Ready For Winter

Winterization, 11/25/2007

I was distracted by responsibilities at home last weekend, so I hadn't yet finished winterizing. I returned on Sunday with my father and Anthony (visiting for the holiday) for a quick cruise and to complete the remaining tasks. They were a big help, providing extra hands along the way.

I borrowed an oil change pump (a Jabsco flat tank, just like mine) from a friend at work. After a quick cruise, we set it to work while finishing off a few other tasks. I cleaned the sea water strainer, drained the raw water from the heat exchanger, and pulled the engine zincs. For the most part, the zincs were in good shape (better than 50% remaining), but they're inexpensive and a PITA to reach, so I changed them anyway before putting them back.

Good news: the oil change went fairly easily. Once I was reasonably sure that all of the oil was out of the engine, I moved the pump to the transmission oil and let it work there while I changed the main oil filter. Last time I changed the filter, I made quite a mess. This time, I took a layered approach: I set down an oil absorbent cloth, spread an opened trash bag over that, set a foil tray in the bag, and wrapped a 1-gallon ziploc around the filter while unscrewing it. The ziploc caught most of the oil, and the bit that I missed spilled fairly neatly into the foil pan. When it finished dripping, I installed the new filter and simply picked up the trash bag, letting the filter and foil pan fall right inside. Barely any spilled, so a few shop towels cleaned it right up.

After refilling the oil in the engine and transmission, I sucked 6 gallons of pink RV antifreeze through the raw water side, and then we called it a day.