I finally finished installing our new composting head. It should have taken an hour. Instead I made it a several day project, involving many trips to the store and some very creative plumbing parts, because of course the parts that came with this thousand dollar toilet DID NOT FIT on MY BOAT (which actually was probably mostly my fault). Then It took me a whole afternoon just to wire the exhaust fan because of course the wire I needed to splice in to was hard to reach. I must have used up a dozen connectors before I finally got it done right. Of course, the whole time I was dragging out this project we had to haul our butts down the dock every time we needed to use a toilet, which was actually not fun when we were sick. This was another time I questioned my sanity.
In the end, I did a nice job. It looks great and works as planned and was well worth it. However, after I got everything stowed back in the head lockers, I discovered that the shower sump was not working. Everything out of the lockers again, while I replaced the switch. Another job which should have taken 10 minutes, but it took me a hour to find the right tool to use to take of the old switch. A valuable lesson was learned - do not bury your socket set in the bottom of the cockpit locker!
Finally got that all put away, and decided to work on changing the engine impeller. I knew it needed to be replaced because when I turned on the engine a few days ago to test out my new fuel tank I forgot to open the seacock first. Even though I only ran the engine for a couple of minutes before I realized my bad, I figured I'd better check. Yep, sure enough the impeller was broken and a piece was missing. I had to do quite a bit of digging before I finally managed to find it. I was just about to give up and see about hiring a mechanic when I decided to bang the hose on the cabin sole. That did the trick and the missing piece was dislodged. I installed the new impeller, opened the seacock, and ran the engine for about an hour, checking for leaks. All was good - no fuel leaks or water leaks. Yeah!
Now while all this was going on I was also doing laundry. Those who follow my blog may recall my lack of quarters - from the bank mishap on Monday.. so of course I didn't have enough quarters to actually get everything completely dry. I had to string up clotheslines inside the boat so everything could finish drying. So in the midst of all this mechanical work, I'm dodging dishtowels and socks.
At the end of the day all you can do is laugh! I may not be good at this, but I do get it done!
XXX