GroupWBench

Since we did our family Thanksgiving last Sunday, Ivy and I headed out to the boat thinking it would be a good day for a futile attempt to make the endless list a little a little shorter. The weather looked like it would support a nice day of sailing as well.

I was able to easily remove the old water pump in just a couple of minutes, something that scared me silly. No job on a boat should ever go so easy. This had to be an ominous forshadowing of some kind of complicated doom. I put the new pump in place. The new one fit well and looked like it was going on perfectly. I attached one water hose without problem.

At this point I was really beginning to sweat. All of this going well had to mean that the pump wouldn't work or that the boat would start filling with water when we opened the engine seacock. Something had to go wrong , add extra steps, or fail in a spectacular fashion. The boat repair gods have trained me to expect that.

As I tightened the final hose clamp to finish the job, I felt it. The resistance on the screwdriver increased, then suddenly disappeared. It would increase and and disappear as I turned the driver. Woo hoo!! The clamp was broken. My complication for the project was something that we could handle with out massive wing flapping or circle running. We just needed to zip out to the hardware store and snag a new hoseclamp…on Thanksgiving…Sigh.

Ivy and I decided to pull a hoseclamp off the galley sink water supply as a temporary measure. She volunteered to squeeze in and get that one out. Of course that turned into a whole job in itself. We ended up needing both of us plus pliers, crescent wrenches, screwdrivers, and a fair bit of boat yoga to snag the replacement clamp.

After that, things went swimingly…metaphoricaly, that is, all hands remained aboard. The boat repair gods were apeased by our extra efforts to deal with the complication they sent our way. Our new waterpump is in and doesn't leak like the old one. That means we don't have to crawl down and close the seacock the instant we shut down the engine any more. We just have to go buy a few new hose clamps so we always have a couple handy.

You might have noticed the picture above that Ivy had someone helping her remove the hose clamp from the sink. That is CWNN (Cat With No Name). As we walked into the empty marina, Ivy jumped and asked if I'd seen the racoon. We have some racoons that live under the deck of the marina and make sure the trash gets thoroughly scattered in the evenings. I hadn't, but as we walked past the trash cans, we heard a pretty mournful cat meowing – a sound guaranteed to pull Ivy in.

I went on to the clubhouse knowing that Ivy would stop a moment and the feral cat would either run off or hide from her. Imagine my surprise when she walked up with a little starving kitten that was as loving and sweet as could be. All skin and bones, the poor thing was as starved for food as it was attention. As Ivy walked up, I knew down inside that before we left the marina, our crew roster would be increased by one.

So, rather than firing up the engine and scaring CWNN and then testing the little thing's feelings about having the boat heel over as we race around the lake, we packed it up and brought the little Thanksgiving beast home.