I had the boat all ready to go: washed, waxed, painted, and the marina had put her in. Then I got the flu. I was flat on my back for a several days, including the weekend. Then I had to go pick up Dan at school (Patti had the flu then and I had to go by myself). So this past Saturday (May 24) was the day. Maddy's graduation was Sunday, so we all thought we would go sailing on Memorial Day (today). I saw Scott and Mark on their boat, and first thing, I tried to start my engine. No go. No matter what I did. Damn. Got the sails on the boat, and then started to go through my check list. Radio: not working. Damn. Engine. Still not working. Everything else was fine. Whatta revoltin' development. Depressing. And the battery (which was supposedly "fully charged" when I left that morning) died after turning over the engine only a few times. I had to go to West Marine and buy a new one. And I put the new chip in the GPS, and the charts were still the same crappy low res. Damn.

So today, I figured I'd try one more time to start the engine. If that didn't work, I'd try different fuel. I bought more oil and a new gas container at Richlin (to take the old fuel). If that didn't work, I'd get it off the boat and take it to Gerard.

Engine started pretty easily. I just pushed the choke in almost immediately after pressing the start button. Easy peasy. Joy! Radio still didn't work, but I figured I'd try and fix that. Once I looked behind the unit, I saw that one of the power wires was disconnected. Put it back together and wham! Radio worked. I was on a roll, so I tried to figure out how to access the Navionics charts. A few tries with the menu features, and I found the Navionics charts! I was really hitting on all cylinders.

The weather was beautiful, the boat was jamming. Let's go sailing! I looked up at the rig and noticed that the starboard upper shroud was off the spreader. No wonder it was too easy to harden the turnbuckle. I obviously couldn't go sailing, so I decided to clean the boat. I washed and scrubbed Hukilau, inside and out. She is now ready for the interior cushions and to sail, as soon as the rig is fixed. I left a message for the marina; I hope they do something this week.

Amazingly, the marina looked empty. There were almost no boats at the docks. While there were a lot of boats left on the hard, I wonder if a lot of the launched boats went to new places for the summer because of the almost sale. It may be time to reserve a slip elsewhere for next summer.