June 6th... Charleston, SC

After some coffee I began putting things away and straightening up the boat. I replaced the sink, which had to be removed to access the compressor portion of the refrigerator and turned on the water system.

Things were going fine until I tried to flush the new toilet and it clogged. I hesitate to write a blow by blow account of process I went through to remove the clog and put the new toilet back together, but suffice it to say that it wasn't fun.

After getting cleaned up I wandered over to "Fine Lion" to pick up our frozen food and chatted with them for 30 minutes or so and made plans to go into town around noon. When I got back to the boat Kathy informed me that the toilet was again clogged. Wonderful...

As an expert on the inner workings of our new toilet and its drain system, I psyched myself for another round of fun. I had learned some things earlier in the morning and had deduced that the clogging problem was not the toilets fault but that of the drain hose. (I hesitate to add here that I, Kathy, had advised replacing all hoses in said area when replacing the toilet.) Over time, the inch and ½ hose forms a layer of what looks like a calcium deposit. In the process of installing the new toilet I had moved the hose around enough to break some of the deposit away from the inner wall of the hose which collected on a low spot and caused the clogs.

So I removed and loosened the drain hose on each end holding the bottom on tightly to the toilet and then quickly moved that end to a bucket. We ran a water hose through a hatch and I had Kathy turn on the water which I ran through the section of drain hose.

Then I took the hose to the dock and pounded it with a hammer breaking loose about a half of bucket full of calcium deposits. Finally, after putting things back together, we had a working toilet.

By this time it was about 11:30, so we called Steve and Kim to delay our trip to town for an hour which gave us time to clean and disinfect the boat as well as ourselves.

We ended up meeting them at 1pm and took the marina van into town where we shopped a little, but spent most of the afternoon at an oyster bar. We watched the Belmont race, wandered to another oyster bar AND ate more oysters and we wandered around a little more and ended up at the Roof Top above the Library for the sunset and the first two periods of the Redwings game. Charleston is a wonderful city to wander around at night.

We got a taxi back to the marina and hit the sack...it had been a long day.