hot weather

I have been working on putting a new vhf radio on the boat. A pretty simple task really but I always manage to make it more difficult than it really is. I like to solder wires together and really dislike butt splices. I have a butane powered soldering iron and it fails to light well during hot weather. It may have something to do with its age – about 10 years. Anyway, I got it on the air tonight. I bought it for the feature of a wireless microphone. Almost all the functions can be performed via this wireless mic. Pretty cool for a boat. However, it is a 2.4 GHz freq and it might cause a problem with other wireless gear.

One last thing remains – to install the NMEA in & out from the gps. This gives the lat/lon to the radio and transmits position if a emergency is declared. It is called a DSC radio. I have a licensed HF radio on board and it has an MMSI code so I entered it into the radio. Now the world will know if I have any issues. The output goes to the gps and will show position of others in distress.

Time for bed. Night.

GR to PL

I was up a little early this AM & ate breakfast as usual on the boat. Still asleep, I took the wrong pills but did not feel any ill effects. The aircon was off at work today and it got pretty stuffy and just a little stinky on my floor. It did not take much encouragement to hit the road at 1600 for the trip back to PL. When I arrived home Jess was there and we had a nice chat. On the way thru town I picked up KFC value meal and ate it at home. After dinner, I attacked the dishes that SAM has learned to leave for me on Th night. After that I started the clothes and filled the boat water bottles.

I came home to a little message that something was wrong with the self-propelled push mower. I could not believe my eyes. The top plastic cover was laying there but captivated by the recoil starter and I pulled the cord and nothing – no compression. From the description that it was running faster than normal and then it just quit running, I expected to find a blown engine. This was not the case. A little further investigation came up with the observation that there was no spark plug in the normal spot. Just a gapping hole was there and the plug was very tightly wedged under the cylinder head and the mower deck cover. The cover was there with a perfect hole shaped just like a spark plug that had been melted in the plastic.

I fixed all that and started the mower. It was vibrating very badly. I found the blade was bent pretty bad – I’ll have to get a new blade tomorrow. After all this I am beginning to think I was not told the whole story. What do you think?

Sailing Season

I am again living on the boat and witing the Inspiration Blog Line. Since I am a lousy typer everything goes slow and I just run out of time to write. You can pick up that blog at youngsunowners.org. Look for Inspirations’s blog on the home page.

I go back to Indiana each week for varing times but the boat is occupying most of my time. I am loving it too. Maybe by the end of the season I will be glad to exit but for now life is good.