Today has been a very good day for me.  Well.... There is one thing that bothered me just a tad, but that comes after a very good day and it cannot spoil my mood :-)

It was cold for a couple days. Yesterday was beautiful. Today was starting out the same. I felt the best I had in a long time. I will get to that also in good time.

I decided after the 3 days it took to get clothes dry and condensation out of Mary Lee from the last laundry day. I would be careful and only do it on warm days when I could have everything open . I would also limit how much I do. I packed up what clothes I thought I would do and decided to check weatherbug quick (on phone). It is indeed going to rain. I poke my head out and decide those clouds out on the horizon did kind of look like the type. Hmmmm.... Guess I am not doing that. So now what. It accurs to me that I was waiting for a nice day to fix latch on forward hatch that broke the other day.

First things first. It is warm and I want to take a walk. I have time. Off I went. I made it about 5 minutes and ended up talking to the harbor master and another gentleman for another 10. Finally figured I better move or forfeit. I made about 100 yards and it started to sprinkle lightly. Walk is over. Back to Mary Lee to get that hatch done.

It took longer than planned. Gee...where have I heard that before (maybe I should quit planning). I laid in the v-berth to do it. If I had gone topside I would have been rained on the whole time. The hatch would have needed to be all the way open and then I would have a lot more to dry out. Nope.. Did it inside. I was dry and the hatch only needed to be open a little. Good all the way around..

Well that picture is not very clear. You might remember the box I built for this on an earlier post. I decided today would be a good day to hook up my gps inside and have a closer look at what all it does. I had really only had time to figure out just some precursory settings and wanted to know everything in that little box. Yes..That is a 19 inch led monitor.  It was a good buy and I decided I liked seeing things. The intention with buying this kind of set up is to eventually have a monitor below with the gps and a monitor at the helm. I will set everything up out of the weather then go up and play. There are alarms for anything and everything that might bother you while unaware. Even the anchor watch alarm if you drag anchor at night. I don't know how well these things will work yet but it is a good idea. Of course having it set up where you can hear the alarm would be necessary.

Could not get the camera to focus on the screen and the gps at once. You have to admit, that screen will make things easy to see. It zooms in much closer.

Practice what you preach. I was in a hurry last year when I wired the gps and screen. They got separate power plugs. I set it up so it would take just a minute to unplug and put away. I changed to one plug today. Turned out good. Next, since I was standing there was the in-line fuse holder for the marine radio.

Thought you might like to see my electrical box. I have worked on a lot of stuff out of here. This is top tray.

The bottom. Notice it is packed tightly right up to where the tray reaches. I have at least 5 different types of soldering irons, 4 different types of strippers, etc. Everything I have for working on electrical is not here. Apparently I still have a lot of things in storage that I would like here.

I started looking for a clamp to hold gps box down with. This worked beautifully.You can see the weight of the box will go forwards. I didn't have to tighten this. It is just close. The weight of the handle locked it down nicely. If I had a dog or kids running around it may not be good but it is more than stable enough for me.

I said the day went beautifully until the end. The waste is not pumping all the way out. My tanks are overful again. Yep... That is exactly what I thought. I know the cure. All that replumbing I did two summers ago is coming out. I will use pvc and put it the way the factory had it. All of it. I will replace everything including the hand pump-out.

I was in pretty tough shape my first summer working on Mary Lee and I was concerned with the differences between a boat and a car, house,etc. (pretty much everything I had ever built or fixed) I figured I would just ask those that were doing boats and follow their advice. To date. Some of the advice was good but a lot more was not.

From now on. I walk my own path. Capping off that other waste tank was a huge mistake and I should have made sure the syphon tubes that pull the waste out of the bottoms were correct. I know the cure. I forgot to take pictures of the first mess of hoses the last owner had but I will remember to take pictures of what I was told was the right thing to do and what I will do this time.

That was not all the story but I have to get up early and take care of Mary Lee before the wind picks up.

Truth be told. I am not really bothered by this in the least. Better I know this now when it will be easy to fix. I will be sailing all summer. If all these little odds and ends are tied up now I will be much happier enjoying the fruit of my labors.

