Fur, diesel, listing and polishing

As part of a dentist trip, we collected our little goddog to look after her for a few days as her owner Anne was off for shoulder surgery to correct a very painful and debilitating calcified tendon problem. As you can see, Anne being incapacitated for a while meant that Izzy had become rather furrier than normal. Despite the copious amounts of nose fur, she still managed to see her ball to chase it. We have no idea how, she must be a determined little dog: 

So, she was booked into the groomer and came out half the dog. It must have felt for her as though she had been through a cataract operation with the improved eyesight afterwards. Being groomed is tiring:

As you can see, the princess likes a nice soft spot to snooze in.....

Lockdown amusements included some polishing of the hull and transom on nicer days, some teak cleaning (luckily we don't have much of the stuff) and plenty of walks and runs for the dog. We also had several email exchanges with Lars (he has been in here before so keep up!) about buying a boat and how Brexit has made things massively complicated for him. The VAT rules now make it financial madness to buy the boat he likes in Finland and bring it back to the UK for a couple of years before moving it back into the EU. Similar problem if he buys a UK VAT paid boat to use here for a couple of years and then wants to take it to Croatia for the longer term. For us, the rules about what foodstuffs can not be brought into the EU put us off visiting any EU countries and  Northern Ireland too until things get clarified or become more sensible. Having no dairy or animal products on board would be a challenge. We could have one fish on board and up to a fixed weight limit of honey. Oh yes, plenty of regulations you can fall foul of... We've no desire to be in the first tranche of boats that over zealous EU customs guys want to check. Kind of limiting even when lockdown eases.....

We did have one nice Easter surprise though. Lars' wife, Birgit is a renowned baker and this typically German present arrived by post, wrapped as securely as the radioactive waste that is transported to Sellafield (she worked in a sorting office as a student and saw how parcels get treated):

Post photo, it was enjoyed as an Easter treat - very nice indeed. Izzy was upset that she is not allowed such stuff but some ring fun in the park made up for it. When she chases the ring and grabs it, sometimes it ends up making her go partially blind again. She still manages to run back to us in triumph somehow:

Perhaps it is a bit like fitting blinkers to a horse?

One job that needed to be done was to "swing" the fluxgate compass fitted to the autopilot. It seemed to have lost the setup last year during lockdown with the heading being up to 15 degrees out compared to the Furuno satellite compass. That was fun when the Furuno kit sent a course to steer to the autopilot which then went 15 degrees off course to start with (in some compass directions). So, after the fuel tank fun (see maintenance news below) we took the boat into the bay and did a few slow circles using the wing engine to allow it to re-calibrate itself. The results looked way better and the first sea trip of the year should prove the point. On the way back in we stopped at the fuel berth and replenished what we had burned this winter for heating and genset use. Not sure if Guernsey will reopen to pleasure craft from the UK with no quarantine / testing requirements soon so it seemed like a sensible (if more expensive) thing to do. 

Maintenance News:

We reported ages ago that the fitting from the bottom of the starboard diesel tank which leads to the pump and polishing filter had a little film of diesel forming on one joint. Luckily it was the pump side of the valve rather than between the tank and the valve. Had it been weeping there and suddenly got worse, we could not have stopped a more serious leak without pumping out the whole tank.

Well, the little leak didn't get worse but as it was not going to fix itself, we had to do so. As the fuel levels were low, it seemed like a good time. Sort of. The valve is hidden in a little cupboard area with a small hinged access cover:

Which is the small grey part at the bottom of the picture with the label on it.

Getting to the valve you have to take off the fire extinguisher and then the panel that holds it to reveal:

the little GRP moulding running across the top of the area makes getting to things so easy... You can see how many spanners were tested before finding the ones that would just about fit.

Access to the valve is so poor that we are sure that in the factory they fitted the diesel plumbing then added the water pipes that you see running down the left hand side of the void. These pipes make getting a spanner onto the valve and fittings tricky to say the least. Especially as you need a 1" spanner to hold the valve and they tend to be long and wide things! 

The first part of the fun involved pumping about 700 litres of fuel into the port tank to empty this one. Although we did not need to disturb the fittings from the valve to the tank, it would be easy to upset them when trying to undo the offending parts and cause a leak. 700 litres heading for the bilge is not a good idea. It takes quite some time to move all that fuel and the boat lists nicely to port afterwards. So nicely that a resident in a nearby house called the marina office to say we were in trouble and the office sent two dockmasters in their workboat to check up on us and make sure that all was well. The crew, who was busy in the galley, explained that this was self inflicted and that if the repair went OK, we would be pumping ourselves back upright shortly. Nice that someone noticed though.

Here are the valve and fittings showing how little access you have:

and here it is dismantled ready to clean up:

As mentioned before, the factory seem to use a sealant on all the pipes that ends up as a white semi-solid substance and this is the third diesel joint that had started to weep. We guess that as the boat is now 14 years old, that is OK really. After a good clean up, the adaptor was refitted using Wurth pipe sealant rather than white goo and the fuel hose was then reattached.

Pumping some fuel back in to check the seal and start to rebalance the boat was a good feeling. An important job completed as that meant we were able to put some fuel in to replace what we have burned on heating and the genset this winter and be sort of ready to head off once the English lockdown restrictions ease after the 12th.