The promised hoist, yesterday, has not yet been met. But later today…
It rained 12 hours steady on Sunday from 4 till 4 p.m., then I still managed to get a secondĀ coat of bottom paint on the areas that will be covered by the stanchion when the boat is shifted. I worked all day on the drive shaft to engine alignment. But in the end I got real lucky. I was all resigned to having to lift the engine up from the four bases and re drill the holes. But when I had all the 12 nuts taken off their bolts and used a lever to lift the engine from the front and then let it back down it settled in a perfect alignment. Totally in the opposite direction of where I had expected to have to drill the new holes. Baffled but satisfied. Yesterday I installed the flex coupling. This is going to make the ride a whole lot smoother.
I figure that I’ll be back in the river by the weekend and then I need to wait for the engine controls to arrive from Holland. Probably towards Monday.
The 4th of July almost passed as just another day but one of the guards, when I came “to work”, yelled “happy Patru (4) July Americano!”.
Since I left in 2005 I had the “fourth” that year in Papeete, Tahiti. 2006 in Tawi-Tawi, the most southern Island in the Philippines where I had made an illegal (because I had no visa) stop to get a supply of $1 a fifth rum before my next stops in Moslem Malaysia and Indonesia. 2007 I was back in Tacoma, visiting by air from Virginia, 2009 I was working on the boat in Green Cove Springs, Florida. 2010 in Holland. Who knows where I will be the next couple of years. I do miss the tradition in Tacoma, the activities on the bay front, the fireworks, often watched from the boat at anchor in the bay.