Here's why. This is the faucet in our galley. You might notice a distinct lack of handles and a spout. Kind of useful attributes in a faucet.
Things didn't exactly go as planned yesterday - not just with the faucet, but with other things.
What should have been a simple task of changing out our old, leaky faucet for a bright, shiny new one turned to {insert your favorite naughty word here}.
Yes, there were plenty of naughty words yesterday. And some blood. And some bruises.
Scott wanted to persevere late into the night and continue to try to get the old faucet off. I suggested we quit for the day and have a very large drink instead.
"But we don't have any running water," he said.
That's when I called him a sissy boy. We can live without running water. We've done it before. This is what we call role reversal. In the past, I would have been the one complaining about a lack of running water and Scott would have told me to suck it up. It's like Freaky Friday on our boat. Somehow we've switched bodies.
Of course, it wasn't just the faucet that turned to {time for a naughty word again}. The outboard engine on our dinghy started messing with us too.
We had been so happy just a couple of days ago when it started right up. Then we did some routine maintenance on it and it refused to cooperate after that. Stupid outboard.
Remember how excited we were that we got our Thornycroft engine on our boat to work? We figured out the main issue was with our glow plugs. (Glow plugs heat up the air in the cylinders which allows the fuel to be ignited and makes your engine go vroom vroom.)
We could get it going with the existing glow plugs, but they didn't heat up enough to start the engine quickly. So we decided to order some new ones from the UK which were recommended for our particular engine. (Thornycrofts are British engines.)
They worked as advertised. The engine started lickety split. One tiny problem - a burning smell. The kind of burning smell that makes you look frantically around for the fire extinguisher. Fortunately, we didn't need to put our firefighting skills to the test.
If you were wondering why there wasn't the usual Friday blog post, now you know.
Have you ever had a day where nothing seemed to go right? Could you live without running water?
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On boat you just never know what's going to work and what's not going to work. I can so relate.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't want to go long without water on a boat, but here are other places to go get water. I'm sure that's what you did too. Been there and done that.
I hope today is a better day than yesterday. And without the naughty words.
Any day on a boat is far better than being on land.
Have a fabulous day. ☺
Things turned out much better then next day and we have running water!
DeleteA day where fixing one simple thing turned into fixing many things and none of them were actually fixed? Oh yeah, been there.
ReplyDeleteAnd had to take a faucet off once. Those suckers corrode on good. I about destroyed our entire sink getting one off.
I think that's the rule when it comes to home improvement projects - everything takes a million times longer than you think and nothing actually gets fixed.
DeleteThe only thing worse than working on a sailboat is working on a British sailboat in the US. We changed out one of our taps before. Getting it out went well, but the connectors! Ugh! What a pain in the backside. Good luck with the rest of the project.
ReplyDeleteStephanie @ SV CAMBRIA
For most things, the fact that Tickety Boo is British isn't a huge deal except when it comes to the engine.
DeleteI would not like to be without running water, no! However, you don't have to be on a boat to have an ongoing DIY saga. We are having one now. 3 jobs, 2 not going to plan requiring extra trips to DIY / electronics shops. I suspect both will be held over and the third more straightforward one will get done today. I'm just keeping out of the way except when soothing noises are required.
ReplyDeleteI love your approach - stay out of the way and make soothing noises :-)
DeleteAll day, every day! Sometimes it's best just to not fix anything, since it can seem like backwards progress... victories are hard fought!
ReplyDeleteI knew you would be able to relate :-)
DeleteSometimes a fresh start helps with something that became daunting. [Or caused sufficient injuries as to halt progress temporarily, be they physical or mental...]
ReplyDeleteYour story is a cruel reminder to all boaters that the time required to complete a project is often inversely proportional to its perceived simplicity...
Best wishes to you both, and especially Scott for regaining his sissy status...
Cheers! Bill on SV Denali Rose
That is so true about the correlation between simplicity and time required :-)
DeleteI'm sorry about your running water, but I think getting the hack saw out is going to be the solution to this. Also the name of your engine...THORNYcraft...gives me pause. Thorny? Does that bode well? Just saying, might want to christen it with another name to balance that out. Something like SMOOTHcraft, or maybe EASYcraft. I hope that smell was just the newness of those glowplugs wearing off. Keeping fingers crossed for you.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you on this one. I often wonder what kind of mind tempts fate with boat names like, Crusher, Revenge, Violence, or other Neptune baiting, or insulting remarks.
DeleteScott and I laughed out loud over this one. We'll definitely need to give the engine a new name :-)
DeleteHA!! to the sissy babies! (Not you and Scott though) As a matter of fact, yes, I have lived without running water, and the only heat source was a wood stove, in Alaska.... for years! I am definitely not a sissy baby, been there, done that, not again. That is why I insist on running water/hot and cold, heat, with a general flick of the wrist, and some of the comforts of home, even on a boat.
ReplyDeleteYou get a zillion points for roughing it up in Alaska. I think having to deal with the cold and only having a wood stove would make me a huge sissy baby.
DeleteThis sounds so very familiar. Yes, we have many days like this, but I have to admit that they happened more often when we were still on our boat. Scott's names for you are more endearing than yours for him! :-)
ReplyDeleteI should have called him something like my "cute little sissy baby" to soften things a bit :-)
DeleteI guess the lack of running water on the boat depends on how easy it is to access water. Hope you get all the problems sorted quickly
ReplyDeleteThat's very true. We were able to get running water really easily which made it not such a big deal.
DeleteI'm no sissy, but it's bugged the heck out of me when I've had to go without water plenty of times. At the beginning, it was because the building's water tank had been drained and water wouldn't be pumped from Cairo for a day or two. Later, I realized everyone had water but me -- and my hubby helpfully informed me that everyone else had bought their own tank over the years -- so I freaking BOUGHT A TANK!! Of course, then my water pump started acting up. My ever-helpful hubby refused to buy a new one and brought plumber after plumber to change pats and fix things, but it just kept dying, and naturally plumbers take a day or two to come... After a year of this, he went on vacation and I freaking BOUGHT A WATER PUMP. He hates buying new. Is always determined to fix the old one. Jeez, he's annoying!
ReplyDeleteOh Lexa, you cracked me up with this comment! I couldn't stop laughing. Scott would have done the same thing. He hates to spend money on anything. And I would have done the same thing as you - buy stuff when he was away.
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