Sailing around the World. ( presently in the Coco's Keeling Islands , Indian Ocean )
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Sat 25 Sep 2010 01:19
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FRIDAY 24th SEPTEMBER
2010
We had very strong winds all night along with
plenty of rain and real heavy showers,
After a light breakfast, terry ferried Aileen and
Neil ashore to D.I. as they wanted to relax on the beach,
Now , the wind was still honking, and as sure as
eggs are eggs, rally control cancelled the BBQ for tonight, the
reason for this decision was they could not get the
food suppliers to ship the food across from West Island to D.I.
as the sea was too rough...
So bang goes our lovely BBQ and rescheduled to
Sunday before the cheese and wine party over on West Island,
Skipper and Terry got into reparing and replacing
some of the items on board that were giving trouble,
first, the pump for the galley sink. the
diaphram had broken on the existing pump and all the waste water was just
spilling into the bilge,
of course this caused a substantial
stink,
Lucky for us, Our Mr Hugh Gibson at home had put an
assortment of spare electrical pumps on board before we left Cork last
year
and these have proved invaluable. so we dug out one
of these spares and replaced the broken pump.
We then took the crystal "Aqua fresh" filter for
the water from our starage tank, which had a little crack in the side of it for
ages and was also
leaking into the boat. It was not a huge
leak, but none the less , it was a leak, loosing water on the boat is not good,
and of course it put more pressure on the bilge pumps , and all these
things add up to more wear and tear on the boats equipment and eventually
shortning their lives.
We repaired the filter with metal putty, This putty
comes usually in a roll , 1/2" thick and two cores , you cut off the required
amount and kneed
the cores together untill there is a uniform colour
and then apply to the damaged item. In less than an hour it will be as
hard as steel
and can be cut, filed , sanded or shaped
..absolutly great stuff on a boat. It will stick anything to anything. and
in this case, did the
job and repaired the leak,,
Then we spent the next two hours cleaning out the
bilges, ohhhh what a dose ! but we got there and finally sprinkled some
peppermint essance into the bilge to give that
fresh feeling to the place.
Terry went ashore to join the others, while Dave
from " Voyageur" came over to " A Lady " and sorted out the dept alarm
problems
we were having with our instruments. That was a
relief, as we were really worried that there was something
seriously
wrong here.
16.30hrs,, Skipper and Terry went ashore to
the Skippers briefing for the next leg, this was held on D.I. and was
followed by a few beers and
Emilio from " Kallopie" provided some whiskey for
good measure. It waqs all very enjoyable and we returned later to the sweet
smelling boat
where Aileen had cooked a mince curry with
rice, yum, yum,
We wolfed down the food, Neil was collected
by the younger members and taken off to the beach for the night.
We had another early night, but happy that we
achieved a lot today..
Oh, and Cork won the Football final, we had to get
that info from Niall in Dublin, Well done Cork, its been a long
time.
Thats all for today.
Signed :- Stephen
Hyde, ( skipper )
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