Yesterday I decided I had put off doing laundry as long as I could stand it. Before I get to that, I should mention that although nice and sunny there was talk of snow for the evening. I had my mind made up. I asked the harbor master and he said I would have to do it in the shower as it was not allowed outside and when done I could not hang clothes outside either. Hmmm....I will deal with that when I get to it.NEVER DO THAT!!!! I had quite a pile of laundry built up so decided half would be plenty to do. This was the smartest thing I did all day.

I went and got my 5 gallon bucket,washboard,laundry and shower bag. I will take a nice long hot shower when done. Good plan....right?

So it begins. It turns out doing the laundry here was not bad. Nice warm place. A little slow filling the bucket in the shower but acceptable.

Halfway there. All the heavy shirts and sweat pants are done.

All done :-) It does take a bit of effort. But if you remember, this is not about the easy way. I want to recover the health that I lost when I got hurt. I decide the heavier clothes that are harder to wring out should keep dripping while I shower. Then I can wring the bottoms out again before taking them back to Mary lee.

I don't know if anybody else has tried shampoo for shaving. I never heard of it, but I was curious. I had always used barbisol and had gone to the neutrogena on the right. It is a small tube and fits everywhere. You only use a dab about the size of a quarter to shave. It works very well. I ended up using the same amount of the head and shoulders. I could not tell the difference....really. I don't know if all shampoos will work the same. I have this big bottle of head and shoulders that was on Mary Lee when I bought her. Since it was new I just put it aside. There are a lot of shaves in this bottle.

But back to laundry day. I took a long, nice shower. Took my time getting everything picked up and ready to go. Headed out the door and was looking at cold rain and wind. Great. I have a half mile walk to the boat with the little cart full of laundry and shower goodies. Like always when things look trying, I thought for a minute about not doing it :-)  I know the rain has just started and will only get worse. It is a cool and wet walk but hey....I got a 2 mile walk in today overall.

This was in my shower bag and I thought I would share it. It is a piece of leather cut to the basic shape of my hair on the back of my head. When cutting my own hair I realized that the back was near impossible. This is easy. I slide it on with the elastic on my forehead. The ends line up evenly with my ears making it pretty much how I want it in back. I then take the clippers to it. I pull it off, comb hair again and do one more time. That way if there was something I missed I should have got it. I also trim the hair on my neck at the same time. When you take it off,the hair that was mashed down the most also fluffs back up the most and it is sort of a blind mans taper.

When I was hurt the most. I tried everything to make going for a haircut easy as i just couldn't sit up in a regular chair for long. I even made appointments and would end up in a straight backed chair waiting sometimes a half hour or more for a haircut. I finally realized that I had seen enough haircuts to do my own. I got fairly good at it. I mean I had paid for worse than I could do. Eventually I bought a flowbee. That worked beautifully. I could do all but trim the back in about 3 minutes. So back to laundry day.

I got back to the boat. Figured out how to hang all the clothes, decided it was getting cold and nasty enough that I didn't want to dig through the cockpit lockers. Materials for putting together my improved shower sump pump/box can wait. I realized in an hour or so that I was going to have a water condensation problem. I wasn't suure quite how to alleviate it yet so let it go hoping some things would dry a bit.

1:00 am. time to do something about condensation, if I leave it, things will surely get ruined. All clothes that were not dry went into the head/bathroom. I spent some time wiping everything down. Opened a port window for air and fired up the propane burners for a while. I didn't look at the time when I was done but after a while, between the fans and heat, it looked like I could give it a break.

It was sunny,40 degrees and windy in the morning. I had no choice. I needed to open everything up and get Mary Lee dried out. I put on a stocking cap and coat,opened it all up and let the wind do it's job. It took about 3 hours before I was satisfied. At this point I have 3 pair of sweat pants, a towel and 2 heavy shirts that are mostly dry hanging in the head with a little heater going on them.

There was clearly a lesson here :-) I tried to cut corners by piling up my laundry and doing it all at once.  I got bit by doing it the wrong way. The right way. The way I will do it from now on. I will wash the clothes I change out of when I go to shower right then and there. One change of clothes is pretty easy to deal with. That and I really do not have room for a big laundry bag laying around.

