The weather was really bad, so there was no sailing for us. So it was a case of getting stuck in to boat projects of which we had quite a few, but before that could all happen we seriously needed some coffee and chocolate.

At the moment there is a whole thread going on about one sailors pet peeve, which is people drinking coffee in a sailing channel. Seeing as we consider coffee the fuel for the day, we made sure that we included a little sequence about the making of coffee in the video.

Make shift seal on the filler cap

One of the issues we had this week was while Beverley was filling uou the rear water tank she got distracted, which meant that water was flowing out of the water tank. I think that she had overfilled the tank just a bit. The thing about this distraction was it gave us the opportunity to test the make shift seal that I had created using a small about of air pipe that you can buy for fish tanks. The seal was not perfect, I might need to use a little bit more CT1, but it reduced how fast the water poured out from the cap dramatically.

Using a high tech sponge for cleaning up and life

We cleaned up the water that had come out with a sponge and we made a point of saying so, because another blogger had recently put in a complicated pump system, for which Beverley and I were both thinking sponge. Sometimes we are called the Blue Peter channel and to be honest that description is quite accurate. The other description that I have heard used is that we are a pot pourri, they never know what they are going to get, but that is because we just get on with our life and the videos just come out of what we are doing. Which is why we included a little silly sequence of when Prudence and Elly decided that two little bowls were coracles and had a go in the sink

Running the wire for our AC circuit

One of our recent purchases was 10m of AC wire rated at 25Amps. This rating is far too much as the boat had a 16Amps breaker aboard, but making sure that the wire is over specked will make sure that no wire will be caused by the AC wiring. So we had to drill a few holes in Salty Lass, one is the forward cabin and one it the bulk head between the galley and lounge area. Once the holes were created it was just a case of running the wire. This task was helped by our really long piece of plastic which we find useful as an alternative to a mousing line. I also has the opportunity to wax lyrically about cable ties and how useful they are in the boat

Out looking at the lines

Beverley is a worry wart, so when it is stormy she just like to check the lines.

Replacing our Life buoy

We needed to replace our life buoy because the stitching was going and the fabric was UV damaged. while we were sorting out the life buoy, we took the opportunity to straighten the bracket for the life buoy and put a layer of paint on it. All simple stuff really, but it looked so much better as a result. Some tips on cleaning the bracket

• Use tape over any captive nuts to make sure they do not drop out by accident
• Use vinegar followed by a metal brush to clean up any screws
• When putting the screws back use loctite to
• Clean any brackets with wet and dry paper to remove any issues
• Paint with a zinc based paint over anything that has been galvanised.
• If you are using bungee cord, knot it a little short, so that the bungee cord needs to stretch 
• Buy any lettering that you want early so that you can add that on