July, Friday the 13th - Lucky or Unlucky??

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For any of you that know us, you have heard the story about how Friday the 13^th is considered a lucky day for us. For those of you that haven’t heard in 1973 we both felt that July 13^th (a Friday) was a lucky day as that was when we got engaged and have always considered any Friday the 13^tha good day and even better if it was in July.

Well, what about July 13, 2012 (also a Friday)? Today is not so lucky for the handyman, Bob. This AM Bob determined that the head (for those non-sailors - the toilet) wasn’t working properly and needed to be worked on. Of course on a boat there is never much room to move around and even less so in the head. You have to squeeze yourself into small spaces to get to the valves and hoses which is never fun. Bob got it torn apart and even though he does the monthly vinegar treatments to it, found a large calcium deposit build up. As a result even though it is a nice sunny day here, Bob has not seen it as he has been in the head all day. It is now 7PM and Bob is still finishing up the project as he had to tear the whole system apart. Janice offered to help but when it was not wanted she decided it was best to go into town to do errands such as go to the bank and buy bread and anything else to stay away from the boat where at times the air was blue!

The romantic Bob, however surprised Janice when she got back from her errands with a a beautiful card that he had hidden away for the day and we have a bottle of champagne chilled to celebrate.

Fortunately the Festival of Emigrants starts tonight so hopefully we will still be able to go into town and salvage part of the day.

For those of you that think the cruising life is all fun will have to just remember this day or ask Bob about working on a boat. As the saying goes, cruising is just fixing and repairing your boat in exotic places! Luckily it really is more than that, but these types of days remind us of the work that needs to go into maintaining this life style.

So, should we continue to think of Friday the 13^th as lucky? Our vote is yes as this is only 1 not so good Friday the 13^th of 38 years – not too bad odds. However, it was definitely a 11 on a scale of 1 to 10 as far as “bad day” goes! Just ask Bob.

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