The reality of maintaining a boat rears its ugly head again. With visitors coming soon, Trip turns his attention to the toilet, which has not been flushing well. After confirming that the motor works fine and the macerator blades are clear, he pulls out the entire hose that runs from the toilet out the side of the boat. As we feared, it was lined with a thick scale that greatly reduced the amount of waste that could flow through. Without a water maker, we flush with sea water. The sea water, combined with the contents of urine and other things, over time line the hoses. Yours truly took the hose out on the dock and spent an hour banging it with a hammer to break up and release the scale, and flush it all through. Disgusting messy work, no question, but we’re good for a while now!
We had two days of winds blowing in the 20’s, gusting into the 30’s. It was a solid anchorage and we weren’t worried about the boat, but days like these are extremely wet and uncomfortable for the dinghy. I picked up expensive cheese and iberico ham, pork rillettes, and a lot of red wine to get us through the weekend.
And there’s always projects. One of the things we noticed was the amount of moisture that came through the hull during the big passages. Book pages have developed mildew stains, and a few electronics like the portable USB power bank were rusted out completely. We took everything out of the cabinets so Trip could check the chainplates for any structural weakness. All looked good, so we cleaned everything up, threw a bunch of old or damaged things away, rebedded the chainplate covers, and packed up again. One less thing to do at the end of the season….
We were in Leixos for much longer than we expected, but making repairs to the boat is never a timely process. I’m quite proud to say though we managed, just the two of us, to get the broken headstay off, as well as remove the jib and furling gear. In most situations a team in a boatyard would be doing this, but we got the job done ourselves.
It sucked being tied to the pontoon (or in a slip) when the remnants of Tropical Storm Danielle came plowing through. It’s much better to be at anchor. The surge of the storm had us bouncing up and down against the dock, with one cleat/hawse bending from the force (Trip was able to bend it back), fender covers ripping to shreds (though that had started earlier in the season), and one of our docklines losing strands several times because of chafe which required cutting & re-adjusting. No one was going anywhere, and boat neighbors were kind to lend us spare fenders to protect the boat from the dock. Marina staff would come out and check on us multiple times. It was uncomfortable, but never dangerous.
And then the storm passed and the new headstay came in! I hoisted Trip up the mast so he could disconnect the dyneema line (temporary headstay) and connect the top of the new headstay. I thought that would be the tough part, but it went pretty smoothly. It was connecting the bottom part of the new headstay to the boat that turned out to be a nightmare. Several hours, lots of lines, many a curse word, and it was finally on. We opted to wait to put the jib back on the following morning when the sun was up again.
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