Pendle Witch hooked up & ready for Burnley Sub Aqua Club‘s week-long trip to Lochaline & the Sound of Mull.
On Thursday afternoon (30 August 2018), Andy & Naz prepped the club RIB – Pendle Witch – and hitched it up and moved it from it’s storage site so that it was ready for an early start on Friday.
On the last club trip, the hydraulic steering failed just as we were mooring up at Seahouses harbour following a day’s worth of diving at the Farne Islands.
One of the hydraulic hoses had failed & burst with a rather loud bang and with the loss of all the hydraulic fluid too. The broken steering on our RIB was a major disaster for us – not just because we had lost our second day’s worth of planned diving at the Farne Islands, but because it put our annual week-long trip to Lochaline at serious risk. That trip was less than 2 weeks away!
We moved quickly on this one and within a week we had it all repaired. Last Saturday (25th August 2018) Andy & Naz successfully replaced all the hydraulic hoses (in the conduit in the hull), cleaned all the brass connectors, and refilled the system with new hydraulic fluid. Obviously, we bled the air bubbles out of the hydraulic system and also took the opportunity to re-align the steering wheel with the outboard motor as best we could.
This little repair operation took a good 4 1/2 hours, but luckily was done in nice sunny weather. We originally planned to do this repair on Sunday (with three of us instead of two), but we decided to bring the maintenance forward a day – good job too, as we had consistent heavy rain on the Sunday!
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