Busy,Busy, Busy

A manatee plays in the a/c water outlet on a boat near mine today.


Man o man have I been busy for the last few days. I've even neglected calling my mom. (I'll call you on tuesday mom) Leaving on a 3-6 week trip always does this to me. I'll be heading out of the harbour around 7 am tomorrow morning (tuesday) and heading south. I'm starting a day later than I'd planned, but oh well - it is- what it is.

I've been working so hard to get the boat ready to the degree that I wanted it. I think I got it 95% done. The rest will just have to wait. It's so funny that I bought a nearly perfect boat - but keep making it 'better'.

This trip is multi-faceted. I should make Ft. Lauderdale by friday pm. Doug will join me there and we'll try to cross to the Bahamas (from Miami) on the first opportunity. If we don't cross by tuesday - we'll probably stay in the U.S. He needs to fly out of the Bahamas on the following saturday and Jan needs to fly in - to meet me around the following Sunday. This time of year is a lot of 'hit and miss' regarding weather. You can get pinned down for days in the lee of an island, so we need enough time to make sure we can make it to one of the islands with an airport.

I'll be posting fairly short posts - but with lots of photos in the next few weeks. Most of it from my phone.

Christmas in April, RSS and More Boat Prep

So, when did Easter become another Christmas. Seriously - I was in Walmart today and had to take a photo of the Easter Baskets. They were 4 feet tall and crammed with toys. This one has a full size 'slot car' racetrack in it as well as a lot of other stuff. Somehow I missed the memo of when kids were getting this kind of spoiling.

RSS FEEDS
Also, I've been thinking lately about something that I'm finding few people know about on their computers. It's called an RSS feed. I started using RSS feeds last year to keep up with when someone places a new post on their blog. Prior to that, I had been going to their blog on a daily basis to see if it was updated. When I realized I could EASILY set the RSS feeder to notify me - it was great. My discussions with a lot of folks has lead me to believe that many people are not aware of the RSS feed. So, I will take a minute to tell you how to set it up.

First of all, not all computers can do this. Actually, it's more related to the browser than the computer - but in short - no mom, yours won't do this. It requires an operating system that's less than 4 years old.

If you look up in the URL window of this blog (where you type in the address of the webpage you want to go to) you will probably see a blue "RSS" on the right side of it. If so, when you click on that RSS, you will get a new page and address that is the RSS version of the page. If you 'bookmark' this new address then everytime you look at the bookmark it will indicate if there's a new post. It's that simple. I've put all of my RSS blog feeds on my browser menu. When I click on (what I have named) RSS BLOGS, it lists all of the blogs that I read everyday and it either has a (1), a (2) or nothing beside of it. If it's nothing - then there's no updates. The number in the parenthesis are how many new posts.

You'll notice that the RSS feed has a slightly different look than the normal blog. All you have to do is click on the blue RSS to change over to the actual blog and not the feed. Pretty dang handy if you keep up with as many blogs as I do - which is currently about 10-12.

BOAT UPDATE
Well, I'm sick of working in cramped places. It's good that I got the brunt of the work done today. Now it's all just a bunch of small tasks that I'll take care of on Sat and Sun. The current plan is to head south on Monday morning. I just heard from my buddy Jim Lee (from Stardust). You may remember I met up with he, Kathy and Rachel in January down in Vero. He's been in the Bahamas for a month or more and they will sail up to meet us when we get there. That's cool.

More later

Boat Prep

I'm working pretty solid through the week to get the boat ready for leaving on Monday morning. I got a slow start and after allowing air into the fuel lines yesterday and having to bleed the air from the system (an hour long job - by yourself), I finally got back on track to get my list of items checked off.

So far I have:

• replaced my 5hp honda outboard on the dingy with a better (new) 4hp outboard and broken it in.
• installed a vacuum gauge on the fuel system -which allows you to diagnose when the filter needs replacing. (this is important because an engine stopping at the WRONG time is a very bad thing.) While installing this item is when I allowed the air into the fuel system by not completely sealing the filter properly. It turns out that it wasn't my fault - I called tech support for the vacuum gauge and they said I was sent the wrong adapter. It's too long - so it won't allow the gaskets to seal.
• I've dismantled the air conditioner discharge system where it sends water out the 'thru hull' fitting, in preparation to add a second bilge pump.

Here's what I have to do:

• Add a second bilge pump. I'm installing an 'emergency' electric bilge pump approx 8 inches higher than the regular bilge pump. This is so if the regular bilge pump fails for any reason,, the higher one will take over when the water gets higher than normal in the boat. This is a fairly standard thing - but my boat did not have this. To keep from having to drill another hole in the boat hull, I'm putting a Y fitting onto the A/C discharge with check valves on both feeds.

• Change the toilet water intake to the 'screened' water intake at the A/C. This will keep any grass etc out of the toilet system. It will pulll sea water out of a filter/screen.

• Figure out a better way to hold the main shower nozzle. The way the shower is set up on the boat is very efficient. It uses (on both showers) the faucet from the sink with a long 'pullout' hose (like your kitchen sink sprayer) to conver to a shower. A special nozzle allows it to instantly switch from normal 'faucet' stream to 'shower' stream. The original set up is not to my liking. It has the shower attachment at the 5 foot level on the bulkhead. I'm going to fix it 'overhead' in the hatch. It'll be a more enjoyable shower this way.

• Sew some canvas. I have a few spots of canvas covers that need some mending. They're not torn, but some stitching has come loose. I need to spend about 20 minutes and touch them up.

Optional Items (if I have enough time)

• Install some LED lights. I'm a bit of a energy miser when it comes to anchoring out. Currently, most of the lights on the boat are flourescent. They use anywhere from 1.5 amps to 3.5 amps each - depending on what array is on. I've found some 6-light LED fixtures that use much much less. I want to install a couple of these.

• New Anchor. I want (and will have at some point) a Delta anchor to go with my Bruce anchor. Currently, my 2 bow anchors are the Bruce and a Fortress. I want to take the fortress off the bow and use it as my 'back up' anchor and put a Delta 33# on the bow in it's place. We'll see.

Well, I'm not getting it done sitting here typing.

John Wayne wears Crocs

Here's a cut out of John Wayne at the CROC (those rubbery shoes) booth.

Each day when we came to the work, the valley was full of camp fire smoke from all the people camping out. After the day warmed up, the smoke would rise, but it was really thick in the mormings.