" A LADY TRIP" SAILING AROUND THE WORLD, ( presently in the Dutch West Indies )
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Wed 13 Jan 2010 12:50
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TUESDAY 12th January 2010
07.30hrs Up bright and early, rang Louis
regarding fixing the leak in the watermaker,
08.30hrs We collected Louis from the
dock and brought him out to the Lovely A LADY.
This was the start of a frustrating day, things just went bloodywell downhill
from there.
Firstly, Louis told us of two other " Oyster 56's "
he recently changed the membrain's from 3 units to one long one 40" long instead
of the 23" ones we have, He explained " less
connections, so less things to go wrong" ok all sounds good and it would
fit the boat as well,
we trashed out the cost and off he went and set
about installing the new " membrain " ( This takes the salt out of the sea
water, so we wind up with
pure fresh water )
Later when it was temperoraly installed ,to make
sure it worked, it only produced 40 litres per hour, down from the 65 litres we
were getting from our own units, and well down from the 100 litres its supposed
to produce.. Shit what next !
While all this was going on, the skipper decided to
clean op the rib, greese the steering gear on the outboard moter, and remove the
friggin
lock and cable , which had got a bit rusty, ( the
lock and wire cable are used for locking the rib to "A LADY" at night or
to the Dock, when ashore.
This was more difficult than first thought, so out
with the WD40 and a big BIG screwdriver,
A little slip here and a little slip there and
BANG, the screwdriver shot into the rib's tube and the skipper hears that
dreadded sound, hisssssssss
Oh my God ! I have punctured the RIB ...ohhhh
Then Louis had to go ashore , ( his wife is in
hospital with cancer and he had to collect the twins)
A soft trip, and the rib had lost so much air,
Later things improved a little when " Kevin"
repaired the puncture in the rib and Donal decided he would cook a Pasta
dinner,
around all the bits and pieces on the floor, This
turned out a great success and with the wine, rum and coke's, and whiskey,
we soon forgot about about all the day's
troubles.
We hit the bunks and soon crashed out, only to be
woken later with the heavy rain, Ah well , we dont see too much of this,
T.G.
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