Thursday 14 January 2010

First (only?) casualty of winter

Yesterday, we arrived at the yard to find our ferry boat sitting on the bottom, sunk.

Thankfully, it was in our slipway so she wasn't flodded over the gunnels and so the salvage pump was put to work. Well, I say work.....

We spent most of the morning trying to get the wretched thing to actually prime up and pump. It's always been a bit tempremental, but today it was being little more than a waste of petrol. Finally, we fitted a transparent header tank to the pump body and it became apparent what was wrong; it was drawing in air - lots of it. Some investigation later and we found that the hose clip on the inlet was just a tad loose. It was one of those wire ones that came with it and we flet it better to replace it with two Juliblee clips. It wasn't very loose, but it was amazing just how much air it was pulling. Certainly more than enough to stop the pump from working. Well, another lesson learned.



Once it wasn't drawing air again, this baby emptied most of the water from the boat in just a couple of minutes. However, the problem with a 3 inch water pump is that it can't pump water if it's less than 3 inches deep (3 inches is the bore of the suction hose) and trying to manouvre a spiral reinforced suction hose around to get the hose flat on to water isn't easy. So, with most of the water out and it's back to the 3/4 inch bilge pump which also kept it afloat overnight.


So, what caused it? We don't know yet, it's got to be something to do with us using her to break the ice on Woods Dyke on Tuesday in preparation for this weekend's bookings. She's being lifted this afternoon so we'll know more later. We are hoping that the stern tube has been knocked by ice and fractured the joint with the hull. Fingers crossed.

Engineering

We've reorganised some of our storage space this week too. The life jacket store has been moved and we've taken down the wall between engineering and the old life jacket store to enlarge our engineering space. It may only be another five foot, but it's made all the difference. We've now got space to properly work on engines and we're also gearing up for working on outboards more efficiently. We've been servicing a 60hp unit recently for a Cromer fisherman and look forward to establishing ourselves as a major player in the outboard engineering field locally. 

Things are looking up

On the plus side, bookings are doing quite well. Rambling Freedom is proving to be a very popular boat this year - there's just one August week left now. We've also got a few more out-of-season bookings and enquiries, though, sadly due to the weather, we've had to put a few people off and postpone one holiday already. Hopefully the 7 degrees that are forecast for Saturday will see the end of the ice and snow.

Cottage holidays are selling well too as the booking season takes hold.
The Old Post Office has got a February booking and is so far, the most popular of all our cottages this year. This is quite unusual as the chocolate box Garth Cottage normall ytakes that position, regardless of the season.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Andy
Very interesting to see the trials and tribulations you face every day particularly the added problems posed by the adverse weather.

I must look at your cottages in more detail as I'm thinking about a possible short break in March.

Keep up the Blog - great stuff.

Many thanks

Terry