February 16, 2016 Racor fuel filter in dinghy

Today we started rearranging the boat so that Dave’s brother, Dean, can sleep in the aft cabin.  There is enough room for one person, but not a couple.  He is arriving Thursday and will stay with us for a week.  We purposely grouped out guests together in February because we knew we would be in one place.  After we leave here, it will be much harder to make plans to get together, since we don’t have a set schedule. 

We were able to pick up the wifi from the cottage Harold and Juli stayed at near our boat.  So I spent most of the day getting caught up with e-mails and my blog.  I also spent time downloading and deleting photos.  I keep a spreadsheet of all the cash we spend and updated that, too.  It helps us budget when you don’t have a paper trail from checks or credit cards.   

Dave had several projects, like cleaning all the raw water screens for the water maker, generator and the diesel engine.  Those can pick up some nasty odors.  I really appreciate what he does to keep this boat functioning.  He had much better access to them after rearranging the aft cabin. 

Then Dave worked on the dinghy.  He mounted a fishing rod holder on the stern which will double as a holder for our stern light.  He had mounted the light on the pole back in Florida.  He also added a Racor fuel filter for the gasoline line in the dinghy.  Last year we had some dirty fuel and it cost us several hours of headaches and eventually $500 to rebuild the carburetor.  So Dave wanted to avoid that in the future. 

light on PVC pipe

the Racor filter is mounted on the stern

Dave spent some time arranging his tackle box.  We are all set to do some local fishing ourselves.  Back to basics after playing tourist for 2 weeks.

This evening, Dave wanted to test his new light and fuel filter on the dinghy.  So we grabbed a couple beers right at sunset and went for a spin around the area.  We stopped the motor up wind of our boat and just drifted back to the boat.  It was so peaceful!  I think we’ll do that more often.  When you are in the cockpit, you can’t see the stars because of the bimini. 

in action