July 15-18, 2000 -- In the Yard

On July 15, I didn't want to do anything. Infact, I said to Mike that I didn't want to do anything. Mike patted me on the head and told me that was fine, but he was going to change the oil. Exactly 17 minutes later, Mike called me to help him in the engine room. So much for me not working today. We spent the next several hours changing the oil and filters on the engines. We also had planned to change the air filters on the engines. Unfortunately, when we reviewed our filters, we discovered that we didn't have any air filters! By the time we were done, we had only 1 gallon of oil left on the boat! On July 16, we did nothing. We didn't have the parts to fix Ling-Ling, and the dock hand person didn't know where we could dispose the oil. So we decided to just take the day and relax. On July 17, Ling Lings parts came in. Mike went behind her and changed out the ground solenoid. While he was back there, he discovered a second wire that we had failed to move when the ground solenoid died. We hope that is the reason that she wouldn't charge her battery. After he crawled out from behind her, we tested her out; she fired up! We will find out if she will run properly after about 4-5 hours of run time after we leave the dock. We paid a visit to Braxton to find out what kind of progress payment we would need to make on the insurance work, as well as to talk with her about when we should bring the boat back. We set a yard date of August 28. She also said that she would have to let us know about the progress payment because they were still waiting on KATO Marine to get a quote back for remanufacturing our stainless. On July 18, Tink's parts did not show up. On the flip side, we put a second coat of armada on. We spent part of the day cleaning the boat up since we swapped tours with Carol and Gary on Yellow Rose. They have a cute Lord Nelson tug, complete with three steaming lights in case they tow something. It is a very nicely laid out boat. While they were touring our boat, Bill and Janet from Britican showed up on their dinghy. They came aboard and we chatted for a little while. It was good seeing them again