One of the good things about having a day off is that it gives you a chance to do some thinking. I had several thoughts pertaining to work needed to be done at sometime aboard Bearing to Heaven. First, the issue with water. In my wisdom at first I arranged the various stopcocks in the piping in what I thought would control the water to join both tanks together and from there to the freshwater pump. Under normal circumstances this probably wouldn't be a bad idea. But, these are not exactly normal circumstances. If there is a problem with a leak, and it's a pretty significant leak, in the starboard water tank and I have joined them both together then water put into the port tank will eventually make its way over to the starboard tank and from their leak out and be pumped over the side. Both water tanks are stored directly under the port and starboard salon seats. Barbara made the suggestion to pull up the wooden covers that make up the seats so that we can have a direct look at them. They are held down with about a dozen slot screws, so bringing them up should be fairly simple. I am hoping to be able to inspect them for the leak. I will also see where the outflow comes from each of them and how they tie together to the freshwater pump.

Another good thing is it gives the admiral a chance to proofread yesterday's post and point out to me all of the goofs that I made as a result of quickly writing it and posting it before even I properly proofread it. My apologies to readers who were probably wondering what on earth I was trying to say in some spots. It's fixed now if you want to try again.

Some of the jobs I want to do today, besides measuring things for the mount for the auto helm, is get myself fitted for a new pair of glasses to match my new prescription, perhaps mow the lawn at our house which has been sadly neglected, go up to the Firehall to get my recently laundered bunker gear back and in my ready spot, and a few others including a small amount of grocery shopping and buying parts for the Autohelm install.

The hardest part of the Autohelm install is preparing the mount and as I write this I am relaxing in the tub after a full day of fitting, framing, fussing and fuming over preparing one flat surface area adjacent to the rudder quadrant that I can fasten the linear drive and the rudder sensor arm to. As you all may know in a boat there is rarely anything but complex curved surfaces so it is extremely hard to get a flush fit but after three hours I got close enough that I was comfortable fastening the whole thing down. As I type it is in place and held there with bolts, heavy duty screws and 5200 adhesive. Once that all sets it will be as if the mount had always been part of the frame. It needs to be strong as the linear drive is capable of producing 250 pounds of torque and the mount has to be able to support that. Tomorrow I will mount the drive, the sensor, the computer and the ECV. If I have enough time I will wire them all together. Then that will be done and I can get at one or two of the other little jobs.

One thing that I would really like it if it could be made to happen, besides the fresh water issue that I mentioned earlier, is to see if it is simply a matter of plugging in a cable to get the radar working. I am hoping that is the case and am guardedly optimistic as we have found a number of other places where things simply had been disconnected for some reason.

Since we hope to be at sea during our birthdays we will be having a celebratory dinner tonight at our favourite restaurant for special occasions here in town Charlotte's Lane. Normally it is a bit pricy for our pocket books but excellent food and certainly worth every penny. We just can't do it very often.