the starter, the starter solenoid, the auxiliary starting relay. Betsy was the quizzed on all the engine system, having to show each system, and point to the parts while describing the function.
We will clean up the boat and take it out for some boat handling training now that the weather has closed in and it makes it more difficult.