Thursday, 4 August 2016 - Wow! Today was a wreck, period. Nothing seem to go right. I started off the day about 8:30 AM planning to change the sacrificial zinc on my outboard motor, then go buy groceries. I thought I could take the outboard off the transom of the dinghy, then work on it with it laying in the bottom of the boat. Shouldn't take long, I thought. I used the outboard davit that is mounted on the rail of Island Time to get the motor off the transom and laid down, removed the trim tabs that are mounted on the engine. There's one simple, single bolt that holds the sacrificial zinc in place near the bottom of the outboard. That's where the trouble started. When I attempted to remove it with a socket wrench, the 3/16th inch stainless steel bolt broke off about a half inch down in the hole.
                  I suddenly realized that this was not going to be a quick replacement; nor was it going to be a job I could do while bobbing up and down in the dinghy. I needed to get the engine out of the dinghy and into the cockpit of the boat. I used the outboard davit and one of the dinghy davits to raise the outboard motor onto the deck of the boat, then carried it carefully to the cockpit. A work bench sure would have come in handy. I have lots of tools, but none of them seemed up to the job at hand. I have two types of "easy-outs", but for them to be implemented, you have to drill a hole down the center of the broken bolt. Easier said than done! I removed the propeller to get it out of the way, but the propeller shaft was still in the way, so I used a right angle attachment for the drill motor. That barely let me get a drill bit in there. I center punched the bolt, then decided that I'd use an eighth inch, left handed drill bit to drill it out, thinking that, just maybe, the left handed bit might back the bolt out itself. I drilled and drilled, but only barely made a dent in the stainless steel bolt shaft. Stainless steel is hard and hard to drill, but the left handed bit is brand new. It should have made some progress, but it sure seemed dull. I tried a 3/16th inch, right handed bit and it started making progress, so I drilled in about a half inch, then switched back to the 1/8th inch left handed bit. Since it had a pilot hole, it now did fine, but the hole wasn't large enough to insert an easy-out. Actually, I tried a small one, but was afraid I'd break it off it the hole, so I tried another, larger bit. But I couldn't. The bit was too long to insert in the hole even with the right angle adapter on the drill motor. Like I say, I have lots of tools, but all my "normal" bits large enough in diameter were short enough to fit...and this is why I keep old, broken bits. I resharpen them. I dug out my box of broken and resharpened bits, found one that would work and put it in the drill chuck. Everything seemed to be working...then the bit broke off. This time it broke outside the hole, in fact, far enough outside the hole that I could put the chuck back on it, put the drill motor in reverse, and extract it...I thought. I broke off about 3/8 of an inch down in the hole. Now I have a broken, hardened steel bit stuck in a broken, stainless steel bolt in a very hard to access part of my outboard.
                  I decided, after unsuccessfully trying for about an hour and a half to find a Yamaha service manual that would show me how to disassemble the lower unit of the outboard to get the propeller shaft out of the way, to make a circular saw that I could drill a hole around the broken bit and bolt and remove the surrounding zinc anode. Perhaps this would allow me to grip the whole thing and twist it off with vise grips. I found a piece of 1/2" stainless steel tubing, got out the Dremel Tools and cut teeth in the end of the tubing. I thought I had it all figured out...until I realized that my drill motor will handle the 1/2" tubing in its chuck, but the right angle adapter won't...and I can't use the drill motor without the adapter because the prop shaft is in the way. Argh!
                  I quit working on it at half past 8 in the evening to have dinner and type this. It's now 10:30 and I'm too tired to go on. I'm going to sleep on it. Perhaps I'll have an epiphanic dream and wake up with the solution to my conundrum in the morning. I'm beat. Good night.

Friday, 5 August - Another not too productive day for me. I didn't get the Yamaha outboard fixed and put back together, however, with the help of Gary Powers, who was a good friend of my parents when they were sailing, and who has helped me immensely, I now have a simple solution. Quit trying to get the broken bit and bolt out and simply bolt a new zinc onto the lower unit in another location. I'll probably bolt one one on each side of the lowest fin that protects the propeller from damage when grounding. As Gary pointed out, it will disturb the flow of water past the lower blades of the prop, but, heck, this isn't a racing machine, it's a dinghy. Of course, with this 15hp Yamaha, it's a fast dinghy...but I'll sacrifice a little speed in order to get to use it again soon. Now all I have to do is find suitable zincs I can bolt on. One hole drilled through the bottom fin and I'm back in business.
                  The main thing I did today was put the spare Evinrude outboard on the dinghy, then go to the local hardware store in search of zincs. They'd never heard of such an item, even though they have a marine isle in the store. I also checked the post office for an envelope I'm expecting. No luck there, either. That done, there was no need to go to the bank, as the envelope I was hoping for was to be a check from the insurance company for reimbursement for some of the money I had to pay to cover extra work done. The insurance company said they'd get the check out within a couple of days, and that was last week.
                  Since I need not go to the bank, I thought I might have time to catch the bus over to the mainland to go to the marine hardware store. I waited for the bus for a while, but gave up and headed down the street, then the bus came around the corner. I raced the bus back to the corner on my bike, stopped, looked around and saw that they already had two bikes on the rack. Two is all it holds. Oh well. Back to the boat to put tools away and wait to see if Steve Monaghan is going to make it back to his boat this weekend.
                  He's back and, apparently, so is Steve Luta. I'm waiting to hear from one or both of them to go out to dinner (and probably a libation or two.)
                  I must say, my wind generator tail extension project so far seems to be a total success. I haven't seen it once since I installed it, not pointing directly into the wind, and as a result, the blades are spinning a significant amount more. Not faster, but a much greater percentage of the time.

