The winter has been long....

Finally spring is starting to slowly, very slowly, creep over the melting snow and ice. All winter, Mark and I have been plotting the work that needs to be done to the boat this year and most importantly before she is splashed into the water, even though it is still in solid form.

The weather today 45 degrees and sunny, good enough for me, let's head to the boat and see what we can do.

Our mission today was to replace the intake hose on our port air conditioning unit. We have a leak coming from somewhere on this side of the boat and the highest suspect on the list at the moment are the aging hoses for the air conditioning unit. This hose runs from the pump that supplies both air conditioning units to the air conditioning unit itself. Along the way this hose runs through 3 compartments and therefore 3 bulkheads with a hole drilled through each, so the hose has a place to run through. Unfortunately, each hole is about 1.5 to 2 inches in diameter with not only this water hose running through it but also about 6 - 7 other cables, wires and such too, making for a tight area in which to pull the hose through.

Based on a tip that I had heard about from another cruisers blog, we cut a small section of wooden dowel material that fits into the internal diameter of the hose and used that to connect the old section of the hose to the new section of hose by drilling a couple of screws through the hose and into the dowel materials where the hoses now connect.

Now came the fun part, pushing, pulling, grunting, crouching upside down in an extremely small space....yeah! the hose moved about 2 cm....yes, we started out fairly slow, however once we were able to get it moving and had more leverage with more hose to grab hold of, it started to move more and more quickly, until finally we were able to pull the new hose section completely through and the old hose is now removed, Yeah!!! Unfortunately, the integrety of the old hose appeared to be good, too good, so that hose doesn't seem to be the cause of our leak. So, we will have to move on to replace hose #2 and then hose #3 that are connected to that port air conditioning unit.

Well, after all that hard work, we were hungry and had to have a bit of fun and reconnecting with our sailing friends in the area, so a stop at the Shoreline Pub was in order. It was great to see Kathy (the barkeep) again after a long winter away. Saw our friend Don as well. Had a beer or two and a pizza for dinner while looking at the great views of Lake Pepin. I really can't describe in words how it feels for me when I am near the water and connected to our community of sailors. It feels like coming home and has an incredibly soothing feeling for my soul to just be near the water and my boat.