Fit to be Tied!

The Captain had always heard one has to be rich to own a boat.

Put another way, a boat is a hole in the water into which you throw money. So you should have a lot of it.

I didn’t want to believe that.

Deep down inside, your Captain is an optimist.

Deep, deep, deep down inside…

But after only a year of boat ownership, I am beginning to see the light.

I had big dreams for The Tiki Hut.

After an enjoyable first summer on the lake, the Captain had big plans to take her from being simply a 30-year-old cabin cruiser to a jammin’ party boat!

My first thought was to have the hull repainted.

But after crashing around into docks all summer, I decided to wait and get a little more docking experience.

So over the winter I re-upholstered the interior cushions.

A small first step.

The second step was replacing the gear shifter. It was a Frankenstein creation if ever there was one. So with Captain Carl’s help (okay, he did all the work), we replaced it.

This is the "After" photo.

But before I could take the next step, we discovered a crack in the engine block.

Captain’s Note: A careful examination suggests that the crack was there before I bought it, hidden behind a two-inch hose.

Yet the seller, with his mechanic at his side, gave me a line of bullshit about how his kids are just so busy with summer sports that they never have time to take her out anymore.

And you call yourself a Christian!

The engine repair was going to cost almost as much as the Captain paid for the boat.

But what is one to do? Foist a broken boat onto some other hapless victim (like was done to me)?

Walk away from her as a total loss / lesson learned?

Sink her?

One mechanic advised the Captain, “Insurance won’t pay for the engine repair. But if you were to forget to put the plug back in when you put her in the water, go off to lunch for a couple hours, then return to a sunken boat, your insurance WILL pay for that… But I’m not recommending you do that; I’m just sayin’…”

So I bit the bullet and took The Tiki Hut to a mechanic.

Three weeks on dry land. Completely exposed to the sun. All the teak dried out and cracked.

But I got a new engine, and the Captain and First Mate looked forward to a worry-free summer on the lake.

That lasted one whole day.

While docking that first evening, The Tiki Hut refused to shift into reverse.

One might suggest the metaphor of “No Retreat” here.

Unfortunately we discovered this as the Captain tried to slow our approach into the slip – I threw her into reverse only to have the boat surge forward!

We ping-ponged around the slip until I could pull the key and grab hold of a post!

Another trip to the mechanic.

A broken cable.

Captain’s Note: As it turned out, the cable was not broken. The casing had split so that when shifting gears the cable would protrude through the breach instead of do its job.

Seemed simple enough.

But alas, another week out of the water.

And despite a new cable, the mechanic couldn’t get her to shift.

This morning they took apart the lower (gear) unit and found it “rotted out”.

Rust. Corrosion. It was locked up tight.

Which most likely is what damaged the cable.

At this point, the Captain has no idea how much this repair is going to cost.

And his blood pressure is rising!

Add to that "good news" our discovery on Saturday that the First Mate’s kayak has been stolen.

Captain’s Note: This is not one of those $200 jobs from Walmart either!

Apparently there has been a rash of thefts around the marina over the past two weeks that the management failed to share with the rest of us.

The Tiki Hut will soon be back in the water. We haven’t decided what to do about the missing kayak... other than report the theft to the local authorities.

Captain’s Note: It was interesting trying to figure out who has jurisdiction. Surprisingly, it is not the local sheriff. If the kayak had been in the water, it would have been a Coast Guard issue, or maybe the Fish and Wildlife Management people. But since the kayak was on the pier, the nearby city police department has jurisdiction.

Summer is finally here, and with any luck, The Tiki Hut is now good as new!

But the pirate life may become a necessity after all that has happened this past month!

Where Is The Outrage?

In 1972, a young American actress protesting the Vietnam War climbed atop an enemy tank for a photo-op. 

Vietnam veterans despise Jane Fonda still today.

Forty-six years later.

Despite numerous apologies from the actress.

Despite a general agreement that the Vietnam War was morally wrong.

Now fast-forward to 2018...

This past week, the President of the United States of America saluted a General from the North Korean army.

An enemy army.

[*Crickets] 

Where is the outrage?

Where is the outrage?

The Captain wants to know... 

Where is the fuckin' outrage!?!

 

I Tried. I Really Tried.

