My long time friend Ross and my college friend Stephanie got married! I introduced them 4.5 years ago so I got a quick shout out during Ross’s speech. The wedding marks #7 for us this year, and this one had all my good friends attending. The next day Mia and I recovered and worked on some small boat stuff. I found out the exhaust manifold hose was contacting my oversized heat exchanger, so I put a heat resistant rubber between them. Could this have had something to do with the white steam I have been noticing? On Sunday I installed two new deep cycle batteries for the refrigerator- the existing ones did not work the fridge and had dates of 1998-2003 on them. However, as is almost every project, it was not a simple replacement of the batteries. The fridge still doesn’t want to run/switch to DC (battery) mode. It works perfectly fine and automatically when connected to the AC (shorepower) though. Hoping the wiring is still ok, maybe it’s a simple switch that went bad on the refrigerator unit. I’ll have to do more research but I still have hope that we’ll be able to keep the fridge cold without needing ice all the time.

Also I went to tackle a simple job of replacing the caulking tape in the head that is between the counter and wall. Of course it peeled up the paint of the counter revealing sort of soggy plywood countertop. I’ve know about this since I bought the boat. I quickly taped off the walls and blasted the counter with white paint to see what would happen. It looks fine, but now do I dress it up with a few more layers of paint, or do I enter the project of building (cutting, sanding, staining or painting, installing) a new counter top? It would probably be nicer in the long run, and I could get under the area and see what else it back there. I just don’t have the saw equipment. So, $10 of paint, or much more money and time for a new counter? Fun things to ponder.

I still need to climb up the mast and replace the windvane, spreader flag line, and anchor light. Next weekend I head to Catalina on my friend Derek’s boat for his first trip there.

Mia repeated her lifesaver blood donation too! We drive by hermosa city hall and see a donation truck and signs and she just wants to do it. Really cool! I will next time but I’ve felt sick for about 4 weeks