Following on from my post 3 weeks ago about losing an impellor, inspected the water inlet strainer this weekend and it's fully clogged with weed again (in just 2 weeks since I last cleared it).
Mine was too, and thats on the East Coast.... there seemed to be a lot about this weekend, all floating.... Fortunately, I saved my impellor, but the strainer was well and truly blocked..... I wonder if the hot weather has brought it to the surface for some reason?
As I said in my RTIR post, we had green strands up to 2ft long hanging off just below the water line which werent there 2 weeks ago. I assume it is due to the increase in temperature - and the semi stagnant water in our marina.
We left Bembridge end of May, the boat was slugish under engine as we worked our way to the entrance, in the end rolled out the genny and hoisted the main 'on the run'. I thought we had an engine problem. The sail back to Northney was not as brisk as I would expect. When we got to within sight of Northney we started the engine for the last few 100 meters, then I remembered the trick of reversing the engine, it worked, it looked like we emptied a compost heap behind us! A mass of weed.
Could be.... the lock into Ipswich Wet Docks on Sunday afternoon was filled with water that was almost lime green it had so much weed/algae/plankton/whatever in it....
Lakesailor, you clearly haven't been floating boats in the Solent area. You'd need to powerwash every week in the shallow, warm waters of say Poole harbour or Keyhaven. On my fishing boat, the stem of my unantifouled outboard grows about 3-6 inches of vegetation a week during the peak growing season, ie now. It would make the crane owners or drying berth owners rich men very quickly!