Monday 3 September: Newport, admin day
A dull morning ruins our plans of going ashore early and fly the drone over the mansions. Well, droning was the “excuse” we made up so that we can walk back to Bellevue Avenue, where we spotted a laundromat.
Geared up with Ponny full of laundry and cardboard boxes, we go ashore for an admin morning. Right next to the dinghy dock we notice the Maritime Center, a public facility for boaters. Fantastic facility in fact, with fully equipped launderette and great internet. So we bring the laptop too, and upload a video while waiting for the washing machines and dryers to finish. And in that time Glen also flies the drone over Newport docks in the mid morning sun. On TV we see the news about tropical storm Gordon becoming a hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico, plus another building in the Atlantic. Hm, it’s September, the hurricanes are in full swing. We will need to watch closely to see if any come up the east coast.
Back to s/v Cloudy Bay, we carry on in the same admin mode. Glen re-arranged the wine bottles that we store in the forepeak bilge, and while at it, installs a pipe which will drain the water from that section of the bilge into the next section, where the speed impeller is, preventing all our wine supply from getting covered in salt. We have a minor leak in the bow somewhere, but have never managed to locate it, so salt water was draining through our wine supply.
Then he installs himself into the engine room. Ouph, I suspect that is going to be a loooong session. Here, he first attacks the main electric bilge pump. We bought a spares kit to service this pump, and he is now taking it all apart to replace xx. It takes several good hours till the pump is back in place and working. All good with the pump but as usual there is always a nasty surprise: the flexible inlet and outlet pipes are found to be rotten. Well the rubber it OK, but the metal spiral inside is a rusty mess. So 2 new pipes for the shopping list.
Early evening we go ashore, back to the Maritime Center (why didn’t we spot this gem earlier?!) to do more internet stuff: 2 more videos uploaded, and few pictures on Facebook. The center shuts at 8pm, and we still have our last upload to finish, so there we are, outside the building, in the chilly wind, holding the laptop close to the window to catch the WiFi signal. The things we do… ! We certainly raise some eyebrows of passing people.
Back onboard s/v Cloudy Bay, we check the weather forecast. A storm seems to be coming our way at the end of the week.
Then Glen gets to his next project in the engine room. Generator this time. The end fitting for the exhaust silencer started to leak in the Caribbean. We had it re-welded at huge cost in Antigua, but it was leaking again just a week later. So we now have a brand new end fitting supplied by HR-Parts in Sweden. The trouble is, the silencer is under the generator. Impossible to see and only assessable with just one hand. So Glen has to get the old one off and the new one fitted only by feel! He was not sure he could even do it without jacking up the generator. But after a couple of hours cursing, grazes on the top of his arm and knuckles bleeding, the new end is fitted. At first try with the generator running there was still a leak around the fitting. But a few more turns on the 4 hose clamps and the drops stopped. Fantastic. This exercise in Antigua cost us $900 of man hours … so Glen was pretty happy to have done the same in one evening.
To celebrate a very constructive day, we finish the evening with some nice drinks – G&T for the mechanic and Baileys for his trusty assistant and camerawoman 🙂
Newport Rhode Island photo album