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Sunday arrived with bright blue skies and puffy white clouds--a perfect day for sailing. I decided to join Jerry, Lallie, and the gang for their Sunday sail around the waters off Waikiki. I'd been busy with school and work, so I hadn't been able to come along as often as I wanted to. Sailing with Jerry on Mystic is a fun ride. They race against Gerard on Grand Louis. On Mystic we had several experienced sailors, and usually a handful of onlookers. I'll let you guess which category I fit into. On Grand Louis, Gerard invariably had a troop of topless women. If you strayed too close to his boat you were likely to get mooned. As I approached Mystic on the pier, I noticed some of the crew putting fishing poles on board. Lallie told me they expected to drag a few lines while sailing. Feeling bad for the fish, I made a silent wish that no fish would be caught that day. My wish was granted, but the tricky genie gave me more than I bargained for. As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for...

I knew when Sean had managed to start the diesel engine that there was at least some fuel left in the tank on Tempo. However, the fuel gauge had long since corroded away to dust leaving me with no hint as to the level. Additional clues included a ring of red diesel fuel around the tank, indicating the presence of a leak somewhere. However, there was no evidence anywhere that the leak had let diesel fuel into the bilge. So that was a relief. Hoping to find the tank nearly empty, I unscrewed the twenty or so self-tapping metal screws from the inspection port on the tank. Finally, I gripped the edge of the cover, broke the elder seal, pried the port open, peered inside and found...

On the first day of the haul-out, we'd hemmed and hawed over how to paint the boat. Robbie had suggested that we do a two-color paint job. That way, when the diver was cleaned the hull and noticed the under color showing, then we'd know it was time to haul out the boat and repaint it. Eric and I thought this was a great idea. Then we had to decide what two colors to use. We were limited to red, blue, and black. Red was certainly out of the question. That left us with deciding which of the blue and black would go on top. We decided to have blue for the undercoat, and black for the top coat. However, what we actually ended up with was far from what we expected.

In preparation of the keel returning to the boat, I had used my dremel tool to clean out the old keel bolt holes as much as possible. Sean needed to seal up these old holes, and drill some new ones that would hopefully match the placement of the bolts on the keel. Sean came by later with a 1" drill bit and bored out the old holes to prepare them for being sealed up. Adam taped up the holes from below, and I soon found both Sean and Adam up in the cabin talking story and mixing epoxy. Adam would mix the epoxy, wet some rounds of fiberglass with epoxy, sandwitch about 1/2" of rounds together and hand them to Sean. Sean would place the epoxy-laden fiberglass cylinder in the holes and lightly tamp them down with a wood rod. It was interesting to hear them chat about the boating community, and all its odd folk that inhabit it. When all nine holes were mostly filled with fiberglass, Adam mixed up some epoxy filler. Sean poured a little filler in each hole till it was mostly level with the bilge. Sean advised keeping a fan on the bilge to keep the epoxy cool. By the next evening, we should have our keel back on.