mechanic's yoga and other updates.....

charlie_the_tuna

charlie_the_tuna

God
first, a bit of back story. some of you know i have two boys. 24 and somewhat gainfully employed and 20 and fishes 16-20 hours per day. Cam works at a hospital as an ER clerk. i don't know exactly what he does but everybody loves him because he's gorgeous. Steven is a man-child who lives to fish, and he's dam good at it. he's also been my shadow for some time. well' y'all know i'm trying to get this boat done and the Beeb (a nickname his brother gave him) has been a big part of getting things done. now i'm getting down to the actual work and i know exactly what needs to be done. the problem? i'm closing in on 60 and i just can't get into these positions anymore. i was on the deck for about 25 minutes the other day and after struggling to get to my feet, my body was stiff and my back was screaming. like being in a yoga position that i had no business being in in the first place. that morning, the Beeb came home from the pier about 11:30am, had a bite and went to bed. i asked if he wanted to go work on the boat and he said give him an hour or two. i left and tried to work on it myself. came 2.5 hours later and he's snoring away. he wakes up and asks if we're going to work on the boat. i worked on the boat while you were sleeping. i got almost nothing done because i can't do the mechanic's yoga anymore. so let's go now. not a chance. it's almost 5:00pm and i'm not going back down. i have too much to do. a wasted day. all i need to do is pull the batteries (in the starboard fish box and impossible to get to) and pull and measure the fuel line and go pick it up. it's now 8:36am and we'll see what happens in another hour or so when i'm ready to go. he got back from fishing all night at 5:45am. he caught a few dozen weakfish. one of his favorite.
and this is the reason i've been high and dry for 3 plus weeks.
 
i wake up at 5:00am for work and on my days off (wed/thu) i'm still up around 6-6:30. i enjoy this time . quiet and alone. i'll have my coffee and sometimes i'll watch youtube channel deerfield beach pier underwater cam. it's a live feed of a camera under the pier and it's loaded with fish. it relaxes me and sometimes i'll watch it for an hour or more. i watch it on this huge smart TV. it's about the only thing i know how to do on it. it's smarter than me.
if you have a few minutes with your morning coffee and you want to see something cool, go to youtube and type in key word deerfield pier. it should come up. it's a live feed and you never know what you'll see.
 
I'll have to check out the Deerfield pier. We've got a cool camera at frying Pan Shoals that has some good activity. It right off Cape Fear, right at the NCSC line. Charlie, Im 55, 5'9" 250, on my second back surgery. Every day I bend and stretch in places no one in their right mind would try to go. Last week I spent the better part of 4 hours upside down, installing a pair of bilge pumps in a 31 Sea Ray, both pumps were under the generator. After laying on the exhaust system for most of the day, I determined the wiring to the pumps was in too bad of shape, ended up pulling the mufflers out of the boat and was able to stand, crouched over fixing the wiring. I've been stuck, like stuck real bad twice. Once between the top of a 6 cylinder Volvo diesel and the floor of the stateroom. When I got out of that one, i had the scars across my chest to show off. The other time, I got stuck between the engines on a 34 Searay, on the very bottom of the bilge. Like I was sitting on the floor of the bilge the boat was taking, I had slowed teh water down, but now I couldn't get out. My belt was hung up on something, quick work with teh benchmade and I was free. I've actually joked about doing a boat yoga utube channel, it would probably be funny. Reach for the bilge, stretch and reach for the starter.:you:
 
Hey Spare, before I got the corona, I was a young mid 50 something. I’m now suffering from what they call long Covid. I’ve gotten very old in the last two years. I spent most of my life building cars and hunching under the hood or rolling under with or without a creeper and never had an issue. That fauci koksukker and his Chinese friends really got us good. I watch friends and coworkers drop dead weekly. I watch myself and many others aging at a rapid pace. The virus was bad, but the long term effects of this disease are more than I bargained for. I thank god for my 20 year old. He’s good with his hands, he loves to learn and he’s getting pretty good at this stuff. All that stuff you speak of, I can’t take that on anymore. Now I just impart wisdom and point to what needs doing.
 
and i've seen the feed from frying pan rock. pretty cool, but the amount of life at deerfield is 50 times more. great variety of fish as well.
 
Subscribed!

I'm closing in on 50 in a few months. My back acts up here and there likely from football in high school, not to mention all the pounding I've taken on the water over the years.

I guess more of the same (and worse) is what I've got to look forward to.

I've always imagined fishing boats are kinda like swimming pools and dogs. Yeah, you can own it but it is much, much better and easier to have a friend or neighbor that has one. I haven't had much luck with that.
:pray:
 
Ha, you guys ain t seen nothing yet. No matter how bad u feel today, a year from now you will wish you felt as good as you did a year ago.

I will be looking at 70 in a couple of months
 
You guys reminded me how stiff I'm feeling in the morning (no, not the good kind of morning stiff!). I remember working on cars and all the positions I'd get into, and one of the most frequent was working on under dash wiring and stereo installations where I would lay on the seat with my legs up in the air and my head and shoulders on the floorboard looking up under the dash. I haven't done that in years and that's probably for the best. Big 60 here.
 
First, to any of you guys who were affected by the storm, hang tough! Walk through this.
Second, I had this big plan to run the fuel line under the splash well, out through a bulkhead fitting and into another bulkhead fitting running into the battery well with the bulb in between. So I couldn’t find any of these fittings so I ordered up a bunch. So I had everything in hand on Wednesday and I went down Thursday morning to slap this sh!t together.
So I run a snake from the tank to under the splash well, I reach under to grab the hose and I feel a little gap between the splash well and the battery compartment. So I push the line into the battery well and right into the filter. So I sat like a jerkoff waiting for these parts to arrive when I could have just stuck my hand in there and got everything tied up weeks ago.
Oh well….. you live, you learn.
So I hooked everything back up (with 4 trips to ace hardware) which thankfully is just across the street from the marina. Took her out for a spin and she ran like a champ for a solid 40 minutes.
I ended up replacing the fuel line from tank pickup to filter/water separator while replacing the filter element as well. We’ll take her out Wednesday/Thursday if the weather holds and knock wood, everything runs as intended.
 
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