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Underwater maintenance

Having finally succeeded in fitting the solar panels. I decided to turn my attention to the hull and see what maintenance was required. It seems that the cutlass bearing is worn again, which is surprising as we just replace it last year. Movement is in a vertical plane which makes me think that the weight of the auto prop is causing undueo wear on the cutlass bearing?  It's not terrible amount to play so I'm going to leave it even though I have two spare bearings on board but they are quite tricky to replace and need specialist tools which I have at home. I saw some small spots of rust on the  leading edge of the keel, so I ground those down to bare metal and primed with epoxy primer.  I couldn't source marine grade epoxy primer is so I elected to use a Portuguese product called CIN.  There is a retailer for their products in Porto Santo and the very pleasant gentleman is very helpful.   The propeller and shaft had turned a very strange golden black colour ...
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Flying cock roaches

Yesterday evening, while reading, I heard what I thought was a small bird flying around the board. I found the "bird" crawling around and then it flew at me.  It looked like a cockroach with wings. I wasn't convinced it was a cockroach until  a local person confirmed that yes indeed Port Santo has flying cockroaches!  Apparently it's quite uncommon. Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of it in my haste to catch it and evict it from the boat, but it was big! Addendum: while recounting the story to a fellow sailor, he told me that he had a roach investation.  Hi solution was quite simple - get a plastic bag and put potatoes inside it.  Seemingly the cock roaches adore potatoes and so you can just grap the bag when full and dispose of potatoes and cockroaches in one foul swoop! Thankfully, this was the only cockroach we encountered on Embla, so no potatoe traps were required!
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Solar Panels

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I had long promised to get Embla equipped with solar but kept putting it off.  I didn't want a gantry as I feel it looks ugly and too busy on the back of a sail boat.  So I was searching for the best way toount solar on top of the bimini.  I didn't need gigawatts of power either, just enough to keep the house battery going a bit longer than normal.  Embla does have a water generator which work well under sail, and so it was just to allow some extended anchoring without having to run the engine. A large package arrived from Germany: two rigid solar panels.  I decided on rigid vs flexible panels after reading much about how the latter don't perform as well, don't last as long and probably more importantly, have cause biminis to go on fire. I rationalised that 4 stainless steel U bolts with long nuts providing a gap between the bimini and panel was the best and cost effective solution.  Yes there are more elegant solutions but having been quoted €7...
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Diesel Laundering

Back home diesel laundering is the illegal washing of dye from agri diesel to sell to motorists.  Tends to wreck engines as they use acid as part of the process and the final ignomy is the waste bi product which is dumped into local streams killing all life in his path. By comparison my laundering is a more benign and should more correctly be called fuel polishing.  I've never had a problem with clogged diesel filters but reading all the horror stories, I reckoned it was only a matter of time.  So I drilled a big hole in my fuel tank to create an inspection hatch.  Made up a simple system with an electric fuel pump and filter mounted on a small piece of plywood.  Then I simply placed the intake and out let into the new hole, while making sure to position the intake at various low parts of the tank.  To my surprise, the system ran for several hours and no water or sludge was evident in the glass bowel of the filter.  So I fitted the WEMA inspection hatc...
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