The Baby Blake and the pickled onion

Zepher
Chris & Lyn Darch
Wed 22 Aug 2007 20:25
21st August to  23rd 2007
 
"The Baby Blake and the pickled onion"
 
Hi to you all on terra firm , well don't be to jealous of us here in Spain because the rain doesn't fall mainly on the plain , at the moment it all on the Rias , since our arrival at Ria de Camarinas its been wet and windy we are tucked up and protected by the surrounding hills the Spanish are big on windfarms down here and we can see why theirs plenty of it .
 After a lazy day on Monday Lyn made a great salad which included our last bottle of Tescos finest Onions in balsamic vinegar and very nice they were to , lyn left one , I was too stuffed to eat it so we did our usual routine of washing up after our evening meal and went to bed .
 Next day went about doing bits and bobs , ties for the boom spliced in clips and tidying the forpeak , it was wet and windy so we decided that getting the Z boat out would wait till the next dry day , Lyn called me aft to say her loo wasn't working , and yes you guessed it was just after a tom tit ! well I thought were not going anywhere today so best tackle it now , " To all baby Blake owners and maintainers reading this take note "  armed with spanners pump out gear I liberally put towels around the fine piece of 20s plumbing , pumped out the bowel which had clean seawater in it , the pump handle moved upand down OK but shifted nothing , I thought that the shaft must have become disconnected and after rebuilding both of them I found that hard to believe , so I proceded to undo all the bolts around the pump out housing , cracked the lower seal and was greeted with a stream of the brown stuff ... sacra blu I declared and that was the clean one ! hurriedly mopping and shouting to Lyn ...get another bucket the till the stem of ooze stopped , after much grunting and persuading I got the unit out and into a bucket of disinfectant looking up into the barrel and stuck behind the ball valve was said pickled onion less the balsamic vinegar ?? how to get it out without disassembling the whole unit ... one of Lyns fine silver forks later and the onion was cleared , deep joy .. a functioning loo again ...
Ater the tidy up and swamping out of the heads all was sweet in rose garden , the inquest was held as to how and why it got there and yes folks it was pass by Lyn via the washing up bowl as we don't put any waste water after washing up down into our grey tank but ditch it either over the side or down the aft loo and pump it out its ok with small particles but not pickled onions !  
One more day here and we are on the move to the next Ria, slowly winding our way to Bayonne to prep for our crossing to Madera
 
That all for now " The Brown Noah"