Our boat is LEAKING! And we run around the Block | Sailing with Six | S2 E40

We are a family of six who call the ocean our home. We feel incredibly blessed to be doing this life together as a young family. Embracing the ups and downs of what is a life at sea. This is our floating home, Happy Days. And you are invited to follow along as we share this incredible adventure. Have a laugh and be inspired to pursue a life less ordinary. Click the subscribe button to keep up to date as we see where this journey takes us. In the last episode, we share some of the highs and lows of our time in Canada. In this episode, we skate through Bristol, tick off more boat jobs and get lost on Block Island. As we head back south towards the Caribbean, we make the most of our time by ticking off some boat jobs while we wait for hurricane season to finish. So, the old and the new. I bet you internally this is still sound. It's like a brass ultimately with a chrome coating on the outside. So, you know, that's going to last forever. But there's a new expensive shiny one. Such is marine insurance. That's the only reason. But it certainly looks prettier, I guess, if nothing else. We've tried polishing this one up a couple of times, but it now has forever character. So, let's hope we can get this one on. You can see it's about 30 mil, close to an inch bigger. And it's also fatter at the ends too with this cut out. You've got to be aware of that. The seagull striker has a really important job whereby it counters the tension of the forestay. The forestay is always pulling up through the crossbeam, whereas the seagull striker is creating a downward force. So, super important piece of kit. On with the new. So, we're intentionally threading on here more because of this hole that we were talking about. Sort of a bit of a guessing game to begin with, I hope I don't have to take it off too many times to get it right. And we need it sitting in the right space so we can get it nice and tight. Lots more screwing to do. What are we up to? We are changing secondary fuel filter for the first time. So, you've got to make sure you get A, you're turning it the correct way, and B, you've got enough space. That's half the battle once you figure that bit out. All right, so we've taken the old one off. There she is. The old yogurt container came in handy. We've topped this one up with some diesel so that we don't have to prime it too much. We've put a wee bit of engine oil around the seal. The bell's just going to gently wedge it in there and do it back up by hand. The key is to keep it flat, so if you can, I'll get a hand on the bottom. All right, I think I got the first ones gone. I reckon you've done a fine job there. It's a pretty awkward position with all those three pipes around it. So now what I'm going to do is I'm just going to get this fuel filter down here going. So you'll hear it go tick, tick, tick. The idea is I'm going to do that two or three times to fill, even though we put fuel in there, I just want to fill it up, get rid of any air in the system. So that's the plan. Time to do some cooking. Smells interesting, eh? Like a vinegar. Yeah. So the reason we're doing it is because it got really mouldy and you couldn't scrub it off, so we've just gotten rid of it. It's all aesthetics. It wasn't cracked or anything. It's just pretty gross. Okay, we're now approaching the time where you just stop touching it. Otherwise you're like, I'm just going to... And then you make it worse. And then you just, it compounds. So you've got to back away slowly. The pizza train. We've got some pumpkin coming along. Look at them. Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. Pip was helping. She was here. She's just cleaned her shower drain, so when she has a shower, the water will pump out. Where are you, Pip? Here. In other news, what did we learn about the temperature? I checked it, and it said it's going to drop down to 7 degrees tonight, but the real feel, I love when they do the real feel, said 1 degree. That's probably going to be... Especially if you're doing it cold. As you can see, I have just been wearing my jacket inside all day. But that's not uncommon. It's just normal. So, but right in here, it's beautiful. It's really nice. Outside with the wind chill. The way we do groceries looks a little different to land life with a car. Normally, it involves skateboards, one folding bike, and our trusty dinghy to get it done. You're eating it. Look at it. The pack horse. That is the realities of groceries in like a first world country. Where there's ice smooth pavement and stuff. Loaded up. Mission complete. Well done. This is day three of wet weather. We're done. Wedding's on. We're getting into town. Finding a park. So, we have just had what I think is the longest run