So we had somebody interested in trading ERIK for their larger boat, plus cash. He came down to look at ERIK and, as you do, wanted to have a look in the bilge.
I think it’s been about four years since we cleaned the bilge, and about a year since we pulled the cabin sole up to have a look. Suffice to say it was Not Pretty. Blugh, yucky and messy might be good words to describe it too.
We took the opportunity to give the bilge s good vacuum today, and checked all the fill, drain, and breather pipes. Then we filled the water tanks… Oddly tank 2 was still full, but the foot pump didn’t think so and was sucking air…. Hmmmm.
Time to pull the foot pump. Blugh!
Ages ago one of its mount legs had broken off, but it’s been working like trooper for years… Not anymore. Leaking like a sieve.
We have a spare, of course, but it’s a prick of a job to pull these pumps out. The mount screws are very difficult to get at because of the design of the cabinetry. I’m going to sit down, one of these days, and construct some sort of sled system with the pumps mounted on it. That way I can position the screws the sled down in a nice easy spot… It’ll mean attacking the cabinet with a saw, and detouring the feed for the raw water pump, so it’s not on today’s list of things to do.
After a 15 minutes of skinned knuckled, and swearing the new pump is in!
Note the water everywhere… Sometimes a gravity fed day tank for water can be annoying!
All fixed!