Tuesday morning I started the day in the boaters’ lounge and ordered some more spares online. This is a nice place to work quietly with a great internet connection.
Richard stayed on board Morphie waiting for the rigger – expected at 8 am to fit the whisker pole – so continued to work hard to find places to stow things. Anyway….by the time I had finished and returned….it was clear the rigger wasn’t coming. So Richard left a message in his office and we headed off to the supermarket for some dry goods / essentials – we have loads more provisioning to do – but will leave much of it for later when we have the fridge and freezer operating properly. As yet they are being stubborn and falling over every time the compressors start.
During all this I received a fraud alert on my credit card – oh no… not again!! Luckily it was only because the two marina offices had both charged the card at the same time and it looked suspicious. Well it was genuine as one was for our splash / launch bill and the other for our slip in the marina. All sorted – phew – that would not have been a good start to the season. We popped into the marina office to collect some parcels – this time it was new Mares dive bags and a gas fitting that had turned up – and I realised when she gave me our final statement that they had charged us twice for the November storage. Hmmmm…. over to them to sort out…. luckily I had printed copies of our credit card statements with us in case of any dispute – glad I did!
Later on in the afternoon – in between rain showers – the cleaners came by and finished polishing the stern for us. And of course the rigger never showed up at all – not sure why I’m surprised when this happens…. Oh yes – and I found a local source for Garmin datacards to take us beyond Panama so tried to order them on line…. But the online ordering system requires a US or Bahamas billing address for the credit card so I called them. He was on the road and said he would get someone to call to take my order… Fingers crossed that this works out as these cards have been discontinued by Garmin without any prior communication of this – even though we are registered on their site as owners of plotters. We are very angry about all this – if they had given us warning we would have ordered everything we needed at that stage. So we were facing a decision about whether to swap out one of our plotters to accommodate the new type of chip that Garmin are now supplying. So to find a supplier who still has them in stock here in the US has cheered me up no end! After another busy day we had dinner in the bar and had an early night.
Wednesday morning and it was raining again…. This curtails some of the jobs that we want to do so we are focussing on work down below right now. The rigger – of course – didn’t turn up again but he did contact Richard finally and agreed to come Thursday morning to fit the pole. Sadly the boom vang has still not arrived and no details on estimated arrival dates.
Anyway more important things to sort out – our liferaft needs servicing. We rang Winslow at their headquarters and they gave us a local company who they recommend – so we got in the car and drove to Riviera Beach to drop it off. The service was due end November 2015 and can only be done in the US so good timing or what?!? Anyone would think we had planned it LOL. The drive down to Riviera Beach was about an hour away and we were dogged by serious rain squalls all the way – and, again, we were amazed by how quiet the roads are here…..
On the way back we popped into West Marine to pick up our order that had arrived – very exciting – new anchor and some serious parts like a duo charger and a spare alternator. Arrived back and picked up our post from the marina office – fire extinguisher holders only had arrived this time. We also spoke to the canvas shop and they are now making us new insulation pads for our fridge / freezer tops and straps to hold the spare diesel / petrol / water cans on the rail – all designed by Richard. Will be interesting to see them when they are finished….
In the rain I emptied the water tank…..and refilled it…..and emptied it again. Then the heavens opened so we abandoned the final fill for another day. Good job water is not metered here! We chased the watermaker warranty part again – as it was supposed to arrive before Thanksgiving – only to find out it hadn’t actually made it into the postal system yet. Thankfully we chased otherwise we could have been waiting here indefinitely for that one. The rigger was still not around although he had agreed to come Thursday morning to fit the pole. Richard climbed into the cockpit locker to give some loving attention to the refrigeration system and – yay – with a little more gas he managed to get the fridge working perfectly. Amazing – just the freezer to resolve now – as it remains stubborn and falls over constantly. So switched it off and will try again another day. Again we headed to the bar for dinner and enjoyed the music night.
Thursday morning and the rigger turned up – hurrah! The rigger check was completed – no major problems apart from some rust on the stainless at the top of the mast fittings so some high-level cleaning required – and they re-tensioned the backstays. Finally the new pole and associated rigging was installed. Is much bigger than we expected but thankfully it doesn’t weigh too much….
While they were doing that I took the car out (on my own for the first time) to get some fresh produce now that we had a working fridge and got our card credited by the marina office for the overpayment. Glad that’s sorted. The rigger also confirmed that the boom vang had shipped – so still playing a waiting game but at least it is on its way.
