We're back on Sparrow as of Nov 5 or so. Spent my 1st week here in hospital with pneumonia. Still using O2 but 'they' say this is temporary. Plenty of cleaning to do after years of relative neglect: cat hair, roach sand and dirt in every crevasse and corner, nicotine coated walls. So'k. Awesome (from Dollar Tree) is just a great cleaner. I've already fixed some of the neglect: New sink drain, replaced faucet, replaced the power cord, tossed all the old cans left in the galley. Heck, don't even recall all the small chores. Safe to say, we're livable again. The Kittehs are beginning to play and roam the deck again. They were way in their shells in that house, trapped on the bed as they were. No rain for days. Temps middle 50s to upper 80s.

That all said, I was going to work on a little clock project but Lessa was using the parts pot for a pillow. She's gettin' quite a belly on her...

Ok, onto other tasks. Came up the companionway and had to smile:

Ahhh. Life's pretty good now. 9+ months sans a drink and a meetin' every day. Work to do around the boatyard that's fun, repetitious and keeps me around other folks. Making up for the last dozen years or so? No, today is a new day all on its own. Quote from sponsor that guides me now:

Explore and tend with kindness and integrity.

I've hesitated to post this. Who cares? Doesn't matter; I get to hear some of your stories and I appreciate them. I've been mostly quiet for the last year because I had little positive or good to say. That has changed as I've returned to this path and want to live again. There's at least good sunset pics to post from here.

Sully blew the right side head gaskets a few weeks ago. Left side has been dubious for years now but gasket sealer works for a few months. Overheated him twice due to low water (oops!) and wound up with milkshake in the valve covers.

So I took his motorvation apart.

Heads are off a few thousandths so we chucked 'em up in the mill and shaved .001" per pass until they were flat.

We covered the mill area with SHarpie(tm) rather than blue dye because it makes a thinner layer. You can see black on the top of the pic after the first pass.

Tomorrow we finish this driver side head and I get to start putting it all back together again. Gonna replace some hoses and other crunchy bits, too.
It's been 30 years since I really tore down a gas engine and they were all big 'Murican iron. Stuff on this engine is so small and easy to work with. Other than how soft my hands have gotten, this has been fun.

And a DIPL from this morning for your time. Never saw the back of it...

No, wait! This needs some cat laying in the sunshine.

Not so bad as a hurricane but these Tropical Storms can cause some havoc. Eastern hemisphere of this thing went over us - the worst half. Sparrow weathered it well. Rocked to 30 knot winds and walls of rain. Rain flying sideways finds holes that rain falling more-or-less straight down doesn't - we have a couple leaks.

Only one boat broke her mooring and wandered off uptide. Duet grounded herself in a safe place and the Seaarc brought her back this morning. I see Duet safely rafted to a shrimp boat for now.

Lot of water in the streets but this is normal after the many millions of dollars spent after Irma to build hurricane friendly streets down there. Yea, right. Never used to flood at every drop of rain...

3 tornados touched down. No picks of the Meeting street one because they had all the streets blocked off by the time I got over there. Higher rent district got hit but mostly just trees. No mention of houses damaged.

Nearer me, heck in line-of-sight to me, something smacked the ground and only lasted a few hundred yards but did plenty of damage to trees. Cool how the trees are laid down in the same direction amidst trees snapped off 20 feet up. That was a lot of power applied real quick. It's posted property so I couldn't go in but you can see the path of vengeance.

And the 3rd made a mess of an RV park up by the base. Here are pics I pulled off the FB and an article from the DM. Several trailers went into the river and swept away.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9763483/Hurricane-Elsa-threatens-Floridas-northern-Gulf-coast.html

Lessa was terrified and foaming at the mouth for awhile. I just let her be and eventually Erin went into her cubbyhole and stayed with her. An bit after the last of the lightning I wiped Lessa's face and petted her. She started purring and then laid down for a snooze. They are fine now.

So good to read a bit more of your stories. I truly love this site. Some common goals (ghouls) and differently interests.

Haven't said much this past year. Was too drunk most of the time to care. Then I moved to my brother's house and got sober again. Lovely place with an incredible shop in the basement. But...that didn't work out so well. So Me and my kittehs are back on Sparrow. I hope to leave her in a bag.

Still sober but now the mess of the last dozen years has come to my attention. I built Sparrow when I was sober so her bones and systems are top notch but these past 12-years of neglect show. Cat hair, roach sand, dirt and nicotine stain everything. Most of her systems still work, the walls need cleaning and a few persistent leaks have rotted some wood. Plenty of projects to keep me busy.

And then there's my health. Years of athletics and then booze have come to roost. I have a good GP and we have developed a plan to address them. In the meantime, I hurt and can't breathe well but am happy.

My old sponsor says Joy is not happiness. It is the lack of unhappiness. I am joyous and grateful to be able to type this to you all today. Merry Christmas!!

When you get old, you'll regret more the things you did NOT do than the things you did. It is sad that your sister is gone but your life must go on. Go to Iceland, young man. You will not regret this in the coming years. Learning from others, particularly way out of your comfort zone, is a blessing.

Aleksander Doba is a hero to many adventurers but unsung to most. An older man when he started doing great things in a kayak. Solo adventures not recorded anywhere but there are those who know that he just liked to see things from his boat. And then his 3 Atlantic crossings brought him a bit of fame. And a climb up the mountain. He didn't make it back down. Rest now, you've earned it, sir.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksander_Doba

This is a grizzled old man content with his life.

https://explorersweb.com/2021/02/23/legendary-kayaker-aleksander-doba-dies-on-kilimanjaro-summit/

And another article.

https://lenexnews.com/aleksander-doba-who-kayaked-across-the-atlantic-dies-at-74/

This morning I woke to the sound of birds twittering and 2 cats chittering at them. Sweet sounds of home. As I lay there, I got to thinking about Fibonacci numbers. They're all over nature from number of flower petals to, well, stuff. What do they look like?

