Tuesday, October 14 — Sunday night was really rainy, but by the Monday morning, the precipitation slowed down to a drizzle. It was drizzly and cool all day, making it a great day for boat projects. Eric went back to the wing engine exhaust project. He undid the hoses and tightened the wing engine exhaust elbow. When he tested it, he was frustrated to see that there was still debris in the air. But after inspecting it more closely, he’d determined it was probably smoke from the paint; he’s pretty sure that the exhaust was properly put back together and wasn’t leaking. He’ll run it some more over the next few days to be certain.
Once Keith was done with his school work, Eric and Keith went to a restaurant called the Iron Rooster, which was located near The Market. Christi stayed aboard to work on her land-life project.
In the afternoon, Eric again hosted two D & D sessions aboard Kosmos.
While Eric and the kids were playing D & D, Christi walked to the closest grocery store, called Groul’s, which was a little over a mile northeast from the marina. It was a nice market. She took a ride share back to the marina.
This morning’s boat project was to clean the bilge, which Eric and Keith started on as soon as Keith finished his school work. First, they cleaned bilge pump sea strainer. Then, they filled up the bilge with water and, using the wet/dry vacuum, sucked it back out. Eric thought that it hadn’t looked dirty when he’d checked it, but once the stuff that had settled on the bottom was stirred up, Eric saw bilge water was much dirtier than anticipated. They did a few rounds of filling the bilge and sucking the water back out with the vacuum before the bilge was clean. The last thing they did was to clean the shaft packing.
Once that round of chores was done, Eric and Keith went to another playdate at the park closest to the marina. They met up with the same three families that they’ve been having regular playdates with. As always, Keith had a blast. Christi stayed behind to cook dinner.
Once they returned from the park, Eric and Keith went back to chores. First on the to-do list was to clean the fresh water strainer between the water tank and water pump. It had a surprising amount of gunk in it. When Keith emptied out the strainer, he simply turned it upside down over the water and the O ring fell off and drifted away in the current. This turned out to be something of a crises, as Eric didn’t have a spare O ring on board and, without that part, we had no water.
Eric immediately went to work fabricating a new O ring. He found an O ring from the dorade vents that was close in size, so he cut it and put a little Rescue Tape on it.
He put the strainer back on. It was leaking. He adjusted the O ring again and put the strainer back on. Voila! It wasn’t leaking. We had water again! Crises averted!
We don’t think that we’ve mentioned that two of the handles that were built into our dinghy broke. Eric was planning to get replacement handles here at the boat show (one of the reasons why he’d stopped by the OC Tender booth). They only had one in stock. But while he was looking for the O ring, he found a piece of hose that was leftover from when we’d replaced our hot water heater that was just about the same width and rigidity as the handle. Tomorrow, he’ll see if it works as a handle.