Mowing the lawn...

I know what you're thinking: Jim, you hate yardwork.  Mowing the lawn rates right up there with getting dental work done.  Selling the house up north (and giving the new owner the lawn mower) was a delight.  Living on the boat for the summer is a guarantee you won't have to mow anything.

Sorta.

Wild Blue is self-contained.  One of the reasons we chose this boat is the enclosed head, complete with a shower and an RV type toilet system (less complicated than most boat heads).  We visit the pump out station when the holding tank gets full.  This morning, Wild Blue let us know it was time for a pump out.  We make these little treks around the marina (the pump out is on the other side) once every 7 to 10 days.

Today, the tide is way out.  Looking down from the boat, the leafy green stuff on the bottom is way up.  I put the motor down, fired it up, and... we started mowing the greenery.  The BIG leafy stuff won't hurt the prop, but it can cling to the skeg and block the water intakes.  For you landlubbers, that is like having no water in the radiator of your car.

We got just outside the breakwater (we have to go out to go around) when the engine water alarm went off.  "Check the pee stream," I said to Joan.  No, that has nothing to do with her urinary tr... um, nevermind.

"It's peeing!"

I was about to do the same thing when the engine quit.  Joan was getting the paddle out when I got the motor restarted.  A few seconds later - the alarm again.  We went through the stalling/starting procedure a couple more times before we could tie off at the pump out.  First things first: the shitter needs to be emptied, but first we need to check the motor.

Yep, lots of leafy green crap all over the skeg, blocking both water intakes.  It must have been sucking enough water through the leaves to pee, but not enough to keep the motor cool.  A quick brushing and we were good to go back to the reason we were here (easy with an outboard... not so easy to diagnose with an inboard or diesel)... emptying the poop tank.

That chore went easy (they have good equipment here), and we were soon on our way back to our slip.  Yep, the slip that is sitting in the same shallow water.  We pulled in, tied off, and cleaned the intakes again, 'cause they were both covered.

Lesson learned: excrement occurs, but when you need to deal with it, an extreme low tide is not the time.  Take care of this stuff AFTER work, not before when you are up against a schedule.