Day 189, Year 10: Water Tanks and Broken Glass—Not a Good Combination
Date: Friday, April 17, 2015
Weather: Overcast, Drizzle, Warmer and Humid, Winds ENE 5
Location: Lightkeepers Marina, Little River, SC
Today was another day of checking jobs off the boat TO DO list, but this morning we added cleaning one of our water tanks to the list. And that ended up to be a job that took much longer than expected. I’ll get to that in a minute, but first I’ll explain our need to do things that take lots of water while we are here. We did not have easy access to water this winter in Florida or the Bahamas, and once we return to Cape Cod, we will be on a mooring for the summer. Our only source of water all summer is either using the water maker or carrying jerry jugs to the boat from shore. So doing things like cleaning out water tanks, washing the boat down on the outside, cleaning out sink drains by forcing pressurized water through the drain pipes, and washing down the engine with fresh water need to be done while we are here on a dock with running water and a hose. What a luxury. We started today by cleaning out the starboard water tank. This first requires emptying the tank by running water through the faucets in the boat. And that takes longer than it feels like it should. Mark really did most of the work, so he then opened the water tank from inside our boat by lifting the floor boards and loosening about 20 bolts that hold down the metal plate over the opening. Our water tank opening is about a foot in diameter and this allows us to reach down in and wipe down the sides and bottom of the tank. Mark did that and then sprayed it out, added West Marine Water Tank Flush, filled the tank, and let it sit for 30 minutes. After that he emptied and filled it two more times, but in between we had a bit of a disaster when Mark accidentally flipped a canning jar off the sink with the hose. It hit right on the edge of the open water tank. Shards of glass flew everywhere and the broken jar fell right into the full water tank. Needless to say, it took more emptying, more wiping down, and more filling to complete the job. Mark feels confident that he got all the glass but thankfully we have filters and fine mesh strainers on all of the faucets, just in case a little piece was missed. We still need to clean the other tank, but the West Marine here had only one gallon of the Water Tank Flush and we used all of that on one tank. Hopefully they’ll get more in next week and we can do the second tank. But if not, we’ll just wait and do it next year. We only clean the tanks every two to three years, so it can wait. But hopefully whenever we do it, we won’t have the glass disaster with the second tank.
In addition to water tank cleaning, I cleaned the v-berth book shelves and prepared the v-berth to accept all of the boxes of photos that we are taking back to Cape Cod. My sister has been storing our boxes of photos from pre-digital camera days, but it makes no sense for her to move the photos to Nashville with her. So we’ll get those onboard Windbird this weekend. In addition, Mark defrosted the freezer and I helped him defrost the refrigerator. We were both up to our elbows in water all day long. Tomorrow we will take a break from boat work and go to Patsy and Joe’s for the day. We hope there are some jobs that we can do to help them get a little closer to being ready for their move to Nashville this summer.
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| 150417 Day 189 Little River, USA–Mark Defrosting the Freezer |
