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07/18/2010: "A Week of Projects"
A week of projects is over.
Most important was getting the head working again. We lucked out that we had agreed to dog sit for the week. This means that we stay with the dog instead of him staying with us. A week of living on land with all the benefits of living in a house. It doesn't hurt that Apollo (the dog) is the sweetest thing on four paws. Not living on the boat meant that I could tear the plumbing apart and not worry about making a mess, having to clean up each day and not having a working toilet is not a problem. The problem started with a plugged line that blew out the joker valve. I bought a rebuild kit for the pump that flushes the toilet and new hose to replace the lines. Sanitary hose is stiff and hard to route through the boat not to mention that it runs under the floor. It is notoriously hard to replace. I got it all replaced and when I tested it by pumping water it started to build up too much back pressure. Something was wrong. I checked the valves along the way and had not opened one. Once opened everything flushes better then new except for one small leak with the rebuilt pump but it turned out to be a missing gasket. Not sure what happened to it but after replacing it everything is working. In order to get at the plumbing I had to tear out most of the air conditioning duct work and a number of other hoses. Once the sanitary lines were in it was time to replace everything else. Of course with the ducts out the air conditioning was not working. A lot of breaks were taken. It sounds like a one day project but it actually took four. As I said, a lot of breaks were taken.
The box in the cockpit needed to be reattached since the mounting boards had rotten and was loose. I found some teak pieces that I could use but decided to replace them with Starboard, a plastic material, so that will not be an issue again.