So how does this all tie up into a single statement? Murphy's law states "not enough time to do it right... always enough time to do it over". True but I feel it lacks somehow in the definition. Not only does this mean you get to do this at least two times.... BUT, You also get to learn what happens when something you spent time on is wrong. All the disappointments that go with realizing you not only did it wrong but depending on what it is you may get to tear it all back apart, buy new materials and spend even more time this time doing it right. Or you can just cobble everything, hope you get by and leave it for the next person.

I have one last thing that I get to do.

When I opened up the forward hatch the rivets finally broke off on this little rascal. Without this one corner won't latch tight and is going to make the hatch leak next rain. I thought I could just pop the rivets out for now and use screws and a little sealer just to get by. I broke off the head of one of the screws trying to see if the screws I have would go through. Now I get to dig drill and bits out of the cockpit locker so I can drill the proper holes. I guess I will use 5200 to seal it when done because I won't be doing this twice :-)

Sometimes we need a little challenge

I notice everytime you mention working on a boat someone says "That's boating". I thought about this. Everything man made wears out. When your car needs a tune-up,oil change,tires,brakes, whatever. Nobody says "Thats driving". If your house needs painted,lawn mowed,toilet or disposal quits, window breaks. Nobody says "Thats housing"

My world is a mechanical world. I see everything as a puzzle. Things must be right or they won't work. Everything man-made breaks or wears out. Maintainance is key here. "That's living in a modern world with conveniences. All the things I have fixed on Mary Lee up to this point were caused by the previous owner trying to do it himself. It is evident that he was not mechanically inclined or tenacious enough to get the job done right. Therefore I get to.

I not only get to work on things, but I also have to figure out if what I am working on was right when I started. I have to admit. With the exception of the engine and a few smaller things I have never worked on some of these things before. Most cars and houses do not have these exact things. I have a mechanical mind though. Fixing things has been my lifes interest. Figuring out how it works. I do not believe they make anything I cannot figure out. I mean really. A man built it right?

Then there is fighting it out until it is correct. Sloppy work brings on more trouble. Did you tuck that wire away properly? Solder the connection and seal it so it never gives trouble again. A very excellant tool for running wires is a hot glue gun. First leave some extra wire on the end you start with in case you ever have to work there again. Then start running wire. Go a little way,then clean a spot well. I use a good cleaner and then rubbing alchohol so all soap residue is gone. Squirt a little hot glue, press in wire and hold until glue cools enough to do the job. I have used this on four wheel drives for years and even after all the rough roads I have driven in the woods it never broke one loose. I have even used it to seal a connection when nothing else was available. Run the wire nicely. When at the other end, again leave some extra. Trying to work with a wire that is to short later is a problem we do not want. How about Dialectric grease.

Did you put a small dab on each end of that fuse to avoid corrosion? How about that light bulb you just put in. It also helps make a better connection. A dab of that on those wires you just crimped before you slid them into that connecter will help stop corrosion..

I mention this because I have been working on electric connections this week. If you think corrosion just happens on boats then you need to open the hood on an older car someday and pull the first connector apart that is not factory. But that is not the big project of the week. It seems as if the cobbled up goodies just keep on testing me to see if I am going to keep fixing them.

So back to my toilet and assuming it was correct when I started fixing it.

This piece. See how it opens?

This is where it goes. I assumed the flapper was right so I fought with it. When it was obviously wrong I pulled it apart and thought about how it all should work. The flapper was facing straight away from the toilet but the drain was at at a 45 from the pump. Hmmm... wouldn't it make more sense if the flapper opened up towards the drain so the toilet paper did not have to fight around a corner to go down? I thought so. Once again. This is new to me but common sense usually wins the day. Back together. Works fine. Then....

I actually didn't want to talk about this at first. After the head was fixed it suddenly started acting up. It had not been used much so I assumed it was the vent. I pulled up the deck and had crap all over. CRAP. What do you do? Well...after a disappointing few minutes of not wanting to deal with it I decided that I had to. First was to clean up so I could find out where it was coming from. I did not like that. After I got it clean I went in head and flushed again. This boat has two 30 gal. tanks. One for grey water and one for waste. When I bought Mary Lee the grey water was just opened. He had taken off the hoses but not capped it off. It also had a tangle of hoses you would not believe.

