Sunny and Cold today. I was informed that it was going to snow on Sunday and had to have outside confirmation – and weather.com verified it.  Just as I thought it was safe to go in the water! Glad it’s not on a work day  😉 By the way were able to get a new starter for the marina water pump – about $450 (and worth every dime!) The Sabreliner can go in the water at anytime now that the bottom is done, but we won’t be doing it today with the temperatures expected over the weekend. It’s enough to be ready to do it on a minute’s notice. We also had a work order come in to replace the bellows on a Volvo outdrive. This job is not child’s play – in fact the owner brought in part of his manual with about 20 pages of instruction. The outdrive needs to be entirely removed to do this job. If you enlarge the second picture you can see the hole in the bellows. The keel bolt project is almost done. As you can see with the engine removed we were able to remove and clean up all the bolts in this area in order to get them torqued to manufacturer’s specs. Did You Know I see a lot of surveys  come across my desk. One thing that pops up a lot are a couple of safety deficiencies that shows up on almost every boat. The first is no protective boots on positive terminals of starters, alternators and electric motors. The other is the absence of sealed boxes for AC electrical connections. If you are selling your boat you may want to care of these – and maybe if you just plain don’t want to be electrocuted. It would behoove you to know more about the electrical systems and mechanical systems aboard even if you don’t plan on doing the work yourself and no one teaches better than Nigel Calder. This book is a valuable asset to have aboard when things go wrong or just to study to be prepared when things DO go wrong (it’s a boat). Buy it at Amazon.com Anything Can Happen Friday Underwater River in Mexico – you have to see this to believe it.