Having a TV on the boat is a luxury, though we are lucky if we can get 2 channels. Usually we are able to get at least one channel to watch the news, which right now is about the unhealthy heat wave over Boston and the Cape. What confuses Peter is that Provincetown is shown on the map as being one of those unhealthy places, yet we are very comfortable with a lovely breeze blowing through the boat. Of course, we're a long way from the beach; it might be much hotter on land.

We watched two sailboats full of kids having a wonderful time playing chicken, splashing each other and just enjoying themselves. I think their falling off the boat was just an excuse to get wet.

You can see lots of photos of Ptown at: http://www.fototime.com/inv/16710F0AFB1E60D

We decided to stay in Ptown for another day rather than head back to more land where we wouldn't have this lovely ocean breeze. There is some maintenance to do, and this is a comfortable place to do it.

Peter removed the three raw water strainers for the engines and the generator so they could be cleaned. They were not seriously dirty the way the air conditioner strainers were, though there were some large plant stems and leaves as well as some sand and grit in the strainer baskets. The strainer baskets look as if they're nylon, a reasonable assumption, which means that I can't use chlorine bleach to clean them. Not a problem, I have lots of cleaning stuff including non-chlorine bleach and my trusty toothbrush.

Peter also checked the fuel in the tank for the generator. Although the tank, which holds about 75 gallons of diesel, has fittings and shut-off valves for a fuel transfer system to the main fuel tank, there are no hoses attached. We would like to install the hoses so that we could use all 190 gallons of tankage for the engines if we want. Peter hasn't figured out how to run the hoses yet; it looks like a difficult job. Maybe we'll need our skinny nephew to help us again. Peter decided to check the fuel, and he came back with a small glass container of what looks like blackstrap molasses but is just very, very dirty diesel. We will try to use as much of the fuel as possible before pumping out the dregs and discarding them when we get to a recycle center. Looks as if we will have to do a major cleaning of the tank, and change both fuel filters again.

The fuel in the generator tank probably hasn't been turned over enough. We certainly haven't used the generator very much since we've been on the boat, and 75 gallons is a lot of generator time, about 300 hours. I would guess that the fuel in there is at least a year past its use by date. [sigh] One more thing to work on.

As I've cleaned the boat I noticed that the fellow from the charter company liked the fiber scouring pads "green meanies� as Peter calls them. Everywhere there are patches of scratched spots on the plastic liner of the interior. The worst is in the head, and the polycarbonate splash guard of the flybridge is badly scoured in spots. This boat was only on charter for a year and a half, I would hate to see the damage to boats kept on charter for three or more years.

We are still trying different ways to shade the huge windows. I had bought some auto windshield sun shades, the thin foam with foil on top that people use to keep the sun from baking the interior of their cars. I cut and taped them to fit the forward windows, but since I haven't come up with an effective attachment system yet we only put it on the center opening window held down with the windshield wiper, some string, and a few clothes clips. We are going to have to put more thought into a sun shade because the sun through those windows makes the saloon very hot. Just shading one of the three windows has dropped the temperature inside significantly.

We want to be up bright and early to leave for Barrington in the morning.