Connecting engine

Anders allowed me to stay in the slip until I fix my engine. I don’t want to stretch his offer so today I worked 6h to bring my Yanmar back to operation.

First thing was to drain the old fuel.
When I bought Meritaten the tank was almost full of diesel. During both seasons when I sailed her I hardly used 5 litres, topping up the tank before each winter (to avoid condensation and water in the fuel). Before each winter I was also adding anti-fouling liquid to the tank, to prevent any biological contaminations.

This year I’ve decided to drain all this old fuel, flush the system and start with fresh diesel.

I’ve drained the tank by disconnecting the hose after first-stage filter and placing it into container. Since it would took very long to drain this way I also sucked-out the fuel directly from fuel tank, using a huge syringe for changing oil. After removing circa 22 litres the tank was empty. The last 2 litres were dark and full of sediments.
This gives me a hint about tank capacity - estimated 25-30 litres.

I then took 1 litre of old but clean diesel and flushed it through the system.

The next step was to align the engine against the propeller shaft. Even though the shaft has a flexible coupling and engine sits on flexible pillows the initial misalignment was too big to accept.

I levelled the engine using fours big nuts which sit on top of engine bed. Once both shafts were aligned I connected them - which was a bit of yoga gymnastics as this assembly sits deep down in the bilge.

Then I started connecting all hoses and wires. Photographs and labelling I did last year were precious. Anyhow - working in very confined space, with very little room for tools and in awkward positions has made this a hard job.
Not to mention that certain things need to be done in proper order - otherwise one must disconnect the previously connected components to connect something which is now obscured and not accessible.
I don’t need to mention how I know this, do I?

At the end of the day I have all hoses and wires connected. What remains is to adjust engine controls (gearbox mostly), pour new fuel, bleed fuel lines, add glycol to fresh-water cooling system and try to start the engine.
That is a plan for tomorrow.