Article by Capt. Steve Katz
Traveling Spares
During peak fishing tournament season, there is a service truck for every marine trade in the parking lot at nearby marinas and boat yards. Engine mechanics, propeller companies, fiberglass, and paint contractors, electrical and electronics companies, all the trades and parts you would need to build a boat are readily available day and night during tournament season. While this is convenient for captains and crews, it is not the normal way of getting parts or service for most boaters. What happens when you travel away from the mainstream areas or popular fishing destinations?
9th Street Ocean City or Nantucket
I recently traveled to Nantucket to work on a sportfish boat. While the island is packed with fishing boats and yachts, there are not many marine retailers or service providers on the island. Cape Cod is 30 miles away and Mainland Massachusetts is 60 miles away. Finding boat supplies or service in Nantucket feels like millions of miles away when you need help. Not too much different than a trip up the Assawoman Bay into Delaware or south to Chincoteague Virginia. Boating and fishing in distant areas require planning and preparedness.
While it is hard to be prepared for every situation that can sideline your boating or fishing activities, a few critical spare parts can save your trip. Carrying a good cross selection of spare parts can allow you to make temporary or permanent repairs while away from your home port. One boat owner who prided himself in his spare parts inventory mentioned finding a technician was easier than getting the needed parts. What if something critical breaks- do you bring a spare?
What spare parts should you bring? What parts can I get at my destinations? How can I ship parts to my destination and how fast and how much will it cost? Do you have room to bring all of this with you?
What to Bring?
Let’s skip the typical spares and supplies such as filters, oil, bulbs, fuses, screws, nut & bolts and the other supplies. How do you determine the parts you should bring on your trip?
The first way to be prepared is to bring parts that your boat has a history of needing, - could be shore power cord ends, fuses, float switches, latches, etc. Review the part numbers, sizes, serial numbers etc. to be sure you have the correct parts for your systems. What about the parts you do not know you need? You can bring spare parts that could be used in more than one situation!
Plumbing Spares
Carry a good high-capacity seawater pump. This pump could be used for your air conditioning systems or it could also be used as a live well pump, ice maker seawater pump, water maker low pressure pump, freshwater pump, saltwater wash down pump or even an emergency bilge pump. You may need to get creative for the connection and operation of a pump in a nonstandard application. Carrying a few sizes and long lengths of plumbing hose is a clever idea and carrying lots of smaller lengths of different diameter hoses can allow you to use a short piece of hose as an adapter to step-up or step down for a temporary repair.
Electrical Spares
In addition to the specific components, bring supplies that can serve multiple purposes. For example, you can bring a spool of 10/3 wire – this could be used for AC power 115v or 230v or two wires in the jacket could be used for DC power such as 12v or 24v. The three individual wires can be removed from the jacket to form a single wire.
You could double up the #10 wire which would be similar in capacity to a single #6 wire. Note: Using electrical wire in the above situation is only recommended for a temporary repair or use to keep you going - the wrong wire size and color should not be used for permanent repairs.
Fuses and circuit breakers – with so many styles, shapes and capacity how do you decide what to bring? The popular toggle breaker (often sold by other companies such as Blue Sea Systems or Paneltronics) is used on many systems on a boat and can easily be temporarily substituted for most other style circuit breakers and fuses. These breakers are often rated for both AC and DC use, allowing you to reduce the spare inventory needed. Carrying a few sizes (amp ratings) of these breakers allow them to be substituted to replace most over-current protection devices. You may need to adapt the breakers with new wires or terminals if it is not an exact replacement.
Navigation Electronics
Modern navigation electronics seem to operate flawlessly in a stand-alone system, but a complex electronics network with mixed brands and a lot of accessories could be troublesome if something fails. If a system problem occurs, you may be able to reconfigure the navigation electronics network and simplify your system by temporarily disconnecting a problematic device from the large network. You may need some specialty cables to do this, and be sure test out your “backup” configuration at your home port.
Backup Systems
Another way to be prepared for a breakdown is to have redundant systems, like a spare, but the spare part is already connected and ready to be put into use if there is a problem. These redundant systems are often found on critical systems such as freshwater pumps and sea water pumps for air conditioning systems.
While there is not enough room for all the spares you would like to carry, carefully selecting the spare parts that match your boat, and a little bit of ingenuity is the best way to be prepared. §
