Update

For those who are waiting breathlessly for an update on the fresh water system problem:

Water tank in the bilge. Aft is to the left.

According to the boat specs, the original tank was 100 gallons. This appears to be a replacement tank - fiberglass over plywood - and probably doesn't hold quite as much. I finally figured out that the fresh water tank is divided into two tanks. In the picture to the right, you can see the large tube with a tee in it going to each tank. There is a smaller tube in each tank that is in the line with the red handled valves. Those are the intakes for the fresh water pump. For some reason, when they are both turned on, the system seems to suck a lot of air. I tried turning off the valve to the aft portion (to the left in the picture) of the tank and things went well for several days. Yesterday evening, the problem reappeared - the pump would not shut off after use. I turned off the valve to the forward half of the tank and opened the one to the aft portion. So far, all is well.

I hit a slump - got mildly depressed and had a hard time staying focused on getting work done. Some variety surfaced in the form of a dinner with the Wednesday Night Dinner guys at Macaroni Grill in Milpitas. It is always interesting to catch up with these friends I first met in 1977 when I arrived in Silicon Valley.

I rented a car to get to the dinner and kept the car for another day so I could drive down to Santa Clara to meet with one of my former co-workers from Agilent, visit the much updated marina at Westpoint Harbor where I used to live aboard on Laelia and had dinner at the Sequoia Yacht Club. Dinner at the club was quite interesting. I was accidentally included in a group of people who had been out doing a lot of sailing in the South Pacific and backpacking in Ecuador.

All this reminded me that I need to arrange things to have a little more variety in my life. In the months before I moved aboard Ayala, I discovered that regular exercise did a lot to improve my mood and give me energy. I was going to the gym three times a week for a workout and an extended swim. I got to where I could swim for 30 minutes without stopping and I felt great afterward. Yesterday, I finally made it to the gym for the first time in a month. I had to stop swimming at the 20 minute mark but I feel so much better today! Gotta keep up the workouts! It is a bit tricky because the gym is about a 15 minute bike ride and I don't want to be out pedaling around in the dark. That means taking a 3 hour chunk out of the middle of the day - but it is important so I will be working on doing that.


Starboard settee with way too much stuff

Ayala has lots of things that need fixing up but she is certainly in good enough condition to do some SF Bay sailing. I just need to clean up some of the clutter and make sure that things won't bang around too much. My focus for the next few days will be to get things in shape to go sailing.


Port settee and dinette. Better but needs work.

I got started on my fixup agenda by doing a good deck washdown today. Alameda is not the cleanest place to keep a boat to begin with and the SF Bay area has been experiencing a string of "Spare the Air" days - too much pollution in the air. There was an unsightly amount of green fungus starting to appear in areas on deck so the washdown resulted in a significant appearance upgrade.

Now - start sorting through the cabin clutter. What to I need to keep here to be able to work on the boat? What can I put in storage or get rid of? Hopefully, by the next time Judy comes to the boat, we will be able to go sailing instead of working on cleaning and fixing the boat.