As our trip to China gets closer and closer, the waiting gets harder and harder. It like having a long awaited vacation just around the corner. The last few days before it starts just take soo loooong toooooooo goooooooooo byyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

To numb my brain to the waiting, I have been doing little boat projects that have been on the list forever. Stupid things like replacing the stereo remote control that is up at the helm on the flying bridge deck. The old one never really ever worked and I bought a new one when I replaced the stereo a couple of years ago when we were in New Zealand. I kept putting off replacing the dumb thing because I would have to run new cable from the helm to the navigation station in the salon. Running new cable between the two places is a real pain the arse so this project just sat on the far back burner. Well, the new remote now works great!

Today, I ended up washing out the starboard bilge. Not a real exciting thing to do but something that slowly crept up on the must do list. The problem is the two A/C units we use to cool the salon and our suite both drain their condensate to this bilge. We have CruisAir heat pumps and they are real work horses. However, there is so much humidity in the tropics that as they cool the air, they also remove a ton of water from the air. It makes staying inside the boat so comfortable. However, they have one small design flaw. The units are mounted within a collection pan that collects the condensate as it drips off the unit. The hole where the collected water flows out of the pan and into a hose that leads to the bilge is not flush with the floor of the pan. Instead, it is about a half inch above the floor of the pan. This results in the pan always having standing water in it. The pan is painted metal and after 6 years the paint is starting to lift off exposing the metal. The metal is slowly rusting and the water that flows to the bilge carries that rust. Over time, the rust in the water reacts to the trace amount of diesel oil that accumulates in the bilge and forms bits of sludge that sloshes around in the bilge water. Our starboard bilge is always wet because of the condensate drains there.

This sludge is not a good thing to have because it can clog the automatic bilge pump that cycles on when the bilge sump gets a couple of inches of water in it. We plan on putting the salon heat pump on the "dehumidify' setting when we leave for China to prevent mold from forming inside Leu Cat. Thus, I don't want the automatic bilge pump getting clogged up with sludge while we are gone.

Just an interesting additional note: since I posted our blog that talked about the Tiananmen Square Massacre we have not had a single hit on our blog from China. We usually get a few of readers from Mongolia, Beijing and Honk Kong checking our blog once or twice a week. I am starting to think that what I read regarding the government there blocking all sources of references to that event is true. We will confirm or deny it when we arrive in Beijing by trying to pull up our blog. I think I will still be able to post our blog but if you don't see me posting things daily, you will know why...