The Catalina 36 V berth is laid out with one large V shaped cushion and a separate insert to fill in the Vee area attached to an upholstered board that fits/rests perfectly onto the trim of the berth. Invariably, just as we become fast asleep, the insert falls to the cabin sole. Since our plan is to sleep on the v-berth to enjoy the nice custom mattress who came with the boat, it’s time to fix it!
Since day 1 we own the boat, the sherwood water pump was leaking a bit, it was never the top issue but always something bothering me. In this article we are going to go through:
Replacing the water pump
Replacing one of the old cooling hose
Touch up painting of the engine oil crankcase
It took few hours to go through this work, but everything was pretty straight forward.
Original state of Hotel Catalina
Here couple of pictures from June 2016, 2 weeks after we took delivery of Hotel Catalina.
First engine picture June 2016First engine picture June 2016
Based on this pictures we can saw this leak has been there for a while by the rust we can see on the engine.
Time to fix this leak and give some love to the engine!
It has been now over 1 year we own the boat and it’s time to tackle this pump leaking and clean the rust on the engine block.
Here are few of the options to complete this task:
get a rebuilt kit and fixing it (tried it, it was worse!)
new sherwood pump (very expensive and not so much good feedback on the different forums)
migrate (upgrade?) to Oberdorfer
Replacing with an Oberdorfer pump that has the base that goes on with the same clip system as your Sherwood pump (more expensive, but more straight forward replacement)
If you aren’t scared of, rework the base of the Oberdorfer bolt on pump so it bolts into the pump land on the engine (way cheaper, but a bit too involved in my mind)
After looking online I found a very good deal on the N202M-908 at pump and parts online. Let’s go with this solution!
I was not sure about the purpose of this hole, and asked online I realized it was to make sure in case of leak of the pump, the raw water has a way to exit somewhere else than in the engine.
Now it’s time for some painting touch up
It’s the first time I try that, I decided to pick white to be able to see if any leak happens in the future. The result is pretty good looking. Next time I have a chance to remove the belt, I will definitely do more painting.
It was not possible to take advantage of the outhaul with the sail becoming a bit older, it was a missing feature. So after a bit of fighting with the boom, I was able to tear it down and see how it looked.
One of the challenge was to remove the end caps, I guess they haven’t been removed for a very long time, maybe never?
Hardware
On each end caps, I replaced the screws with 8 x ¼-20 x 1/2” SS Hex Head Bolts
The new system is composed of two ball-bearing Harken bullet blocks:
