Before I start to babble on as is my wont, let me post a pseudo ad before I forget again. Now that the Perkins has been removed and replaced by the Yanmar, we find ourselves in possession of a whole mess of Perkins spare parts that I can no longer use. We have: oil filters, fuel filters, raw water impeller kits, a spare injector and injector hose and some other stuff that I forget at the moment. Our old Perkins was a 65hp 4.236 but I believe that some if not all of the parts are interchangeable with some of the Perkins engines that are close in size. They can be had for free. Just pay the shipping. Contact us through the blog or send an e-mail if you have any questions.

Now, on with the babble.

This morning I got the cockpit lazarettes finally straightened out. On the port side we now have the emergency tiller in a place where we can grab it if it should become necessary. Hitherto it had been buried under a whole bunch of gash, most of which is now either stored, or in the dumpster. The four 30A cables are carefully stored hanging along the hull and the water hoses are along the cockpit wall. Our towing line is in its storage crate at the bottom and we have a whole bunch of space left which is good since that will be where I want to build the aft chain locker. The starboard side has the scuba tanks and hookah system on a shelf towards the aft and the rest is essentially empty space. I plan to hang the spare BBQ and single burner stove in there but I would like to have as much open area as possible so I can keep an eye on the auto helm which is also installed down there. The other thing that I have to decide is where I want to put the small portable generator. I plan to build a shelf in one of the lazarettes where we can stow it when we aren't using it and which will keep it out of the elements. I am leaning towards the port side since there is more space and I really want access to the auto helm so I can maintain it.

After that we charged off into town to get a coffee and for some of the fixings for my BBQ tonight and while on the road we priced a trolling reel at West Marine for our new rod. We also got a price for a new binnacle mount compass. Our old one was another victim of being left alone for the 8 months we were in Halifax and it had gone to that large magnet in the sky after a summer baking under the Virginia sun. Here's a word to the wise - if you are spending much time in the sunny south or plan to leave the boat here while you head north for whatever reason, make sure that you cover everything and I do mean everything. Cover any bright work, canvas, instrumentation, etc for the sun will ruin or do its best to ruin just about everything it can.

It is about time that we start to fly our colours and I have made the final addition to the backstay hoist where we fly the national flag. In the past we always had a monkey's breakfast of extra line that I had some big plans to do something with but darned if I can remember what that was. As it is I now have enough to come from the hoist pulley and back down to the cleat that I installed today. When the flag is in as well that will leave us enough to tie it off when up and have only a minimum left over. Much neater and far more ship shape. Besides the Canadian flag astern we will also fly the US courtesy flag from the starboard main spreader and the Nova Scotia Provincial flag off the starboard mizzen spreader just to make sure that we cover all bases.

I have also designed and measured off the new bookshelf for the middle cabin office and marked out the pattern on the lumber. It's a simple design with three shelves, one of them 9" deep to hold all the cruising guides and the others are closer to 6" for the other books. The big trick was to make sure that the first shelf was high enough off the table top so that the printer could fit under it and still function. Once this is done I just need to build the desk extension for the laptop and run the LAN Ethernet cable and we'll have a little office in our middle cabin. We won't have to disturb each other when one of us wants to work on the computer and the other to do something else on the main cabin table. Peace and marital bliss. Ain't it great?!

Remember the fellow who came in after dark with Grendel, his 30' sloop that was taking on water? Well, as we thought the problem was the keel bolts, and he had them loosened up so he could clean of the seating and then he tightened them back down again. I sure hope that works for him since when I looked at the bolts about half of them sure looked worse for wear. I'm not sure that they will hold the torque that he has tried to put on them. At any rate, he is launched again and shortly before lunch he sailed off to the next creek over where he will tie up. He is going to find out if his reseating job worked through a torture test as he has to sail. His motor isn't hooked up as yet. The entrance to the harbour here is through a very fight channel so I really hope that the wind held for him so he could get out on a reach or a run. It certainly didn't have enough space for him to beat out.

At around lunchtime the threatening rain finally started. This was just in time for Tony and Ed to come back aboard to try to finish the install of the new instruments. Cutting and sawing; drilling and screwing; crimping and heat shrinking in the rain. What fun! We cranked up the engine and ran it up to 1500-1600 RPM under load and it behaved well except for shifting from forward to reverse. It shifted all right it's just that there is a lot of mass for the engine to change direction and there is an audible clunk. Tony feels that in the long run it might damage the transmission, so I have asked the marina to talk to the prop guys about exchanging our two 20" x 20 pitch bronze props for one that is something in the order of 18-20" x 14 pitch which will mean less mass but a slightly higher RPM to achieve a certain status of thrust. We will also take the opportunity to change from a left hand spin to right so that the transmission will run in what it has been designed as for a forward direction. Progress! Yea!

Barb has been working away on replacing the cover on the horseshoe life ring that we carry aft and the man overboard pole flag. Last summer up on the hard wasn't very kind to them and the material was all perished and rotten. Fortunately she is an industrial sewer extraordinaire so she quickly put together the pattern and was sewing in the zipper. Also, in a good and wifely manner, she repaired a hole in one of my two sets of blue jeans that she did to the tune of ragging on me about how when something hooks on your clothing your should stop and unhook yourself rather that continuing on and tearing it. Unfair comment I say but I agreed to pass it on.

My contribution today for dinner is Mike's infamous hamburgers. If you happened to have gotten a copy of the cookbook (see link on the right to SV Nelleke's Library) you will see the technique. Essentially it involves the hamburger cut with a handful of oatmeal, a half an onion chopped up and an egg. You put it all into a Ziploc bag and squeeze it until everything is mixed together. You can even put the BBQ sauce directly into the mixture rather than spreading it onto the top during the cooking if you wish. Using this technique you can easily make two big juicy burgers from ¼ pound of meat. The other thing that we like to do while we are down here in the US is buy those flat rounds of bread ofr Deli Flats rather than the burger buns for our hamburgers. Much more beneficial to your figure as well.