Sunday, September 21, 2008

Sunny and bright

At the lake it is always sunny and bright! Well most of the time anyway. Today started out overcast and I was afraid it would stay that way all day. But not so, as it burned off about 11 and the rest of the day was perfect.

I started today by working on the jet ski trailer. The tail lights on any boat trailer take a real pounding. Or should I say dipping. You back the trailer into the lake to get the boat and then pull it out again once loaded. The trouble is that this fills the tail lights with water and sand or mud.

The water slowly seeps out, over the next hour or so, but leaves the sand and mud behind. This drys to a film that coats the inside of the light. After a while, the lights do not work anymore. The lenses are so muddy from the back side, that you can't see the bulbs if they are working. So today was the day to fix this.

Our Wal Mart here in Osage Beach, has all these boat products, that most Wal Marts don't have. I had purchases these lights on a previous visit, and had been putting off their installation. Today was the day, and it wasn't all that hard either. Just bolt them in place and I soldered and heat shrinked the connections. Its been a long time since I have seen those tail lights work like that.

But then it was time to take the jet ski out of the lake. Loyce drove the car and trailer over to the public boat launch, and I rode the ski over. We were both in the lake trying to get the ski on the trailer straight, but we finally prevailed. If you back in too far, the ski floats around and doesn't land in the bunks right, and if it isn't in deep enough, the ski is really heavy to get up into the nose lock. Today I wasn't in far enough so we had to restle with the heavy ski to get it on straight.

Once home, we ran the water out of the engine and put stabil in the gas. It is now in the back corner of the garage with the battery charger on the battery. I ran the thing nearly down, trying to get it started. Turned out I didn't have the choke on all the way and it needed to be.

In the afternoon, we went to Wal Mart again to get some oil to change the oil in the pontoon outboard motor. Its a Honda. Takes eight quarts. I remember this from last year, but had forgotten in the interium.

Tomorrow, I will tackle the job of lifting the old oil out of the engine without pulling the drain plug. The pontoon sets out on the water on a floating lift. Pulling the plug would drain the oil into the lake. The oil floats on top of the water and coats everything it comes in contact with. This is particularly nasty, so I do not take this chance.

That is our day here, not too exciting, but then I am at the lake and it is sunny and nice, what else could I want?

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