What today turned into was a fiasco of comedic proportions that Fawlty Towers would have been proud of!!
First of all, how difficult is it to locate a marine petrol or diesel water pump??
I can tell you its a nightmare.
I had made the assumption that when you go to a plant hire, you could get one off the shelf or at least come away with the idea that you are going to get one in the near future.
How wrong was I??
Very methinks, it turns out that you can walk in fine and ask for one,but dont expect them to actually have one or tell you when one will be in from hire!
How the hell do these places keep track of their stock?
Anyway, that was more or less done,dusted and that option exhausted at 0900 this morning.
The next move was to go around to another plant hire operator, who it turned out was on holiday but had a guy running the place while he was away.
Well the guy running the place was AWOL!! and the shop next door was taking messages for him and surprise surprise I am still awaiting a call back.
It was now about 1030 so I decided a coffee and sandwich were in order and a rethink of where we could get the pump was needed.
We decided that another marine engineer out of town was worth a try so we headed up to his workshop about three miles down the road.
The manager was very nice and showed us three pumps that were ok, but really only one of them was fit for our purpose.
Sadly we could not hire the equipment then and there as it belonged to the actual owner of the company and we told that we needed to get his authorisation for the deal.
So off we traipsed back into town and up to the office of the business owner to plead our case.
When we arrived he was nowhere to be seen so I felt that now was a good time to go shopping for my sons twelveth birthday present the time now was 1130.
I made it back to the office by 1200 and met up with the owner who was on good form and immediatly authorised the use of the pump from the workshop.
So back out of town and into the workshop for the pump unit, now heres where even more fun started.
The engineer on the premises gave us an all 'singing and dancing' diesel pump, he fired it up and told us it had been serviced recently and it was very powerful.
However it had bits missing and we could buy them from the local tool hire place..... Guess where we went after loading the pump up?? yep..back to the first plant hire people and a mere £15 later we had the connector and a length of pipe (Free!! the desk guy was symapthetic to our cause by now..).
Ok now to the boat as it was now an hour after low water (1330) and we were keen to get her (Lady Evelyn) dry ASAP and keep as much water at bay until she floated. On the pier side we realised that the deck was 15 feet below us, ok this is where my old Seamanship Teacher would have been proud of me! so a couple of bowlines and brute strength along with a pivoting system to stop the pump being wrecked against the was all in place and away the pump went down the quayside. If you have never shifted a diesel pump its quite a beast to manhandle.
However with some swearing, it made it and all the relevant piping was attached.
The pump started fine, but for the love of anyone it would not suck up any water. We primed, re-primed, changed hose connectors, filled pipes with water and eventually gave up! cursing the thing, now what the hell was wrong with it??
To be fair we were pretty knackered and p*^%&$ off by now. We thought it was something stupid, but I have used these things in various situations and in fact used to spend hours training with them while working with the Coast Recue Team in my Auxilliary Coastguard days so I was pretty much sure it was not us that was at fault....but then it had been serviced before we collected it...Allegedly...
It was then that I had to get the car to my 'very tolerant' partner so I decided to leave my second in command (My Brother)to deal with the bloody pump and nipped off for half an hour.
By the time I returned the housing was apart and the impellor, or rather what was left of the impellor was in a bucket.
It turned out that once the housing was opened it was easy to see that although the pump may have been serviced, it had been used.
How did we know this?? that would have been down to the big bloody 'stones' that had destroyed the interior of the housing and impellor that were included in the mish mash of materials that was now sitting in a bucket.
So it was a case of phoning the office/engineers shop and tell them the good news.
Now I expected this to be a hassle, but to be fair the owner of the business told us to go anywhere and get an impellor and he would pay for it but of course, you will have guessed by now, there was no way we were going to find one in this small town!!
We had to try though so off we went for a wander, leaving said pump high and dry.....
Or so we thought....
I swore I heard my brother say "I left the pump well out the way of the water, it will be ok for a while yet..." or words to those effect.
When we finally got back to the boat at around 1700 the F&^%$* thing was just about covered.
Yet despite previous conversation here was the pump sitting right where it had been set up earlier with water just about to enter all the various inlets and outlets engines tend to have.
An immediate panicked extraction was undertaken and the thing was hauled unceremoniously up the side of the quay and words were had.... I'm apparantly deaf and useless even though I had left him for an hour on the boat on his own!!
Never mind. It was the enevitable end to a very long and non productive yet physical day.
The boat didnt move an inch and we have major pump issues that we are unsure of how to resolve as nobody seems to be able to hire us a pump.
Oh well as the discussion after the pump was hauled up the quay side went..."Lets never mention this day again"
More soon
Aye
Kered
P.S the pump?? Well its running fine albeit with no pump housing on it.
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