Day 202, Year 2: Down and Dirty in the Bilge
Date: Monday, November 12, 2007
Weather: Partly Cloudy Day, Lots of Wind
Location: Bundaberg Port Marina, Australia
Today was the day to clean the bilge. The only vacuum cleaner I have aboard is a mini wet/dry vac. I use it to sweep the carpet runners we have and to clean out the bilge once a year. We run lots of fresh water in with bilge cleaner or liquid Tide, swish a brush around, and then suck up all of the dirty water with the wet vac. The wet vac is small so we have to empty it several times to empty the water from the bilge. Sounds easy, but basically this took all day because Mark was also installing
a new bilge pump. We have a big bilge pump in case we get water coming in–it pumps a lot of water very rapidly and it sits very high. But this is not a very efficient way of dealing with the small quantities of water that seep in through the packing glands. So then we have the smaller bilge pump to deal with that. The one we have has not been as reliable as we would like, and since we are thinking of leaving the boat in the water while we are visiting in the US, a new bilge pump sounded like
a very good idea. Somehow what seemed like a little job took all day.
During the day, I continued to catalog what we have in all of our cabinets so I’ll know what I need to buy for the next leg of our voyage. Next season we will be traveling through Indonesia, stopping in Singapore, and then heading north through Malaysia on our way to Thailand. We assume we will find that it is difficult to find many of the things we need, just as we have found it difficult throughout the South Pacific. I used to make fun of my mother for liking only certain brands of products,
but I think I am much worse than she was. I miss New Dawn dish detergent. Not because I can’t find an acceptable dish detergent, but because we also used it as a teak deck cleaner and because it would cut grease and oil and when other products wouldn’t. Today I used the last of my liquid Tide laundry detergent in the bilge. I have found an acceptable laundry detergent, but nothing out here seems to work as well as Tide. Tomorrow or the next day I plan to take my list of needs to town and see
what I can find here to replace the depleted cleaning supplies.
I ended the day by sanding the cockpit cap rail. It got rained on last night just after I applied a fresh coat of varnish, so I had to sand off all the little “dimples” in the varnish. Just like yesterday afternoon, as soon as I was ready to apply another coat of varnish, the winds increased and dark clouds floated overhead. I defied nature last night and went ahead with the varnishing, but tonight I didn’t. I’ll apply a coat of varnish in the morning if the weather permits. I’m almost out of
varnish and even though they don’t have my brand here, the chandlery here was able to order some from Brisbane for me. I use Epiphanes Clear Varnish on the outside teak and I really hated to switch varnishes at this point. The Epiphanes has been lasting longer than anything else we have ever used, so it seems wise to stick with the known.
I’ll start tomorrow with the varnishing task and then move on down the list. I think we will take Wednesday off and go to the Botanical Gardens and Hinkler Museum in town. We’ve been working non-stop for a few days now and need to get off the boat and see some of Australia.
