No seriously. This is the life :
1) Yesterday when leaving the land at Union we forgot to raise the dinghy stern anchor. No obvious protest as the anchor came up of the ground. Only realised as dinghy was running slowly. The anchor had been spinning through the water unwinding the three strand rope attaching it to the dinghy. As the three strands unwound, the individual strands coiled around themselves further. Result: the rope became a mess of clumped up strands. Took me about an hour of rope stretching, coiling, uncoiling, massaging to fix.
2) Last nights sleep was lousy resulting from being woken approx once an hour by bilge alarm. Checked things out at first light only to find port shaft seal leaking. Gentle prodding turned small drips into steady trickle. Leak must have been building for some time as it has corroded parts of my ground plane installed last November. Remedial action so far has been to slightly compress seal with cable tie and to work grease between seal and shaft while shaft was rotating. I’ve also cleaned and raised corroded ground plane for SSB to minimise further damage albeit at probable cost of effectiveness. Drip is now occasional and under observation. Hopefully drip can be triaged until August when we plan to haul Dignity for bottom painting, etc. Unfortunately this is right under our berth. We may have to move cabins to ensure ready access to shaft. Big thanks to Jim down in St Georges with whom I’ve bounced around ideas.
3) The birds round here seem to be ‘trained’ to expect food on and in boats. Where birds go, so they shit. We’ve found two splodges already.
So far we have done none of the things we wanted to today. I feel tired and grotty.
*This* is the life.
Leave a Reply