The Longest Case of Lazy, Harmless, Deferred Maintenance

[Hoodsail]

Hudson:
I have a new found respect for rubberbands and will add a few of various sizes to my on board tools. I am sure there are others but currently my one manual head will not draw in seawater x 1.5 yrs.. but flushes just fine. My "temporary" fix; fill (from 120 gal on board) and cap a plastic water bottle in the sink to fill up the bowl prior to urination/defecation/whatever...I'm beginning to grow attached to that bottle...
thanks for the story..
dave

[sailpower]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

That is beyond any record I know of.

back in my Navy submarine days one of the times I noticed was that every once in a while some senior person would show up on the boat and see something we had long accepted as "that is the way it is" and ask the simple question, next thing we knew we fixed it

Didn't know you were SS. What boat?

I made 6 patrols on 610 Blue.

[Tetepare]

My Raymarine ST4000 holds a course, but the indicated compass bearing isn't correct. I tried to fix it 20 years ago, but haven't bothered since then.

I had a loose fire extinguisher for 10 years, finally mounted it last year.

Ten years ago the Loran antenna was shedding fiberglas, so I tossed it. Still have the functional (sans antenna) Loran installed.

[Hudson Force]

Originally Posted by Tetepare

My Raymarine ST4000 holds a course, but the indicated compass bearing isn't correct. I tried to fix it 20 years ago, but haven't bothered since then.

I had a loose fire extinguisher for 10 years, finally mounted it last year.

Ten years ago the Loran antenna was shedding fiberglas, so I tossed it. Still have the functional (sans antenna) Loran installed.

Impressive,- a major contender for the ultimate record!

[mowerandy]

Yeah - my to-do list at purchase included servicing the original motor. Finally got around to changing the oil last week, only 20 years later....

Next I plan to drain the stinking cesspool in the cockpit lazarette... assuming I live that long!

[Captain Dharma]

Can I borrow that rubber band?

[Mike_NC]

Originally Posted by sailpower

Didn't know you were SS. What boat?

I made 6 patrols on 610 Blue.

Good to know there are submariners on the forum. I served on John C.Calhoun, SSBN 630. I will say boomer sailors are some of the worst line handlers in the Navy. I guess that is expected since they don't get much practice (generally leave and arrive in port a half dozen times a year).

Mike

[senormechanico]

I was on one of the last of the diesel electrics, the SS-524 Pickerel back in the '60's based out of Pearl.
Thankfully, I wasn't aboard when they did the "Emergency Surface at
Flank Speed From Test Depth" test.

[Mike_NC]

Originally Posted by senormechanico

I was on one of the last of the diesel electrics, the SS-524 Pickerel back in the '60's based out of Pearl.
Thankfully, I wasn't aboard when they did the "Emergency Surface at
Flank Speed From Test Depth" test.

I am sure you have some stories. Hopefully the sub was rigged for sea well with that emergency blow. We did an emergency blow at our max depth (we were actually limited in depth to less than test depth) and I think we got a 25 degree up bubble. We were not at our flank speed but I would guess our flank speed on nuclear power was substantially higher than a diesel boat on batteries. There is a lot of talk about batteries on this site. The batteries on our boat consisted of 240 cells, each cell was almost 5 feet tall and I would estimate 16" square.

[Hudson Force]

I need to return to the original comment in post one of this thread and make a correction. What I thought was a simple fix for the throttle cable creeping back to lower rpms while operating was not the cure at all.

When we took "Aythya" out for a sail with the new owner, we found that the rubber band "cruise control" was still needed. After searching the web I found that others with the same problem had sometimes used a pressure clamp on the cable itself to provide more resistance. We decided that the crimp on the cable was a less desirable cure due to the potential of damaging the cable cover. We're thinking that the best cure might be to eventually find a way to add resistance to the throttle handle itself.

In the mean time I gave the new owners a fresh pack of rubber bands after completing the paperwork for the sale.