It's been another busy day today(Thursday). After all the work we did on Sunday and Monday, we took the last two days off. It was just too windy(gusts to 30 knots) and with showers thrown in for fun, it just seemed the thing to day. Today on the other hand, was all work. We started out cleaning up areas on the boat that had gotten, well, out of hand. The big thing was my workbench. I had all kinds of stuff all over the top. Sail hardware, glues, screw drivers and wrenches. If it came off the workbench, well it never got put away. I have a real problem sometimes getting things back where they belong. Today, first thing was to try and make order out of chaos. The DuoGen was making strange noises again last night in the big winds so I grabbed some grease and took the blade unit apart and re greased it and put it back together.

Our American Flag has seen better days with the blue just about washed out of the fabric. It's now more red, white and grey instead of blue. Going through our boat parts box under the stern berth, we found a spare so down came the old and up went the new in all it's glory. Looks really good flying from the stern. We've had our last flag for years and while the seams and binding was fine, it was looking the worse for wear.

Next, on to the engine. Our poor overheating engine. One of the hoses(from the fresh water pump to the oil cooler) had a bit of a kink in it. Too soft a hose or too tight a bend. It needed replacing with a stronger, harder hose so it was next on the list. Off came the hose clamps and off came the hose. We'd bought a bit of replacement hoses a few days ago and out they came. One chunk was the perfect length so there was no problem. Before we changed out the hoses, since it was off, it was the perfect time to change out the oil in the injector pump. It was one of the easiest jobs of the day. With the old hose off, I had no problem getting in to do the change. I drained out the used oil into a large measuring jug to see how much we had in there. The answer was about 13 ounces. Twelve is the normal with us. We waited for our currency convert man to show us and once he did, the check was presented to the two of us. We left the rest for tomorrow.

We had a noodle concoction with chunks of chicken thrown in all served on a bed of mashed potatoes for lunch. When we finished, I headed into the engine room. It was time to get down to some serious work before the new water pump, thermostat and mixing elbow showed up. It was time to take off the "mixing elbow". It's where the engines hot exhaust gets mixed with the cooler raw water that comes in to keep Zephyrs engine cooler and then gets blown out the exhaust pipe on the stern. Once we had it off, we found that it was about 20% clogged with lots of what looked like big carbon chunks. Out it came and up on deck to get as much chiseled out as possible. It's not a great picture but it shows some of the buildup. Years ago when we first bought Zephyr, there was a foiled pouch in one of the tool boxes that got left on board. It was marked as the gasket for this piece. I pulled it out and now I could put it back once cleaned. I had to sit on the back deck and chisel out as much of the build up as I could. With it sort of clean, I attached the gasket and the hoses and that job was done. While it's not spotless, it will work fine till the new one I bought on Monday shows up. I'll be putting it in storage till the time is right and the need exists for a replacement. With tons of salt water pouring through it every time the engine is run, it's corrodes quickly is after time will blow a hole through its casing. We started in on the job just after 1300 and weren't done till about 1630. I was a mess with oil, grease and engine filth(lots of dark carbon chunks). Out came the Lava Soap and off to the showers. I needed to jet this grime off me as well as any odors that were attached to my skin(sweat).

We only ran the engine for a few minutes to make sure that all the hoses I'd worked on didn't leak as well as the gaskets on parts I'd used. Tomorrow, Friday, we will run it for a good while to see if what we did made any difference.

Last night was a blustery night with wind coming and going in the bay. One big blast hit us just about at midnight and things went flying inside and on deck that were not tied down as the wind laid us over at quite a steep angle. It's supposed to continue blowing like this till early next wee. Guess we will see.