of wet weather we've had while living on a floating home. So, today's the day. We upped anchor just after sun up this morning. And we're heading south. Because the sun didn't rise. Yeah, well the sun didn't come up. It became light. But anyway, it's just an amazing feeling to have the sun come out and get the sails up. So, we're away. See down here when I open. Yeah, not good. And shut. So, it has, if I'm honest, we've been managing it for a wee while. There's just been a couple of drips when we open it. This is the gross pipe, right? It's the holding tank out. So, we open it maybe every two or three days depending where we are. And every time we've opened it there's been a drip or two. And we've just put like a bit of toilet paper there. It's caught the drips. And we've done that for... Almost a year now. Yeah, like a year. Just over a year. So, and today it's just packed it. So, we have just rocked up. And we're like keen to go and explore, mate, aren't we? But... Yeah. It's way more important. This is way more important. We've got to get it done. So, let's get in the water. Do you want me to come and show you how to put the plug in? Or are you comfortable? You dive down and you put it evenly up. Maybe I'll tie a string onto it so I can pull it back up nicely. Yeah, that's a good call. Okay, I'll try and get it in this time. Alright, take your time. Get eyes on it. And sort of make sure it's seated properly, yeah? Yeah, yeah. Alright, screw's coming out. Okay. That's not too bad. Okay, so, here's our o-ring. It's slipped. Alright, let's get some paper towels and we'll clean it up. Look how flattened out that one is. So flattened. So, that's definitely our issue. This is a new one. Nice and round. Big o-ring back on now. Bells are still in the water. So this is a brand new one? Brand new. So... What's going on there? The takeaway is you can... Well, we haven't done it yet, but... We do have the plug in. From underneath. And the ball valve is shut. So you'd think that it wouldn't let water in anyway because the ball valve's shut, but honestly, it's not one of those things that you're like, oh, it should be okay. No, no, you don't want to mess with it. So, we've gone belt and braces, which is why we've got bells in the water. Yep. Gotta make sure that it's going in nicely. What we've just did that you didn't see is... We reread the instructions and it said to whack a bunch of grease inside the actual cog. Not just the o-ring. Not just on the o-rings. So we just pulled it back out and added some extra silicone grease in there. Yeah, this is the one, Chum. So we'll put a fresh piece there. Alright, is there any drips or have we solved it? No drips. Last time we did that, it was pegging out. So, it was definitely a busted o-ring. The takeaway here is probably do it within an hour of a haul-out facility in case it goes wrong. That would be, there's wisdom in that. We are not that close. We're closer than we could be. You could be mid-ocean and you just have to do it, right? We'd probably go low tide on a beach. Mum's the eternal optimist. I want to be able to rip this thing out of the water if we have to. Anyway, done. Not hard. Don't do what I did and go, oh no, it's okay. Don't panic. It's designed to do that and it did what it was designed to do. So that's props to the product. Yeah, it is. Side note, we have had both stainless steel composite ball valves and brass ball valves in prior vessels. I'm 100% fan of plastic. I know that sounds ridiculous but the composite plastics these days, I think the best brand is True Design which comes out of New Zealand. These aren't. These are Maralon but similar principle. Very similar, yeah. They don't seize. We've had stems break on brass ones Anyway, these seem to be very good to us. So, high five. Now that water isn't leaking into the boat, it's time to explore. Did you just run over a snake? Did she literally step on it? I know, stepped over it. They say he's more scared of you than we are of him which means he's pretty scared. Let's go. This is actually pretty rad. Not 100% sure where we are and where we should be and shouldn't be but it's beautiful. It's world class. Some really cool buildings that we just love with green grass and ocean views. Beautiful. Love it. So, we've been running for a while now. Two hours? Just about. That's a few k's underfoot. And we just had to sneak through. Bit of a shortcut. Turns out running around the block, that is Block Island, is a wee bit further than we first thought. Well, further than I thought. These guys are nailing it. Thanks Block Island. Yeah, thank you. It's been nice to come back. Where to next? Come and join us next time as we pick some grapes with our friends at North Fork, high five Liberty on our way through and kite surf at Fort Munro.