Not a sailing post, just an anti-gun rant

Americans, and us Canadians too, will have prayers, memorial services and lay flowers in all sorts of places in memory of this horrible and preventable tragedy. All that does is comfort the living. It does not help the murdered. It most certainly won't help the next bunch of victims, and there will be a next bunch, that gun culture will always have a next bunch lined up. Organizations like the NRA don't have an upper limit of deaths where they pull back the reins and say,"Hey, maybe we should do something about this!" . The NRA and people of their ilk, do actually do something when shit like this goes down, they buy more guns and ammo and hoard them "to prevent crap like that from happening again". Go on any gun site/blog/facebook page and that's what you read. It is sickening. They want to arm teachers. Unfucking beleivable. The furor of this will die down, then another event will occur, and the cycle will continue.

New boat, new blog:)

We bought a Seafarer 38, hence a new blog:)

http://sheppard1961.blogspot.ca/

Here is a picture of our new, 38 foot, cutter rigged sloop at anchor.

Congratulations to us!

We just closed a deal on a Seafarer 38. It is cutter rigged and needs some interior work, Ok, needs a lot of interior work. I am 6'3" and there is atleast another 3inches in the galley area. Don't have great pics yet. The Perkins 4-107 works, looks rough but works. We are pumped.

10 days

It has been 10 days since we last sailed.

Outboard motor issues.

The last day we went sailing, I tilted the engine up and unknowingly pinched two (2) wires off. effected repairs while bobing about to no avail. You would think I could connect the wires without any problems, right? Well you would be wrong.

The starter would not fully engage. Thought maybe the starter battery was low the wife suggested we hook it up to the house battery. Same result, an anemic spinning of the starter.

We sailed in to the fuel dock with several power boaters just watching, not one offer of assistance which I find mostly typical of the powered brethren.

Next day, with the help, (OK, he was the nautical driving force), of a friend we sailed the boat into our slip, though it took two attempts. Whe we pulled in, there was unasked help from, you guessed it, a real sailor. he recognized that a boat with its sails up approaching a dock might be in distress.

Sooo, now a day or three has passed during a massive heat wave and I'm thinking like a demon. The starter itself is now shot, I know, I know, the odds are long that two things could go wrong but remember, I am a genius....lol

I remove the flywheel with a puller, but boy oh boy was its nut ever on tight! The starter was a snap to remove but guess what? On the bench it worked like a charm! Some effing genius I am:(

So its back to the book and the wiring diagram. Somehow I must have screwed up big time as now the ignition smoked a bit. Just a bit. So, any day now I am going to haul that sumbitch motor out of its well and really look over the wring.

Any designer that designs a wellfor an outboard should be stuffed down said well head first. BTW, there was an awefull lot of cuss word at the marina this past week.

Oldsail repair kit.

I was visiting my wifes family in rural Nova Scotia, Canada this week and my Mother-In-Law gave me her fathers old navy sail repair kit. Some of the stuff is beyond my ken. Some I know, but I have no skills to use these puppies.

The first tribute to my navy trade!

This is the first tribute to my naval trade, Marine Engineer, (Stoker), that I have ever came across. We stokers worked in ridiculous heat, I seen with my own two eyes, a medic with a machine that measures environmental stress on the human body scramble out of the engine room when he took a gander at his readings. We stokers just muddled on. If you saw a stoker come off watch and his shirt was not plastered to his body, you knew he was skiving off somewhere.

When we not on watch, we had to respond to fires and dress up in fire fighting gear, and sweat your bag off once more. If there was a flood, we stood waist deep then chest deep in the water shouting measurements to our mates who were cutting wooden braces to stop the flooding. There was nothing delicate about my trade so it was very nice and surprising to hear about this monument.

http://watch.ctv.ca/news/top-picks/new-monument/#clip692455