While I was out Richard installed a new Merlin controller to the freezer….. He altered the refrigerant levels and the freezer kicked into action and the temperature started tumbling. My hero! Fingers crossed that it remained stable overnight. Then we put the new primary Delta anchor on – and refilled the water tank again. And of course it is windy and raining again….
So we went shopping again – this time for rope for the anchor snubbers amongst other things…. When we got back Richard started making a new cupboard to fill in the gap left by the removal of the microwave.
We then realised that the Y valve to the overboard discharge was leaking – we have it switched to the holding tank right now – so just another job to add to the list. I refilled the water tank again for the final time. We then made some more phone calls as we need autopilot spares – and ended up ordering a new unit from the manufacturer. Something else to wait on being delivered….. We then went shopping again and purchased some meat for the freezer as we are now confident that it is going to carry on working. Phew feeling tired. While I cooked dinner Richard made a snubber and we ate down below and had an early night listening to the wind howling and the rain beating down on the coach roof.
Friday morning and the weather remained dreadful. There was a cold front coming through with strong winds predicted…. So we checked our fenders but we are snug in our slip. Richard finished the new cupboard – looks lovely – just need to do some beading to finish it off.
The fridge and freezer are both operational and the meat froze during the night – what a result – well done Richard! Forced down below by the weather we continued on small jobs – Richard re-installed the bathroom shelf that had been removed in August when we struggled with the hoses. I made another anchor snubber….. More shopping arrived – this time it was our new Bad Elf. This satellite gps gismo adds capabilities to our iPad as a back-up chart plotter. Very exciting to get that operational and its first trial will probably be as a road satnav on Monday.
Other stuff arrived too: more gas cartridges for the refrigerator system; a new foam topper for the bed; and an emergency line cutter.
We swapped out the leaking Y-valve with the one from our spares so ordered a replacement and had another frustrating call to the company that is supposed to be supplying Garmin datacards. “Will get the guy to call you back immediately – so sorry” and, of course, he didn’t. Grrrr….. Very frustrated – thought I’d solved a problem here – but losing confidence right now! You would have thought they would be keen to take the money though, wouldn’t you?!?
Friday night – in the rain – we headed to the bar for a light dinner. Was very noisy and busy but we enjoyed just chilling for a while before heading back for another night of listening to the fenders being squashed on the poles….
Saturday morning and we had a lazy start listening to the rain…… This is getting tiresome – apparently so far this December Miami has had record rainfall – and it doesn’t look like it is going to abate anytime soon. Chilly too – we have resorted to a blanket on the bed and going out in jeans!!! We went off to the supermarket to get provisions as Brad and Sandy are coming over for dinner this evening. They like live music and a favourite of theirs – Danielle Nicolle – is playing at the Fort Pierce Sunrise Theatre this evening so we are going along with them. We love live music so looking forward to this very much and very pleased to be invited.
We got back – I prepared food – and then we cleaned up the best we could by piling everything into the aft cabin to give some semblance of order LOL. Brad and Sandy turned up and we caught up over an early dinner on board. Down below, of course, sheltering from the rain…. Then we headed off into historic downtown to find the theatre. We parked up – and wandered back – and went in.
We were surprised that the ‘Black Box’ part of the theatre was so intimate and couldn’t seat more than about 100 people. We got a drink and the band arrived.
They did two sets with a short break in between and people were dancing in the aisles by the time they called it a night after two plus hours on stage. Was a really good night – we thoroughly enjoyed the Blues and were very impressed by Danielle’s performance.
Said our farewells to Brad and Sandy – we are going to see them again next week so not too sad – and headed back to the marina. On the way we got stopped by a monster freight train coming to a halt on the cross-roads just in front of us – not seen them stop before – so obviously something was wrong. So we turned around and made our way along a parallel road until we could cross back to the marina in front of where the train was stationery. Bit of excitement to end the day!
This morning – Sunday – and we have had a lazy start. The sky is grey and the clouds look full but – hey – it is not raining – yet!!! I’m in the boaters’ lounge again blogging and doing laundry at the same time while Richard is trying to fix some of our hatches which have sprung leaks…..
Not sure what is planned for the rest of the day but I’m voting for an afternoon of rest LOL. Bye for now
Jan