In the Bilge

From time to time our starboard bilge alarm has gone off. We first noticed it coming up from New Zealand and it reappeared when our friends, Anne and John, were here. It went off again, the other day, after some of Helen’s cleaning efforts. The pattern suggested it was related to the starboard aft shower. I saw something similar to this on the port hull. The shower sump pump connects to a manifold shared with the secondary bilge pump. That means the shower water is only being held back from the bilge by the bilge pump valves. So I decided to take the valves out and clean it all up.

This turned out to be one of ‘those’ jobs. The pump has a good design in that the hoses have an easy release system. Then the bottom of the pump should be easy to remove by undoing the clamp that holds it on. Only it turned out the pump was mounted with the bottom against the inner hull so it couldn’t be removed. So I had to remove the whole pump. No problem. Only there was. To get to one of the screws to remove the pump I had to get past the sump pump for the forward shower which was in the way. So that had to be removed too. All this had to be done lying on my belly reaching down into the bilge which is not overly comfortable.

Having removed everything I disassembled the bilge pump and found it full of crud. I cleaned everything and sanded flat the metal plates and put it all back together. I had thought to rearrange the pumps to make access easier next time but I need a small electric drill, like a dremel, but I don’t have one. Getting the pumps pack on was extremely fiddly and I needed Helen’s help to pass things to me. Even then I needed three hands in spaces where only one would fit. Amazingly I finished the task without dropping a single thing into the bilge. This is extraordinary as I am convinced there are darker forces associated with bilges which suck vital objects into obscure corners and play tricks with your mind to make you flick things at the worst moment in random, unseen directions. Whether this all works or not we’ll soon know as our next set of friends arrive this evening.

One other bit of boat work, trivial in comparison, was to replace a bulb over the forward guest cabin bunk. Turns out these are the only two halogens left in the boat interior. Must have forgotten to replace them with LEDs. Another minor future project.

Later in the morning we went for a walk to the shop near the Sheraton and back. The rest of the day was R&R. I nailed another couple of Euler Problems then ran into a brick wall with a few more. I’m now 5 points away from the next milestone at 200 where I will cease to be classified as ‘Intermediate’. Something to aim for but the recent batch of low hanging fruit have been plucked and a little more thinking will be required to progress.

In the evening we splashed out to watch the England play while eating at the Hard Rock Cafe here. The wazzos had it on the wrong channel so we ended up watching the Fijian ‘wanted’ parade while England scored their first try. The match was rather scrappy and while England ratcheted up another win it was lackluster and shows us in need of significant improvement if we are to progress far beyond this easy group stage.

Today we have a few things to do. Soon we’ll be moving the boat onto dock next to ‘Nobel House‘ a mega yacht. I’ll make a return trip to the airport to try and sort out the paperwork with immigration while Helen gets busy with the hose. This evening our friends Brian, Janine and their kids fly in from Oz. Should be fun.