As John Wayne said (at least I think he said it.. “ Life is hard, and its harder when you are stupid!”

OK all was well with my repaired toilet, all was working perfectly, no leaks, until I went to the pump-out station to pump it clean. I was out on the dock working the vacuum at the pump-out deck fitting when I heard this loud pop from inside the boat. Not sure what it was from. I went below to add a little fresh water to the tank to rinse it and as I poured it in I noticed it running right out of the bottom of the tank onto the floor at my feet. I grabbed a towel and contained the hazardous waste spill from spreading through out the boat but almost cried as I realized what had happened. These toilets have an air vent that is hosed to the outside and this one had a little valve that I had failed to notice was closed tight! So as I was working the vacuum to clean out the tank, there was no way for air to come in and replace what was being sucked out so the only option was for the tank to implode on itself, destroying the carefully completed repair job I had just done. In fact my repair job was SO good that this time instead of the caulking just coming loose, the tank itself actually tore in half, destroying it beyond repair. Boy when I do it I do it good!

So this was about 9 AM, and in an hour my friend Diana was flying in to spend a few days out here. Perfect timing eh? I got the mess cleaned up, ran to the airport to pick her up, and on the way back we stopped at Wal-Mart and picked up a port potty. That will do until I can get a new tank to replace the old one. ARGH!!!!

On the bight side, I finally completed another project, a cute little drop-leaf table attached to the side of the galley stove so I now have a place to set stuff down on! I designed it and made it all myself and it turned out so cool! I have been planning this since almost day One on the boat when I cooked my first meal here and there was no place to set anything down on. I actually had picked up a really nice piece of birch plywood and kept it in my truck since almost day 2, but have not got around to making the actual table until now. It really makes meal preparation much more convenient.

So this weekend is Buccaneer Days out at Catalina island. Thousands of people boat out there from all over So Cal and play pirate for the weekend. It sounds like a really wild time, not so much my style anymore, I am actually a bit of a quiet fellow these days, but we thought we would at least pass by and see what was going on anyway. We were going to head out there in a flotilla with my friend Mike and his boat. The winds are really light and inconsistent here this week so we planned to get up early and just motor across while the seas were calm. It would take about 8 hours or so. My engine has been running just fine for weeks, ever since I rebuilt the carburetor. Just this morning though it was hard to start and when it did catch, it was running rough. I took the lid off and saw sparks jumping across from the spark plug wire, past the spark plug, directly to the engine block.. Only running on one cylinder. Not so good for efficient operation. I took the wires off, cleaned it all up good, cleaned and re-gapped the spark plug, no change. If this was a car I would replace the spark plug wires as a part of regular maintenance, but on this engine the wires are molded into one piece into the magneto coil, so I had to find one of those and replace the whole unit. There is no Nissan marine dealer anywhere around here that would carry that sort of thing, but I made a few calls and found a used outboard engine guy that had one on an old engine out in his “bone yard” so we ran over there, picked up, and I put it on and had the engine running like a top by about 10:30.

Oh yeah, another entry under the “life is hard when you are stupid” category. While I was looking for the used engine guy, I was going to fire up my internet to do a search. I have this little Tmobile wireless device that plugs into the side of your computer and you can get internet on it. However, down here in Dana below the bluff, I get no signal down in my cabin , so for all this time I have been attaching the device to an extension cord , I pass it out the window, and run it up the mast on a halyard. and get good signal! Cool eh? Well this time when I passed it out the window it dropped right into the water. Never once in the hundreds of times that I have done this has that ever happened until today. ARGH!!!! Stupid STUPID!!! So I had to run up the Tmobile store to get another one and they are not cheap. Dang. anyway, I am back on line now..

So I mentioned that my friend Diana has flown in from Salt Lake to sail here with me for a few days, and we had planned to go out to Catalina. After all the toilet and engine and Tmobile delays, Mike was long gone to Catalina and we had no chance of getting over there in the daylight that was left so we decided to head on up the coast to Newport and maybe head to Catalina the next morning. There was still not much wind so we just motored up and anchored here in Newport. We were hearing that the buccaneers days was just a total crowded zoo over there at Catalina and we probably would not even be able to find a safe place to anchor, and with such calm winds it would just end up being an 8 hour motor slog over and back again, none of which sounded very pleasant, so we decided not to bother heading out to Catalina and we are just hanging out in Newport for a few days. It is a beautiful place, with many interesting and beautiful boats going by to watch. Yesterday there was a series of small sailboat boat races here in the harbor that passed right by us. There were many dozen of boats involved, some very young kids in very small boats zipping around, they were so fun to watch and some were really good sailors! Some were over there practicing swamping recovery exercises which was fun to watch. There was also an adult race of a few dozen small boats and they ran about 5 race heats that ran right passed our boat so we saw them all pass by here again and again, first one way and then the other. We had fun bantering with them as they sailed closely past. (sometime s bit too close! I was afraid a few of them would clip us with their boom as they zoomed by, by it didn’t happen. All Ok.

It has been a bit overcast and it rained a bit yesterday, but is still warm and pretty. Today we may kayak around the bay, and if the wind picks up maybe go sailing later, but we are enjoying just bumming around being lazy.

Diana is a good friend from Salt Lake. She has a sailboat similar to my Sirocco and we would trade off going sailing in her boat or mine. She was sailing with me there in Utah when I experienced my first knockdown a few months ago and she is a really good sport when stuff goes wrong. Nothing much seems to phase her and she just keeps smiling and being a fun companion. It has been good to have her here this week. (especially while everything has been going wrong!) I am sure all my friends would be just as good natured in adversity, but you never know!

Diana is a really good cook, and helped me provision the boat with some really good simple foods that I would not usually prepare for myself. We are having really nice salads and we grilled some fish and steaks. She really gave me a bit of grief about my bohemian cheese sandwiches with butter and mustard, but I am holding firm that they are edible and actually pretty tasty. (But I admit I may have to upgrade the rest of my diet a bit….