The advice was to just cap off second tank as it was not being used anyway. The grey water from shower was pumped out by this neat little box that he had installed on a piece of plywood that covered the lid on the second tank. When I worked the toilet waste came out of a lose lid. GREAT. Talk about a problem growing. So another cleanup. I need tank pumped before I proceed. I  am thinking I need to run another hose to this tank so it can be pumped. The next boat I buy will be looked at more closely. I know even new boats have problems but at least somebody that cannot work on them hasn't get to repair them yet. Who knows. I love my boat and am really not that far from getting the bungled jobs fixed. Maybe by by the time I am done I won't ever want to part with her.

The new prop is not here yet so tomorrow I idle her over to the fuel island to pump waste and fill water. It is only a stones throw away but I am a little concerned because it only has a 2 blade prop and one blade is gone. If it was much further....well I don't know. I gotta have a head. It is a half mile walk to the marinas and I can't have the waste tank overflowing.

Update. Today I moved Mary Lee over to pump waste and fill water. Trip over went very well. Everything went well. Trip back was a little tougher. I should have done it about a half hour sooner. I didn't want to rev engine if I could help it so needed to slide easily into slip. Naturally the wind had picked up and by the time I could get Mary Lee moving backwards the wind would blow the bow over far enough I would have to start over. I am tenacious though. It took 3 tries and I found an angle that would let me drift slowly back and in before the wind put me off again.

Not difficult or stressfull. If I'd  had any kind of thrust I was lined up right the first time. I see it as a learning experience. If that is the biggest struggle I ever have then life is truly blessed. I am starting to get anxious to get the last few things fixed so I can be out there. I don't even care where right now.

Last but not least. The toilet works beautifully :-) I wonder how many years somebody fought with that bungled repair. God forbid the boat came new like that and nobody fixed it.

Adventures with Mary Lee

Yesterday was a pretty busy day on Mary Lee.

While traveling south Mike had got something stuck in toilet. Naturally being my boat made me also the mechanic. I know what you are thinking.... I thought that too.  However, it is my boat and I had never taken one of these apart so I did. It was not my favorite thing. A regular flushing toilet in a house is a much nicer thing to work on. I made it happen. It was fairly simple actually. It was the clean up that was disgusting. I thought to myself " I hope I don't have to do that again any time soon". Never ever, ever, think it, because sure enough, you might just get to. It turned out that I just hadn't tightened one of the little plastic pieces enough. I didn't want to break it. It is tight now :-) I also bleached the whole head from top to bottom.

Since my work is done in the head. It is time to go through the galley. It looks small but I took everything out and gave it a deep clean. I know it looks small and at this point it has no oven but I bet I can cook some pretty good stuff in there. I will eventually need to get an oven installed. Yes, I will be the installer. It really isn't going to be much of a project. I remember thinking when I first started working on Mary Lee that I was going to be eating pretty simple stuff. How could you cook a real meal in there? I watched Steve Franko cook some pretty good meals on Yesterdays Dream. I know how to cook. No reason why I can't also cook better meals.

 My problem has always been being to busy and then just eating whatever is handy. I am not going to do that anymore. Part of the idea behind buying Mary Lee is to slow down and smell the roses. I know, you are thinking "how does a guy who was laid up for so long figure he needs to slow down?" Trust me, I always found things to do, even if I couldn't get up to do them. If nothing else, I read a lot. I can get buried in a book if I have nothing else to do.

I remember when I was in the Navy standing watch at the chiefs barracks. Well, it was more like a motel for chiefs. I had almost nothing to do all night as my 12 hour shift was from 6 pm to 6 am. They had a big screen tv and a small library full of westerns. I didn't grow up watching tv much and wasn't really interested in it. I did however read 5 to 6 of those little books in a shift until I had read all they had. I don't read many westerns anymore they all seem like "ground hog day" (the movie) same thing book after book.

I am still going through Mary Lee deep cleaning and figuring out what to keep and where to put it. I am also scrubbing it all down and wiping down the wood with the right stuff.

