Day 124: My Toe!

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL USA


Today was the day.  The day to get as much done as we could.  Wait...isn't that the same as every other day?
Its been fun to keep up on this "blizzard 2011" going on north of us.  There were some pretty crazy pictures posted on facebook.  Whats wild is that in Dallas Texas, which isn't really too far north of us, it was only 12 degrees yet we are here in Lauderdale with a bone chilling wind chill of around 82.  :-)  The forecast is stellar for the rest of the week and it won't have any problems hitting 80 every day!

The owner and I did some small tasks in the morning then hopped on the scooters and went to town.  Our first stop was Lester's diner for some grub.  It was the same place that I went to last year when we were prepping the sailboat for the big Caribbean trip.  We went there with Ethan and Ryan's grandma.  Just like last year...it was packed.  After, we ran to the boaters warehouse and picked up some general stuff, the battery store for a spare for the dinghy as well as the scooters, to Brownies for a scuba tank, two spears, and an extra brownie bag, and to West Marine for a mic for the hand held VHF so it is easier for a deckhand to talk to whoever is on the helm while docking.

The owner has decided to head back to Chicago for awhile and has faith that I can get the boat finished up and ready to go from here.  And he also asked if my girlfriend, Jessie, would like to come visit.  Of course she took the offer and is flying down later tonight (Thursday) and will be here until Sunday night.  I'm pretty excited and the weather is looking perfect!

The turbos came off, and what a cool project!  First, all of the coolant was drained.  Then the airseps.  Then we cracked off the housing for the compression housing side of the turbo.  Then off came the hot housing side (heavy as hell!)  The engine is looking naked but its going to get worse as the aftercoolers are coming off later today.  The tolerances on the turbos can definitely be reduced and while some of the compression housing units were clean others were filled with gum.  Because of this we are also going to remove the after coolers and get those cleaned.  All in all we are going to blue print the turbos, acid wash the after coolers, replace the rubber hosing for the airseps, clean the airseps, replace a few pipes, check the fuel lines that run to the injectors and replace if needed, as well as check some general oil leaks that we have found.  While the coolant looks O.K. we are going to check it and if it is good simply put it back in the engine when we are done.  On top of that we are also rebuilding the racors in hopes that it will fix our fuel problem.

Around sunset we got in to cleaning the aft laz.  After taking everything out I pulled up the mat and about threw up it smelled so bad.  Everything needed to come out, mat included.  Its a thick rubber-like mat and while I was pulling it out the edge caught my big toe.  It wasn't so much a cut as it was a huge chunk of skin getting skimmed right off.  It didn't bleed bad at first nor did it really hurt.  I washed it out with water, threw a band-aid on it and kept working.  I ignored it most of the night but when I removed the band-aid this morning (blog post Thursday morning) I found a huge hole and my entire big toe is stiff and numb.  Just what I need.  It's starting to loosen up a little bit, but I know that this is going to be one of those slices that is annoying and bugs me with everything I do.  Oh well.

Back to the grind...
Sound Waves Out