In the normal course of events, if there is such a thing, we’d have been afloat today, gently bobbing up and down, flushing happily and hanging around untangling dashboard wires until Franky arrives on Monday to give Mr Perkins a bit of a tickle before we charge off into the wild blue yonder.
In the alternative normal course of events, we would have discovered earlier that the ancient grease nipple in the rudder shaft is no longer grease nipple shaped, and the wonders of dissimilar metals in contact with each other in a marine environment had created what some would consider the potential for unacceptable risk of water intrusion. In the normal course of events grease nipples are simple things to replace, you just unscrew them and screw in a new one.
This grease nipple is different. It is now just a lump of oxide, barely hanging in, the only thing between inside the boat and the river is one small clip and a greaser hose. In the normal course of events, one might heat it a bit, ease it out, tap a new thread and screw in a new one. Problem solved.
Haplessly for us, possibly the reason for it being in this state is that getting access to it requires removal of the entire rudder assembly and maybe that removable bit of the keel which holds it in place as well, and on a boat this age, well let’s just say dismantling does come with the risk of finding an endless succession of things that need attention “while we’re at it”. We could just ignore it of course and it will probably get us back one more time, but the phrase “for a hapence of tar the ship was lost’ echoes in the back of our minds.
So while one of us runs off cross legged in search of a bigger tar bucket, the other is two days into it has almost unfathomed the mysteries of the wiring cobweb, and hanging on.
We are looking forward to using that loo.
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