Fun with toilets (Crete)

 

15th Oct 2019 (Crete)

Anchored on the quiet far side of the bay at Elounda. The sun is shining in a blue sky and the water is flat calm this morning, and having woken in the night to the sound of silence ( a complete lack of noise as opposed to anything Simon and Garfunkel related ) I’m pretty sure we’re going to have a chilled and peaceful time here.

We’ve ended up here after leaving our previous anchorage next to the quay on the other side of the bay, and heading out briefly past Spinalonga to empty our black water holding tank. 

Now that’s done, today’s mission is to remove and replace the last of the old toilet pipes - The pipe in question is the biggest and most difficult - the end of level baddie - the one that runs from under the holding tank to the outside seacock. What I didn’t know before starting, was that human excrement when combined with salt water creates the strongest glue known to man.  The end of the pipe, at the tank end, came off with little persuasion, but I struggled through 4 different methods to remove the seemingly welded pipe from the seacock end:

1. Removed the jubilee clips and spent half an hour grunting trying to wiggle it free by hand - in hindsight, this was never going to work.

2. Used an oil filter strap wrench - it worked on the other end of the pipe.. but no luck this end

3. I then used a Stanley knife to cut through the pipe to give me some more wriggle room - still no joy

4. Finally decided to drill through the pipe and push a screwdriver through the hole so I could get some decent turn on it. After significant sweating and swearing, I managed to twist it free and off the end of the seacock.

The new pipe pulled through and went on without any issue - nice to get a big job (no pun) like that out of the way. 

Treated myself to a swim/wash.

After a lunch of rather good home made gigantes and fish fingers, I flopped down for my now usual afternoon siesta.

After an hour or so (Chez says more!) I’m up again and onto the next job: fixing the navigation lights - this turned out to be a simple bulb replacement.

Chez suggested the kippery leek hash thing I’ve started making for dinner, so put that together, ate it (was good), then washed up listening to my Leros playlist. 

After dinner I once again ineffectually threw my fishing lure around while the sun set, then sat down to write this - which I must finish now, as Chez has just cued up the penultimate episode of ‘Casa Del Papau’ (Money Heist) a dubbed Spanish series recommended by Martin.

...and having now watched 13 episodes of the bloody thing, it gives us a ‘to be continued’ !