We’ve had a few gremlins in the systems, which Todd has mostly worked through. The most recent was the failure of one of the housings on the Spectra Watermaker.
We were just getting ready to leave the boat for another walk on Stocking Island when we heard the unmistakable sound of water gushing into the port hull. It turned out that the top of the Z Ion fresh water flushing housing had sheared off, and fresh water was running into the bilge. We had bungs already attached to the hoses throughout the boat, so it didn’t take long to get the leak stopped.
This housing isn’t something that gets twisted on or off, so it’s a pretty weird fail. Fortunately, it wouldn’t have sunk the boat, but it would have emptied the port water tank if we hadn’t been aboard to stop it.
We replaced the wind instrument on the mast head last year, right before we crossed the Atlantic. The bearings had frozen on the old one. The new one worked all the way across, and we removed it for hurricane season. In Novemeber, we put the new one back up and it didn’t register at all. Todd had replaced the bearings on the old instrument so he put that back up, and it worked.
The newest instrument had failed, so Todd sent it back to the manufacturer under warranty. The new replacement instrument arrived before we left Georgia so Todd went back up the mast to replace it. It still didn’t register, so we’ve been using the old one ever since. Except we now have the AWS issue. Oh well, true windspeed is still working, and that’s been helpful for reefing etc…