Everybody wants to charge for advice; for their opinion, or to peek into their life. Join this, upgrade to that, support me, etc. Everyone wants money, money, money. If you need the money; then ok. If not it seems a wee bit “greedy”—to me.
I’ve been working on the website for most of the last month. Cleaning it up, making sure the code is correct, reducing errors: I hope! 🙂 And it is all still “free”. From cruising years ago we adopted the idea that cruisers support each other. On the site are nearly a thousand photos providing a look into a cruising yacht and the crew’s life on aboard. Over 100 product evaluations from our real world sailing experience. And of course there are dozens of picture stories about major projects we’ve worked on making the boat more comfortable. Some even with instructions. Luckily, we don’t need to charge. What would I really do with extra money? I’ve always said you can get more money but you don’t ever get more time. For me; for us, time is more valuable. It has always been.
That said other than the web site what have we been doing with our time? We We had three projects upper most on our list when we returned from our S Thailand sojourn. First: repair the dinghy. We had two leaks. Second: we needed to replace the Tank Tender pickup for measuring how much fuel was in our new port tank, and the third was to stop a smallish leak in the Lavac Head base. These were actually the priority; not the web site.
The dinghy we hauled up to the work shed planning to seal the leaks. We discovered one under the oarlock that had fallen off. It would be a problem to repair. We didn’t like it. The other leak was near a seam. We use 5200 Fast Set on the Hypalon tubes. It works great but I didn’t like using it over seams and the oarlock area was a real conundrum on how to repair it.
So we chose instead to ship it off to the Dinghy Dr. aka AllStar boats. They had it last year and did a great job on the repair. Our dinghy is getting a bit long in the tooth. We plan on getting a new dinghy next year, but one more year out of old reliable would be nice.
While we’re waiting for it to be returned to good nick again we had our new 15 hp Yamaha Enduro delivered. It is now resting gently on our aft deck waiting patiently to be put into service. All the while we still have the other for sale. Any takers? LOL
The Tank Tender needed a small new connection to the sensing tube. Either I did or the workers in Phuket broke the old connection when removing the tanks. I had called Tank Tender to get a new one; ordered 3 to have spares and they were fantastic in their response. When we returned to the Marina the items were there. With those in hand we set about running some new air lines. For a small project it ended up creating a good mess in the boat. We opened up the panel where the display was. Removed 3 drawers, one set of cabinet openings, two finished floor boards, two floor boards inside a locker and emptied a huge locker with our sewing machine, power snorkel and other gear to get to the last floor board and replace the fitting. After connected we tested the fuel level before returning everything to its correct place. With that completed and working on to the last job- for now.
The third issue was the Lavac Head Gasket. It’s weeping, sometimes more sometimes less. I’ve complained about Lavac before. They have a plastic base in which there is a rubber gasket and the ceramic toilet sits on those two. The bolts come up through the plastic and there is a nut on the base. To tighten them one needs to remove the entire assembly and position a socket on the bottom bolt head inside the base while tightening the top nut. In the past I had tightened the assembly too much and cracked the base causing… another leak. It seems over time the rubber gasket hardens a bit and is not really functioning as a gasket. And as I mentioned before Lavac has never responded to me on how much to tighten the assembly.
This time I thought, I’ll use butyl on the gasket. So I did. No leak. After two days a very small weeping occurred. Wendy lifts the toilet assembly and I tighten a wee bit more. One quarter turn on the nut. Cautious not to over do. I don’t want another cracked base. Now; no leak, again. I am thinking we will need one more slight tighten to ensure the effluent stays where it belongs.
Ah ha; we have another bright idea. Get Fredrick; the local welder to make a new base out of SS with studs coming up from the bottom so if and when I need to “snug” the bolts down on the rubber gasket it will not be a job with many four letter words.
On to new and better things. Boat work never stops. In between any play we are re-varnishing. We’re working on varnishing the exterior wood before it gets bad, bad enough that we would need to strip it back to bare wood again. All fun! All Adventures in Paradise! And yet I wouldn’t give it up to be driving down I-95 or the M-1. No life style is perfect; however cruising comes close.
Go Slow
Sail Far
Stay Long