You might remember these pictures. Plenty of wood to wipe down. I am also changing my computer over to Google chrome and searching out appropriate apps. I see google is no more by the end of the year. Might as well get an early start. I have daily walks that are important as well. The cockpit lockers also need to be cleaned out again. When the exhaust piece broke it gave everything in there a coating of diesel soot. That should be fun. Then re-torqueing the head, exhaust and intake manifold bolts. I know I don't have to do this but well really I do. The engine was just rebuilt and that work does have to be done and unless I want soot on my hands every time I get into the cockpit lockers, I have to do that also.

I got hurt in March of 2006. I am rapidly approaching my 7 year anniversary. In all that time I dated one gal last year who turned out to be so exactly opposite of me that it was almost scary. I did decide, however, that   I shouldn't give up just because The first gal in a long time was not the gal of my dreams. I am going to be more careful in the future. Opposites do attract and I need to just keep an open mind and not dive into anything. Hopefully the search is not to difficult.

I decided not to give up on dating. I like meeting new people and I especially enjoy a womans companionship, but better off alone than with the wrong one. It is funny how an extended period of being laid up with a good case of getting "matured" changes ones way of thinking. Finding a nice gal won't change who I am but it could very well alter my plans. I'll just be me and leave the rest up to fate.  Everything happens for a reason even if we don't see it. Who would have thought I would ever be living on a sailboat AND in North Carolina? I didn't see it coming but whatever life throws at me, I can take it.

I better get started. I have a short list for today but sometimes the list takes longer to get done than I thought :-) Who am I kidding, It always takes longer

February 8, 2013

I have been looking through my old posts since I have been back on Mary Lee. It is interesting to see how far I have come since I started this journey.

 My first summer working on Mary Lee sure was a tough one. I had almost forgot how the nerves in my legs would just be on fire at night from crawling up and down the ladder all day. Let's not forget the atrophied muscle. I do not EVER want to rebuild that again.

I was pretty beat by the time I got to Thompson falls, Montana last winter. Between the yoga and then spending every single day in the gym once I started there I really made a lot of headway.

I got back to Mary Lee Last summer and it was such a different story. I could not have managed the engine build that first summer. I also have to admit. I think it was still all beyond my capabilities that first summer. I was still taking pretty strong pain meds and it really was hard fighting the atrophied muscle, the back pain/nerve issues along with working on things similar to things I had done before. But cars are not like boats.

Yet, I ground it out every day. The bright spots were the people I met. Steve and Linda Franko (live aboard retirees, Steve was recovering from a broken shoulder) Lance and Mary from New Zealand (Came to America and bought a trawler to go on their own adventure with) . Lets not forget the people at the marina. I was a mess when I got there and everyone was very helpful.

I spent most of this winter in Maryland and I have to admit. I like the weather in North Carolina better. Of course it is still very much winter in North Idaho where I came from.

It would appear that I would have nothing to do while here on the boat in North Carolina in the winter. This does not qualify as winter to me. This is cooler months. You do not have winter where you have palm trees. Sorry... You are just used to warmer weather the rest of the year. But I digress. I have been slowly going through Mary Lee cleaning and "still " trying to figure out how to have a place for everything and everything in its place. I Have a fresh water leak that I am trying to nail down, Gauges to get working properly for engine. Of course I need to get in there and retorque the head bolds and a few other things one last time.

 The weight is falling off. I won't go into to much detail but I am not meant to be heavy and I won't be. I am naturally lean at 200 pounds and with the lifestyle and diet I have adopted I will be back to 200 pounds by summer. By the end of the month I will have lost most of what I gained this winter in Maryland.

Standing on the dock with Mary Lee. It looks further in the picture but I can easily throw a rock and hit the Marinas office. If I want to use their shower, or pack fresh water from there as the water on the docks is shut off to prevent freezing. It is a 1/2 mile walk to get there :-) I know, how ironic.

I have to go here.

Then here.

Then here.

Then here.

Looking back at the last one.

Then here.

And there it is. That building I could have hit with a rock. Try to make it from the boat to here if you gotta potty. Good thing I have one on boat. So basically, I have a nice quiet place to walk and I do quite a bit of it. 7 complete trips on my best day so far. I will be picking up the pace as this is flat land and takes almost no effort at all.

Not my most exciting post but I am getting to it. The adventure is coming. It is going to be an exciting summer. I may spend it up in the Morehead city area or maybe????? Either way. This summer I get to sail instead of work on the boat and hope to go sailing.

