There's A Hole In The Bucket, Dear Henry, Dear Henry

Our latest problems remind me of that well known children's song.

With our generator taken apart we can't run our refrigeration so we need to go into the dock at least every other day for ice. Normally we use the dinghy, but our floppy old dinghy is just getting worse and worse and we really need to take it apart and glue it back together. However, if we take the dinghy apart, we can't go get ice or the head for the generator which is at the machine shop. But if we had the generator head, the generator would run, and we wouldn't need ice.

See what I mean?

Instead of going around in circles like Liza and Henry though, we noodled out this solution:

First we picked up the head (from the hack who broke the exhaust manifold trying to pry it off of the head) and took it to a different machine shop. Ten miles on bicycles in the blazing Florida sun.

Then we paddled back to the boat (we were afraid to trust the transom to support the outboard motor any longer) and heated up the glue joints with the torch, and pulled it all apart.

Next we cleaned all the old adhesive off in preparation for the re-gluing which we hope to start tomorrow.

And finally, the marina allows the mooring ball boats to come alongside the fuel dock now and then for a few hours, so that's how we'll get ice and run necessary chores while our dinghy is healing.

Thank goodness we don't have to keep singing that annoying song.