New Captain onboard

Two of them actually yesterday. 

When we were in Seattle to pick up Gray Hawk we had an abortive attempt to deal with Captain Dan and ended up hiring Captain Linda to give us some boat training.  That helped Marilyn a lot with line handling – it may have helped me some with boat handling although I can’t say I remember it doing much.  I do remember one conversation with Chuck once we got to Anacortes where it was like a light came on for me.  He was a trainer for Alaskan Airlines and he’s GOOD.  Way past good.  But we’re not talking about him today.

Yesterday Captain Linda arrived just before 9:00.  We had the boat running and the lines rigged for departure.  I took the boat away from the dock with Marilyn handling the lines, we went out in the fairway, turned around and came back to the dock.  That was all so that Linda could see how we normally like to dock.  Then I went and hid out in the bedroom while Marilyn got her lesson.  When we got to the part where she needed a line handler I returned but the goal was to keep me from interfering with the instructing/learning process.  We must have succeeded because SWMBO docked the boat several times and true to her name, I obeyed her orders handling the lines.

By 1:00 Marilyn was pretty well played out.  Linda went home, we had something to eat and then we took off on a Seattle shopping trip in George’s truck.  George is the previous owner of Gray Hawk.  When we arrived here at Shilshole Marina we went and banged on the hull of his new boat, Slo Dance.  Almost the first words out of his mouth when we got talking to him were “you can use my truck while you’re here”.  He’s got an old Ford set up like a contractor’s truck with roof racks that he uses for his various projects.  Its no virgin but beggars can’t be choosers so we were pretty grateful for the offer and yesterday we used it for a run to Fisheries Supply, Tacoma Screw, 2nd Wave and Albertsons with a few other stops thrown in along the way.  Its great being here in Seattle because the marine service industry is so well developed.  I’ve been looking for bronze bolts and screws for close to a month now – no problem – go to Tacoma Screw.  We needed a seacock for the genset wet exhaust and some bronze fittings to install that – no problem – go to Fisheries.  Of course we stopped at 2nd Wave which is a used equipment consignment store and I got lucky on the seacock that would have cost me over $100 at Fisheries – only $13 at 2nd Wave.

When we got home we tackled the head – again.  “Head” is the boating word for crapper and we have been having crapper issues for a couple of weeks now.  Not to get too graphic but the issue is that the stuff isn’t issuing out of the crappers properly.  Both of them quit at once for slightly different reasons so I bought a ton of parts and a complete pump assembly.  I replaced one pump assembly, rebuilt the one I removed, used it to replace the pump on the 2nd head and now I will rebuild that pump so that we have a spare onboard.  Once we got through all that and all the attendant mess the head in the master stateroom quit working again.  That time it was the line from the pump to the holding tank that had plugged up solid so when we got here I went with George to Lowes and returned with a 25 foot plumber’s snake.  No sooner had we cleared that line than the line from the pump to the 3-way valve plugged up.  I think what had happened is the impeller on the pump was pretty well gone so there wasn’t much flow to the water coming off the impeller.  That allowed “stuff” to build up in the lines and when I put on the new pump it knocked everything loose and tried to ram it all at once through congested lines which more or less lead to a shit coronary.  At least that’s what I’m hoping because if the new normal is fixing crappers every week we’ll go back to living in a bus.