I decided to head back to Maryland with Mike. I would stay with friends while I looked into having my medical implant removed. It hooks up to my spine and I can adjust the amount of current going down my legs for pain control. I wish I had never let any of my back surgeries be done ever. I think I would have recovered better without help. But here I am. In the meantime I practice my culinary skills.

I make a pretty good lemon meringue pie. I will brag about this. I modified a recipe to make it taste the way I wanted. It met rave reviews. I made an apple cinnamon pull apart bread but forgot pictures.

I also make cinnamin rolls like mom used to make. I know I need to practice some to get them to turn out like moms but my bread is already good. All that needs modified is the things that turn bread into cinnamon rolls.

If you are making bread you must have dinner rolls.

Try taking your own picture while baking.

Was easier to have someone else take the picture.

Christmas came and I put up lights. I couldn't get all of them in one picture but I put up about 5,500 lights. I made the trees out of chicken wire. There were lights around the side of the house and out back. As you drove by you could see most of them at one time. I enjoyed this. I had not been able to put up lights since I got hurt in 2006.

These people really need a bigger porch. The picture really does not do this justice.

Let's not forget Bella. She is a beagle/pointer(of some kind) mix. Their son had rescued her from a drug house and given her to his mom. She was extremely underfed and had absolutely no training. Well she knew how to lick' pee in the house and generally had to be watched closely when not in her crate. I decided she was to good of a dog so I trained her. She has gained weight and is starting to look pretty good here.

Beagles are hard to train anyways and she was getting to an age that made it more difficult. She was smart and would learn things the first time. Good or bad. So mostly the training was to get her to stop the bad habits. I was really bothered by having to train a dog this way. If a dog is trained right out of the litter it is so much nicer.

In the end. No more crate. Still a puppy, but she really is a smart dog and will make them a wonderful pet.

I gained 30 pounds on all the rich food I was fed(ok.. I made some of it).I spent 5 years in a hospital bed when not in a recliner.  Funny how I never had a weight problem before I got hurt. I realise now that it must be a life decision to eat properly. That is ok. I have spent the last couple years researching nutrition and for the first time in my life I am starting to eat correctly. I have learned about sprouting and am going to start fermenting foods to go along with eating how I know I should be and the weight will go away. I should never weigh over 200 pounds. I know I don't look it but as I write this I am 245. I weighed 205 when I got hurt.

So I have caught up my blog. Will be getting a few things fixed on Mary Lee and looking forward to a summer of sailing and enjoying the sun. Who knows, I might even get lucky and find that gal who belongs in my life. The search goes on.

Day 7. Mike and I leave Portside marina early. We are headed to Oriental City. Will meet up with Steve and Linda (Yesterdays Dream) and stay the night there.

Mostly a lot of this is what was happening on trip. Unless something broke we traveled from the crack of dawn until the last possible minutes to be anchored or tied up someplace. I will be the first to admit. I do not care for traveling this way but Mike was helping me with navigation and he had limited time to help. He was only a couple days from heading home at this point.

In the future I am going to just travel from One place to the next. It will be a much more relaxed pace and there will be much more to see and do. For me, owning the boat and living on it is about seeing and doing new things not "just" going. I realise I am going to need more creature comforts on Mary Lee but really, I think of it more as my mode of transportation and place to stay while I am out doing things.

So we made it to Oriental, NC. It is on the Neuse river. I am surprised I didn't take more pictures than I did. I am going to have to be more thoughtful about doing that. We pull up to the only marina we saw. Tied up and went to find the harbor master. Couldn't find him but one of the patrons there who knew him well said he would call him for us. We took care of things and got our showers, then followed up with an all you can eat prime rib dinner. Very good. I slept very well that night. My back is feeling much better.

The picture is the dingy tied up at the public dock and Mary Lee is back beyond it. You can't see the bridge from here. it is to the right. We talked to Steve and Linda (who were staying at their daughter and son-in-laws home) and decided on a plan to see them. through a mis-understanding on our part we headed under the bridge to go to the public dock to meet them for breakfast. Not realising that we were looking at it right in front of us. We saw smaller sailboats on the other side of the bridge but you couldn't see much.

