It's been a long, tiring day, but productive. I'm pretty bushed and struggling to write this blog, but duty calls!

Up early again. It's good I didn't take the Purple Cow option yesterday because it doesn't open until 7am. I know I'm retired, but really. Who needs coffee who doesn't need it before 7am? What good is it later than that I ask you? Having walked the two blocks from the boat yard, I had to walk back, get my keys off the boat, get my bike out of the car where I'd stowed it yesterday, and bike up into Ballard to Firehouse Coffee. That's my usual Saturday AM haunt, so all was well with the world.

My only morning schedule constraint was to have everything out of the way for the electrician to access to the 110V supply connections. One of the surveyor's comments yesterday was that I had reverse polarity on most of my 110V outlets. That's not a safety problem, but it can cause trouble with some electronics, so ought to be fixed. It's a simple matter of reversing some wires, but finding the wires to switch turned out to be a bit of a witch hunt.

Of course, any project on the inside of a boat requires that all cabinets be emptied out and their contents strewn about the boat, hopefully in places which, because your original guess on the location of the problem was incorrect, requires relocating all the stuff to some other place which will block cabinets that, in turn, have to be opened up as well. That's how it went, but the electrician was a sarcastically pleasant young sailor guy from Hawaii and it was actually kind of fun working with him. Eventually we found the problem buried in the bowels of the power panel, so he switched the two cute little connections and pleasantly went off to work on other boats while I got to reassemble mine. Well, that's another couple of hours (at $90 per) well spent, huh?

The mechanic got the shaft out fairly early. It looked pretty much okay, but the propeller had a ding in it that brought up the suspicion that it was out of balance. Both were sent off to the propeller shaft shop for a check up. The good news came in early afternoon: the shaft is okay; the prop WAS out of balance, but is easily fixed; and the yard manager succeeded in getting the shaft seal manufacturer to provide a new seal free of charge. That's a $350 whoopdeedooh!

The bad news came later in the afternoon when we found that the forward port engine mount bolts were stripped. Not really a big deal, but I'll have to drill them out in the morning, fill the holes with fiberglass stranded epoxy, and re-drill them. The mounts themselves seem to be solid, but they're rusty and our ability to adjust them to realign the engine is questionable. That's good, because it provides some suspense for Thursday's blog entry.

That's the segue into a discussion of schedule. I didn't really have anything particular in mind when I came in here, but I was thinking three days, ...maybe five. It's looking like five, now. The propeller should be balanced and back in our hot little hands by Thursday, so checking the alignment may happen as early as Thursday afternoon. It may be done on Friday morning if all goes well. If the engine mounts are too rusty to adjust, all bets on schedule (and cost) are off. That may involve hoisting up the engine for the "out with the old and in with the new" scenario.

So, in my spare time between working with the electrician and consulting with the mechanic and the yard manager, I've decided to repaint the boot stripe while I'm here. (Landlubber moment: The boot stripe is a band of paint, usually about three inches wide, that defines the waterline of the boat. Mine is blue, but they can be other colors or non-existent.) Mine was also sanded into obscurity during the last haul out, so looks pretty ratty. I'll have a couple of days to work on it, so new boot stripe it is. I got the port side prepped and taped today. Starboard will get the same treatment tomorrow and maybe paint on Thursday. What do you think. Same old blue or go out on the wild side with red?