Decisions
30 May 2013 | Cape Town
steve
Within the first week of May the number of decisions made was....lets just say 'quite a few'.
Admittedly most were kind of things that have to be done, so are of no great recording interest.
The first really big issue - and probably the one of greatest 'interest' - was the holding tank !
Were to start. You could wax lyrical for hours on the why's, were's, how big's, and whether you actually want one or not !
Cut a long story short, the old approx 460L - 500L steel tank was shot to hell...so what do we replace it with ? Do we replace it ? Now or when in Cape Town ?
It was decided that we were going to do this now and get it over with.
Yes, we did want a tank as we intend spending time in No Discharge Zones - places where you weren't allowed to dump your crap overboard - literally !
And I sure as hell would get the shites if I had to go to a port to discharge every other day...so the largest tank we could fit was required.....
We decided altho bigger, not to remake the same size in steel again because of cost; nor to have a purpose sized plastic tank made, simply because of the technical issues we had heard about and could not run the risk of.
So we are ending up with a slightly smaller 390L Vetus (plastic) tank.
Not quite the size / number of days I would have liked / could have achieved, but....lets hope we don't regret our decisions !
Manfred the shipwright, is meanwhile working his miracles on the drainage system so we don't end up with the same issues the previous owner had, a result of which can be seen in the Favorites link 'Drainage'.
And yes, the scrap steel is the old tank; and that white stuff in the pipe is........as Manfred so eloquently put it "....calcification when the contents of the pipe are not sufficiently pumped out...."
Another interesting item was the whole gas storage system. The rules regarding have changed somewhat since back in the day when the boat was designed and built....and it no longer conforms !
All we have to do is move the current bottle store from inside the cockpit, to somewhere, where any escaping gas could easily dissipate. Yes well no fine !
Currently the suggestion is to convert one of the cockpit cave lockers to a gas store with the access and drainage etc from the deck side (not the cockpit)
We shall see whether we get this one right - or end up with bottles hanging off the rail !
And then there are the issues regarding the shaft, the rigging, electrical,..........!