A Retirement Plan, Florida injustice, Panama canal rate hikes

A wall didn't stop this; Wall, what wall?

Floriduh: give me a break!

Panama Canal transit hike; $$$$$$$  

Chasing an over heating engine

Finally got around to taking apart our exhaust system to see if there was any build up that would account for the Mighty Perkins running hot. There was. Not a whole lot, but enough to make some back pressure that would impede the cooling system from working properly.

To clean the hardened soot and carbon is going to take elbow grease, a screwdriver and wire brushes. This will be tedious, sweaty work in this Guatemalan heat. Oh, I also broke the gasket removing the exhaust elbow.

The barbs that the exhaust hose slid on, connecting the elbow to the muffler were corroded, still serviceable but in the next year or two I am going to have to replace both items $$$$.

Getting the get up and go to get up and work is hard. This heat just beats you down. Two minutes in and you’re a pile of sweat, glasses slide off your nose and tools slip in your hands.

After I get this done, I want to remove the injectors, put a few drops of oil down the cylinders and turn the engine over by hand to free up the piston and any frozen rings, after all, the beast has been sitting idle for 9 months now.

On the plus side, I found a program that allows the laptops Linux system to download books to our 2 kindles. With over 4000 books on the laptop it is good, and I mean really good to get some of them on an easy to use platform we both can use. I am reading “The Forever War”.

Funny masculine clips, suspicious, and a great shame

Ha, men caught up with themselves,

Gulf of Tonkin part II, very convenient.

Wow,what a great speech, Jon Stewart 9-11 speech

    I am an incompetent boob when it comes to technology. For example, I just replaced our raw water strainer with a larger one and took photos of it.

     I have no idea how to get the pics from the phone to this laptop so I can then upload them to this blog.

     When I do figure it out, watchout world!

A horrible report, something good under attack and oops

    This is just awful, murdered and missing aboriginal women

     Snopes under fire, Help!

     If you want a job done right, don't blame an intern, Freudian slip?

     Ran out of sealant for the portlightes so we have to order more from Lorena's, a fantastic hardware store at the concrete mall here in Rio.

     Bought a used, but larger capacity sea water strainer for the engine. Its base was damaged so I am going to rivet on an aluminium mounting plate.

     Still helping a boat buddy trying to get his Perkins going. It's fuel. It's always fuel.

     So much work. So much heat. So little stamina in this heat.

 

     

      

A crappy person, Lionfish culling, and what I don't do while at sea anymore:)

What kind of schmuck gets this gig, not professional at all.

Invasive species gets a lickin', Lionfish.

Here is what I an now not doing while at sea; thanks to Micheal Penner for this, Protecteur supplying Algonquin


     When we decided to do this sailing full time I was in my 40's in debt and only had a small, 25 foot boat, our first boat, with no name. We called it a training boat.

     While sailing the Coronado, I jokingly said to my wife we should get a bigger boat and do this permanently. She said that was a perfect plan. Plan? What plan?

     She became the driving force behind the whole thing. Took a decade to become debt free, that was hard, very hard. She found us an affordable blue water cruising boat and we were able to cut the docklines on my 55th birthday!
 She was 46. (Youthful but still my boss!).

     On our living room wall we put up a huge whiteboard some thing like the size of a sheet of plywood.

     There was no rules for what went on the board; destinations, projects, courses and things we wanted. You get the idea, it was a brainstorming conference which worked out quite well. Things started out quite organized but as with all things sailing, it literally started going askew. Thing wrote down in a rush went on at an angle etc. We never erased a thing when it was written even though we used dry erase markers.

     We didn't erase anything because we felt if it was important enough to put it on the board in the first place, it should remain even if we discarded the idea later, who knows, it might become favourable again!

     We only put four destinations on it;
-Turkey
-Rio Dulce, Guatemala for hurricane season
-Machu Picchu, in Peru, Machu-Picchu.
-Angkor Wat, in Cambodia, Angkor Wat

    We are in Rio now these past 8 months. Work is slow as I get two small pensions we parse out the money sparingly. Wouldn't have it any other way. At 57 I am retired and doing what we planned!!! 

    

Insecurity at its most highest, a 'WTF?' article, and a capsized ferry

Wow, as a sailor from a different Navy, I can only imagine the resentment and lowered moral brewing here, how to hide a warship from a Leader who doesn't like its name department. 

Why, just why, Eyeball tattoos.

A tragedy in Congo, Capsized ferry.

Having trouble getting decent weather to allow me to remove more portlights so we can seal the better. Nothing goes as planned on a sail boat. 

An expensive loss, and an unusual video and a new patch

I moan and cry when I lose a tool over the side. I can't imagine this, superyacht falls off a ship. Also, one has only the need to see this once in a lifetime for a sense of fulfilment, wolverine carrying a goats head. This should be a 'must have' on serious cruising boats; easy patch!

Old laptop, some work

Old picture of 'No Gridlock" when we just bought her. Nothing to do with this post at all.

The heat has abated somewhat with severe nightly rainstorms here in Guatemala...no new leaks but my oh my the old ones are just torrents.

So we started rebedding our port-lights, (windows), starting with the two small ones because I only had a small tube of sealant handy. The starboard one came off easy with nary a hint of sealant to be seen. Smugness set in. Do another the following day.

The following day; removed bolts, glass won't budge. 3M 5200, or God Glue, was used as a sealant. An hour job stretched into over 3 hours. Got the glass off but it took major elbow grease to remove what was left of the old sealant.

Four large port-lights remain but have to wait for pensions to be deposited to buy larger tubes of sealant.

Dinghy: Motor transom clamps were seized on so I had to saw them off. Drilled out the bolt remains then found out I had no metric taps to clean the threads. (10mm). Dinghy has new leaks plus I grounded it over a fire anthill. Ask me how I found that out. Go ahead, ask me:(

Don't ever buy a RIB, (rigid Inflatable Boat), sure, they are not tippy but they are not hardy in the least. Got plans to build a hard, nesting dinghy.

Tried splicing rope but it has been so long I had a complete mind wipe. Re-reading Brian Toss' rigging book again.

Laptops are dropping like flies. Acer, Abus not reliable. Now on the old, venerable Panasonic Toughbook with Linux and Ubuntu loaded. Slow, but weather proof.