And the handle broke off in my very hand!

Let's see. What has broken lately.    (Note:  pictures may not relate to the text.)

For the last month the refrigerator has been slowly giving up the ghost. She runs longer and longer every day.  After trying her best to bring the temperature in the freezer to a "freezing" temperature she slows down, labors loudly, and trips the circuit breaker.  We often leave the boat with the generator running ( we don't want to listen to that racket, but don't mind if our neighbors do) and the refrigerator plugging away to return to find the batteries topped off and the refrigerator breaker in the off position.  Connie asks me, "Did you turn the refrigerator off?"  I ask her the same thing.  Then we both shake our heads.

This is how we start our day. Tea in bed as the sun
comes in through the port hole.

The refrigerator compressor is cooled by salt water that comes in from the sea, through a filter, then around the unit before being dumped back into the sea.  Thinking that the filter might be clogged, I opened up the floor board and turned off the thru-hull valve for the incoming cooling water.  I cleaned the filter then turned the handle to open up the thru hull valve.  The handle broke off in my very hand!   I could see rust and corrosion on a thru hull valve that was permanently now in the off position.  Let's see, what items draw sea water from that valve?  1.  The refrigerator coolant - no cold food from now on.  2.  The anchor wash down hose - wash anchor with a bucket of sea water.  3.  The incoming flush water for the head - stop using the head or carry a bucket of flush water in there with you in the morning.

You may be wondering how you repair or replace a thru hull valve fitting.  It is simple, you go to a haul out facility and pay someone an outrageous amount of money to haul your big fat boat out of the water and onto dry land.  Then you rip the old fitting off, and try to find an expensive replacement valve to reinstall.  If you try to do this with the boat in the water the boat sinks. Inconvenient.

This is the little walkway from the beach to the highway where we catch the #1 bus.

What did I do?  I found another thru hull fitting that still works (it's under the nav station) and ran some hose under the floorboards from there to supply the refrigerator with it's cooling water.  However this supply hose is a size smaller than what it had before, supplying a little less pressure and thus less cooling stressing out our failing refrigerator even more.  We now carry a bucket of water with us when going to use the head.

The #1 Bus will take you everywhere. 
See how they write the destinations on the wind screen?

What else broke?  The deck prism over the quarter berth is now leaking water down onto the mattress. It never rains here so the source of the water is the nightly dew (if any) or when we get into big seas that sweep the deck.  The prism is a big triangle of glass that lets light into dark areas.  

Glass deck prism and its frame

I dug the prism out and while carrying it below to clean it found it cracked on one corner.  We begged some super glue from our buddy Rick and fixed the glass.  Now we have a big hole in the deck while I figure out how to re-bed the prism and replace the teak.

What else?  Our little propane tank for the grill leaks so you can't leave it attached but must immediately disassemble after each use.

The auto-pilot handle that holds the gearing in the engaged position is coming loose and that connection has wallowed itself out so badly that it needs replacing.

There is now a hole in one of the inflatable kayaks.

The sun cover on the genoa sail is ripped and needs to be resewn, as does the torn dinghy anchor storage bag.  I have a hole in the ass end of my favorite shorts that needs to be patched.

So much sewing to be done

We had the center sky light open when we jibed the mainsail a couple of weeks ago and the boom vang got under the hatch and ripped two out of three aluminum hinges off.  We found John Jones of JONCO Marine Repair who was able to fabricate the hinges.  This cost mucho dinero.

The heavy aluminum spinnaker pole slide cracked and many of the rivets holding the pole parts together were corroded.  This cost more mucho dinero for John to re-fabricate.

And to top it all off, last night we woke to find ourselves besieged by a hoard of tiny mosquitoes.  It took us hours to kill off the little guys so we could finally get some sleep.

So if you think this is all the life of Riley we are living down here, think again.  It's a tough, challenging life.  Now hand me another cold beer while I think about what I might or might not attempt to fix today.   The hell with it, let's go to El Ray's.

Somebody has to figure out where we are headed next.