Early Morning
It is still early as I write this, and I’ve got a long day of boat maintenance ahead of me. I ran out of coffee beans yesterday, so I had to resort to my backup freeze-dried instant Nescafé for my caffeine fix. To make matters worse, I’ve run out of milk. I ordered supplies from Carrefour at 10 AM on Friday, and their website promised delivery within 48 hours. I’m not optimistic that they’ll deliver before 10 AM today and certainly hope that they deliver on Monday at the latest.
Seawater pump
All that’s left to do is to reattach the drive belt, open up the seacocks, and fire up the engine. That ought to be both quick and easy to complete. <break> It went relatively well. The belt took but seconds to put back on, but while doing so, I found that I’d not connected one hose correctly. Fixing that took 15 minutes before I could get it seated and sealed. But all was forgotten as the engine fired up and water came out the exhaust! No more water leaks in the engine compartment.
Removing the seawater
I used my cheap shop-vac (from Home Depot, in 110V and requiring use of my transformer) to suck up dirty saltwater from the engine bilges. I’ve emptied about 50 litres so far. Luckily, it looks like there won’t be much more to remove before I’m done. I’m going to celebrate with another cuppa.
Down in the bilges
The main bilge isn’t quite as easy to clean, as there’s still some diesel floating on top of the water, and I can’t just pump that overboard.
I’m extracting it from the depths of the bilge with the manual pump and will then transfer that to the large waste container ashore later.
I’ve started cleanup in the aft cabin and engine bilges. It’s ugly down there, with clumps of dirt and remnants of diesel mixed in with dirty water. At least it smells of Pine Sol, which I’ve been using to flush out the limber holes and parts of the bilge I can’t reach. I’ve now done 2 hours of cleaning work below, and it is time to address other issues.
Storing items
Over the past week, I’ve removed just about every toolbox I have aboard. The major jobs are all finished, so I’ve got to stow everything and prepare Zanshin for the upcoming passage. That means having anything that can fall down/over either put away or lashed down.
Lunchtime software update
Since the Wi-fi update for the Raymarine Axiom chartplotter kept on failing, I downloaded it to my PC. From there, I had to get it to my notebook as that had an SD-card port. After transferring the big file to the SD card, I took it topsides and inserted it into the chartplotter, and it is currently updating the system. The chartplotter operating system is Android, so the process is simple and robust but not particularly fast.
Starlink activation
The internet connection in St. Lucia and here has been good enough for me so far. But I’ll be leaving shortly and want to make sure that I’ve got connectivity. Out came the Starlink pizza-box antenna, and I’ve hooked the router up. Time to turn it on and see if I can re-activate it.
<break> Starlink was quick to have me reactivate my paused contract with but a single click. But after doing so, the device wouldn’t connect to the internet. I decided it could be a timing issue and went ashore for a lunchtime beer and have just returned to Zanshin. The Starlink internet connection is now working perfectly!
Evening
After my cleansing shower, I went ashore, but I had forgotten that on Sunday nights, most of the restaurants here are closed. But Ti Toques was open, and I had their scrumptious beef carpaccio main meal.