My friend Chriss just jetted off today after a week here. We had a great time this last week in San Diego as classic tourists. Chriss was a great sport hanging out reading her book as I had to handle a recurrence of my engine problem from 2 weeks ago. After replacing that magneto, The engine again started running rough and when I took the cover off I could again see sparks jumping across the spark plug which made the second cylinder go numb. I tried a number of things, replacing the magneto again (again from the motor bone yard. It turns out Nissan doesn’t make these parts new anymore so I am left dealing with used parts…), swapped spark plugs from one cylinder to the other, to no solution. I finally tried another brand of spark plug which seems to have solved it! NGK bad, Champion good! Hmmm. Still not sure it is solved but it doesn’t seem to be doing it anymore.

We had a bit of excitement the other night out at anchor just outside Dana. Anchoring is always a bit of a crap shoot: you lay out the anchor, run the motor in reverse hard to set it good, and cross your fingers. You can’t visually see if the anchor is really set well, or whether it will stay that way all night. Some boaters actually don scuba gear and dive down to look to see if it is well set. I have anchored out there dozens of times and have always held well. This night we set the anchor as always, I felt satisfied, and we went to sleep, but about 3:00 I woke up, looked out, and saw us quickly drifting towards our downwind neighbor, the Bruyere! We got the engine going, pulled in the anchor, and circled around to reset it. As I looked it over, it turned out that there was a big loop of my anchor chain that was wrapped around the anchor. The wind had shifted during the night, causing our boat to circle around the anchor and caused a loop of chain to wrap around the anchor and pull it free, rather than pulling in a straight line like it usually does. BIG lesson learned: Even if the anchor is well set at first, there is no guarantee it will stay well set all night! From now on I need to set an “anchor watch” and wake up every hour to check and make sure all is well. I guess boating will be like being a new mother with a nursing baby.

Today I completed another long time lingering project. I dug down in the cockpit locker and removed the old gas tank and exhaust system left over from the old inboard engine! I am trying to close out my little storage unit and so storage space on the boat becomes more important and valuable, and this junk took a lot of room on the boat. The storage unit is $70 per month and removing these un-needed pieces of junk allows me to store more good stuff on board the boat. Money in the bank! (and the used boat gear store may even give me some cash for it! I will find out tomorrow.

The marina here has a little laundo-mat that takes quarters. I always toss my spare quarters in my laundry bag for just this purpose. Tonight after wallowing down in the greasy bilge getting that old fuel tank out I really needed to do laundry, and found myself one quarter shy of a load. (I wish I had a quarter for every time people say that about me lately !) I was just getting into my truck to go to a store and buy something so I could get some change and I happened to glance down in the center console: A mother lode of quarters! I could have swore that I had already cleaned them all out long ago but there they were: dozens of quarters sparkling there in the deep recesses of the arm rest. Hurray! I could do my laundry and settle in and cook dinner without having to run to a store! I enjoy simple bliss.