The clean up after our Pan Pan begins, so we sort out our problems and we discuss wind over tide.
One of the issues that we had discovered after our Pan Pan was that the diaphragm around the manual bilge was broken. When Beverley was using the manual bilge pump, it had been quite late at night, but when we came to look at it in the daytime, we found that the diaphragm had just come loose, so that was some good news.
On the night of the Pan Pan, we had removed all the water we could out of the bilge, using our automatic bilge pump, followed by the dingy pump, followed by the bucket and sponge method, but because our limber holes do not go all the way to the bottom of the bilge space, there was still water where we store our cans, so I had to remove all the cans out of the bilge, clean then all off, so that I could clean the bilge out again. It had not been that long since we had the leak from the hot water system, but at least this time there were no stray labels on the cans. As this time the bilges had been contaminated with salt water, we decided that we would have to eat all if these cans over the coming months as the cans could go rusty.
Once a couple of jobs were done, we went to the local repair shop to order the parts required to mend the elbow and the air filter. It would take a few days for the parts to arrive, so we order parts for our engine service as we were getting close to 200engine hours, so a service would be required pretty soon. While we were in the chandlers we looked at other equipment. I love looking at chandlers as there is always something that needs fixing on a boat, plus I believe in buying local when ever I can.
Once we had got the parts ordered and seen what else we could buy, we went back to Salty Lass, put what we had bought on the Lass and was off again, this time into Beaumaris, to do some shopping for food. In Beaumaris there is a really good delicatessen called Tredici and we bought a lamb chop from them so that we could have lamb, chips and peas on the Lass.
The next day, quite a few of our parts arrived, including the elbow, so we went to collect them. Now we were all ready for the mechanic to come out. He arrived the next day by speed boat. He soon removed the old elbow, so we were able to see the damage in all its glory. When we were looking at it, we soon saw that there was not just one hole in the exhaust but two. The reason that the engine was fine was because, the failure had occurred after the water had passed through the engine, it had just pumped out into the bilge, rather than the sea. Once the new exhaust elbow was fitted, we tried to start the engine, it failed on the first attempt, but considering the drenching the engine had had, we were not surprised. We got it started eventually, but clearly we still have other issues.
Once the engineer was gone, we realised that we had not removed the water out of the sump, which is below the engine, so that had to be cleaned out.
That night the wind had dropped and we were able to watch a small fleet of classic boats out on the water. The timing to go through the swellies was not right so we would have to wait until it was light. The next day, the wind tunnel effect that you get at Beaumaris was in full swing, so we decided that we would have to stay on Salty Lass for the day. When we are in rough water, I like to look at our inclinometer as it gives a number to the amount that Salty Lass was swaying side to side, which was easily 5° sometimes more than that. The only problem with our inclinometer, is that it gives side to side motion, but it doesn't show the motion that the boat was moving up and down.
While we were watching the wind and the waves in action we discussed wind over tide which is where the wind is going in one direction and the tide is going in the opposite direction. The tide is pushing the water against the wind, so what you have is waves starting to form with loads of white caps. As long as the tide and the wind are opposing each other, you get this effect, but if the tide swaps, which it does after six hours, then the waves reduce quite a bit.
While downstairs we realised that we only had one toilet roll and we were weather bound on the boat. Beverley might have issues with lack of certain supplies but for me its rubbish. I am amazed at people who produce one small bag of rubbish for five weeks. Beverley and I had hardly been on the yacht for five days and we had already produced two bags of rubbish and the bin was already half full.
One of the other things that Beverley looked at was our arch, just making sure that it was all right, which I am glad to report was.
