Finally back after about a month hiatus. Not that we haven't been working on the boat.

I took annual leave, and gratefully neglected all things electronic (except for boat electronics) for weeks.

During the first week, I spent lots of quality time in the bilge installing a vane type electric pump, remotely with a PVC pickup tube/trigger switch extending into the bilge. Seemed like a fairly easy task, but in the end it required about three days of intensive work, modifications and sweat before it finally received a test run.

Same with mounting a transducer for the depth finder.

Since I despise drilling holes in the hull, I have no problem sacrificing a small margin of operating efficiency by installing the normally wet transducer in a low point of the hull. I mean, a depth finder is really only a tool to tell you how shallow the water was that you got stuck in anyway.....

So I found a good likely spot between the water tank and the dinette, and set about routing the wires and plugs, which involved drilling through several small partitions, picking up another wire run, exiting over on the starboard quarterberth where I'm in the process of installing a swing out mount that will extend into the companionway. Another "easy" task that took all of about two days to complete.....

Seems nothing is an easy task on a boat, and I figure that there's about a 50-75% coefficient that must be applied to the time estimated to do any job on the south end of the mooring lines.

Take for instance my last encounter of the close kind with our new marine head.

The whole time I was off, the weather was typically near-tropics, with daily temperatures in the 80's, so I was often thirsty, and as a consequence, had to er-aaaa,  drain my own bilge from time to time....

Since the marina restroom is a way from the boat, and since I really didn't want to interrupt the work each time, I decided to use the head on the boat.

First off, I recently installed a screen filter on the sea water intake hose for the head, and for some reason, it had an annoying drip-drip-drip each time we used it. I took the thing apart, and used teflon tape on all of the connections, screwing down all of the hose clamps to just under crushing-tight, and the leak stopped.

But another problem was about to rear it ugly, uhm, head....

Upon installing the Wilcox-Crittendom head several months ago, I gave a determined turn on the discharge fitting  in order to get it to line up with the discharge hose. In doing so (apparently), the gasket in the flange of  the discharge pipe developed a slight leak, so each time water was pumped into the bowl, or was discharged back to the tank, another irritating, tiny drip-drip-drip developed. A drip-drip-drip of nasty, foul, head water collected alongside the bowl, requiring an immediate cleanup after each use. Totally unacceptable. And now,  it was getting progressively worse, so after about the third or fourth in-port use, I decided screw it, I'm gonna fix this thing.

An easy task right? just grunch down on the screws that surround the fitting, and presto!......

No such luck.

I got out my biggest, baddest Phillips screwdriver, and tried to re-torque the screws after an especially long held session, and in doing so, the leak suddenly increased to a minor deluge. I frantically shoved a couple of rags under the gushing torrent and got it quelled to a sick ooze...

So I figured it would be a lot better to just bite the proverbial bullet and unseat the throne so that I could get around behind it and dismantle the freakin' discharge outlet, re-torque the screws and be done with it.....

.....And in a great gush of occult liquids, soaking my shorts and the mid cabin sole, I yanked the cursed thing off at the root, scraping my back pretty good in the process as I wrestled it into the mid cabin area, where I could work on it in an area the size of a Toyota Corollas' trunk.

I got the evil thing dismantled and put back together, remounted in the closet sized head, and tested it out. Everything seemed to be working OK, so I went back to work on the transducer run.

About an hour later, I had to use the head again, and when I went to flush the thing, water poured out of the discharge flange again. In anger I repeated the disconnect procedure, again soaking myself with foul fluids and again wounding myself on some hitherto unknown sharp object, carting the thing up topside into the cockpit where I had enough room to really get after dismantling the offending part. Panting and puffing, I finally convinced myself that I had the procelin goddess repaired, so I waltzed it back down below, past the galley and into the mid cabin, bolting the thing down, this time testing it for operation before use. 

Mission accomplished.

Like I said. Nothing is ever easy on a boat.