Summer In South Carolina

SHIP'S LOG:

      Tuesday turned out to be a bad day after all.  No rain and high heat and humidity. It was in a word "BRUTAL!" I think I actually came close to heat stroke or heat exhaustion or another one of those "heat"  impacts. I was dizzy and listless all day. I consumed incredible amounts of water and sweated it all out as fast as I drank it. It was a mid-August day in South Carolina!

     I was really hoping that we would get a thunderstorm last night. I had all the ports and hatches open in the hopes of enticing a deluge to fall butt no joy. They got creamed inland, especially around Vernon and above, but down here there was only heat lightning. NOAA is predicting a thunderstorm today, late in the day, and it will probably happen as today is Wednesday and Wednesday is racing night. So far, they have had no wind, too much wind, good wind that faded, just enough wind to move a boat at a snail's pace and one great night. It would seem as though we are "due" for a thunderstorm.

     I spent part of yesterday afternoon trying to track down a drip leak. Water is dripping into the bilge and I can't find out where it is coming from. The limber holes, those holes in the structure of the boat that allow for water in the bilge to end up in the deepest dart, the sump, are not all level and some times impede the water flow so that water collects in gets released only when the boat rocks. I went around sopping up all the water I could find and pumped out the bilge and I still can't find out where it is coming from. It is not the stuffing box, it is not the rudder shaft, it is not any of the thru-hulls I can find. It just shows up. Thus again, I will spend some time today trying to track it down, inside the boat, contorted in the bilge, one a hot, humid, summer afternoon. ARGH!

      Still no nibbles on ABISHAG, so by then end of the week, I will have the broker drop the price again. Only Publisher's Clearing House can save me, but the odds of that are slim and none, and, as they say, "Slim left town!"