Your Captain so wanted to leave politics behind and just focus on the real world for once.

Or maybe even on a fantasy world, where every child can grow up to be a pirate or a mermaid if they want.

But dammit, President Trumpf keeps dragging me back in to his nightmare!

This self-proclaimed genius, who doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground, keeps chipping away at the America I have known and loved all 55 years of my life.

He campaigned on a theme of “Make America Great Again” – which I didn’t think was necessary; we are already great, aren’t we?

And then he began chipping away at those things that made us great: our care for the least among us, our protection of lesser nations, our moral high ground!

And now he’s isolating us from our world allies. He has pissed off Great Britain and Germany already, and at last week’s G-7 Summit he even managed to piss off Canada!

Canada!

For Christ’s sake, man! How do you piss off Canada?!?

But then, he goes from the G-7 Summit with our Allies to a summit with Kim Jong-Un, the Great Leader of North Korea.

Pay attention here. Just over 10 months ago, Fox News host Sean Hannity told his audience that North Korea was led by an evil regime that should not be appeased since it would break any agreement with the U.S.

And all this time your Captain thought the President got his policies from watching Fox News.

Here’s the thing: no president since the Korean War has met with any leader from North Korea.

And for good reason! The Communist country has an abhorrent record on civil rights and the treatment of its citizens, and it has continually made threats against South Korea and Japan.

And Kim himself seems to have no compunction about having his enemies killed, even his own family members.

So the summit happened. Singapore hosted it. Lots of smiles and handshakes for the “Fake News” people, both far and wide.

Images of flags of the United States lined up with flags of North Korea were too much to stomach.

Talk about disrespecting the American flag!

Captain’s Note: Me dear ol’ Dad served our nation as a Marine during the Korean conflict.

And what came of the summit? No one can be sure because both Trumpf and Kim are notorious liars and their discussions were held in secret.

Truth. Only a translator was present and your Captain is guessing she will be the next to mysteriously die.

The written agreement that was produced said Kim would work toward the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

Promises he has made before. And before that. And before that.

But did you listen to what he agreed to? Denuclearization… of the whole peninsula – not just his part of it.

And there was nothing in writing about verification or how the denuclearization would take place or that it be permanent.

Captain’s Note: Trumpf withdrew the U.S. from the Iran Nuclear Agreement, which took months of diplomacy from world leaders and contained very precise statements about verifications and timelines.

Nothing like that in Trumpf’s great “deal”.

For Kim’s part, giving up his nuclear ambitions is easy. His nation is broke.

Before the summit Kim even wanted to know who was going to pay for his hotel room in Singapore!

Plus, the mountain on which they were building and testing their nuclear weapons recently collapsed, sealing their nuclear fate. 

Trumpf, meanwhile, promised to cancel U.S. military training maneuvers with South Korea… without first consulting South Korea. This will be a boon not only to North Korea, but also to China.

Trumpf even suggested the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?! READ A DAMNED HISTORY BOOK, YOU IDIOT!!!

Sorry. Where was I?

So after only a brief meeting with the Kim Jong-Un, President Trumpf has declared the world safe again.

Except for Canada. They hate us now.

And naturally, on Tuesday, following the Singapore meeting, Sean Hannity did a complete reversal and praised Trump’s efforts to negotiate with the dictator, saying it even exceeded White House officials’ expectations.

Wait a minute. The White House had expectations of this summit? And what were they, pray tell?

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared before the summit that complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization “is the only outcome that the United States will accept.”

“…the only outcome…”

Odd. The Captain doesn’t hear that language in the signed agreement.

So what was this charade really about? It’s really quite simple.

We know because President Trumpf can’t keep his mouth shut – or in this case, his Twitter feed.

In his own words, “North Korea has great beaches. You see that whenever they’re exploding cannons into the ocean. I said, ‘Boy, look at that view. Wouldn’t that make a great condo?’”

I shit you not!

Trumpf advised Kim Jong-Un to build “the best hotels in the world” on North Korea’s coastline.

Naturally, they would be branded with the Trumpf name…

“Think of it from a real estate perspective,” Trump(f) said.

And that, my beloved shipmates, is what the Singapore Summit was really about.

Sigh…