A 2011 Pilot 18' came through our workshop with 244 hours on the engine and fourteen and a half years of paperwork in a file. On paper, 244 hours looks like an engine that has barely been run in.
The file tells the true story of ownership, warts and all. Over those years the boat needed a complete new heat exchanger after the old one blocked with salt, a new cutlass bearing at eight years old and five visits to sort out the automatic bilge pump. None of these faults were the result of neglect, as she was much loved, kept in a marina and lifted out every winter for maintenance and servicing.
What follows is taken from the paperwork that accompanied her to our yard, shared with the owner's permission. It shows what ten years actually does to a well-kept Pilot, and what to look for in an older boat.
Ten years is a calendar problem, not an hours problem
The engine is a Beta 20, and across fourteen and a half years it averaged about seventeen hours a year. In my experience that is a little lower than I would expect, but well within the realms of possibility.
Engine manufacturers write their service intervals in hours. Beta's manual sets most items at every year or every 250 hours, whichever comes first, and a second group, including the fuel filter, antifreeze and gearbox oil, at 750 hours. At seventeen hours a year, those 750-hour items would come round after more than forty years!
Most leisure engines never reach particularly high hours, which makes the hours almost irrelevant. For most owners these checks are best done annually, because rubber hoses, seals, switches and anything carrying salt water age on the calendar whether the engine is running or not.
We had two Pilot 18' boats operating out of the same port for similar parts of the year. One was commercial, used every day during the season and worked quite hard. The other was a leisure boat, used only occasionally. The commercial boat suffered fewer problems over its lifetime. Partly that is because diesel engines like working hard, and they like to be used rather than sat idle. Partly it was because the owner's livelihood depended on the boat running, so he did all the maintenance regularly, religiously, to limit the risk of downtime.
Low engine hours on a ten-year-old Pilot, and in fact on any boat, do not necessarily give you the full picture. They do not tell you what state the hoses, the seals or the cooling system are in. Those are kept in hand by the small routine jobs: checking hose clips, opening and closing the seacock as part of the checks before each trip, and cleaning the boat, which is how an owner gets to know it. Essential Maintenance: What Matters, What Does Not goes through which of those jobs matter most and why.
The automatic bilge pump
Plymouth Pilots are not self-draining. The cockpit drains to the bilge, where the water is pumped out, and this allows a lower, deeper cockpit. A manual pump is standard and an automatic electric pump can be added. For a Pilot left afloat, I would generally say an automatic pump is essential, because it is what deals with the rain when nobody is aboard.
At six years old, the owner reported that the pump was not working properly. The sensor and its housing were covered in algae. While the yard was looking, they also found water leaking from the aft end of the heat exchanger. A bolt had come out of the end cap and was lying in the bilge, rotted into two pieces.
At eleven the pump ran but nothing came out. The outlet pipe was blocked, and it was cleared by tapping it. At twelve the sensor had clogged again, and the pump was replaced with one that has a separate float switch, which is less prone to clogging. At thirteen it stopped altogether. The fuse had failed, and it had been made up from two spade connectors rather than a proper fuse holder, with the pump cable sharing a bulkhead entry with the exhaust. The cable was rerouted, sleeved and clipped away from the engine, and a fuse holder was fitted.
When we install a new bilge pump, the connections are made as high as possible and sealed in heat-shrink terminals to keep water out. That leaves the pump itself, sitting in the bottom of the bilge, as the part most likely to give trouble, and that is where most of the problems were.
An automatic pump that has not been checked can give an owner a false sense of confidence. On a Pilot of this age I open the deck hatches, look at the state of the bilge, lift the float to see the pump run and follow the cable back to where it is fused.
Salt in the cooling system
The biggest single job in the file came at ten years old. The owner had noticed that the engine was starting to overheat every now and then. The outlet hose from the exhaust elbow had swollen and the elbow itself was blocked.
A blocked elbow is something we do see from time to time. It is salt building up, and it can generally be cleaned out and the hose replaced or refitted. On this Pilot the elbow bolts were so tight they felt as though they might snap. It took heat and some dismantling to free them before a new elbow and first section of exhaust hose went on.
Behind that, the heat exchanger was blocked with salt and pieces of old anode, along with pitting on the sealing surface at the ends. The whole unit was replaced, along with the thermostat housing. Four years later the owner asked for the heat exchanger to be cleaned, and there were salt deposits inside it again.
On the Beta engines, raw water runs through the tube stack inside the heat exchanger to cool the engine's own coolant. The anode sits in that same salt water to protect the heat exchanger, and as it wastes away doing its job, pieces can break off and lodge in the tube stack. Beta says to remove and clean the stack and replace its O-rings every year or 250 hours, which on most leisure boats makes it an annual job rather than one done at the hours specified.