When I got up, the birds flew away and the cats settled down to watch me. Time for their breakfast. Over coffee I wrote this and through the afternoon I've messed with it. My itch has been scratched now.

I don't know how to compile & run c programs in winders (64bit numbers would be nice) without installing an IDE (nope!). Instead, I pulled out an Arduino and came up with this bit of code. And played around with it .

I started with floats but modulus calcs don't work on them. Doesn't even compile. Also found that out-range-numbers display "ovf" instead of digits. That happened at iteration 46. Changed the data type to unsigned long and it compiled.

At iteration 40, I quit the program after 10 minutes and ~10 million modulus calcs. May run it over night to test those last 5 iterations. Took that bit of code out to see how far it would go.

It ran only a bit further before it went off the rails. No warning, just garbage numbers after iteration 44. D'oh, 4.8 billion is too big to fit in 32bits. (max <4.3B). So I learned a couple things and had fun.

I've noticed some of you have been having hard week. Here's to Friday evening improving everyone's mood! Cheers!

Love being old enough to not need an excuse for my afternoon naps. As usual I make the berth as I get up. Sit at the bottom and spread the duvet(s when cold) from top to bottom. But today, I really had to pee. Got the top half and went off. A minute and a half later I come back to finish ... and find this. They do not want to move.

I now sit at the nav station looking at an unmade berth and am disturbed. Bah, cats!

They have to celebrate with very fancy show chains

seent on twitler via fark

A few from my collection:

A fella taps his taxi driver on the shoulder. Driver shits his pants, swerves into the other lane, nearly sideswipes a bus and screeches to a stop just in front of a store window. Passenger says "Fuck me, yeer a bit jumpy, aren't ya?" Driver says "This is my first day driving a taxi. For 20-years I drove a hearse."

I saw a rodent dancing to a Hall & Oates song so I left. I can't gopher that!

After you die, what part of the body stops working last? Your pupils; they dilate.

Uh oh. I've opened a can of worms. But they just sit there, barely moving. Not the chaos I expected.

Seeking one-night stand. Possibly 2 because I have 2 lamps.

@functionoverfashion Lemme tell ya that pro sailing is tough and boring. But to get a taste, start by beer can racing at your local club. A 6-pack will get ya on a boat. Learn how to make the boat go faster. If you stick with it, folks'll ask you to go on the longer races. Offshore weekends and such. These can be done with a family as far as you want. A lot of the lower level pros have regular jobs; they get expenses to sit in wet closes and get bounced around.

@bison78 Of course! Am eagerly awaiting the start. Also the feeders like Route du Rhum and the Solitaire du Figaro series.

Yes, I watch this series religiously. Lotta money being spent for these boats. Well prepped and excellent buoy sailors. Excellent electronics and twitchy crews these things have almost topped 100kmh! That's 62mph in less than 30 knots of wind. The pinnacle of technology. I think the more one knows about buoy racing the better this show is. The presenters try hard but can't teach the audience from the screen. One has to be a sail racer to understand much of what is going on.

Other races that interest me are the The Ocean Race https://www.theoceanrace.com/en/home , Which is teams on formerly solo 60' IMOCAs circling the world in stages. For some dumb reason they're not using the VO65s in the current stage which were made for this stuff. Sad to just have 5 boats in the race when they've have 35 in the past.

And then there's the The Golden Globe https://goldengloberace.com/ which is <40' boats sailing around the world non-stop solo with no tech better than they had in 1968. Yes, they have all the modern safety gear (GPS, SatPhones, etc.) but they can't use them except in emergency. Sextants and nav tables only. Unfortunately, the tracker only works on phones.

and a sad edition of the https://www.globe40.com/en/map-tracker/ which is IMOCA 40's sailed solo. Only 4 boats left...

@KngT That is beautiful. Happy it exists.

@EssExTee These don't even wikipedia. Chocolate is good, though. How do you get them? Reach up and pluck them down? Will all those be sold? Thanks for the TIL. Spent my 1st 5 years near Santos but don't remember much about it.

Yea, hard to beat a good, fresh cuppa. That glass carafe is cool, too.

We've used a stainless espresso pot on Sparrow for 15 years now. Bought it at WalMart for $18. Thousands and thousands of pots of coffee and the seal is still good! I did find another one at a GoodWill that we keep as a spare. So easy to make a single cup of strong caffeinated beverage. And so much better than the standard hexagonal aluminum models.

@User yea, something like that. All the comforts of home in a small, eventually (maybe) mobile package. Would at least be something notable for your class project - a different solution.

Most boatyards charge rent by the foot with a minimum. Go to a local DIY yard and see if they have any abandoned boats they want to be rid of. Some will sell you one of these boats for past due. Look for something 27' or longer so you have a real head and galley. Move aboard and act like you're fixing it. I'm only half joking as I've seen folks do this. A few even get back into the water and go have adventures.

My rent is $370 a month for a 40' with $20 for electricity. We have showers, a community kitchen and wood and metal shops.

@ITA97 Thank you for this TIL. I, also, didn't find any 10-30W Castrol Edge for Sully at my local Advance Auto so I bought 0-30W. Now I feel better about pouring this into his bowels.

While on this subject, What's with "high mileage" versions versus the non- version? I've heard the former softens seals and such. Since I changed all Sully's when I rebuilt his engine a few months ago, I went with the non- stuff.

Maybe this is some sort of trend. Saw a beautiful Maroon Z3 with the top down yesterday using his turn signal. And he was already in the left turn lane. Mentioned it to Andy who was looking at the car and said "Yea, I see it but I don't believe it." We didn't mention it to anyone.