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| The Pride Flag at my very downtown boat club |
I interrupted today's labours, which involved passing on some companionway hatch dogs to my excellent fabrication for pondering and modification (they are a little over the top along the length) to attend a brief flag-raising ceremony in honour of Pride Month. Now, it's true my yacht club has a demographic not only pretty pale, but also one in which after nearly 20 years, I'm
still one of the younger sailors...a disturbing thought, maybe...given my rapidly greying hair. But it is also true that there's several gay men and women, a few of whom are couples, who are members at the club and avid boaters as well. Of course there are. There almost certainly always were. We just called them "bachelors" in the past. Or maybe "married to the sea". But the times have changed, Toronto is an extremely gay-positive city (it wasn't as late as my 20s), and hey, flags, parades, merriment.
The Commodore looked tickled, as well he might, as it was a beautiful day to be hoisting a flag and not being indoors at a budget meeting. It was also (finally) showing signs at the seawall that the waters that have plagued us with their abudance are in retreat. There's only five or six centimeters of water over the bricks of the inner basin wall now. The swans and geese look a bit put out, but the members hope to get to damage control shortly. D Dock is in terrible shape and the breakwall keeping the lake out is still submerged, although it can be faintly discerned dragging at the waves.
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| From the Big Book of Amish Sailing |
Some time ago, I purchased a hand-cranked fuel pump. I intended to plumb it to transfer fuel between keel tanks and the (provisional) day tank I hope to install post-filters. But I've changed my mind a bit on that score and may just use the Walbro FRA-1 inline 12 VDC pump I bought to overcome a potential rise problem from the keel tanks to the engine. Turns out not only does this measure seem unnecessary, but the diesel's fuel pump seems to do just fine dragging fuel up from the tank, further up to the filters, and down into itself. I rarely have to use the filter setups integral pump, and there's no sign of strain in the pressure gauge. So I realized I'm up one old-timey manual pump.
I rooted around in my "plumbing" tackle box (my spares are stowed more or less by function: plumbing; electrical; wire reels, impellers and filters and so on) and found enough correct pieces to try making a Jerry Can Aid. My deck fuel fills are located less than ideally close to the double upper stays; it's a tight fit and tipping a full 25 litre diesel jug has always been a bit fraught and problematic, even with a tall funnel. I thought leaving the diesel jug on deck and hand-pumping would be cleaner and less alarming.
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| Going with the flow. I doubt the carp knew what I was doing. |
And so it came to pass. Less splashing, only a couple of drops away when I was done, and this little simple device really passed the fuel rapidly: about 40 revolutions for 21 litres into Aft Tank. I may bother to get fewer, more correct pieces and use this regularly. Squeeze bulbs are for outboards!
