We are STILL in Puerto Rico

Yesterday afternoon, it seemed that we would have everything ready to be able to sail on Sunday (today), but by the evening, Peter decided that there were a few more items on his ever-growing list of tasks (which seems always to happen with boats).

While I went to the deli in the marina (for the best Internet service) to research and book a dock at a marina in the Chesapeake Bay for most of the summer, Peter set to work on his projects.  He called me about 1 p.m. to say he needed help and maybe lunch.  This is what I found when I returned to Mantra:

What you see here are the spaces under the sole (floor) where pipes and wires run and where some of the bilge pumps are located.  Peter had ascertained that the bilge pump visible by the bright glare of the tropical sunlight was not working properly because there was a blockage in the line somewhere.  He also discovered some original design flaws and a bad solution to a sump pump problem which had only created more problems!  So, we had to find something that might dissolve the blockage, wherever it was.  The previous owners left a plethora of cleaning supplies, parts, tools and other useful items, but we had not seen any bilge cleaner.  Of course, we had not looked everywhere because the boat, like most yachts, has an abundance of spaces (some of them requiring the skills of a contortionist to access--that would be Peter, not me) for storage.  We decided to look in the aft lazarette.  Peter climbed in and handed bottles and tins of polish, solvents, cleaners, rust removers and other useful chemicals as well as loads of brushes and cleaning cloths and sponges to me, looking for bilge cleaner.  He read all the labels as he handed them over and I made a pile.

Not finding what we needed, he set off to the chandlery to try to buy something that might work, and I took on the task of sorting through all the supplies.  I filled a kitchen garbage bag with unlabeled bottles, dried up polishes, brushes lacking most of the their bristles and damp clothes and organized the rest into fiberglass cleaner/wax, metal polish, solvents and miscellaneous.  Low and behold, I discovered a bottle of bilge cleaner that Peter had missed because the printing on the label was faded and scratched.  I called him with the good news, particularly good since the chandlery was closed and the little store didn't have what we needed (although they suggested that barnacle remover might work!).  

As we waited for the bilge cleaner to do its work, Peter worked on other things and I tried out one of the rust removers on the wheel and some of the rails.  It worked!  Then Peter asked me if I had found anything that would clean the sticky residue off the water hose, so I tried out a multipurpose cleaner with instructions stating that it would clean just about anything.  I could clean floors with a 1:60 mixture of cleaner to water or strip paint by using it fairly undiluted.  Who knows what this stuff contains!  Without measuring, I put some in a pan of water and used one of the many brushes I found to meticulously clean about 60 feet of hose.  It seemed better, but, hey, we also have an abundance of mold and mildew cleaner, so I dumped some of that on it also.  Although it is not like new, it is in much better shape than when I started.  

After I made dinner and we consumed it on the table on the aft deck (Peter has been wondering why so much attention is lavished on interior design on yachts when all of us yachties spend as much time as we can on deck.), we got to work on the bilge pump lines.  Peter did some pounding and jiggling of the lines to help dislodge things and then we pumped buckets and buckets of dirty water and gunk out.  Success!  The lines seem to be clear.  

By the end of that task, it was 11 p.m., so we are leaving the floorboards and baseboards off and putting things back together and cleaning up in the morning.  

Then--maybe--we will set off.  At least the weather has calmed down a bit!