Friday, March 29

Month: May 2020

Happy Towel Day
Holidays

Happy Towel Day

Towel Day is an annual celebration on the 25th of May, as a tribute to the late author Douglas Adams (1952-2001). On that day, fans around the universe carry a towel in his honour. From Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your he...
DON’T PANiC finally shows off her name
Boat, Solvents

DON’T PANiC finally shows off her name

I finally finished putting the name one the boat. The old vinyl name was a pain to get off at first. Goo Gone does not work on Vinyl adhesive, so forget about tying to use it. A neighbor boat recommended two options, Kleen Strip and Interlux 202. Both did work, but the Interlux worked better. The Kleen Strip worked almost as well, but took more effort to scrub. Interlux cleaned the adhesive off with a bit less effort. I ended up using the Interlux more, but if I had to do it again I would use Kleen Strip, it's a bit less toxic and is dual use, if you have an alcohol stove. Getting the new name on the boat was pretty simple, I could have done without the boats on the ICW making all the waves. That probably doubled the time it took. But in the end I got it done and there is room left ove...
It Broke

And the water pump breaks…

Well I am learning that things do break at the worst possible time on a boat. Last night the water pump decided to quite right in the middle of a shower. It’s leaking and not priming. So, I’m in the boat running around naked covered in soap trying to get a bit more life out of it, no such luck. I end up rising off with cold drinking water and screaming like a girl splashing myself with cold water. By the way, no I do not have curtains on the port lights yet, so I may have been providing entertainment to my neighbors…no one said anything the next day. The broken pump is old and discontinued but there lucky there is a newer version that is an in-place replacement for it, so I won’t need to make any modifications to install it. It ended up being a nice improvement from the older pump. I w...