Rains off and on thru the night and early morning, sometimes quite heavily. Looks like maybe a day for indoor jobs.
Before Christy is up, but after I make myself a muddy coffee, I start working on the little switch in the forward head that controls the sink/shower drain. It’s always struck me as a bit of a weird design, all sink effluent flows into the shower basin (same in the aft head). I REALLY thought it was weird before I discovered there’s a float switch in the shower basin that triggers the pump. Before that, you had to manually reach under the sink and start the pump. The aft head switch was stuck and once I freed it things worked great, the basin pumped out when full without intervention. But the forward head pump would only activate with the manual button. I did a bunch of testing last year and determined it was the little gizmo that controls the pump and float switch.
Long story for a stupid little pump switch. I ordered the switch in Canada and have been waiting to install it.
The worst part about this switch is the location. Underneath the sink against the hull. Getting in there to unscrew the old one and reattach the new one costs me a few boat bites. I then have to rewire the float switch wires. Works great.
Rain continues off and on in the morning so I do a bit of biz work until early afternoon. Michael and his guys show up just after lunch for the FINAL instalment of the bimini piece and Christy pays Michael. Boat looks great.
After returning to Milu we get ready to try our dinghy repair. We’re going to:
- take the motor off and remove all internals
- row it over to a nearby floating, abandoned ex-bar
- fill it with this supposedly magic Super Seal
- touch up the paint work
- reglue the bumper
Then we’ll lock it up, swim back to the boat, wait overnight and cross our fingers.
The hardest part is getting the motor off and back on Milu’s transom. The rest is just grunt work. We forget to take the 3M 4200 tho, so while Christy is painting, I swim back for it. George is in the bay and he gives me a ride back.
All done, we swim back to Milu, shower off and have dinner. I’m writing this now on Friday night.
Pretty good week, here’s some of the things we did:
- got the dinghy down, motor on and started
- turned on the stove gas, fridges, opened the heads and all required sea cocks
- checked motor vitals, started her and moved the boat to dock and back
- semi-sanitized and filled the water tanks
- filled up our straight gas tanks
- swabbed the decks
- replaced broken pressure pump
- acquired parts for some other pending jobs
- got both bow thrusters working
- installed new dodger and bimini
- replaced forward head pump switch
- repaired the dinghy (hopefully), painted her up a touch and reglued the bumper