It’s a grey, drizzly day, which after a couple of hours is just a grey day but at least last night’s rough weather has gone through.
Mike has the generator to see to today, something which sets off a bad mood and worsens the headache he still has from yesterday. His task is to get the generator primed so that it can suck water through to cool it. Sometimes when boats come out of the water, the inlet pipes drain out and you get an air lock.
He tries unsuccessfully, pouring salt water into the pipes and even trying to blow it back to push it past any air but it still won’t draw. Looking for something else, he checks the impellor and discovers that one of the cogs has broken off.
Looking through his spares, of course that is the one thing he has run out of so he calls Tom, who has offered the use of his car, and goes off in search of a chandlery.
While he is gone I catch up with some housework. I really don’t know what happened, but it looks like some charterer had thrown a quantity of pumpkin soup over the main cockpit curtains, so what with that and the liberal sprinkling of sand that seems to be all through the cockpit and the inside of the boat, I have my work cut out.
It takes a lot of effort but the soup (or whatever it is) does eventually come off and the sand comes up. Three hours later Mike is still not back so I prepare the cod - and its little friends.
Even though Tom had removed some worms, when I bring it out of the fridge (thankfully it has been in a container with a lid on) I can see one more clearly half out of a piece of fish. I gingerly pull on it and shriek when I feel it move. Gross, gross, gross. The little bugger, yellow and about an inch long, is alive and kicking. I go and get my tweezers and pull him out. He goes swimming, I go to the internet.
A UK government health site tells me that nearly all cod has these worms living in them. They are usually in the gut and gutting the fish removes them quickly, but in larger fish, they burrow through into the flesh. They are removed in the fish processing plants on candling tables, literally tables which lights underneath, enabling these parasites to be seen and removed. Both freezing and cooking kills them.
OK.
Still gross, but free fish is free fish. I go back and search more thoroughly. Now the fish is out of the fridge, five more little critters are to be found and they all end up over the side. I freeze the four large fillets and smother the remaining pieces with enough garlic, onion and lemon juice to pickle the rest.
Mike eventually turns up. He’d had to go all the way back to Portland to the chandleries we had visited with Bob and Maggie and hadn’t managed to get the exact impeller that he needed. The plastic outer was exact but the metal ring in the centre was slightly different. With some of Tom’s tools he had created a hybrid, pushing out the correct centre from the ruined one and hammering it into the fresh surround. And it worked. Isn’t he a clever boy?
Flushed with success he runs the generator and takes to his bed, his headache now of massive proportions. And I used to think working made him stressed! The boat makes him nearly as bad.
After lovely hot showers I cook the cod, giving it another once over before popping it into the pan. It is delicious.
Position: 43 deg 32 min N, 70 deg 19 min W
Distance so far: 1837 miles
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