Monday Maintenance

The boats heading north left at the first bridge opening, since the wind was from the South West. We wanted a northerly to head south, and since one was forecast for Tuesday we stayed put, having work to do on Robinetta.

The first job was moving the toilet out of the way to look for the forepeak leak. Julian handed it up to me in the cockpit, and I was sat there cleaning it up when Mary came back from paying her mooring fees. She commented with amusement, saying that her bucket was better than worrying about thru hulls for a flush.

Worm had been moored alongside Molly Cobbler for the weekend, and Mary gave her back, before casting off and heading out of the harbour as soon as the flap gate allowed.

Julian and I wanted mains electricity for the day, so we had decided to move to a pontoon berth as soon as Mary left. This lead to us motoring through the harbour with the toilet on display in the cockpit, which caused several ribald comments.

Once we were moored up I finished cleaning the toilet and Julian moved it onto the foredeck, where it was a lot less obvious.

Water was coming in from a couple of places. Julian tightened up the toilet flushing water ingress sea cock, which had started leaking again. ( a recurrent problem.)

The other leak seemed to originate at the foremost floor strap's central bolt, just aft of the chain locker.

A good thing about being at a Traditional Boat Weekend is that there are experienced wooden boat builders/repairers around. Scot Metcalf, skipper of Vilma and owner of the Penryn wooden boat workshop came to have a look, together with John, off Bridget. Scot tightened up the nut on the threaded rod through the strap and the flow ceased. He thinks there may be a scarf joint on the stem poast that is being held in place by the nut. Tightening the nut against the floor seemed to do the trick and Robinetta stopped pumping as often. Vilma and Bridget both headed out on the last bridge swing before the flap gate came up, they were going to moor at St Mary's overnight and leave early from there for Holyhead.

The toilet bowl went back in place, now nice and clean.

I passage planned for our trip to Holyhead tomorrow while Julian worked, then we went out for an icecream and internet, before eating dinner on board.