Damn! Time to go home!

This is an unpublished draft from June 2013


There's a great Jimmy Buffett song titled "Why do we ever go home?".  I'm feeling that one right now!  Sure, in the sun it's "Kill the white-man" hot, but damn it's interesting down here.

Yesterday, we saw a porpoise pair chasing fish right under our dock, an osprey perched on a light pole, and more weird-looking homeless men.  You can always offset the ugliness of those that have come to end of US1 as truly the end of their road, with beautiful people riding bikes and running.  Sometimes the beauty and the weirdness down here are all in the same guy.  For example, the seventy-something year old man running on South Roosevelt in a bright well Speedo and a floppy pink woman's hat drawing approving honks from those passing by.  We're eleven degrees south of home and a million miles away.

The boat is stripped down for hurricane season.  All the sails and canvas are going home with us, the canopy bows are in the van, the cushions from the cabin are going north, all to be re-done.  I've signed up Connor Pope to check the boat weekly and Jay Thienes for final hurricane checks.

Some of the last work done was to verify that I had a bad transducer installed.  Now the economic decision is whether to pull the boat out and replace the thing, a process that costs nearly as much as the part, or just put in a "Thru-the-hull" transducer.

The overheat problem was exacerbated by the lack of a reliable cooling water switch.  The switch was broken off at the screw.  The tachometer sender is bad (wiring and tach itself are good).  I cleaned out the heat exchanger and checked all the hoses.  Changed the thermostat.  The engine still seems to run hotter than I'd like.