We noticed two things a little awry as we’ve been underway. The first thing is that our AIS didn’t appear to be working. We just had AIS installed earlier this year with a new electronics package and it was working fine. After a quick text exchange with Dave @ Nautilus (he installed the electronics and is incredibly helpful) to figure our where the unit is installed, I pulled out to take a look.

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I did the first thing that everyone should do to troubleshoot electronics. I rebooted it. That seemed to do the trick! Now we are receiving AIS, but I’m still not sure if we are transmitting. We will test again when we are underway.

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The next project was not quite so easy. We noticed that our water pressure was really poor when not hooked to the dock. When not hooked to water from the dock, Our Dash has a 110 gallon water tank and a pump to pressurize the system. It never has great water, but it was really bad.

First, the pump would run continously and made a loud “clackity-clackity-clack” sound. That ain’t right.

We made sure the water tank was full, but still no joy. Thankfully, the previous owner was a master of keeping spare parts on board and had a rebuilt water pump stored away.

After a little bit of wrestling with the old pump in a tight space and a lot of water (I forgot to turn off the shore water before unhooked the hoses), the new one was installed and worked great! It sounded so much better, but, unfortunately, our water was still low pressure.

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Then I noticed the little strainer before the pump. It was not filling with water like it is supposed to. I unhooked the output hose and the water flow was just a dribble. I took off the input hose and the water gushed out.

At least we had identified the root cause. After sprinting to the aft to turn off the input from the water tank (which happens to be in the center in a very difficult place to reach), I cleaned out the strainer, hooked everything back up, and we were good to go!

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