June 16, 2010.

Okay, where to begin. Let’s start with soccer. The Germans have arrived in South Africa, everybody else grab your cleats and head home. Thanks to ESPN3 I’ve been able to watch a few of the recent World Cup games on the computer. The Brazilians were entertaining, even against defensive minded North Korea. It just gets a little old watching the boys from Brazil throw themselves to the ground every time they get bumped. The Italians are past their prime and everybody else seems to be playing ultra conservatively, even in “must win” games. The Germans just looked like a freaking machine. 4 goals against Australia and it could have easily been 7.

Christy is still doing the scrape, sand and then varnish thing while I’m attempting not to make a complete idiot out of myself while working on other peoples boats. I removed an injector pump the other day and sent it out to be rebuilt. Today I picked it up and reinstalled it. Then I set about attempting to bleed the air from the fuel system so I could restart the engine. That’s where the wheels fell off…..

I installed the pump and everything was tight as it should be. Try as I might, the engine would not fire up. I got air outta everywhere fairly easily and every time I checked and rechecked there was nothing but pure fuel oozing out of every spot I chose to bleed. What the hell?

Finally, after a couple of hours wracking my brain, sweating my ass off and going over everything again and again I realized that the engine shut off solenoid was in the “kill” position. It seems that when the owner brought the boat into the slip the solenoid froze when he shut the engine down. So I come skipping along and take the fuel system apart. Then a few days later I wander back in and after putting everything back together the boat doesn’t start. So its gotta be something I did, right? Wrong. The system designed to shut the engine down is still physically engaged in the “off” position. The plunger was freaking stuck. Should I have noticed it sooner? Absolutely. But I was sure it had to be something that I wasn’t doing right and just didn’t see it until I stepped back to look at the bigger picture. F%#k me.

Of course the owners were on board and the captain had been hovering over me like my own personal dark cloud of annoying suggestions. So when I manually put the solenoid in the correct position the engine fired right up. It had to, since I’d bled every drop of air that it’s ever had, outta there. It ran like a top and there was great but sweaty joy throughout the land. At this point the captain said to me “what was wrong?”. In keeping with my policy of unflinching honesty I explained to him that the stuck solenoid was the culprit the entire time. He looked at me and replied “Oh, that thing, I hate that f%#king thing, its always getting stuck”.

This is where I decided to abandon my personal policy of unflinching honesty. Because I thought it might cause some hard feelings if I were to express just how deeply I wanted to beat his forehead in with my ball peen hammer. He knows the thing gets repeatedly stuck which causes the engine to not start, he’s got his head practically right in my ass all morning and it doesn’t occur to him to mention that this reoccurring issue might be the problem? F%#k me.

In the evening I went shopping with Mike from Sapphire and watched him spend some money on boat stuff. That made me feel a little better…..tomorrow is another day and I’ve heard rumors that the sun will be out.