Day 69 in Ft. Pierce, FL

It is going to sound like we took the day off, but instead, it was a day of maintenance, etc.

I got the "esay job while the Admiral tackled cleaning, straightening up and putting away weeks worth of "stuff" that seems to accumulate. Our impression of many people who live aboard on a full time basis is that they never leave the dock largely because their boats get too "cluttered".  Well, in one sense we are live aboards, but we are also travelling most of the time. Thus, the boat needs to be "neat" or one well placed wave can create real havoc... Meanwhile, I spent three hours changing the oil and oil filters on the main diesel engines. You can see the six 1-gallon containers of oil at the top of the picture, as each engine takes 3 gallons of oil. You can also (barely) see an orange 5-gallon pail with a black lid at the bottom of the picture. There is a pump on the lid that is connected via hose to a slip connector on the white fiberglass covered (stringer) low rail on the right side. This fitting is connected to a hose that comes from the bottom of the oil pan on each engine. This would be a slick job if it were not necessary to run the engine to "stir up" the sludge in the bottom of the oil pan. This means that it gets hot in the engine room (Oh. poor me.... ha ha). Once the oil is pumped out and into the 5-gallon pail, it is a simple matter to change the filter and put in 3 gallons of new oil. Then it is simply a matter of reversing the 12 volt DC pump for pumping the oil into the now empty white plastic gallon oil containers.  It really is a pretty slick system, but of course, stray drops of oil seem to end up all around (and on the operator). It was also time to clean up the hull under the engines to get off old oil spills (and leaks along with assorted flakes of rust, dirt, etc.). In the engine compartment of your car, there is no floor. So, all of the "mess" falls out on the highway or if you are unlucky, forms those lovely oil spots on the garage floor. Fortunately, in our case the boat has a "floor" under the engine - it's called the hull...

    We ended the afternoon with about a half hour of "face time" talking to the grandkids on the i-pads. We mainly talked to Will and Sarah, but 15 month old Katie kept proudly showing off how well she now walks as she cruised through the fore and background with a very big smile on her face.  At 5:30 pm we met up with Tom and Nancy in the Tiki Bar-Restaurant for dinner. Terry and Nancy were work colleagues during Terry's time at TAMU-Galveston. They live in Vero Beach a few miles north, but they will probably be travelling when we go through there next weekend. We had a fun time. Thanks for visiting!

     Probably some more of the same types of jobs tomorrow with hopefully some fun time for good measure.