Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving Day. I plan to spend mine fishing as soon as it cools down a bit - it is super hot right now, and the sun is just beating down. It is a beautiful day here as usual.

By the way, the engine problem did turn out to be the alternator. Mike took it out, and when we turned the engine on, the noise was completely gone. He then replaced it with a spare we bought in Mazatlan a couple of years ago. It turned out that it did not fit exactly - one used 3/16 inch bolts while another used 1/4 inch bolts. Really? Why is it that nothing ever seems to work with anything else? I have spent many hours so frustrated over the lack of a screw or bolt necessary for project completion that I have almost been in tears. I mean, think about it - we go into a store that has nothing but screws, bolts, and the like. There are rows and rows of little bins - all sizes, shapes, different kinds of metal, and on and on. But guess what? They will never have the kind we need. They will have everything else, but not that. For want of a nail a kingdom was lost, and all that, I know. But it never fails. Anyway, this time, however, Mike figured out how to make do and got the replacement alternator installed, although it took all day, and I felt bad for him, being folded up like a fan in that hot little engine room. So we tested it, and it seems to work generally, except it is not charging as much as it should be. I think it is a bad connection, and if Mike fools around with it for awhile, I am willing to bet he gets it working fine. As it is, it will not cause us to slink back to Panama City for repairs. I am proud of his mechanical abilities as always, and frankly a bit awe stricken. I consider myself to be pretty smart and accomplished, but I have to admit my particular talents are useless out here. Mike has never changed an alternator before, nor has he done a quarter of the things he has done on this boat. He could charge people to deal with their refrigeration systems if he wanted to, he has learned that much. The only thing he really doesn't do is hard core diesel engine repair, but I think that is not because he can't, but because he does not have all the necessary tools.

On this particular Thanksgiving Day, I am grateful for my friends and family, for the fact that I don't have to work for a living, and for having the opportunity to do this - to travel by sea, in my own boat, with nothing forcing my hand into action but my own desires and nature.

"He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all, but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea." (Henry David Thoreau)

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