Tsk! Boats, huh?

Well, boat life's just been made a little more challenging. Yesterday lunchtime, we prepared our first meal without a galley sink, and did the washing up in the shower! A few days ago, I noticed that water was getting into the cupboard under the sink, and traced the fault to the sealant between the sink and the draining board. It looked to me as if the front right corner of the sink had dropped a few millimetres, and the sealant had consequently pulled away along the right side. Water running off the draining board over edge of the sink naturally runs along the bottom edge of the board before meeting the inside of the sink, and it's there that the seal is broken and the water gets underneath.

I contacted Roy straight away, but he was unable to come until yesterday morning. He and Lee found that the oak draining board had warped a little. It, and the sink itself, all needed to be screwed more tightly, but first the wet panels have to dry out, and this will take some days. Consequently, we have no sink! Interesting!

Two or three days ago, I needed to run the Alde boiler. It wouldn't fire up. I called Carl, who'd been responsible for moving gas pipes when Kantara had her new galley fitted, and he came on Wednesday to see what the problem was. There were flakes of rust which had fallen onto the burner unit. He cleaned it up, and the area all around it, but it still wouldn't ignite. He changed the thermocouple, which he had suspected to be the culprit in the first place. Still no ignition. So he had to remove the heart of the Alde, to send it off for repair by a qualified engineer.

A thermocouple - fascinating, huh?

Carl and Roy will both need to come back next week to complete their jobs, but we intend to have left Kantara by then. The office keeps copies of our keys, and will sign them out to known individuals, so there's no problem there. What will happen now is that we'll go back to the house on Friday, return here when the men have finished their jobs, winterise the boat and then leave her for the winter.

The dehumidifier was delivered yesterday, and we set it up straight away and switched it on. Let's hope it lives up to our expectations. We had it on for several hours before going out yesterday afternoon, then all night. It's still on now, and has done a remarkable job of preventing the condensation on the window-frames which normally forms very easily in weather like this.

We'll come back to Kantara every couple of weeks over the winter this year, to check that all is well with this device running all the time. It'll cost us a fair bit for the electricity, but not as much as it costs those who leave their boats to keep warm with their in-built diesel-fuelled heaters, and our solution has the air-drying advantage over heaters, too.