Here’s a hot tip for the would be cruiser: Learn to weld stainless steel and you’ll never be wanting for money or work in your travels. In all of our years aboard we have hired welders seven times that I can think of off hand. Mechanics, twice. Refrigeration guys, twice. Nope, welding is where it’s at. If you can weld stainless you’ll be working in every exotic anchorage the world over.

The davits are coming along nicely. They are big strong beasts and I’m pretty sure they bring Bumfuzzle’s overall length to over fifty-two feet. We’ll be in super yacht territory before you know it. Today they fit the davits and then spot welded four supports in. Two crossbeams and two supports back down to the boat. And at the end of the day we decided to throw on even more. One more crossbeam and a triangular support at the bend of each davit. These things may just raise the bow up a bit by the time we’re done. Anyway, hopefully this project is complete on Monday. Check something off this damn list of ours.

Our toilet is leaking salt water from somewhere deep inside its bowels and it struggles to flush a two-year-old’s number two, so instead of taking apart a thirty-year-old no name toilet we’re springing for a new one. These are the things people with boats talk about. Sorry. I looked at the fancy schmancy electric ones, but a thousand bucks seems a bit extreme for what this is used for. We’ll be scoring the two hundred dollar Jabsco that took us around the world last time. In comfort.

I decided to hold off on reinstalling the compressor since with it off I should be able to do some sort of military crawl underneath the engine to access the last of the bilge filth. I am in no way looking forward to that.

Boats. Man. What were my exact words? “One thing I know for certain is that we’ll never own another boat.” I wrote that once upon a time.

Lowe is still struggling with his sleep. I mean seriously struggling. He slept for half an hour today. That is messed up. And this after being up at five o’clock. He’s slowly killing us. But Christ is he ever a sweet little thing. Despite the lack of sleep he spends most of the day smiling, talking, sucking, and gnawing on anything he can get his hands on. Yep, there must be another tooth coming in. If babies were just born with a mouth full of teeth they would be so much cooler.