Yuckie! Gooie! Disgusting! ECK!

SHIP'S LOG:

Went down to visit ABISGHAG the other day and fiberglass guys (and girl) hadn't yet begun working their magic. The weather for the coming week also do not bode well for any fiberglassing. Looks like everything will be delayed . . .ah so what else is new?

Spent the day sterilizing the bilge, or rather the sump of the bilge, the deepest part of the bilge wherein drains all of the effluents and detritus that wends its way on the the my craft. While I have attempted to clean the bilge in the past, the final discovery of the hidden oil leak last summer (see previous blogs from last summer - you don't expect me to recount the whole story here again, do you?), I was committed to cleaning it all out completely, making it sweet-smelling and surgically sterile! I didn't quite get there, but close, oh so close. There was a surprisingly large amount of water in the sump and about a 2 inch layer of "oil?" under it. It took some pumping to get all the water out as it had to be filtered through oil retaining pads so that I could dump it without irritating the EPA and/or getting fined. There is some lifeform that lives just at the barrier between the water and the oil and it produces a noxious smell that is beyond belief. I pumped out some 6 gallons of a water/oil mixture, drained it through the pads and dumped the water and put the pads in a plastic bag that had to be taken to a disposal site to get ride of.

Once the bilge was dry, relatively speaking, it had to be scrubbed down with the bio-degradable, oil-consuming mixtures that themselves smelled equally bad. Trying to make them less noxious, the manufactures added "a fresh citrus scent" which, when mixed with the lingering odor from the oil/water lifeform, smelled worse than the lifeform alone . . .if possible. It was enough to gag a maggot! Two(2) hours bent over in the bilge, scrubbing and wiping and rinsing and spraying and rinsing and wiping and spraying . . . . and it was done . . .until next year. It is clean and fresh smelling . . . well at least it doesn't smell. And it is clean, no oil or scum left. Mind you, I wouldn't eat anything that dropped in there, but if I drop something in there, at least it wouldn't get eaten!

MASTER'S PERSONAL LOG:

Financially, things continue to be a mess. The debt resolution company and Bank of America are fighting; the condo needs to have a required minimum$7,888 (which I don't have) worth of upgrades to stay in the rental program; I have had to drop the asking price on the condo again to stay in line with the other panicky sellers, my income may be halved beginning this month and taking a flier on a Powerball Ticket on Wednesday didn't even earn me eve one right number. I haven't got a clue as to what will happen next but it ought to be something. Just what I don't know. The dream seems to be turning into a bit of a nightmare and I am not quite sure what to do next. I know that God in in control and I trust that things will work out according to God's plan, but these leaps of faith are getting scarier and scarier to make. Compared to other people, I've got no problems, but compared to me, I have real serious problems, and trusting that they will work out in God's own way, well . . . . they always have before and I will keep trying to believe that they will now.