Up the creek

 Time to put Bonita into her mud berth for the winter, and Saturday seemed a suitable day. Spring tides and light wind, but not very warm. Luckily I had help from Allan and Toby.

Toby is the one in the rhino wooly hat. With Allan at the helm we got up the creek without any trouble, and the only hiccup came when we had a bit of difficulty getting the bowsprit out of the boat. 

Faversham has 4 community funded rowing boats that exercise going up and down the creek at weekends, and we saw a couple of these on the water. Its so good to see the creek being recognised as an asset to the community.

So we took a lot of gear ashore for drying out, overhaul or repair as needed and fitted the winter covers. 

After so much motoring in the Dutch waterways last summer I thought I should replace both fuel filters. The primary filter was certainly quite dirty.  I put in new ones and ran the engine with the prop disengaged for a couple of minutes, when  for no apparent reason it decided to stop. At first I thought maybe air had got into the system, but after a bit of detective work I found the fuel pump wasnt working. Taking it apart, it was clear a fragment of an internal valve cage had broken off, and the broken piece was still trapped inside the pump. Definitely time for a new one. 

Its tempting to think that this damage was in some way caused by changing the filters, but I dont see how it could be. This fuel pump was the one fitted by a Dutch engineer after its predecessor stopped working when we were off the Dutch coast in 2016. Then we had to send out a Mayday and got towed in by a Dutch lifeboat. I am grateful that this time the pump failed while Bonita was safely tied up alongside, and I was just trying out the engine. The best possible place for it to give up I suppose.