We went, we saw, we came back again!

 So the day finally arrvied after so long and Pagan went back in the water after four long years ashore on the 12th of this month.

Relaunching is always a bit nerve wracking and after so long ashore it was doubly so.

The biggest worry, of course, is that something will leak and as is the usual practice as soon as she was in the water, whilst still in the slings, I went through the boat from stem to stern checking everywhere a leak could occur. Happily, she was watertight so we were towed round to the river pontoon to crack on with recommissioning all the systems etc.

My biggest worry was that we'd have a serious engine problem. To my delight, the engine started quite happily albeit after a lengthy pre-heat (not particularly unusual with Mercedes OM636 engines with the original series glowplugs) and ran very happily

For all of about fifteen minutes then it died ...

There followed a very frustrating couple of days trying to find the problem. It was immediately obvious that we had a fuel starvation problem and it didn't take long to ascertain that we weren't pumping fuel from the tank to the engine via the fuel filters. But the why was a mystery.

Being an old but for it's day quite sophisticated design of engine, the OM636 has quite a powerful engine driven fuel lift pump which not only pumps fuel from the fuel tank to the engine fuel filter (via, in our case, an additional CAV filter and water trap) but also pre-pressurises the fuel feed into the injector manifold. It's not a complex design of pump and it uses plungers rather than a diaphragm so for it to completely fail to pump fuel at all is unusual to say the least.

Furthermore, mounted on top of the fuel pump body is an additional manual priming pump which has a completely independent action. It too is remarkably effective at pumping fuel and for both pumps to completely fail would be exceptionally unlikely. So from pretty much the start I was looking for another possible common cause of the problem.

And I was pretty sure the problem was likely to be an air leak rather than a blockage as a blockage would have led to a vacuum between it and the manual priming pump and that I wasn't getting.

The problem was I couldn't for the life of me find an air leak anywhere! Getting desperate, I decided to rig up the hand pump we use for syphoning fuel from cans to the fuel tanks with a temporary pickup fron a 10l jerry can and attach it to the fuel line at the tank outlet.

That enabled me to pump fuel through the entire system, or not as the case may be. And pump fuel it happily did most efficiently and as the glass on the CAV filter bowl filled up the source of our woes became patently obvious as diesel squirted merrily out past the O seal between the bowl and the filter body around the back of the filter up against the bulkhead it's mounted on.

Totally hidden by the filter body, the O seal had not quite been in its groove when I refitted the bowl after changing the filter element. It did the same thing on two further attempts until at last I persuaded the bloody thing to stay where it was put and got a seal.

That solved the problem entirely. Now the engine ran happily and fuel was being pumped as it should be. 

We grabbed the chance to attach ourselves to an ad-hoc club outing to Burnham Yacht Harbour so there ensued a frantic rush to get everything else ready to go. And almost everything worked as it should with one vital exception ... the depth sounder hull unit isn't sending any data to the instruments. 

Around the shifting shallow waters of the Thames Esturary, that's usually a bit of a show stopper but I know the river well and as long as we didn't do anything daft we could safely potter down to Burnham and back without the depth sounder.

So down to Burham we duly pottered without incident. It was great to be out and about again, however briefly, even if it was under motor (we're nowhere near ready to set sail again!).

Unfortunately, just as the party was about to get started we received word of a family crisis and we had to promptly head back upriver, abandon the boat on the river pontoon and dash home which cut our "holiday" short by several days.

In our mad dash to get away several things either had to be left as they were or were forgotten about. One that had me worried before we were half way home was that I realised we'd left our recently rejuventated outboard unsecured on the back of the boat. My old mate Tony sorted that for us, retrieving it and putting it under lock and key in the container.

The yard very kindly moved Pagan onto her swinging mooring a couple of days later and with the crisis dealt with (it turned out to be nothing serious, happily) I returned on board yesterday pending a lift out today or tomorrow (it's going to be tomorrow now as timings didn't work out today). I had to be down early enough to hitch a lift out to the boat on the trot boat because the dinghy was quickly rolled up and stuffed in one of the cockpit lockers! And I forgot to retrieve a lifejacket too!!

Oh well, never mind. 

I was now faced with a crucial decision.

Since we bought the first yacht and moved her to Fambridge in 2011, the first thing we've done when arriving on board (except during the time we were in a mud berth) has been to move the boat over onto the river pontoon (top middle in the above pic). However, we do have to pay to spend the night on there (albeit at a discounted rate as moorers). And a key discussion we've been having is the growing need to reduce the time we spend alongside in marinas and harbours as berthing fees just keep going up and up.

So I thought ... I've got water, I've got reasonably well charged batteries, I've got gas and diesel ... I actually don't need to go alongside at all. So I haven't! As I haven't any pressing need to go ashore either, the dinghy is still in the locker too.

We're expecting to lift out tomorrow afternoon around two-ish and then we'll be back in our yard cradle for the winter. There's much still to do!

The v-berth refit is still some way from being finished. I need to deal with the leak that has developed around one of the stanchion bases before I can continue with that job (sigh) and then I've got all the trim to make and fit, the new lockers and shelves to construct and finally the deadlights (covers that hinge over the portholes to block the light and improve the insulation) and deck hatch insert (which will do the same thing) to make. And there's a fair bit of finishing, painting and varnishing to do.

Then I've got to get to the bottom of that dead depth sounder. Not sure what the answer to that is going to be yet.

And we need to sort through the running rigging and decide what can still be used and what needs replacing before the spring. I suspect the bulk of it is past it's useful life. Hopefully too we'll be in a position to order new sails in time for next season as the current set are now pretty much done for.

There's a whole long list of things I could bore you with but apart from the above they won't stop us getting out and about on the water next year so how far down that list we get this winter matters little.

Once Pagan is ashore and sorted ready for the winter I'll be away home again pronto but we've got two week-ish long maintenance trips before the winter really sets in planned and the same again in March / April so as long as the piggy bank recovers from being hammered recently we'll hopefully be a lot further down the to-do list when we go back in next year

(I'll post soon-ish about forthcoming plans when we've made some!)