Bequia - Admiralty Bay - Day 2
Rainmaker
Donald Macdonald
Sun 14 Mar 2021 18:46
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Before going ashore last night needed to add air to rear
section of dinghy. Did get some in but started to hear air escaping, it was from
the foot pump each time I pressed down. Further investigation revealed the
wooden plate of the bellows was splitting at the hinged end. Nothing to be done
but go ashore in dinghy, had good view across bay from Papa's
restaurant.
This morning took a more detailed look at how the pump
was broken, you could see the the wooden plate was splitting in half through its
thickness. A bit more thinking of what the tools and repair glues etc we have
onboard to formulate a repair. The split opened up when pressing end of plate so
as having one G-clamp onboard, some bits of wood and a heavy toolbox and some
thickened epoxy in a tube repair could be done. The thickened epoxy mixed and
then put in plastic bag with corner chopped off so could squeeze the mix into
the split by having the toolbox closing the pump. Once lots of epoxy squeezed in
got the pieces of wood either side at hinge and squeezed down the wood battens
with the G-clamp, lots of epoxy oozed out and cleaned up. That was 5 hours ago,
the epoxy is no longer sticky and surplus is still a little flexible so shall
leave toolbox and clamps on probably till the morning when we shall get to test
to see of good fix.
John has done some scrapping of barnacles from the hull,
too cool for me to go in without the sunshine to dry oneself. Hull over half
done now. Completed areas looks as though just been painted.
Been cloudy all day so unable to run the inverter to
charge computers etc from AC as all light required to charge the house
batteries.
Tomorrow is a holiday here, Hero's
Day.
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