Sunday May 24th...Maintenence

I failed to mention that yesterday I was able to gather just about all of the equipment necessary to change the oil in the boat engine. Greg (next boat neighbor)had pointed me to Sextant's Marine, where they anticlimactically were able to pull exactly what I needed, right off the shelf. This is, of course, after considerable time spent gathering up part numbers and poring through the manual.

I also failed to mention yesterday how completely difficult the docking was. We missed my slip entirely - having turned too late - and ended up just starting to enter Greg's slip. Of course, I'm in full panic mode at this point, but with a lot of guidance and tugging Alice and Paul were able to get the boat into the slip. We later watched Greg get into his slip, and he started turning a full 2 slips away. So that gives me a little bit of an idea of how early I can turn, while the inertia will still take the boat into the slip. Yeah, so this one freaked me out enough so I cried, which I'm not proud of. Good thing I'm really stubborn.

But today, we're past all of that, and we went to go change the engine oil. Overall, it went smoothly, following Rhapsody J/30's online instructions. I would change a few things for next time... I would warm the engine up more (more like 10-15 minutes rather than 5). I will get another method for pumping out the oil, because I don't like all the excess tubing full of oil that needs to be managed. And the pump leaked just enough so I got it all over my hands. And it was really, really slow. I will tape down the container and hoses again - I thought this worked well to prevent my spraying oil everywhere or accidentally bumping the container over.

I plan to do this again in a relatively short # of hours of operation, because the oil was just so black, and I'd like to get it more cleaned out.

Other boat maintenence - trying to get the anchor mount adjusted. I need to bungee or otherwise tie up (with my non-existent knot-knowledge) the anchor. And I sanded some of the teak that has peeling varnish - just starting to chip away at this process.

Another Lesson of the Day: With the current coming over the bow, the boat responds to the tiller like you are going forward, even when you are being walked back from the dock. This is why you freak out because the bow isn't doing what it is supposed to be doing when you are in reverse. Because it's not. Think about it.

And that's it for boat stuff for today. THis of course doesn't mention the 1/2 yard of compost I spread over my front yard, or the scarf I finally finished and blocked. More on those later, I guess... And one of these days, I'll get the clay back in here, too.