Waterford - Wednesday & Thursday

Wednesday July 17, 2013

We were up and ready at 8 AM. Several boats headed for the first opening and we grabbed a vacant space on the 1,000' city dock. These spaces come with 50 amp and water at $5 per day. We plugged in an turned on the AC. Our neighbors turned out to be an Aussie and a Kiwi.

We have decided to stay for two days, as planned. We have a lot to do, but first we headed into town to have a look around and have breakfast. Found a great place - two eggs and toast for $2.00. I picked up our mail and spend an hour or so paying bills and reconciling the bank account. Deidre headed of to the local supermarket and recharged the larder.

Deidre helped me remove the broken ladder from the swim platform and I found a replacement on line and arranged for it to be delivered in Oswego. I am finding it difficult to find charts for Canada so spent some time looking online, with no success.

We invited "our new friends" over for drinks and enjoyed a good natter.

Thursday July 18, 2013

Great day today.

The second test started today so we are tuned into the BBC (on line) when we got up. At 8:00 we walked into town for breakfast with new friends. Two poached eggs, corn beef hash, bottomless coffee and coffee - $4.00

But the reason we stayed an extra day was to get some jobs done.

I rode a bike up to the first lock and purchased a seasons pass, and net "Eric" the lock-master. Deidre and I then changed the oil in both main engines. It is a pretty straightforward task but involves a bit of skill not to spill a drop of oil. Next job was to replace the joker valve on the forward head. That calls for a philosophical discussion.

What travels down hill? (Think about the Pope and bears in the bush)

On terra firma, it is almost universally accepted shit travels down hill. On a boat it travels where it can do the most mischief. The job of the "joker valve" in the sanitation system is to keep it somewhat under control. This is my second joker valve replacement. I had not been looking forward to the task, but we have important visitors in a couple of weeks and it needed to be done.

The toilet came apart easily well. Then Murphy (my uninvited volunteer helper) dropped both retaining screws into the bilge.If I had tried to drop both these irreplaceable items thru the little hole in the floor, it would have taken me 10 minutes of fiddling just to get them to fit. But Murphy had no problem. At that point a "awkward" job became "difficult".

Very nasty old Joker valve

I do not totally blame Murphy 100%. A large part of the responsibility lies with Mr Raritan that built the head ("toilet") system in the first place. I can easily imagine a product design meeting (back in the day) when Mr. Raritan asked the engineer about the task of replacing the joker valve, something like this: "So you have designed this so that the owner has to lie with his chest in the toilet bowl with his head over the back, in an impossibly small space, trying to access a straight machine screw completely hidden behind the outlet pipe, that he can only see in a mirror placed on the floor? Why make it so easy? Why not make it so that the joker valve has to absolutely defy gravity when its installed behind the pump? That seems like a reasonable challenge?" The engineer responds "That's a good idea, and we can make it so that if the owner accidentally drops a piece it falls thru the holes cut for the hose and into the bilge. That only seems reasonable?"

The forward bilge is a busy place. There is the bow thruster motor, the holding tank, the macerator, the "Electro Scan", the salt bucket, the water tank valves and site gauges and a couple of hundred hoses. It took me 2 hours to find the missing pieces.

Once I had the two cruicial screws the rest of the job was straight forward enough. All I can say is that if I am reincarnated, that I do not come back as a wet and dry vacuum.

That evening we all went out to dinner. I had a shower before we left.