Water, water everywhere!

Well, not quite, but it's been quite an issue these past couple of days.

Colin came yesterday to replace the bottom coolant hose in the engine compartment. One of the RCR engineers we met on our Leicester Ring cruise had told us that it needed replacing with a newer, more durable type because that one was perishing. Far from it, it turned out! When Colin removed it, he showed it to me. It was like new. I hadn't doubted the RCR guy's word - why would I? He's supposed to know what he's talking about. Colin thought that it had two or three years life in it, but did point out that the one he was putting in would last longer that the boat, and that we would have had to have the old one replaced some time in the future. He was simply doing a job sooner rather than later. It's a way of looking at it.

Taking the old hose out resulted in water flowing from the engine casing into the bilge - gallons of it! Today, I determined to pump it out, to empty the stern gland bilge, and to dry the one under the engine. I have a pump for the job. The previous shower waste pump. Perfect working order. Except that it clearly needed pump-priming, which we found impossible in the confined space afforded to us in the engine room. So it didn't work, and, after an hour of trying, I gave up and used instead the hand pump we bought in the first week of having Kantara. It worked a treat - as it did then! How I wish I'd simply gone for that option in the first place! All the bilges at that end of the boat are air-drying now.

The weather today has been very mixed, but we took advantage of a dry spell to take the cratch cover off and give it a good scrub to get off the algae and any possibility of mould. When it's dry, we'll paint a water repellant onto it and give it back the waterproof qualities it once had.

Tomorrow, we go to see John Barnard, the painter at Debdale Wharf, to hear what he has to say about repainting Kantara.