Serina‘s engine has been pretty reliable. It was installed when she was built in 2006 so is now about 12 years old. It is a Lombardini LDW 502M.

I’ve had a few problems over the years, but they have mainly been electrical and since replacing the battery and installing more substantial cables and connectors, things have been going well.

It has been serviced each year by Ropewalk Marine in Lymington, who have done the standard jobs such as replacing the filters, impeller and belts.

As mentioned in the introduction to the 2017-18 winter work, I’d planned to do more work this winter. Everything was still working, but a few things were showing their age. What I wanted to get done was:

1. Replace the flexible coupling – which was starting to perish
2. Replace the cutlass bearing – which I had been advised to do in Serina‘s 2012 purchase survey – but would make sense anyway when removing the shaft to replace the coupling
3. Replace the timing belt
4. Do the standard start-of-season service – as above

As part of the planned work, Simon replaced the flexible coupling and the cutlass bearing on the prop shaft, and everything was looking neat and tidy. He had had the engine running – when Serina was out of the water – to be sure the new coupling and bearing were working OK.

The plan was to relaunch her, take her back to the marina, and then hand her over to Ropewalk

It was a bit of a surprise when Serina‘s engine didn’t work when she went back in the water. Normally it’s just a question of switching on the power at the master switch in the cuddy, turning on the ignition and waiting for a few seconds for the glow-plugs to warm and then she’s ready to go.

However, there had been two weeks of very cold weather in February – just before she was re-launched. The temperature in Lymington had been in the region of -5 to -8 centigrade, so I was slightly nervous that there might be some issues.

Serina was launched by Haven Quay as normal, but when I turned-on the power at the master switch in the Cuddy, and turned the key in the ignition – nothing happened. I checked the battery terminals, re-tried the ignition key, but nothing happened. Everything was dead. No sign of power at the engine control pannel. The depth gauge was working Ok, but nothing from the engine.

I borrowed a battery booster from Haven Quay, but with no success. I eventually had to admit defeat and ask the Lymington Haven to tow Serina from Haven Quay back to her mooring. I then contacted Ropewalk.

Ropewalk were expecting to service Serina, but not to do diagnostic work. It took a long time for them to get to the bottom of the issues. They had to remove component by component to test them and then reassemble.

It turned out that both the two glow plugs and the control panel needed to be replaced.

Looking at the pictures of the control panel below, perhaps it’s not too surprising that something went wrong.

I don’t know exactly what went wrong, but suspect that water got into the circuits and then froze. Either way, it was time for a new panel.

Since then Serina has started with renewed vigour!