Saturday, 6 August - I joined Steve Monaghan for breakfast on his boat around 10am, but we both had things to do, so I returned to my boat and put the Yamaha outboard back together. I still need to get a couple of sacrificial zincs for it, so I'll use the Evinrude until I can get to a marine store to buy some. In the meantime, the outboard is sitting in the cockpit where I can work on it easier, but it's very much in the way. Too heavy and bulky to move around a lot. I also re-installed the deck awning and did some reading in the hammock.

Sunday, 7 August - I really need to get the Yamaha outboard out of the cockpit, but don't want to move it till I'm finished with it, so I headed over to the mainland with my bicycle on the bus. I got the zincs I needed at Marine Trading Post, then headed over to Radio Shack looking for a photoelectric switch that I can install to turn my masthead light on at dusk and off again at dawn. They didn't have one. In fact, they really don't have much do-it-your-self electronics anymore except computer and stereo connectors. They seem to be more of a phone store these days. On the way back, I stopped at K-Mart and an ACE hardware store where I bought a drain strainer. The drains in the boat for the sinks and showers are such that anything that goes down them is basically gone forever, so I think strainers are definitely in order. Next, I had lunch at MacDonald's. My next stop was at the Walmart next to the bus stop where I boarded the bus to come back to the island. I went in and bought a few groceries there, then over to the bus and back to the boat.
                  Later, I decided to go see if I could borrow Steve Monaghan's key to the boater's lounge at the marina and watch some of the Olympics. He was actually headed in the same direction as I got there, so he let me in, however, his intention was to get his clothes out of the driers and head home before work tomorrow.

Monday. 8 August - Today I started working on finishing the outboard motor with not much left to do. The main thing was to drill one hole and tap it, then clap the zinc on and bolt it on. The bolt needed to be cut off and I could see that would take awhile holding it by hand and cutting it with a hacksaw, so I finally decided now was the time to dig the vise out of the second level cockpit lazerette and use it. Cutting it by holding it by hand would have taken about 20 minutes or so, but, after spending about an hour digging the vise out and mounting it on a special board I have for that purpose, cutting the bolt only took about 2 minutes. A real time saver, eh? Well, in the long run it will be. I then spent a couple of hours rearranging things in the lazarette so that the vise, which is totally assembled and ready to use, is now in the top level and much more accessible, so I'll use it more often. It's half past 5, so I think I'll take a shower and go to Bonita Bills for dinner and musical entertainment. They close at 9pm, so I'll probably go back over to the marina and watch some more of the Olympics later. It's been raining lightly all day, so I may get a bit wet.

Tuesday, 9 August - I managed to avoid the rain last night...and also won a bright yellow bandana for knowing who was known during the late '60s and '70s as lead singer of a group using his high falsetto voice - Frankie Valli of the Four Seasons,and the Wonder Who. I was having a tough night getting that bandana. I had known the answer to several of the questions, but was too slow coming up with it. That, and the fact that I couldn't even think of one that I really should have gotten...which really big solo songwriter/artist got his start as a singer in the Chad Mitchel Trio? That's one that I really should have remembered. He was one of my favorite singers even before I realized that he graduated from my old high school in Ft. Worth - John Deutschendorf, also known as John Denver. I felt bad about not getting that one, especially because I really did know it, but couldn't move it into the right part of my brain to get it out.
                  This morning I went over in my dinghy to the Topps grocery store and bought groceries that I hadn't been able to carry the other day on my bicycle.
                  I'd been thinking about the zincs on the outboard motor that I'd installed and worried about them not being tight enough so I devised a way to tighten them with a spanner wrench that I had purchased about 30 years ago to do repair work on my photographic lenses. This is why I brought so many tools. Who'd have ever guessed I'd be tightening sacrificial zincs on an outboard motor with a lens spanner wrench. If I'd gotten rid of all my stuff like people told me too, I couldn't have done that repair as easily.

Wednesday, 10 August - Most of today was spent making a new lifting harness for the Yamaha outboard motor, getting it out of the cockpit, on the deck, down to the swim platform using one of the davits for the dinghy and the new harness, then lifting it back up on the outside of the railing on the other side of the boat with the outboard motor davit. Actually, making the harness took up most of the time. The sun had eaten up the old one made of strapping. I needed to make it so that it would be easy to remove and put back on. The easy way would have been to simply take a piece of rope and tie it all up. The problems with that are that if the line breaks anywhere, everything loosens and the engine drops into the ocean, and to keep that from happening, you have to make a cobweb out of it, which is hard to remove and replace. I came up with a design that uses a heavy line encircling the bottom of the shaft and a brass ring at the top of the engine that has four lines that drop down, front, back and both sides, to the lower ring and back up and can be quickly tied and untied if I need to remove the harness to work on the engine. By having each line separate, each is adjustable and if any one were to break, the engine still can't fall in the water. This was another instance of having saved the right item for long enough to come in handy again. The solid brass ring that I used at the top is off of a pair of Dingo boots I bought about 35 years ago. I have three more waiting to be repurposed or recycled. Each boot had a pair of the rings holding leather straps on. I knew I'd find a use for them someday.
                  Okay, I'm going to get this out early today, to everybody, not just myself.