On March 1, the alternator on the port engine was removed, making the port engine unusable. That was pretty much the high point of the day, except that not having the port engine heightened my concern about moving the boat the next day in to the haul out slip.

On March 2, we had lots of stuff to do. First, we headed to West Marine to pick up the 5 hatches and transport them to Rybovich. As we pulled in, we saw that the boat had already been hauled, which was a relief since we didn't suffer the trauma of watching it get hauled. We met the "little guy" who would take our washer dryer apart and he climbed on to the boat. As I started climbing aboard the boat, I was informed that the workers still needed to move the boat. I called to Oscar who came down and informed us that he could do nothing with the washer dryer because it was riveted. He also informed us that we would not be able to find a smaller washer dryer because all of them are 33 inches tall. With that news, we revisited the problem with our yard supervisor. We finally decided to go with the inspection hatch under the deck box. All this for a simple E clip, that has slipped off of the motor shaft!

March 3 was relatively quiet. Work progressed on the boat.

On March 4, we went to the boat to start varnishing the new wood work. We also decided to put another coat of varnish on the doors that we had made in October. What a difference a second coat makes! The doors are really starting to look good!

After working so hard on March 4, March 5 was spent lounging.

March 6 held a major surprise for us! We received a call from Sharman and Jan on S/V Sara. They had arrived the day before in West Palm Beach. We spent the morning running around with them to various marine stores. We made plans to have dinner with them, meeting around 6:00 PM. At 2:00 PM, we were supposed to meet a technician to review our old dinghy since we were considering purchasing a new one and wanted to find out what we could get in trade for the old one. He ran late, and then went to the wrong gate. We wound up running into him at the boat almost 2 hours later! We were also supposed to meet with a security system contractor about the layout of the security system we want installed. We waited at the boat until 5:30 PM before getting fed up and heading to meet Sharman and Jan. We spent a wonderful evening talking and sharing each of our experiences heading south.

On March 7, we arrived at the yard in the nick of time. We found out that the hatches we had purchased were the wrong ones! We then told our yard supervisor that we were canceling the security system since they never showed up yesterday. We then headed to West Marine to return the old hatches and purchase the correct ones. West Marine was actually really good about this. We could not locate the original receipt, but they still took the return and we purchased the 5 correct hatches. They weren't sure if they would be able to get them on Thursday's truck, but they promised to try. They told us that if all else failed, the hatches would arrive on Monday's truck. We found this to be perfectly acceptable.

On March 8, the work was completed on the stereo cabinet. While Mike started putting the aft stateroom lockers back together, I was going to get the new GPS antenna attached. However, I was side tracked when one of the carpenters needed help reattaching the aft rail where a joint needed to be repaired. Then we started putting the stereo cabinet back together. Much to our chagrin, we discovered that the labels that we had so carefully made for all of the speaker wires had come off. So part of the time we spent reidentifying the speakers! To get the system completely wired and in place took almost 3 hours, but it was worth it. We now have an operational stereo system!

On March 9, we, headed to West Marine to see if the hatches arrived. We were told that, unfortunately, the hatches did not make it on Thursday's truck, but would definitely be there Monday. After that, we headed to the boat. Mike got cornered answering questions while I taped then put Armada on the windlass pad and aft rail. By the time we were done with that, it was already miserably hot on the boat so we split for the day, due to the heat, and the boat not having AC while up on the hard.

On March 10, we put a second coat of Armada on the windlass pad and aft rail. After that, there were workers inside so we decided not to work further on the aft stateroom. Instead, we decided that we would go out for the evening so knocked off working so we could be rested up for going out.

On March 11, I woke up with Mike's hangover. Because of this, I spent the day quietly, glaring at Mike occasionally.

