Shitty day in Bahamas

please note!
we have had the USUAL rare/then slow connectivity down here. I will add photos hopefully down further in Georgetown of Allens Cay's Iguanas and Waderick Wells., to THIS post.,,,sooo check back!

Crossing the Gulf Stream, a pot of coffee ended up on the galley floor. Nothing broke, just a mess. Dorothy had found it and cleaned it up quickly, but later that night on an inspection tour of the boat, I noticed coloring in the bilge water. When in D
Da Konk Mon extraordinaire! Really a nice fellow to chat with.
Nassau, the color was darker. Arrival at Allens Cay, showed much darker color.

Neat Wicker work!

An inspection was in order, as the bilge pump certainly should have removed any colored water by now. Oh man. It turned out to be a leak in our sanitation pump out system. A seal between the electric motor and the big Vetus diaphragm pump, had failed and raw sewerage was spewing into a side locker, under stored contents and then off thru the engine room(under some plumbing pipes) to the bilge. Now we knew where the color was coming from.

Old sign, old man..........

A decision was made to attack the problem immediately and not put it off until a later anchorage where maybe there was access to more repair parts. This is the reason I carry so much gear aboard. I should be able to rebuild almost anything aboard. Well, I should say that I was now kicking myself in my own behind, for removing some of it from the boat to make room for more important(?) stuff. Well, I thought I had enough to do some kind of repair.

The system had been built in 1993, using PVC plumbing parts for virtually everything. All of that was still in fine condition, but this seal, was from a Dutch product and probably sized in some metric configuration that I would never have aboard, so removal of the pump and motor and then closing off the lines or jury rigging something in its place was the shitty job of the day. Valves had been installed in the original 1993 project to allow breakdown and removal of this pump if I ever had to and I'm so glad now that I had installed them. Closing the valves allowed me to disassemble everything with less than a gallon more liquid entering the work scene. We were really surprised that the odor was not too bad. but we had used a chemical we had found to really work well for containing Holding Tank Odors and was a biodegradable enzyme that is harmless.....it, just eats that brown stuff, then dies.


Dont bother with building WiFi Directional antennas or buying amps........they don't have anything to lock into down here. They want your Ten Bucks and unless you sign up, you go no where mon.

The Main Doors of Atlantis:

Back to the problem; the pump was disassembled to note that a big nut, that hold all the internal diaphragm parts to the pump shaft had broken and a quick fix was not at hand, so all was removed and our boxes of plumbing parts came out to see what we had to effect a repair. A short length of 1.25" PVC and a couple of No Hubs(a short rubber repair tube any good plumber has in his bag of tricks) were quickly recognized as part of the Fix. Next, I thought we had a spare mechanical bilge pump. Nope, we had sold the spare in a Nautical Flea market, to give us space for more important(?) stuff. Ok, I then removed part of another locker gaining access to the emergency bilge pump/removed it as I have 3 electric ones in place before it would be necessary/ and used the mechanical diaphragm Henderson pump-the No Hubs and the 1.25" PVC to replace the leaking Vetus pump. After all was connected and after Dorothy volunteered to do a clean up of the area first, we assembled everything and pumped out both holding tanks completely. Now we had fixed the leak and emptied both tanks. We like to hold all sewerage in holding tanks until we can either have them pumped out our we are at sea and can release the contents far from shore and now we again had a working system.

Job done, we sailed the next morning at first light, to Waderick Wells, a few islands south. Photo on left of a beautiful sunset behind us is proof enough. Dreams are worth the effort.

Ron Sheridan and Dorothy Knight

SV MEMORY ROSE/CSY 44 PILOTHOUSE KETCH

memoryrose@earthlink.net

www.memoryrose.blogspot.com