Thursday, 13 October 2016 - I really only had one semi-important thing I needed to do today and that was to go to the post office and pick up the dead-man switch for my Evinrude outboard motor that I ordered Monday. It turns out that the supplier is close and the UPS tracking said it was delivered on Tuesday at 12:45pm. I knew the post office wouldn't sort the same day and I wasn't in a hurry, so I waited until today to get it. I called the post office four times, but no one would pick up the phone. Ok, it's been delivered, so it must be there, I'll just go over anyway. I arrived at 3:30pm. They don't have it, I was told. We've been this route before. Last time I checked back over and over until they told me my package had already been picked up. No, it couldn't have been picked up. I'm the only one that knows about it. Two weeks later they finally found it about 5 feet from where it was supposed to be. I had a similar situation at Marco Island and it took about 2 hours to find my package that time. I had good reason to believe the problem was with the post office, but it turns out that this time, indeed, it was UPS's fault, not the USPS. UPS apparently delivered it to someone's garage instead of General Delivery at the Post Office, so I have no idea if I'll get it at all. They wanted to know my physical address. I said I don't have one, I live on a boat. It was supposed to be delivered to General Delivery at the Post Office. Oh, we can't do that. We need your address. Yes, you can and no you don't. Just deliver it to the Post Office. I'll pick it up there. I've done this before. UPS says their investigation may take 8 to 10 days. I guess I won't be installing it this weekend as I had planned.

Friday, 14 October - Another frustrating day. I prepared to go wash clothes and discovered that the large container of Tide detergent I bought recently has a hole in it and has been leaking into the compartment it was stored in. That took about an hour to clean up, but, at least that area is VERY clean now.
                  While at the marina, I intended to quickly update my electronics charts on Navionics, but couldn't get it to work. It kept telling me my subscription had expired, which it hasn't. I think I had trouble back it July when I tried to do this last time, too. Well, after an hour and a half on the phone with their tech support, I finally got part of it done.

Saturday, 15 October - I connected to the internet online this morning to finish my downloads, however, even with my Ubiquity Bullet signal booster, the download speed is off and on and atrociously slow. Right now, it must have lost the signal because it was telling me I had about 2 1/2 hours, but now is saying over 24 hours. I hope it reconnects, I don't want to start over. Ok, I didn't have to restart, it finally finished. I have more to do, but I'll try again another day. While I was waiting for that to finish, I started cleaning the walls, woodwork, ceiling, and everything else in the saloon. When the download finished, I moved on to the forward companionway, head, shower stall, and part of the forward stateroom. Everything, in spite of the fact that I try to keep air flowing through the boat as much as possible, is still developing a light layer of mold. I cleaned it all and wiped it down with a cloth sprayed with a concoction who's recipe Gary Powers had given me to retard the mildew...AGAIN! It certainly works, I can tell by the spots I miss, but it doesn't work forever.
                  Next, I installed the memory card with the latest version of my charts into my chart plotter to see if I could see any differences. I could. The system booted and rebooted and rebooted and rebooted... I could see that my GPS data was missing, so I thought that might be the problem, so I spent a couple of hours troubleshooting that to no avail. Actually, I found a loose wire and thought that might have been the, or part of the problem, but that turned out to be a wire to the wind sensor at the top of the mast. It turned out that, apparently, one of the card slots on the chart display is not functioning, but there's something else wrong, too, that is making the plotter reboot over and over again. The odd thing is that it doesn't do it every time, but I can't figure out why sometimes and sometimes not.

