Fixing things, catching up with family additions and contemplating the winter ahead

After arriving in Penarth, we felt obliged to sleep a lot and then wash the salt and gunge off the poor neglected boat. Greenock had been a good place to stay but treated us to lots of dirty rain. The plan was to collect the Defender and "do stuff". Of course, the night before we planned to depart, the bilge pump turned on and just kept going.

Having been there before, we checked the float switch to see if it was gunged up again. No, not that simple, it just was not pumping. Was the strum box that prevents things being sucked into the pump blocked? No. Oh good, it was the pump itself. Why "oh good". Because the pump is mounted in the least accessible spot possible, behind the genset. After removing the genset side panels, demolishing the supports for the housing and laying lots of cloths and things down to protect the captain's back, he wriggled his way into the tiny gap with two water filters digging into his back:

and the end of the genset enclosure neatly pinning the other side of him. Oh, then you have to work almost at full stretch forwards, just to add to the delight, and remove the housing bolts by feeling their positions to guide the socket onto them.

Sure enough the valves inside the pump had failed. They have a rivet that holds the flap material onto the housing and guess what, it corrodes through. We had been through this fun in 2013 so we had an overhaul kit in our spares stock:

You can see the tiny offending rivet on the new circular valve above. Two new ones were duly fitted and the captain retreated from purgatory in need of soothing red wine but far too late in the evening to do so respectably.  We ask again, why didn't they mount the genset 3 inches further forward??  The plan is to order some suitable marine grade M3 stainless bolts and to drill out the failure prone rivets in the new valves and replace them with something that will last a little longer. Then the torture will be repeated.

We duly took the train and collected the equally neglected Defender which had been spending the summer in his PJs happily locked away undercover. The tyres slowly got more circular as we drove him further.

A trip to the Southampton boat show to look at new generation electronics and contemplate an upgrade was good as was a visit to see Anne who should be well known to you by now. The visit was not just to see Anne and Izzy our goddog. Izzy had produced two pups and so a day of "puppy fun" was in order:

For fun you can of course read clearing up little opportunities that they leave behind them all over the floor. They were around 5 weeks old and active, so needed a little restraint to get a proper picture:

Upon returning to Penarth, we had another little job. The blower that extracts air from the master shower compartment had been sounding sick, running slowly and making unhappy noises. Then it stopped totally. The original had failed a few years ago and so we were not surprised. A new one was procured and another fun fitting job was undertaken - this one involves laying on your back in the wet locker with your head in a hatch next to the tumble dryer trying to work on the blower that is just above your nose. The S curve that your back has to make during this activity is most enjoyable too.

The little 24v blower:

was duly replaced and then the new one (which tested OK before fitting) refused to work. "Oh bother" said the captain (or something like that) as he re-bent his spine into unusual shapes. Re-plugging the old blower into the connectors was a bit surprising as it then worked, with no funny noises. Grr - must be an intermittent bad connection to the thing. After some tweaking, the positive feed was found to be playing up - a crimped on bullet connector from the factory. Connector duly replaced (and its twin on the negative side just in case) the new blower happily made the right noises and extracted air. We now have a spare but well used blower on board.

Just to add to the general maintenance happiness, we also polished the hull ready for the ravages of the winter and sorted out the corrosion on the port pilothouse door. That was a bit of a saga as a door keep was secured using Robertson screws - square headed things that are popular in Canada where the doors are made but rarer than rocking horse droppings here. Still, after ordering suitable bits it was removed and refitted with ease, this time with the machine screws coated in Duralac to try and avoid the galvanic corrosion problem for a while:

We have more painting to do but the weather forecast isn't looking kind....