Beaufort NC USA (Part 3)

Sunday 10 November dawned bright and clear and whilst it would have been fun to make good use of the weather to go exploring we had more work to do on BV.

The membranes, which live inside the white tubes, need to be replaced which meant disturbing most of the connections

This time the watermaker was the object of our attention.  We already had new membranes on order but we needed to pull the whole thing to pieces in advance of the membranes arriving to see what extra bits we needed to order in.  Getting the tubes out of the locker under the aft bunk was the first struggle and, inevitably, several small, critical plastic pipe connectors weakened with age, broke in the process.  I struggled on with disassembling everything whilst Nicky did numerous online searches to identify the offending plastic parts, find a supplier and put in an order for replacements.  And then she repeated the procedure for the replacement seals/o-rings we needed.  In and amongst that she managed to complete her work on the inventory though, like the Encyclopaedia Britannica, it’s out of date almost as soon as it’s printed! 

More beautiful weather, though a southwesterly wind, so not ideal for those trying to head south

The following day, Monday 11 November, we walked the mile or so to Ace Hardware to buy some of the ‘easy to get’ parts we needed for reassembling the watermaker. Inevitably, some of these ‘easy to get’ parts proved to be not so easy to get, being UK plumbing spec rather than US spec.  So, we resorted to purchasing a recommended releasing agent and later managed to get the seized items apart, cleaned up and put back together again, which was a result.  In the process, we discovered that we were following in the watermaker footsteps of our friends Helen and Dave on Grace of Longstone.  The plumbing man in Ace Hardware remembered them as having visited a couple of times the week before, also needing small, ‘easy to get’ but actually quite esoteric parts.  Seeing as we were in the area, we also took the opportunity to top up our food supplies at the entertainingly named local supermarket chain, Piggly Wiggly.

We spent the evening back in the Back Street Pub with the usual suspects (Dianne plus Steve and Carol (Innamorata II)) as well as Matthew (Barfly) and recent arrivals Rik and Sanne (Incentive) and Rudi (See Ya).  The latter three crews spent time discussing the forecast and options for heading further south – perhaps on Tuesday, perhaps on Wednesday.  Along with Innamorata II and we listened in on the discussions a little enviously.  But we were cheered up by Dianne who arrived doing her best Father Christmas impression, bearing mailed in packages for Steve and Carol and us, ours being a big box containing a replacement Navtex.

The new Navtex installed.  Not the one I really wanted but chosen because it fitted the hole in the wood!

So, Tuesday 12 November began with my fitting the replacement Navtex, which went very smoothly.  Its installation also showed that the old antenna was providing a fair signal (good news as fitting the new antenna and cabling would be a fiddly job).  Nicky moved on from the inventory to updating our servicing records, another time-consuming and tedious but necessary task.  It was only quite a lot later in the afternoon that I realised that, somehow, our electronic log was now reading entirely the wrong mileage: 5913.2nm instead of 52,295.1nm.  How did that happen and why did it change to that number?  I spent the rest of the afternoon fruitlessly chasing down the gremlin which I can only assume got into the system when I disturbed something fitting the new Navtex.

It was windy overnight into Wednesday 13 November and we didn’t sleep too well.  There were a couple of yachts that had recently anchored quite close to us and with the fast-flowing tide through the anchorage we were a little concerned that they might swing too close to us.  Happily, the change in wind direction brought a bit of a clearing of the anchorage, though that meant that Barfly, Incentive and See Ya also headed off south.  I had a frustrating morning not sorting out the mileage reading and ended up having to accept that the old mileage was lost with the ones and zeros gone to binary heaven.  To vent my frustration I walked up to Ace Hardware to buy another bit of pipe to fix the outflow of the watermaker (I bought the wrong sized pipe on Monday), which I subsequently fitted.  Meanwhile Nicky lubricated all the blocks and clutches and emailed Steve and Helen Lawrence on Miles, an OCC yacht we had briefly met in Fishing Bay and which was heading to Beaufort via the ICW.  I also chased up the production/delivery of the Aqua Drive shaft only to discover that it had been somewhat delayed because one of the CV units had been broken on delivery to the assembling company.  Still, it sounded as if the part was likely to be sent out the next day, which was excellent news.

We rounded off the day with Wednesday’s half price chicken wings dinner at Clawsons Restaurant on Beaufort’s Front Street.  Dianne came over with Helen and Dave (Grace of Longstone) and Carol and Steve (Innamorata II) joined the party too, though as a vegetarian Carol found the offerings pretty meagre (unless you wanted salad, which she didn’t as it was so cold outside once).  And yet again, Dianne did her Christmas elf impression, this time bringing in the small, plastic pipe connectors for the watermaker project.  We hoped for the membranes and o-rings to arrive in the morning.

Beaufort, North Carolina, USA