Another good night’s sleep and start to the day with the Sky Pond traditional coffee salute. Recently we had noticed the water pump was pulsating, indicating an accumulator tank failure. So Carl and I dove into checking it out. A series of pumping, testing, removing the Shrader valve, cleaning, pumping testing ended in failure. So we removed the accumulator and disassembled it. Everything inside look good with not apparent damage. We review the manual to make sure the bladder was installed correctly and then put it back together with some silicon grease. Next we pumped it up and submerged it in water to find the leak was from between the rubber valve stem and the metal threaded valve. Blerg. We threw a hail mary and attempted to apply super glue to the gap prying the rubber away with tooth picks. This held for a few hours before failing. Tomorrow, we attempt repair plan…
After lunch we jumped on the paddleboards for an epic, spectacular paddle around the hundreds, well it seems like hundreds of tiny volcanic islands and coves. While not in abondance, we did stumble across a sea turtle (quickly swam away), six sting rays, an eel, quite a few spots with small reef fish, a school of six white snappers, and we managed to scare a number of tiny schools of minnows out of the water. But the highlight was sliding on my back through volcanic tunnels that led into interior lagoons. The water color of varying shades of blue from light turquoise to deep dark blue against the vegetation covered volcanic mounds was incredible.
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