Football Standard Time

Football Standard Time

Sunday 20th September

Okay, so it’s really Monday morning but for the purposes of watching football we have adjusted our time zone to FST “Football Standard Time”. We purchased an NFL Game Pass subscription so that we can watch football games on our laptop / tablet. It seems to be working out well and you can watch any game, but only after it’s happened. Week 2 of the NFL season has the Patriots playing the Seahawks on Sunday night football and we wouldn’t be able to start watching the game until close to real midnight. So we went to bed and are going to watch the game as if it were live this morning.

Yesterday we got a couple more jobs completed. We installed a new rail for the shower curtain in the aft head and replaced the shower curtains in both bathrooms. The rail was broken and the curtains were moldy so a worthwhile job. The other thing we did was address the issue of our over-board septic pump-out system. Half the time the pump doesn’t prime properly which then requires that you disconnect the outlet hose from the pump and add water manually to prime the pump. This is the last thing you want to be doing (ever), but particularly when you are offshore and it's bumpy ... fighting with stiff 2" septic hoses whilst half upside down reaching into the cockpit locker ... yuk. So we installed a Y-valve above the pump and now to manually prime it all you would need to do is turn the valve, pour water into a conveniently placed hose, close the valve and switch on the pump. From what we have read this is a common problem with this pump and we did consider replacing it, but the alternatives are all the same design and so we think this is a more reliable solution. Of course we can't check it out until we are 3 miles off-shore.

It’s become really cold! We are now running our “Espar” diesel heating system in the mornings to warm up the boat. We have a second heating system based off the hot water tank. We’ve never used it but it may be time to try and learn how.

Mike

East Greenwich, RI

Our little Weems & Path lantern - creates a cozy glow and a little heat

I added this photo two days later when I cleaned the lazarette and had space to get a view of the septic system and the new manual priming system for the overboard pump.