Brass fittings on sea strainers

Monday 5 November: Herrington Harbor North – rains all day, engine room maintenance continues.
Heavy rain throughout the night and in the morning, and we think how lucky we were with the weather during our time doing works in the yard.
It’s full on activities, as time is now short till we move, and Glen has few ongoing projects to finish.
But before setting to those he decides to sign up to Chris Parker weather advice for 1 month. This way he gets to see the webcasts as well as hear Chris on the SSB. And closer to departure we will take Chris’s advice on departure timing to Bermuda. The weather systems keep rolling through and it’s important we don’t find ourselves in a wind-over-current situation in the Gulf Stream, where the sea state could be pretty nasty.

Then Glen gets himself waterproofed and goes to the mechanical workshop in the yard. Where he uses the vice to unscrew brass fittings from the watermaker seacock. Then to the hardware store (I guess our shopping in USA was not exactly over) to buy a replacement pressure relief valve for our water heater.
With all the various fittings undone he is cleaning their threads with wire brushes, under the umbrella! Then back in the engine room, the real job: putting the fittings back together. Gooy stuff, Locktight 565, recommended by Ray, gets put on the threads to seal them. And a bit of aesthetic job too: spray the pipes, we can’t have new brass on scratched and corroded pipes now can we?

Due to a slight change in configuration, one of the rubber pipes is now too short, so Glen runs to West Marine to buy a new pipe. Measures, cuts, and WTF, it is still too short! Hmm, must remember “measure twice – cut once” …. not the other way around! Meaning another trip to West Marine, for yet another piece of pipe! And to reward himself, he buys a spotlight too. Something we had missing from our inventory. This one runs on 12v socket and is VERY bright. The engine room is finally down, made tidy and the door shut. Tools go away and the interior is generally tidied up ready for departure.

Meanwhile I am tearing my hair out with the next video. I just about finished it when our new editing program, Adobe Premier Pro, decided to mess the whole thing up – getting video and audio clips all mixed up. So, now with no hair left, I had to start all over again, determined to finish and publish this video before we lose internet. Finally we roll into bed after 1am! Our usual time…