This is the fun part.I had measured my masts last year while still taking fairly strong pain pills. I remembered 40 feet. Well the mizzen mast is 40 feet above water. the bridge was 43. we crawled up to it and at the last second realised the bridge was just a little short. After a pretty loud clang, I lost the wind speed indicator off the top of the main mast. That was heart stopping but still had to back out of it. We were pretty sure we woke up the rest of the community. We went back and anchored before going below and laughing until tears ran down our faces.

Mast looked ok. I really don't need the wind speed indicater. Lesson learned. Do not trust any of last years measurements. We inflated the dingy and went looking for where we were supposed to meet Steve and Linda. We rowed to the dock and went walking. we didn't get far when a car pulled up and Linda asked if we needed a ride. It was good to see them. Steve and Linda are the salt of the earth. I always enjoy their company. We had a good breakfast and then they took us to a small market nearby to get a few things. It would have been nice to have stayed longer but we were running out of time before Mike had to get home.

So we made a little distance. about half a days journey until we made it to green 57. I would have to look but I think we were at stump creek. It felt like we hit something. We were in the middle of the channel. I mean we really felt like we ran aground. After a fight with the wheel we were still moving but the vibrating was insane. It felt like we had a major problem. Not good. We drifted with the current to far and hit bottom on the other side. It took a little doing but we got up main sail to pull us out into the channel again and we dropped anchor. It actually felt like something wrapped around prop.

Guess who is going to go look? The water looked nasty and cold. Well, no time like the present. I got ready and in I went. It was cold. I adjusted to it the best I could and went under. It took 4 tries to find what was happening. One of the blades is gone on a 2 blade prop. Looks like we are getting a tow again.

We got on the radio and called out Boat US. They answered right up. We told them where we were and this time we were further away but only about 45 minutes. I doubt if I would ever boat without their tow insurance. How can you beat an investment like that for a little over $100??? I had already talked to Steve and Linda earlier and Linda had found a marina where Mike would be getting off boat and heading home. I think she had also found us the nearest hardware store before the last tow. What good friends. Well in retrospect I probably should have just been towed there but we just went to the nearest marina. Harbor marina in Hampstead, NC. It has been a trying day to say the least. Well the last 3 days have been along with 2 tows in 3 days how can you beat that?

So we got Mary Lee tied up. Showered and ordered a pizza.

Day 6 started off quite well. Back is still bothering me but it has improved enough that I am able to move around again without to much discomfort. I am planning to see Steve and Linda Franko (Yesterdays Dream) today. It has been about a year since they pulled out of the marina where we met. I plan to call them before we make Morehead city, NC.

Well we made Morehead city. Suddenly we had thick black smoke billowing out of the engine room. A moment of shock and then of course kill the engine and investigate. Preparing to grab a fire extinguisher (which of course is right there). It turns out that the exhaust piece I had built for the water injection had broke. What??? Well first things first. We dropped anchor and considered our options.

 Cannot sail down the Intra Coastal Waterway even if we had enough experience to do that. Marinas don't want people sailing in. To much risk of hitting other boats. We are not really sure where the nearest marina is.
 USBoat tow. We got on the radio and they answered up immediately. I don't think we waited more than 5 minutes before they were there hooking us up. Turns out they came out of a marina that was very close. They had been listening when we had been on the radio a little earlier trying to figure out where things were.

They brought us to Portside Marina. I was not only impressed with Boat US but I really liked the people running this marina. Talk about bend over backwords to help. They told me to help myself to the use of a vise and whatever tools I needed. I had my own tools so I pulled out the broken piece. Mike and I caught a cab to the local lowes to find a suitable replacement.

There it is. A 14 inch piece of 1 1/4 inch pipe. Not sure at this point why it broke. I forgot to take a picture during the whole process. The only thing difficult was getting the small piece of threads that broke off inside the other fitting out. In all,from start to finish I guess it took about an hour to fix if you don,t count the trip to Lows. I do not know why it broke. It shouldn't have. Unfortunately I was to find out soon. All in all. I am glad I had Boat US. Hard to beat that. Money very well spent. I am still enjoying boating and we will see Steve and Linda tomorrow.