The "Ninja" pump...

It's like a regular water pump, except it has "blades of fury" spinning inside... of course, I'm talking about the macerator pump that started leaking yesterday.  We checked prices and availability at several places locally; as you'd expect, the only one who had it in stock had the highest price.  We bought it, picked up some hose sections (might as well do it up right) and went back to the boat.

First surprise: the wiring was a larger gauge than I thought, so Joan went to get some butt connectors.  OK, I can already hear some of you snickering about "butt connectors" on a poop pump.  Those are cramp on electrical connectors... seriously - are you laughing about "cramp"??  Grow up.

The old pump came off reasonably easy, except for the hoses.  I applied heat to the hose connection to the through-hull, and pulled... and pulled... and pulled.  Joan said I should not swear so loud, because the neighbors might hear.  "Well, that's why I am swearing LOUDLY: it doesn't do any good to swear if no one hears it!"  Only one of us thought that was funny.

A little back story here: in their infinite wisdom, the factory installed the macerator pump inside the galley storage compartment.  Yes, near your food.  Or, your pots and pans.  OK, everyone get it out of the way... "Eeewwwwwwwwwww!!"

Joan had everything emptied out of the cabinet, not leaving much space for anything or anyone.  I put rubber gloves on and went after that bad boy.  I had a plan: take the old one out, put the new one in.  One of us thought there should be more detail in that plan.  OK, take the old one out, throw it away, put the new one in.  Again, only one of us thought that was funny.  OK, new plan: take the old one out, put the butt connectors on the wiring on the new one, mount up the new one, install the new hoses, tighten up the hose clamps, finish the wiring, test it.

Everything went almost perfectly according to plan, except for that wiring stuff... only two more trips back to the marine supply place.  Oh, and cutting and mounting the new hoses required a lot more swearing than I had planned for... I used up almost my entire swearing vocabulary in the first 15 minutes... not leaving much for the next two hours.  And then a leak from one of the hose connections during "the test"... and another trip back to the marine supply place for more hose clamps.  Not including time to empty the cabinet, clean the cabinet, sanitize the cabinet, then re-sanitize the cabinet, then clean it again, then put stuff away... I am happy to say that I was in on that part only by making myself scarce.

All time considered, we managed to turn a one hour job into 4 hours of grunting, sweating, and swearing.  Really?  "Grunting" made you snicker again?  What are you, 8 years old?

Speaking of 8 years old, on my last trip to the marine supply place... well, the second to the last trip, 'cause I forgot my wallet that trip... and the guy at the counter felt sorry for me and said, "I know where to find you - here's how much you owe us." (for the hose clamps).  Well on one of those trips there was a kid and his Dad walking on some of the finger docks.  You can tell when people are just being lookie-loos... and these two were.  The kid was whining, "I don't like this dock.  This isn't my favorite dock."

I said, "Hey kid - this is a 'NO WHINING ZONE'!!  If you want to whine, you have to go over to the main pier."  He looked at his Dad with the expression of "Can he say that to me?" on his face.  His Dad said, "You heard the guy.  He knows this stuff."

I only mention that last part because of the post previous to this where I talked about screaming kids, and one lady thought kids were delightful.  She should have to spend an hour with this little whiner.  Just passing by was as much as I could stand.  Might have had something to do with the fact that I'd been dealing with a shit-pump most of the afternoon?  What's that?  No, I wasn't whining, I was swearing... whining doesn't get the job done.  It just annoys everyone around you.

Well, Joan is almost done putting everything back in order.  I need to get this posted before she makes an adult beverage for me... otherwise, the chances are pretty good I'll have to make it myself.

You know the definition of "cruising"?  Fixing your boat in new locations.