We motored across to Lagos for 9.00am the next day which takes about an hour and moored at the marina reception pontoon and met Paul Kent. Apparently the marina are happy for boats to spend a few hours on the reception pontoon whilst he works on them, at least we didn’t have to pay them. Paul took about 90 minutes to switch the freezer/spare cooling plate (we never use the freezer so can do without it) on the keel to service the main fridge where the cooling plate has eroded away. In the meantime Chris went to the chandlery to get the hose to replace the heads hoses only to find they didn’t have the right size. Try at Portimao they said! With the job completed we motored back to Portimao and dropped the hook in a different part of the anchorage... a power boat had taken our previous spot. That afternoon we dinghied to the chandlery at the Portimao Boatyard, checked the booking for our lift next week, met with the boss of ‘Bluewater Algarve’ who will do some work on Splice whilst we are away and finally got the hose for the heads work. We ate on board, spicy chicken and rice.
Friday was another early start as we came into the marina in Portimao at 8.30am to meet some of the workmen from’ Bluewater’ to finalise the quote for the solar panels we want them to fit on top of the davits at the stern. There was some confusion as the fabricator (who spoke mostly Portuguese) thought we wanted a fancy full arch across the back not a simple square frame but we think we got there in the end....we shall see when the quote comes in!
We spent the afternoon ‘warming up’ to the horrible heads challenge by changing out the two simplest hoses, both short runs and accessible without cutting up the boat or excessive contortions to reach them. That was successful without major problems, but then they were the easy ones!
Chris also fitted the block for our passerelle to the port stern step. The is the boarding plank we will need for 'Med style -stern to mooring' To bolt it securely you have to access the back of the step through the steering compartment and glue a strengthening board to the inside to support the fiberglass, the block is then bolted through the fiberglass and the board with washers and sealant completing the job.
Boat Pizza and salad for dinner.

The main work on the heads commenced on Saturday morning. Ever since we have owned Splice we have been trying to work out the best way to access the junctions of the hoses. We settled on two locations we would have to cut the woodwork away, one in the back of the cupboard and also a block 300mm x 250mm in the floor under the desk in the centre of the starboard hull. This gave us access to the main junctions which are impossible to reach by lifting the floor panels where you normally access the bilge. Another failure by boat builders to think about simple maintenance access when constructing the craft!! We will cover the holes with either an inspection hatch or simply a raised plate screwed over the top as a lip won’t matter where we have cut.
Access was achieved by about 10.30am with Chris using a combination of drill and hacksaw to remove the boarding. With slight elongation of the planned cupboard hole this did enable us to reach the junctions. The next three hours were the worst job, cutting out lengths of old hose, stuffing with rags and taping to try and minimise spillage and then undoing the jubilee clips and cutting off the remaining ends. We also had to clean out all the plastic junctions and the anti siphon which were completely clogged. Over time urine and sea water react to create calcium, our hoses were so blocked that there was a hole less than the width of a pencil in a hose 38mm across. It’s not as smelly as you would imagine as this is mostly calcium and the seawater we had pumped through beforehand but not much fun! The rest of the day was spent re-fitting the hose, trying to do so in a way that would cause fewer problems (a hose with dip in it will retain stuff and can block). We just about got there by 5.30pm only to find we didn’t have enough hose to put the final join in place! Bahh. At least the missing piece was part of the holding tank run and we could still test the heads out to sea...........amazing - instead of standing there for 5 minutes flushing out, it disappears in a second. It took us until about 7.00pm to tidy up and clean down everything. The first beers went down rather quickly!! Carolyn created a ‘Pasta and Leftovers’ dinner as Chris only had the energy to move his glass to his lips!

We will stay in the marina another night doing other maintenance work on Splice and getting ready to lift her out on Tuesday.

We didn’t think you’d want to see a shot of our heads hoses so the photo shows the view from our stern when we were anchored in Portimao. The boat is a French built ‘Ovni’ made of aluminium and you can see the beach with one of the bar/restaurants to the left.