Bonehead Stunts

Stuart, FL

27 11.93 N 80 15.67 W

Regular readers of this blog know well that I do more than my fair share of boneheaded stunts and create my own snafus. Well, nothing has changed. Here's two of my most recent.

I love Honda small motors. We have a Honda outboard and a Honda 1000 generator. They run very well. The generator is exceptionally quiet which is a valuable quality.

All Honda small engines have a kinky system for draining and refilling the motor oil. They have a tilted spout, that it capped with a threaded plug. The top of the plug is narrowed to make a handle for thumb and finger. The design is kinky because one normally twice as much dirty and clean oil than spills rather than getting to the desired container. I bought a sort of spigot that claims to make the process no-spill.

Last week, I was changing the oil in the generator. I put down the filler plug. It rolled off the bench into the cockpit well. From there it went down the cockpit drain and into the sea. Of course it didn't float.

I tried all the lawn mower and auto parts stores in town to buy a replacement, but of course none of them are compatible. Now, I have an exact replacement on order from Honda and in a few weeks I'll have it. Meanwhile, I have to share one filler plug between the outboard and the generator. We can only run one at a time.

The other stunt happened as I was repairing a leaky sink drain in the head. I took the drain apart, cleaned it off, and prepared to put it back with a bead of silicone tub and tile sealer. As normal in such cases, the project required several trips to my tool box to fetch yet another tool.

Soon the job was done. Good. Then I turned around and looked. There was white silicon all over my shirt, my pants, my shoes, and white footprints all over Tarwathie's head, cabin and ladders. Oh no! What a mess!

I figured out what happened. I used a 6 ounce tube of sealer that I bought at Ace Hardware. It was brand new. What I didn't notice was that the bottom of the plastic tube had a crack. As I squeezed the tube to get a bead of sealer to squirt out the nozzle, a bigger quantity was squirting out the back of the tube onto me and on the floor where I was stepping. Of course I didn't notice until it was too late. As Ricky Ricardo used to say, "Ay ay ay, ay ay."