Sunday saw a mass exodus from the marina, with much of my transient dock emptying out. My German neighbours to port left on their charter at noon and I quickly got the AwlWash solution prepared in a bucket and hosed the port topsides down with water prior to using a prodigious amount of elbow grease to clean that side of the boat and subsequently to dry it off with a chamois cloth. Now I’ve got both sides of Zanshin clean and shiny and ready for further travels.
The next incomplete project was the anchor windlass. I’d put in a new reed switch the night before but the chain counter still wasn’t working and I believe that the reed sensor in the base was set too deep and far away from the magnet to work. Unfortunately, there was now no way of getting the plug out without damaging or destroying the contact switch. I carefully tried to pry it up and out, and tried to push it up from below, but in the end I broke the sensor and once that was done I could use more forceful methods to pry it up (really destroying it in the process). I had two sensor kit replacements, having purchased the second sensor kit by mistake because I’d neglected to add the first kit to my inventory list. I took more care with the second kit and got it installed at the correct seating depth and then soldered the electrical connections prior to taping them up and, after many hours and many trips down into the anchor locker, I finally got the project completed.
My trip to the grocery store for provisioning the boat didn’t meet with as much success, as it was Sunday afternoon by now and everything had shut down for the day!
But I still got some work done on the computer, and got the dinghy lifted out of the water and put on deck so that it wouldn’t get any more growth on the bottom in the fecund water of the marina. This water has already caused my waterline on both sides to sprout long beards of sea grass which I’ll scrape off at first opportunity in my next anchorage.