Sunday, 16 October - I fooled with the chart plotter again almost all day and spent a lot of time trying to download the latest version of the software and the instructions for the plotter, but, again, to no avail. I even tried running the Ubiquiti Bullet Booster up the mast about 25 feet, but that didn't help either. In fact, I got lucky on that, however. I tied a cord to the top of the booster and tied that to an extra halyard that runs to the mast top, then pulled it up. When I realized that it wasn't working any better, I tried to pull it down. Unfortunately, the halyard, which is 1/2" rope, is much heavier than the Bullet and its cable, so it didn't want to come down. I was afraid to pull it too hard because if the cable connector in the bottom of the bullet, which is merely a Cat-5 ethernet connector, were to come loose, the whole thing would have been pulled to the top of the mast by the weight of the halyard and the only way to have gotten it down would have been to go to the top of the mast and retrieve it. Luckily, by flipping the halyard to take a little weight off of it many, many times, I was able to lower the Bullet about a half inch to an inch at a time until the weight started to equalize as more halyard passed through the top of the mast to the side of the Bullet, then it started coming a little faster. It still took about 30 minutes and both of my arms were very tired. Next time I hope I remember my mistake and tie the ends of the halyard together so that as the Bullet goes up, the weight on one side of the sheave doesn't get significantly greater, and in fact, the Bullet will get heavier as I pull it up, so it will, in all likelihood, drop by its own weight when I'm ready to retrieve it. Nah, Murphy will surely raise his ugly head somehow.

Monday, 17 October - I went over to Moss Marina and spent about 4 hours downloading updates to my chart plotter and adding to the charts than I had downloaded two days ago. Even at the marina, the connection was so poor that I'd get about halfway through a 950mb download, then the connection would be lost and I had to start over again. Luckily, there was only one file that large and the charts could be done a little at a time. After completing that, I got in the dinghy and went to the grocery store. I arrived back at the boat, unloaded groceries and put them away, then headed over to Bonita Bill's for dinner, music, and the trivia contest. After two or three weeks without winning a bandana, tonight I finally did. I knew which Woodstock singer had a hit with the song "Brand New Key" - Melanie.

Tuesday, 18 October - Now that I have the newest version of the software downloaded for the chart plotter, I loaded it into the plotter today. I was very careful to do so exactly as the instructions say to since they say, "This firmware update process is done at your own risk. Before initiating the update process be sure to backup and make copies of all important files. If the firmware process is interrupted your product may not function properly, therefore do not interrupt the process and ensure the unit is on a reliable power supply. Damage caused by incomplete upgrades will not be covered by Raymarine warranty." Just a little scary.
                  I think loading the operating system went Ok, and when I put the card in with the charts on it, everything looked great. It also has some new features like crowd sourced reviews of marinas, restaurants, etc. The feature that has me excited is the sonar charts that are uploaded from boater's fish-finder sonar logs that are in one foot increments and show up on the charts in shallow water like the elevation rings on a topographical map. This should be great! However, when I tried to zoom in to see more detail, the system went haywire and I had to reboot, so something's still wrong. This is getting frustrating.
                  I called Navionics, the maker of the chart software, and when I told the support lady what was happening, she said they'd send me a new memory card with the program already installed. Great, but it won't arrive for about another week or more.
                  I decided to go to the library, which I thought might have faster download speeds, and try downloading the software again. The library's WiFi is MUCH faster. I had it downloaded in 30 minutes instead of the hours that it took me at the marina. All in vain, however. I returned to the boat, installed the card, and, it crashed the system.

Wednesday, 19 October - This morning, I started the day off by recharging batteries with the Honda generator, and while that was going on, I vacuumed the cabins. When the batteries were charged sufficiently, I let the engine cool while I dug out some 10w30 oil to change the oil in the generator. The generator is easy to start and very dependable so far, however, its oil drain system is designed such that it's almost impossible to drain the oil without spilling a lot of it, which I did. I'll have to jury rig something to cure that problem before I change the oil again. As I was digging the oil out of the port lazerette, I realized I might as well check the acid level in the starter battery, since getting to the oil uncovers the battery. It needs a little water, but I don't have any distilled water onboard. I know I did, but I guess I needed the jug for something else. I'll have to get some tomorrow on the way back from the post office where I hope to get my Evinrude motor parts.

Next week will be better, I'm sure. On the bright side, my long-time friend Charles Broom called and is going to come down to visit me and do some sailing here at the beginning of next month and another sailor and his wife Clive and Kathy Sharpe will be doing the snowbird migration from Canada and probably be here in their boat, which is on the hard (on land in a boatyard) just north of here, about the time Charlie leaves.

            Until next time.
                        "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!" - Hunter S. Thompson

                                          Rick