Today has been a real trial. Yesterday our water pump decided to ignore its pressure switch and it over pressurised the system, causing the pressure relief valve to open yet again. It just shows that the relief valve was doing what it should, but it was not what we needed.
Anyway, we have a spare pump and I burrowed into the garden shed (the sail locker) beneath the false floor where I keep my spares and got the replacement out. The old pump worked through a relay which involved more wires than the new model had. We traced everything through the relay to work out which wire does what, and we still didn't have enough connections. Anyway, we split a wire and finally came up with a solution that worked and now the water system works properly again. I have ordered a replacement pressure switch which I will substitute at a later date onto the old pump to make it into a new spare. I know the pump worked, so with a new pressure switch it should be hunky dory.
That done, we expected to have a relaxed evening. Not so. We put the watermaker on and having filled our drinking water bottles, we switched over to fill the tanks. Unfortunately when I was doing the pump repair this morning I turned off the inlet valve to the tanks and forgot to open it again. The pressure from the watermaker built sufficiently to burst a joint behind the control panel which in turn flooded the bilge. Two hours of tracing the source of the leak and repairing the damaged joint we put the boat back together again.
In addition to this, the riggers have taken one of the shrouds down to make two new ones. They will be back tomorrow morning early to continue replacing the rigging bit by bit.
We also had the refrigerator man back to take another look at the freezer compressor. He re-gassed the system a little, and touch wood, it has settled down a bit now. He also reduced the rpms for the motor and that should make it run smoother and more efficiently.
One good thing from today is that we have some smart new canvas to keep the cockpit dry when it rains. We feel that we are getting there.
We have reserved two solar panels and a regulator to fit on Tumi. This will boost the battery bank and keep them topped up. We will be fitting them next week.
A couple more weeks of hard work and who knows, we might be able to go sailing again!