Electrics in a damp engine bay
At the same ten-year service the engine was noted as very damp. The battery cable had rotted and come away from the battery switch and a jump pack was needed to start the engine. A few months later a bad connection at the starter was found and renewed.
Further electrical faults followed. At thirteen the owner asked for the engine stop button to be replaced because it did not always stop the engine. The same winter the cuddy light stopped working. The lamps were fine, but the switch behind them had fully corroded. The battery was replaced at eight and a half and again at fourteen.
The damp was likely a combination of things: a cover that was past its best and has since been replaced, water lying in the bilge and condensing in the engine bay and possibly poor ventilation. Damp in an engine bay that is left unattended, or is not ventilated, will find its way into the electrical connections. A good cover and a dry bilge both give it less to work with over winter, and Laying Up for Winter covers how to leave a Pilot so that it stays that way.
The stop button is worth a mention of its own. A button that only works some of the time is often damp in the switch or its wiring, much like the cuddy light, but when this one fails the engine keeps running. There is also a stop lever on the starboard side of the engine and it pays for any owner or operator to know where it is and how to use it, so that there is another way of stopping the engine if the button fails.
When I look at the electrics on an older Pilot, I am looking for green corrosion on terminals, cables that have chafed or worked loose and switches that are stiff or intermittent. Those same connections are where I start when an engine will not start: at the battery, working towards the engine. What to Do When the Engine Will Not Start sets out that order step by step.
Stern gear and anodes
At eight years old the cutlass bearing had excessive play and was replaced. Typically, they will last seven to eight years. Silt on a drying mooring will wear one out in five years or less, as will failed flexible engine feet, particularly on older boats, because the shaft no longer runs true in the bearing.
When I check a cutlass bearing ashore, I hold the shaft by the propeller and move it up and down and side to side. Any more than 2 mm of movement and it is due for replacement.
When this carrier came out, it had burrs from previous bearing changes, so this was not the first one and the earlier one had not lasted as long. Calcium was cleaned off the shaft and the new bearing was fitted slightly proud, so it would be easier to remove next time.
The remote greaser on the stern gland was refilled at thirteen years. The hull anode was renewed at least five times in the paperwork and by eleven and a half the studs it bolts to were in poor condition and needed a good wire brush and clean up before the new one went on. On a Pilot kept afloat all year, these jobs came round regularly.
Above the waterline
By comparison, the deck and topsides asked for very little. The owner kept the boat washed down with fresh water and gave it a hand polish when it was out of the water. It suits some owners more than others, but keeping the gelcoat clean with fresh water will do the boat a world of good.
At thirteen the navigation light plinth on the cuddy mast had worked loose and was re-secured. At fourteen the owner asked for a quote to repair chips in the gelcoat on the bow and scratches down the port side, cosmetic marks rather than anything structural.
On older Pilots the picture changes. Early boats were built with structural timber, and moulded structure only began replacing it from around 1989, starting with the egg box under the floor. Gan Canny, a 1973 Pilot 18' we have been refitting, has a sound hull, but the Douglas fir floor bearers had started to rot and the deck and gunwales are due another refit. On a Pilot from before the egg box, the timber is where to look first, and What Is the Lifespan of a Fibreglass Boat? goes through where it sits and what we found on Gan Canny.
Keeping the record
A file like this records what was done, when and why. That is as useful to the owner as it is to whoever owns the boat next.
Keeping a record of every service, repair and part means you know what has been done and what is likely to be coming due. For a buyer, it turns a Pilot with low hours and an unknown past into one with a history that can be read. A bearing at eight, a heat exchanger at ten and a battery every five years gives a fair idea of what may be due next on a Pilot of a similar age.
If there is no file, pay close attention to the engine and look for signs of recent work, whether that is repairs or annual servicing.
When a Pilot of this age comes into the workshop, we go through it ashore against our own appraisal checklist, which runs to 85 points before the trailer is added. Almost everything in this file has a line on it: the bilge pump and float, the cutlass bearing, the anodes, the exhaust elbow and hose, the engine stop, the battery cables, the cuddy lighting, the navigation lights and the gelcoat.
The same idea works for owners. Going over the boat with a checklist each year as it comes out of the water is a good habit, and it helps build up a winter maintenance programme from what you find.
A Pilot in numbers
Fourteen and a half years of paperwork. 244 hours on the clock. A file of receipts showing which parts wore and where moisture did the damage.
The hours tell you how much an engine has been used, but not how well it has been looked after, and certainly not how hard it has worked, because every one of them could have been at tickover. Like the commercial Pilot 18' that worked every day and gave less trouble, how a Pilot ages comes down to how often it is used and how well it is looked after. On a ten-year-old Pilot, the file says more than the hour meter.