Nose back to the grind stone.
17 August 2014 | Puteri Harbour Marina
Hot and humid
It's been a long day starting out even before we had breakfast. We wanted to get the genoa sail back up the new Harken Roller Furler foils and then rolled in before the winds started their day. We wanted to see how easy it would be to furl it since the last unit(Hood) required the use of a winch. This time, just like in the past, it required the use of a winch just to get the sail up the foils. No clue as to why but just like the Hood, it refused to easily go up the wire. Once up, I pulled and pulled on the rope that makes the foils on the unit go around. It was just as tough as the last unit. Something wasn't right but at least the sail was back where it belongs. We stopped for a quick breakfast. Later in the day, we checked out the system and found that one of the main blocks that the furling line goes through when we are pulling in the sail had jammed and the wheel in it wasn't rolling as it should. I took the block apart and lubed the heck out of it and put it back together. Tomorrow morning, we will pull out the sail and re furl it again and see if that make a difference. Sure hope so. Another boat here at the marina(Solstice) has the same system and the owner-- Bill let me pull in his sail. It was much easier than ours. Tomorrow we will see how ours is.
Once we were done with that, we took the time to hook up the filter assembly we use to fill out huge water tanks. It's far from the norm to see a boat that holds 270 gallons of water. Tracy had filled them while I was gone so it's been quite a while--close to two months since the last filling. I sat outside with the twin filters we use(one paper and one charcoal) to make sure what water comes in is as clean as we can get it. The nice thing about doing it this morning was that it was very cloudy and that kept the heat down. Once that job was done, it was approaching noon and Tracy was going to make one of her great quiches. As she made that, I kept busy on deck cutting and whipping the ends of rope we had used for other jobs and was now going into storage for a while.
Once lunch was over(and it was great) we started in on an other project. Installing a new water filter and accumulator tank in the water line inside the boat. In the past, even though we had double filtered the water as it came in, we still got minute particles that covered the bottoms of our tanks. This led to the water being a shade of yellow when we were out cruising. While I was gone, Tracy had opened up all the tanks, gotten what water remained in them out and cleaned all the sediment off the bottoms. She then refilled the tanks and the water had come out nice and clean. Well, to avoid that problem in the future, I came back from the US with another water filter canister. Now our water was going to go through three filters before we ever drank it. An accumulator tank is a big steel tank that is partially full of air with a rubber bladder between where the air is and the water goes. The side that's full of air is under pressure. As the water fills the tank, it puts the air behind the rubber under pressure. When you turn on the faucet, water is immediately forced out of the faucet since there is already a preexisting pressure in the line. Once that pressure is gone, the water pump starts up and forces more water out and when the faucet is turned off, the pump continues till the tank is re-pressurized. This happens every time you turn on a faucet in the boat. Well, the rubber gasket on ours had failed a while ago and I'd gotten a replacement while we were in Singapore a few weeks ago. Today, it all got installed and thats what you see in the picture at the top of this post.
Once that job was done, I grabbed my shower bag and headed up to the shower stall to get all the sweat off me. I was feeling a bit dirty and hot after getting out of the engine room where I installed the filter and tank. I needed a good cleaning. The problem with taking a shower up at the club house is that you have to walk back to the boat. Well, it's in the high 80's to 90's and with the humidity to match it, by the time I get back to the boat, heck, I'm covered in sweat all over again. That's just the cruising life I guess.