Turds away!

When we brought the boat to the yard last month, we hauled
the portable pump-out from the neighboring boatyard (with permission) to the
slipway when we tied up.  Long walk and it was heavy.
We hooked everything up and pumped, pumped, till we realized the
dang thing was broke.  We hauled it all the way back to the neighboring boatyard, and hauled Journey with two full waste tanks.  Since then, Al has started to notice an odor emanating from the forward head.
Yep, we were starting to smell like shyte.  There’s only one way to fix that…. Pump. So we went over to examine the portable pump out again. Eureka, it had “stuff” in it! That meant that it had worked for someone else recently.
There was hope. So we pumped out the left over shyte into the shyte pipe in the ground and hauled the portable pump out over to the boat.
We hooked it up and pumped, pumped, till we realized that the dang thing was broke.  Great.
Then we remembered Messy Nessie.
Al built a pump out hose for us to use when we are offshore. Sorta looks like the Loch Ness Monster, hence the name. I’ll leave you to figure out how the Messy works into the equation. We hooked up Ms. Ness to the boat pipe and I placed the other business end into the hole in the portable pump out.
We pumped, pumped, and words cannot describe the stench that erupted from the confines of
that hose, but suffice to say, that effluent was transferred, Messy Nessie got a thorough washing out and we are empty, disinfected and smelling like mint, according to the label on the bottle of tank treatment. We emptied both tanks, then hauled the portable pump out back to the neighboring boatyard, and dropped the hose in the pipe and found it was still broke.
We left this recurrent theme for someone else to solve.

Xanthophobia

Definition
FEAR OF THE COLOR YELLOW: (xanthophobia, fear of the color
yellow, and fear of the word yellow)
1: fear of the color yellow: a persistent, abnormal, and
unwarranted fear of yellow, despite conscious understanding by the phobic
individual and reassurance by others that there is no danger. 2: fear of the
color yellow: an extreme unwarranted fear and/or physical aversion to yellow.
So if any of the above seems to describe you, you probably
will want to hit the “back” key right now.
You have stumbled into a yellow zone. 
Al and I had to replace the canvas on our last boat,
Journey. Not this boat, the other boat. I know, it’s confusing, but try to keep
up, will ya? Where was I? Oh yeah, Al was all for doing the normal thing, blue
or green, but I was holding out for… you guessed it, yellow.
Why, you ask? It’s different. I like different. I thrive on
different. I just needed to convince my husband to embrace his wild side.
I finally hooked him with the fact that bright yellow would
make us very visible. Visibility is good, I pointed out. He agreed, and
proceeded to pick out the loudest brightest gaudiest yellow in the Sunbrella
collection.
“Your Honor, Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, one can only
look at the photographs of the wreckage to know that the defendant is lying
when he stated that he didn’t see my clients. No one could miss that much
yellow.”
And I do feel safe with a boat that emulates the lines down
the center of the highway.
Having a yellow boat has been a great icebreaker as well. People
flock to it like flies to honey, cameras in hand. Probably figure no one will
believe them. “No, really, it was the same color as Leroy’s school bus!”
And yes, she does get compliments. In fact, lots of them, so
either people respond favorably to yellow boats, or cruisers are just really
nice people. Well, they ARE really nice, but you know what I mean.
So yellow became OUR color. Our trademark, if you will. And
there was never any question that our new boat had to be yellow too.  People have been stopping their cars on the
little road for the last few days as the paint has finally been being put on
and saying how they love her color.
We do too. It’s such a fun color!