I have reported lay days in which we just sort of laid around, doing virtually nothing. Fun, actually. These, however, were not like those. Our friend Bob, of s/v Pandora, the 47 foot Aerodyne, has said that cruising a sailboat is the art of boat repairs in exotic ports. I set out to do one repair -- to find where the hose carrying pressurized fresh water had come apart. As a result of this break, when we turn on the pressure water pump, we get not only useful fresh water at the sink or shower, but water gets pumped into the bilge. From there, the bilge pump pumps it overboard. As a result, we ran out of water from the starboard tank only a few days after filling it. The way to search for problem, so as to be able to fix it, is to turn on the same electric pump and search for where the water is coming from. So I did not begin this fix while underway from Nantucket because we did not want to waste what water we had left in the other tank. We can still use the manual foot pump to get cold fresh water without wasting it into the bilge. In Shelburne I started to look for the leak but I did not get very far.
I also discovered that the new gaskets I made this winter for the viewing ports in the tops of the two water tanks are not effective: when filling the tanks, water flows out of the tops of the tanks!
But these water issues were put on the back burner to solve the problem of the water in the fuel tank. it is the one I'm pointing to disgustedly in the photo. Herb, the local mechanic took a look, heard that prior attempts to solve the problem were not successful and proposed the sure fire cure to make positively sure that there is no water left in the tank.
We removed the tank from the boat completely after siphoning out about 30 gallons of fluids using his industrial strength 15 gallons per minute electric fuel pump into six lidded five gallon pails that he brought and carted away. Then we removed the four hoses attached to the tank: fill, feed, return, and overflow, and the four wooden blocks that hold the tank in place against the sides of the well in which it sits. You can see two such wedges at each side of the tank. Two of them broke in the removal process and Herb created two to match. Oh yes, before we could do this I had to remove the salon table and the cabin sole of the entire cabin except the sleeping compartments. Yes the particular tank is located directly under the keystone piece of cabin sole to which almost all the others attach! And when Herb and his assistant had the tank off the boat for two hours I removed the scale of grease and mold that lined the space where the tank fits, using quarter pieces of paper towel and grease cutting Fantastic cleanser.
The picture was taken after about half the crud had been removed. When we first lifted the tank out I though: Why did they paint the hole black? And when the tank was reinstalled I got to put the cabin sole and table back together again.
I spent two long days doing this except for a lunch and two dinners in three local restaurants, playing trivial pursuit at the Yacht Club at the end of the second day, and making friends with Tom and Susan
of Gypsy Soul, a beautiful Gozzard sloop with a hailing port of Oriental, North Carolina. Witty went missing there for four days in November 2014 and our friends, Bill and Sandy live there. "Do you know Bill and Sandy?" I asked. "Yes we do." We expect to hang with Tom and Nancy for a while, though they plan to go a lot slower along the coast, and leave their boat here over the winter.
So Shelburne is a pretty town of 1000, named after the English Prime Minister in the 1790's, when it was settled by a lot of "loyalists" -- folks from the 13 US colonies who were unhappy about our revolution. They have museums and Lene got her hair done and did a grocery run but I did not really get a chance to do the town, or even get a postcard for my granddaughter. But we have to come back by here on the way home later this summer so maybe I will get a chance.
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