On March 12, I woke up early. I don't mean normal early, I mean O-dark-thirty early, or 4:30 AM Mike woke up shortly after me, so we decided to get an early start and stop working before the heat of the day made working in the boat unbearable. After breakfast, we headed to the boat and started cleaning out the port stateroom. We needed to do this in order to get to the wood shelving that we had taken apart. Once we had access to the wood, the shelving went back together pretty quickly and now we could get down to getting the boat back together in earnest! Unfortunately, the heat of the day was starting and we called it quits after moving a very few items.

On March 13, we headed to West Marine. When we got there, the truck had not arrived so we headed on to the boat. Right after we got there, the person who was working on the Sonar found us and asked where the control box for the sonar was located. We headed on to the boat and I was extremely thankful we had cleaned out most of the port stateroom, since that is where the control box for the sonar is located! After that, we called West Marine and discovered that the order we had placed almost a week ago had not been forwarded to their warehouse! We headed back to West Marine to sort the problem out and find out what they would do to remedy the situation. Almost immediately, they offered to have the hatches overnighted to us and then hand delivered to the yard. We were relatively happy with the outcome.

On March 14, we ran down to the yard to touch base on a few things, as well as put another coat of Armada on the outside stuff. We went first to the office to talk with our yard supervisor. There weren't any surprises there so we headed on to the boat. While I started putting things away, Mike put a coat of Armada on the windlass pad, the section of toe rail we had replaced and the aft rail. After he completed his work, we put another box of stuff away and called it a day

Mike woke up in the morning with a painfully stiff neck. We decided to take it easy for the day. We ran to the boat to pick up the muscle relaxers, and stopped by K-Mart to buy a heating pad. The rest of the day, Mike spent napping while I worked on stuff on the computer. It was an extremely boring day, but nice

Today started out well enough. At breakfast, we received a phone call from Inflatable Experts telling us that they could get the dinghy today if we wanted. We called our yard supervisor and he thought that it might be possible, so we headed to the boat to get the dinghy down.

When we got there, we saw immediately that there would be no way to remove the dinghy today. So after a quick conference with our yard supervisor, we decided to bag it for today, but to make sure that things would be arranged for Monday. Everyone was happy.

Then we went to West Marine to get our hatches. Not only was our second order in, but our first order had finally shown up. We picked the hatches up and headed back to the yard. At this point, we should have split for the day.

We got out the old computer and Mike started setting it up for his parents. I went to work unpacking the boxes of stuff and stowing it in the aft stateroom. We worked for the next little while peaceably, until one of the painters called us and said that we were needed to look at something on the keel of the boat.

We climbed down and were greeted with the sight of water streaming out of our keel on to the ground. We discussed this with the guy working on our keel, then I headed in to talk to our yard supervisor. After a brief discussion with him, we decided to put a couple of pilot holes in the lower points of the keel to see if water was there as well. The first hole drilled produced water. The second hole drilled did not. As the third hole was being drilled, the drill battery died so he needed to get a different drill.

The fourth hole drilled also produced water. Finally, we returned to the third hole and drilled a little bit further. Extremely foul greenish water started coming out! We had hit our holding tank! The carpenters shop, right next to our boat and downwind of the leak, cleared out immediately.

Mike suggested that I call Cheoy Lee Shipyards to find out more information on how the holding tank was placed in the boat, since we both suspected that it was an built in to the hull of the boat. We were referred to the person who had commissioned all of the Cheoy Lee boats that were sold through the Florida office. Of course, the one boat he did not commission was ours! However, he confirmed that it was built in as part of the hull.

We headed in to pass this information to our yard supervisor who also spoke with the person. The good news is that this should be a relatively easy fix since the tank sides are tabbed into the hull and what was pierced was the hull itself. That still did not make us feel any better though! At this point we decided to call it a day!

