Not all plain sailing.

A couple of weeks into the New Year & our first problem arose. I had refilled our fresh water tank with about 900litres, went off to collect Steph from work, came home & went to put the kettle on---no water. Opening the hatch to the bilges, I found where the water was! Our pressurised water pump had waited for the tank to be filled, to spring a leak, sending all the tanks content into the bilges. It seems things can never be sorted straight away, it was four days before I could source & refit a new pump costing £360. This time, I went for a stainless steel version, so hopefully, it will last a while longer. The main problem was pumping out all the water, which was not deep enough for a bilge pump so, we had to resort to using our vax hoover & about 100 loads later, we still get some water finding its way back.

Although still involving water, February gave us a slightly messier problem, with the Sanilflo macerator toilet deciding it too had served its purpose. I did attempt to clean it all out to see if that was the problem, you can only imagine what that entailed! After the usual searching of the internet & local suppliers, we had to stump up £535 to buy a new unit; considering we were first quoted £816 by the same place, we were happy it was only that price. Even then, we had go without an on-board facility(posh eh) for almost a week, those offay with sailing will be aware of the 'bucket & chuck it' method!

We & our bank balance can now only hope that we can at least go a few more months before the next crisis hits.