more odd jobs that need doing.
17 September 2015 | Hellville, Nosy Be. Madagascar
Bill/ Sunny and warm.
Jobs continued along with errands ashore so we can be ready to move along by early next week.
We started in on cleaning the gunk out of the bottom of our Racor filter for fuel from our diesel tank. It's been quite sometime since I undid the drain plug and let the ugly stuff out. I put down pads and got a jar and let her rip. I squeezed the fuel bulb on the fuel line and boy did the stuff come our. Once I got the first time done, I let it rest for a while and did it again trying to get the last of it out. Well, I got most of it. What I got out is a combination of dead bugs that live in the diesel fuel as well as what ever water happens to get in the fuel and gets sucked up the fuel line. While not much, it's much better to get it off the boat this way than out through the engine possibly messing it up.
Once I got the stuff out, I took off the lid of the Racor housing and pulled out the old filter and put in a new one. It's been quite a while since I changed it out and with the beating we took getting here, I'm sure the filter needed swapping out. Tough job of unscrew the lid, reach in and grab the handles of the old filter and lift it out. Change out the rubber seal around the lip of the cap and tighten it back down.
We headed back into town yesterday to get more supplies for our next journey. We had to take a tuktuk across the island to get to what seems to be the only store on the island that sells Coke in cans. Everyone else sells it in bottles that are returnable like we used to use in the US many years ago. Keeps down on the little problem. That's one thing we can say about Madagascar. The beaches and pretty much every where is litter free. Everything gets reused out here. It's a wonderful sight to see pristine beaches after what we have seen in other countries.
We hit up a few more stores(few that there are) and the central market for some more sort of fresh veggies and headed back to Zephyr. Today, we checked all the batteries on board and topped up those that we were a bit low. When we got here, we found a small section of our mainsail that had gotten rubbed against a shroud on the trip south and made a hole in the fabric. We added some reinforcements to it today and covered the entire section with a nylon sticky tape that's made for sail repair. All the water tanks were inspected in preparation of them getting filled on Sunday when we get to Crater Bay.
It's small jobs like that that have beekeeping us busy for the last few days. Some of us are getting together this evening at the local pizza palace in town for a social gathering. It should be fun. Tomorrow, we check of the harbor for our trip south.