Checking the oil

Remember when you used to have to do that? No more, in modern vehicles, but we're somewhat old fashioned in that regard so that's one of the the things we did this weekend before our trip to Block Island on Wednesday.

Watching us crawl around between our engines is probably like watching grass grow but since we had a new camera and we had to do it anyway, we inserted about 1 minute and 30 seconds of video here. Hey, it was almost eight minutes long before we edited it.



Next, the broken window in our cabin was replaced this past week by the Rose Glass Company in New London.  Great service and also from Progressive Insurance, that paid for it.

Then we made a list of all the stuff we have to bring to Block Island. Not too bad, actually. We'll get everything assembled on Monday and Tuesday and take off on Wednesday morning.

This is an annual trip for us and we love the time we get to spend on B.I. Work pressures kept us from going sooner but now, we think, we are on our way.

We've been following the adventures of dock mates Bob and Dianne, who just bought (better to say took responsibility for) a 1972 32-ft. Grampion sailboat. It's a little rough but very restorable, which Bob intends to do next winter.

It's amazing how all these powerboat people want to take a short ride on this old sailboat. Actually, Bob has great ideas about how to restore the interior. We hope we get some pictures from him over the winter. Everyone on the dock wanted to know more about "Luna-Sea."



It was also time to be old fashioned and to climb into the bilge and check the fluid levels. Everything looked good, save adding a half a pint of fluid to the port transmission.

We've noticed that our starboard engine has been running a little warm and we found out why. The hose to the coolant overflow bottle had become disconnected and whatever coolant was recovered had been deposited in the bilge. No problem to reconnect. Francis held the funnel and we refilled the heat exchanger with some new 50-50% antifreeze.

It appears we are ready to go. 8:30 AM on Wednesday, we head over to the fuel dock for what we hope will be a small sip of gas. Then, we are out of here for a week.