Saturday, May 22, 2010
Unlike my predictions, I didn’t wake up at 10:00am to miss the departure of “Bonjour Matelot” but was up at 7am and did some cleanup work below decks. At 7:30 am or so I went topside with a coffee and was surprise to see the sailboat still there (perhaps we did imbibe too much the previous night). After they had departed on their first ocean passage to Anegada I started some serious cleaning work only to get interrupted by a strange sound from the bilge pump (which runs occasionally due to condensation from the A/C unit) and that was the beginning of a lot of work. The bilge wasn’t emptying and I first disconnected the hoses to see if there was a blockage, but they were clear, then I realized that the electric pump unit was missing a screw and only attached by one – after rummaging through my spares I found an appropriately sized screw and fixed the pump – but the bilge still refused to empty. So I removed the whole unit and took it apart; finding that one of the two valves was corroded through completely; I decided to replace the complete assembly with my spare pump – but when I opened up the box I found that it contained not a brand-spanking-new unit but an old and most likely broken one. After taking that apart I found that the valves were corroded as well, but probably still functional and proceeded to replace old-and-broken with merely old-and-rusted and, hours later, I got the bilge pump working again but will put a spares collection onto my shopping list of parts to buy.
The rest of the day was spent cleaning up below decks interspersed with (as brief as possible) periods topsides doing preparatory work for storage including removing the spray dodger and bimini, getting the mainsail ready for possible windy storms up to but most likely not including hurricanes. The fridge was nasty to clean as not only had some of Björn’s frozen squid bait leaked but some cheese had also found it’s way to the bottom of the unit and was rather malodorous.
I prepared for dinner up at the Leverick Bay restaurant rather late, and was looking forward to having one of their excellent steaks to be rather surprised at the sign “Private Party” for both the downstairs and upstairs restaurants. Although it was a bit of a letdown, I made some dinner from leftovers and odds-and-ends aboard and substituted quantity for quality and ended up drinking the rest of my Carib supplies – which will come to a disappointment to the crew of the Atlantica to whom I had promised my remaining supplies in the morning.
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