Possibly the worst flight ever for me, four and a half hours on a very uncomfortable flight which should have taken half the time, however late we arrived in Porto and were absolutely convinced we had missed the bus as we had been forced to do a last minute abort on landing as there was an aircraft on the runway as we descended out of thick cloud at about 50 feet, full power and a steep climb was followed by twenty minutes of stooging around before we landed very late. Luckily so was the bus to Vigo and ewe managed to be back in the Vigo bus station by early afternoon.
We took a walk along the boardwalk, the sky was blue , the sea was calm, we were home.
There was however work to be done, a fierce storm early in February had caused Dark Tarns bow to be damaged by contact with the pontoons, not a huge problem apart from the fact that I now felt like death warmed up.
The evidence of the storm was all over the beach in the form of masses of detritus......
On Dark Tarn however it was evidenced by a 3 inch rusty gouge on the bow, it had obviously been very bouncy!
Luckily the weather took a turn for the better, unlike my virus ridden body. I did raise myself to address the issue of the midlines that had been left unattended in the water for the last two and a half months.
My flu like virus abated leaving me with a healthy crop of cold sores so I set too with the repairs.
Lynne however was more interested in the weekly market.
We ran Dark Tarns engine and as usual it started first time, however we had a more serious problem lurking out of sight.
Our main bilge pump is a serious affair 3000 gallons per hour, as a side show it has a thing called a float switch which theoretically should kick in when the water in the bilge gets above two and a half inches. This didnt seem to be working and the fault was quickly traced to diesel leaking into the bilge which had perished the insulation of the float switch wiring.
Both of the wires should be attached in the above photo.
Unfortunately our usual help in these matters Manuel in the local swindlers was unable to provide a replacement. a call to Jabsco provide the information that a 20 amp RULE switch would be appropriate, but Manuel couldn't provide one for less than 120 euros. This was for a part available in England for £29.95.
Needless to say I ordered one to be delivered home and hoped that Alex'
promise to fly out in May would happen!
So that just left St Patricks day to be taken care of, bow was fixed, main bilge pump was working Sans float switch, my cold sores seemed to be drying up and Lynne was only in the tertiary stage of whatever awful virus I had acquired so it seemed time to go on a bit of a bender. we had arranged to meet up with Jim and Megan in Vigo and so caught the regular ferry across the ria.
We inspected the new dinosaurs, apparently the mayor of Vigo is very keen, less so the general public, I think they are great....
To be honest it all gets a bit hazy after this. we had pulpo in the old town and then a pizza and we just caught the next to last ferry. great day out!.
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