I started the day going ashore to collect baguettes. By prior agreement I picked up a couple each for Sea Mist and Imagine too. Unfortunately they weren’t as fresh as I’d hoped seeming to be left overs from the previous evening. I’d probably gone too early.<\/p>\n

Later in the morning I set about finding the current cause of the port bilge pump going off. The pipe that runs from the port bow locker looked a little damp so I emptied out the port bow locker and looked around there for possible causes. There were no stains that suggested a significant flow. The woodwork was damp but this could be explained by the unemptied hose that had been placed there. That could have contributed some water that would eventually make it to the bilge but certainly didn’t explain the whole picture. I emptied out the bottom of the port bow locker and gave it a clean.<\/p>\n

Back to the bilge I noticed it had filled some more. I pumped out the water and tested it. It wasn’t clean water but it was nowhere near the salinity of seawater. That was a good clue as it suggested the source was internal. The water being dirty I suspected a leak in the shower. There was a possibility it could be coming from under the shower but we’d only know that through monitoring. On inspecting the pipework I noticed another possibility. Both the second bilge pump and the shower sump pump teed into the same pipe which went upwards and along the hull to the exit through hull further back. If the one way valves in the bilge pump were both slightly open then some of the water from the shower could be backing through the bilge pump and into the bilge.<\/p>\n

To test this I put a cup under the strainer for the bilge pump and took a shower to wash off the sweat and dirt from working in the port bow locker. Lo and behold, the cup began to fill a little following my brief shower. I therefore removed the pump fittings and then the pump from the bulkhead before taking it outside to clean. The rubber flaps comprising the one way valves were indeed a little crusty and there was a dead beetle jamming one of them open. This would also explain why the bilge always refills a little after pumping out.<\/p>\n

I cleaned it all up, reassembled the pump and reinstalled it. The same cup test and another shower revealed no backfill. I left the test in place and a few hours later when Helen had a shower I still so no water. I was pleased.<\/p>\n

Thinking back I think the bilge pump must have been gradually building up a small amount of crud. When the leak around the exhaust occurred a 2-3 weeks ago the bilge pumps were put to use and perhaps then the beetle got sucked in and made the situation worse. Hence, once I fixed the initial leak I was left with the bilge alarm going off but for a new cause. I am pleased the situation is resolved.<\/p>\n

During all this time Helen cleaned out the starboard hull ready for Ben’s arrival.<\/p>\n

In the afternoon we did little more than read and relax. Both Imagine and Sea Mist headed off. We’d heard that our packages had arrived but hadn’t received any confirmation that we had all the parts. Defender had said (perhaps in error) that the order had been split into two packages and without that confirmation I couldn’t know if we were done yet. We therefore had to hang around for this confirmation. We wanted to eat out so this wasn’t so bad. In the evening we went ashore. To stretch our legs we walked back along the main road far enough to see the fort and to see the sea on the eastern side of the isthmus. On the way back we popped into the larger Champion supermarket in town and picked up a few things. We then went to the restaurant where we had a very nice Chinese meal.<\/p>\n

Today we’ll be definitely out of here. We have now received confirmation that all is with Ben and so we can finally relax knowing there is nothing further to chase. We have three more nights to spend behind the reefs around Tahiti-Iti, the southern end of Tahiti, before we dash south for the eclipse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I started the day going ashore to collect baguettes. By prior agreement I picked up a couple each for Sea Mist and Imagine too. Unfortunately they weren’t as fresh as I’d hoped seeming to be left overs from the previous evening. I’d probably gone too early.<\/p>\n

Later in the morning I set about finding the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[144,140,126],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-imagine","category-sea-mist","category-society-islands","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3157"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3210,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3157\/revisions\/3210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}