Day 32 – Posh visitors but no beer
When ocean rowers talk about having visitors we normally expect them to have seen a container ship or some other form of commercial freighter. It is unusual for them to come into contact with a luxury yacht on it’s way to the Caribbean for the winter season but for one of our crews got lucky.
We haven’t been able to find a record of this vessel yet but it is certainly not shipping crude oil or shipping containers across the Atlantic. After a bit of a conversation the rowers of Ocean’s Elite wasted no time in requesting a beer when asked if there was anything they would like. Sadly they were informed that the boat was a dry vessel and had no alcohol onboard. Initially we were surprises that the crew hadn’t requested an additional supply of tea bags following yesterday’s post regarding the shortages they were encountering. But it’s not hard to see that the morale boost of just one ice cold beer in the middle of the Atlantic provided by a beautiful luxury yacht would be a story to recount to the grandchildren whereas the resupply of a few dozen teabags may not promote the same level of excitement.
Meanwhile Rowing Stones have been nursing their watermaker. After a few days of testing and checking, replacing and fiddling, with it seems that we’ve located and isolated the issue. Inside the bowels of the unit is a shuttle valve which is pushed backwards and forwards by the pressurised water in the unit. The crew reported that they could hear the shuttle valve moving smoothly in one direction, but putting up much more resistance in the other. However, in order to service this (and fiddle with it) they would have to disconnect the unit from it’s mounts, take the unit out of the locker, disconnect the membrane from the watermaker itself and then disassemble the unit. If they were then able to find and fix the issue (unlikely and difficult as they don’t have a spare shuttle valve with them) they would then have to reassemble the whole unit correctly and reconnect it to the plumbed in hoses. The chances of doing this correctly and successfully and without any damage to the multiple seals and O rings which keep the unit sealed at the moment is very low. At the moment the unit is complaining about working but it does continue to work and make freshwater. So the best thing to do from our point of view is to allow the watermaker to continue to make water and try and drown out the odd noise it makes by turning up the music on the stereo.
It’s not ideal but at the moment we’re literally aiming to not fix what isn’t broken, and it might be making odd noises but it isn’t broken. It does however provide an outlet for the crew to have something to worry about. This additional mental pressure is unnecessary but almost impossible to ignore. Both crews have done so well to get this far and the weather looks reasonable for the reminder of their crossing. Fingers crossed they can just keep going.