Today, we focused on getting the rest of the boxes unpacked and the contents back into the aft stateroom. So, while I did that, Mike focused on completing the rebuild of the desktop computer system. He's getting pretty good at this, as this is the third system that we have rebuilt in about as many weeks! In the middle of this work, the refrigeration guy showed up and we took a break to discuss the situation with him. He informed us that the type of freezer system we have currently is one designed to maintain temperature with the compressor running, instead of one designed as a deep freeze / holding plate system. After discussing our desires with him, he told us that he could refurbish our system or build a new one, using the existing compressor, that would hold temperature for approximately 24 hours. If everything works out, our generator use will be cut in less than half, combined with the inverter which will be a significant savings in fuel and usage time on the generators. After that, I went back to work on the aft stateroom and finally ran out of steam after completing the last box. I came back up and suggested to Mike it was time to call it a day. We had accomplished quite a bit, the port stateroom was accessible and so was the starboard head! Not that we could use it with the boat out of the water!

The morning was spent slowly. I woke up with a splitting headache that seemed to hang around most of the day. Mike, of course, felt fine. I was annoyed since, obviously, I had his hangover, again! I informed him that it really was not polite to foist his hangover on me, especially since I didn't do anything enjoyable to justify having the hangover. In the afternoon, we worked on getting our HP Colorado 8gb tape backup working. Unfortunately, we could not find the software that came with it. After several searches of HPs site, as well as downloading software from several other companies, we had no luck. I finally broke down and ordered a CD with the latest backup software from HP to get all of the appropriate drivers. It was a quiet day, for which my head was extremely thankful

Today was relatively quiet. We went to the storage unit to start moving stuff to the boat. We are limited to moving 2 boxes at a time so we knew this was going to take some time! After rigging up a block and tackle system combined with the spinnaker pole, we got the boxes on to the boat and inside. We decided not to do anything since it was really threatening rain, and with no air conditioning, it was starting to roast inside of the boat. With the big jobs for the day done, we spent the rest of the day lounging. It was wonderful!

We headed back to the storage unit to fetch 2 more boxes to bring to the boat. We had every intention of putting everything away, but there was no wind, high humidity and it was extremely hot. This is not a good combination when you want to do work inside the boat! So, we decided not to put anything away. While we were there, the workers started installing our new hatches. They look really good, and will improve the safety when taking green water over the bow. By the time we left for the day, 4 of the 5 hatches had been replaced. Since we still had some time before Inflatable Experts were supposed to be there, we headed out to lunch. At 2:00 PM, we received a call saying that they were running late, but would be there no later than 3:30. The driver finally arrived at 4:05 PM. Unfortunately, the yard closes at 4:00 PM sharp, and I do mean SHARP! Everyone except office staff had left for the day. I got on the phone with Vicky the Ops manager, then with Scott, the manager. I reminded him that customer service would seem to dictate that if you are going to a store and to a customer site, the customer site should take precedence of the store. He guaranteed me that someone would be there by 1:30 PM tomorrow to pick up our dinghy. After spending almost all day at the yard, and not accomplishing anything other than smoking cigarettes, we headed off in search of food

This morning, having risen unusually early, we headed to the boat and started unpacking the 4 boxes sitting in the main saloon. Surprisingly, this went exceptionally well, and in fairly short order, we had all 4 boxes unpacked. Unfortunately, not everything was put away because we don't have full access to the staterooms yet. We headed out for lunch and just as we pulled into Miami Subs, we received a call from the driver for Inflatable Experts. He told us that he was going to be late and would not get there before 2:30 PM, and it would probably be later. I had visions of another failed attempt to get our dinghy. I called Vicky and explained that picking up the dinghy later would be unacceptable as we had other plans for the rest of the day. She tried to pin this problem on us, until I reminded her that there was supposed to be someone at the West Palm store doing a demo and he was the one that was supposed to pick up the dinghy. She told us at that point that the demo had been canceled and therefor no one was available. I was on the verge of telling her to cancel the deal (Mike had been saying this progressively louder in the background for some time) when she asked me to hold on while she conferred with the West Palm store. She called us back 10 minutes later and told us that someone would be there by 1:30 as promised. At precisely 1:30 PM, the driver showed up and picked up our dinghy. We would not deal with this company again, as their customer service as least to us seems very poor. At 2:00 PM, the holding tank cleaning folks came out and took one look at the tank and informed us that they couldn't do anything until the holding tank inspection plate was opened. They were summarily dismissed from the boat while we put our heads together with our yard supervisor. The riggers showed up to remove the traveler, but couldn't do their work because the headliner wasn't down. Mike stepped up to the plate and removed the headliner for them. Everyone is a specialist, down here and can't do anything outside of their specialty! We then went in search of the holding tank people to find out what size of hole they needed. We checked the holding tank and the hole and decided that we could safely glass the hole without cleaning the tank first. This was a fun time, let me tell you! We left the boat for cooler places. We looked online for information on Dinty Moore products and where we could by them. We finally called Dinty Moore customer service who told us that we could find the Dinty Moore American Classics at K-Mart. Off we went to K-Mart to find them. We found several different flavors of American Classics and wound up buying somewhere around 50 of them. They make great offshore food as they are nice and bland and easy on the stomach. Adding to this, is the fact that you store them on the shelf with no refrigeration, and cook in about 1 to 2 minutes. This allows us to run down, grab it, pop it in the microwave and be back on deck before we hurl! Also they taste like not too bad airline food, so now we are stocked for heading offshore!

