What a day. Or better yet what a guy!
Chris, the previous owner of Makina came by today. What a dynamo!
The first order of business was getting the lifelines fully secured. As Chris had extended the pulpit a foot or more towards the bow the lines were the same distance short of connecting. He had some special synthetic rope that is said to be stronger than the wire lifelines. They are, in fact, making lifelines out of them now. The finished attachments looked cool and not hacky in my opinion.
Going to try something similar on the Bimini in areas where the canvas had shrunk a bit and cannot reach its locks exactly.
Chris first had a look over the water pump. It was a mystery why it was not pulling water. Through a great process of elimination debugging, Chris isolated an air leak in a joint under the galley sink. Not sure if we had the parts or the time for repairs we thought to put a pin on it and move on to the more important item considering a Wednesday morning launch; the bilge pump.
Chris had done some trouble shooting at home and had replaced the switch in the auto-switch which is in a float a bit like the round floating thing in some toilet tanks. Once installed it worked great. He suggested a more powerful pump if going into blue water, which could expel a greater intake of water at faster speed.
Source : texags.com
Not enough for one day. Hell no! Moved on to the connections for the drains from the gunnels and cockpit. Regular readers may remember my first night on board and thinking we were going to sink on the hard as water poured into the engine compartment (and unbeknown to me), down through the bilge and then out through the removed keel plug opening. To be fair not all boats have keel plugs. 🙄
While writing this after Chris has gone there has been a downpour to a very hot and humid day. Not a noise coming from the engine compartment. Life is good!
May the wind be at your back!
A chronological listing of my sailing posts:
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