Doing stuff and keeping amused / warm

What do you do in the New Year with Covid rampant, scary infection increases and a lockdown? Well, try to keep happy is one good idea. There seem to be various approaches to that. Dry January? Er, no. We went for the dry couple of days followed by a couple of days of badness (or goodness, depending upon your point of view). Massive exercise regime? Well, we did up the step count a bit as it stopped raining for several days and we did a bit of maintenance stuff.

Wandering around town, upping the crew's step count for the Fitbit friends competition, the local independent pet shop amused us with their new window display:

On the way back we found that the council had brought in contractors and one huge crane to start clearing the dangerous trees etc following the pre-Xmas landslip into the car park and boatyard:

As you can see, they have lots to do. According to the marina staff, they have already removed 400 tons of material in clearing up the landslip and this area of the cliff:

Maintenance news:

More fresh water pump stuff, sorry to say.  Our old Jabsco pump had kept going happily until it didn't. Like many things. Suddenly it was drawing in air after running and so it then had to re-prime each time you went to draw off water. No leaks anywhere but you could hear the air being sucked in. So, the captain (who thinks that the O ring and plastic clip seals used on these pumps are a bit suspect / a poor engineering solution) swapped out the three O rings used. Still the same. Put some soapy water around the filter - no signs of bubbles from it or any of the plastic fittings. Knowing that the pumps have a tough time in liveaboard use, the assumption was a dying pump that needed rebuilding so it was duly removed:

Jabsco had finally sent us a replacement for the useless electronically controlled pump we bought last spring. However it needs plumbing changes to work in our system as it is not a variable speed pump. Instead it is pressure controlled and so needs an accumulator tank. We have an expansion tank to handle the expansion from the calorifier and that is set to the wrong pressure for this style of pump and plumbed in the wrong way too. The tanks are the same, it is just where and how they are fitted and pressurised that changes their function. Effectively, we would need a second tank, rigged as an accumulator.

However, needs must and all that so the pressure controlled pump was fitted as a temporary backup, knowing that it would cut in/out far too often if we had to use it:

It worked well, primed itself all OK but when it turned off, there was that noise of air being drawn in again and the filter (the clear cover and black plastic thing on the left of the picture above) showed a slowly dropping water level. Grr...  The captain found an old filter, fitted it and hey presto, no more air being drawn in. There must have been a hairline split towards the top and back of the original which the soapy water trick could not reveal as it was well hidden. No matter, at least we could refit our old pump and put this replacement into the "spares" stock, knowing some plumbing changes will be needed to use it as the primary fresh water pump.

We still loathe the Jabsco diaphragm pumps and might save up to get another nice Marco gear driven variable pressure thing. They are just a truly stupid price but even they make things like the Headhunter 240v pump look obscenely priced. The biggest problem is that importing one now, post Brexit, will incur some hefty duty charges from the UK customs folks. That was not the case in December. Wish we had ordered one then......