Sunday 18 August 2013

Waiting in Brighton

We're going to be in Brighton for a few days more.  Apart from the winds being all wrong for us, we need to get welding work done to strengthen a frame on Firebird and attach to it: our life raft, an aerial, a wind generator and a solar panel.  The welder is on holiday until tomorrow (Monday), so we're going to be here until at least Tuesday, we reckon.  Probably more like Wednesday or Thursday, but it doesn't matter too much as Easterly winds (which we need to get us down the Channel) are forecast for around that time.

To be honest, we're glad to be tucked up in the marina here.  Yesterday and last night the winds were absolutely howling - not nice weather to be out sailing in, or at anchor without good shelter, which there isn't around here.  I checked our anemometer (wind speed indicator) before going to bed and it was reading 37kts, which is a Force 8 and qualifies as a gale.

Improvised shock absorber, made in the night
We were shaken awake at 1am and had to get up to go out into the lashing rain to improvise a shock absorber on our mooring lines as the waves had found their way into the marina and, combined with the wind, they were causing a great deal of 'snatching' on our warps, which would eventually lead to damage to the mooring lines and/or deck fittings.
Store-bought shock absorber the morning after

We've been keeping busy, as usual, doing DIY tasks, but have chosen inside jobs to tick off the list.  Kate has been finishing the battery box she started making at Eastbourne and I have been armpit deep in excrement.  Well, it wasn't that bad, but our toilet had developed a leak where seawater was slowly filling up the bowl.  It wasn't too bad a leak yet, but it highlighted a very dangerous situation that the previous owner had put us in by not fitting the toilet correctly.  The bowl is below the water line, which is nothing out of the ordinary, but he hadn't fitted an anti-syphon loop, which takes the inlet pipe in a loop above the water line and back down again, to prevents seawater from flooding in.  Without the anti-syphon loop, we were relying on the small rubber valve in our toilet flush mechanism as the only line of defence between us and a potentially fast ingress of seawater.  It was this rubber valve that was starting to break that was causing our leak.

Luckily, there is a well-stocked chandler here, so I could buy the parts to fix the
Kate doing a spot of early-morning varnishing in her PJs
problem.  I took the opportunity to disassemble, thoroughly clean and disinfect all parts and replace all seals in the toilet.  She now flushes like a dream and sparkles like a pearl!  The only slight downside is that the anti-syphon valve can leak a few drops of water as it wears, or if you haven't quite set it correctly in the first place.  I had installed the valve right above the shelf where Kate's toiletries live and in my gleeful, overenthusiastic appreciation of the smooth flushing action once my handy work was done, I failed to notice the squirts of water coming out of the valve.  Some well chosen and smoothly delivered words kept me out of trouble as I explained that it was only seawater and I hadn't in fact just pumped poo over Kate's toothbrush and in any case, isn't it favourable to live in fear of a brush with faeces than not installing the valve and face the peril of sending our home into the murky depths to be claimed by Poseidon?  I personally think it's a risk we should be willing to take...so long as I'm also in charge of whose shelf the valve is installed above.

Thomas Crapper's Thunder Box, complete with grime, pre-servicing

3 comments:

  1. Well it strikes me that some essential work is being discovered and put right.
    Keep blogging, we love it!
    All love
    xxx

    ReplyDelete
  2. That is not something you wanted to discover too late! Good fixing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Exactly, Louisa. Better now than later. The frame is currently in the welder's workshop, so hopefully he will have it finished in the next day or so. We would really like to set sail tomorrow (Thur), as the winds look set to turn against us again over the weekend, but I'm not sure he will be finished that soon. In any case, we'll slip the mooring lines as soon as we get the frame bolted back in place :-)

      Delete

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