Perforated tea bags seem to have fewer holes than our boat, we have so many holes on the top and under neath. It’s a surprise that she floats.

We woke up Monday to find the port hull with 9inch of salt water and only a subtle drip drip noise overnight. On inspection it turns out the non-return valve on the air conditioning water waste coolant of the forward cabin has failed and it sits below the water line (why?) and has gradually failed.

With the auto bilge pump switched off, as a consequence of playing with the adjacent electric switches on the fridge and freezers over the weekend, the pump didn’t kick in and we had a gradual flooding of the hull. Lesson learnt and we now have four 85db sonic bilge alarms that we will mount around each of the hulls to ensure we are alerted to any water ingress above a certain level.

Since we have checked the bilges and on an up side the port side ‘whiff ’ has gone. I think it could have been from the milk that spilt in the fridge that drained into the hull and started to pong. Eww. I did flush it through but still a whiffy smell remained.

On perforations above the water line we have had so many holes in the Bimini roof from the old solar which have now been filled, botched over with white resin filler which now flakes off. Although to be fair the roof is now water tight. So that leaves the other holes along the deck sides where the toe rails used to be which we’ve also now sealed up.

More on holes... The helm station needs to be water tight, but the winch buttons were leaking (now fixed) and letting water through down into the electrical space. The last thing anyone wants is the combimaster inverter/charger to get damaged from a water leak. A short term fix, yellow masking tape and a plastic bag sufficed for a few days until dryer weather permitted a re-sealing of the buttons, and now we’re dry again. Puppy pads seem to be good at soaking up any water in the nooks and crannies.

Hatches... we have leak in the starboard hatch, J’s hatch. I tried to change the ‘b###dy’ seal but after 2 hours of swearing and cursing I put the old one back on with a piece of gorilla tape to seal it up. So annoying, the new seal just didn't fit, too tight, I used all my strength, with the aid of YouTube knowlegde and still managed to fail. I can’t believe I’ve got it so wrong. Perhaps it isn’t the right seal for the hatch. Job for another day.

Gangway... this is a serious gotcha that hasn't happened. We on to this one ahead of time. The hydraulic gangway is a plank that extends out of the back of the boat just above water level. It sits inside a fibreglass box inside the port side engine compartment. To access and maintain the hydraulics and change the broken belt over we’ve removed a 1 foot square hatch inside the engine room. If we don’t replace this and reseal it, we will end up with sea water flooding down the gangway channel into the engine room! Obviously a job we need too do before departure but one we don’t want to do before we’ve fixed replaced the belt. Which we can;’t do because if the seized pulley which we can’t unseize because of the seized bolt. FML.

We seem to be living in a large plastic tea bag, but gradually working our way through the holes. It’s comforting to know the weak spots of our boat, her weak spots. As with this knowledge we can look after her, and her after us. All we need now is a few more dry days, over the next two nights we have forecast 30 gusting 50kts of wind. Luckily we’re tucked into a sheltered part of the marina.