We had a pleasant sail across the lagoon doing about 5+ knots in winds around 12-15 knots, Pitufa sailing clause-hauled like on rails and Christian keeping a sharp look-out from the bow for coral bommies. It’s amazing, at 40 degrees on the wind she doesn’t need any steering, I could go downstairs and have a cup of tea and she’d still be on the same course afterwards…
Maybe I should have gone under deck for a cup of tea, because when we were searching for an anchor spot at the coral-strewn northern side of the atoll I suddenly heard splashing from downstairs. Alarmed we rushed down to discover that the watermaker had not drained through the kitchen sink like usually (the drain got blocked by an air bubble during sailing), but had flooded the boat. We quickly set the anchor and started drying up the bilge cursing violently.
After that we wanted to have lunch, opened the fridge and discovered that it was full of water as well! While we were heeling the water from the sink had sloshed onto the top-loading fridge and the content was floating in about 20 litres of salt water… Another few hours of happy cleaning followed.
