After days of working our way slowly through our jobs list, today we decided we had done enough to potter down the coast to Ferragudo/Portimao. Our destination is the former, an anchorage off the latter.
Last night we had a delightful good bye dinner with Peter, Steff and Anita and at lunch time today were joined by them and Kevin and Veronica who had returned from a short outing to Culatra.
After a last minute shop and lunch and bear with the above, the guys kindly helped us extricate Bonny from her berth and we motored around to the fuel dock. After a few minutes I lifted the Galley sole to check the fuel gauge. It was reading just over half full. Then suddenly I was almost hit in the face by a fine jet of diesel gushing out of the top of the fuel tank. I stuck my finger over it and shouted "stop"!
The tank was full - over full and there was a pinprick hole in the top of it through which the diesel was escaping. It took some time to communicate my predicament to Mick on deck and my finger was beginning to hurt from the pressure of the fuel.
Ideally we needed to get fuel out of the tank to reduce the pressure and so I Mick tried siphoning it out from the filler inlet but he couldn't get much out because of the height he needed to suck up and turns in the filler tube.
Fortunately we had bought two roles of kitchen towel recently and after much debate we decided to continue to soak up the escaping fuel with they. Finally after an hour or so the jet slowed to a slight trickle.
Peter suggested - half jokingly I think - "blue tack". Quite by chance we had some. Someone had used some to hold a piece of wood panelling in place! I extracted some and much Mick applied it to the leak. Amazingly it worked!
We decided to press on with our plan to go to Ferragudo and either there or in Legos, will try to affect a more permanent repair. We'll need to get hold of some epoxy glue/liquid metal and thoroughly clean the area..
We should be in our anchorage in an hour and a half or so!
Some pictures will follow. The phone App won't let me post any!
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