Boaters

 3/23- Vero Beach 

   We have had many people come up to us and say “You’re boaters right”. I’m trying to figure out how we stand out as boaters. Even the cashier at the dollar store had me pegged as a boater. Some folks tonight introduced themselves and said you must be boaters. They even went so far as to say sailboaters. I mean everyone around here looks like they could be from a boat. I guess in Florida 1 out every 3 people own a boat so your odds are good asking that question. I mean I shower every couple of days or so so it shouldn’t be the smell. Maybe it’s the scruffiness of our clothes and hair. I have yet to figure out what gives us away. 

     I got my exhaust elbow yesterday from the fabricator and installed it. I always get bummed when I can reduce to a mere sentence an act that took me almost 7 hours to complete. It’s always tough entering it into the maintenance log as installed new mixing elbow when it took a couple of days and a thousand dollars to do that. Anyway it’s in and working fine so now we have a motor again. 

    For those of you who don’t know the mixing elbow is part of the exhaust system. Water is drawn up out of the ocean and goes through a heat exchanger which cools the water circulating through the motor. This water is then pumped into the mixing elbow to mix with the exhaust and cool it so it can be safely ejected out the back of the boat. Because these mixers heat up and cool down a lot and are filled with salt water they corrode rather quickly. Mine was old and it showed its age by falling apart. I had a new one made out of stainless steel at a fabrication shop. The guy copied the old one pretty well and while it didn’t just drop into place it is in there. Of course this is located in one of those spots that you need to be a pretzel to get to so I am a little sore tonight. 



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