This morning, we moved 2 boxes from the storage unit on to the boat. Mike then tossed me down 2 empty boxes, and I went back to the car to pack up the Dinty Moore American Classics and stuff from the trunk and we hoisted those up on the boat as well. I joined Mike on the boat and found the work conditions to be intolerable. It was again hot and muggy. So we called it a day

On March 23, not a lot happened. We met with the Canvas guy at 2:00 PM, and that was pretty much it. We took it easy for the rest of the day. On March 24, the boat was due to go back in the water. Knowing this, we checked out of the hotel. We were headed somewhere when we received the call from our yard supervisor that the boat was ready to splash. We headed immediately for the yard. They weren't quite ready when we got there so we watched as the boat was lowered. We were amazed to see the boat shrink as it went into the water; it is amazing how much larger the boat looks out of the water. The electrician who had connected our refurbished alternator back up wanted to check to make sure everything was working properly. With that one test completed, we were ready to move the boat into its slip. We began the treck; one of the yard tugs helped by being a bow thruster for us. With the help of the tug, we backed into our slip quickly and easily! As soon as the boat was tied up and electricity restored, we started emptying the trunk of the car. After a bit, it occurred to us that we didn't have anything to eat on the boat so we made a quick run to the grocery store for supplies for the weekend. We rounded out the day with the boat yard ball. It was a fun party that Rybovich-Spencer put on for its employees and customers. On March 25, we finished cleaning out the car, and then put stuff away all day long! On March 26, we started out with the best of intentions to continue working hard. However, we headed out to pick up fax paper for the Weather Fax and TZ tape for our label maker. In our quest, we found what we were looking for, but we also found 'The Sims.' When we went back to the boat, Mike asked if I felt like continuing to work. I caved in about a second later. Mike played sims and I tried to get the tape drive working. No luck there. With patience, I finally got the tape diagnostics to complete and found an unidentifiable write error. One of the suggested fixes was to upgrade the firmware on the tape drive. Since I verified the rest, I tried the upgrade. The firmware upgrade that we downloaded didn't work! So, my suspicion now is that the drive will need to be sent back to HP for service. After dinner, I played 'The Sims' until bed time

Today was a busy day, our last full day with the car. After a quick breakfast, we picked up our laundry from the wash and fold place, and then went to mail the computer off, then headed to the storage unit to clean it out. We, then, returned to the boat and started unloading the car. I had been saying for several weeks that I wanted to go to the Book Exchange. So, Mike told me to gather up the books that I wanted to trade since we still had a lot of running to do. It took me all of 10 minutes to gather together 32 books! On the way to the Book Exchange, we started trying to find oil for the boat. You would think that wouldn't be a difficult thing; however, we only want to bring gallon containers of oil aboard. We checked 6 different auto parts stores on the way to the Book Exchange to no avail. I didn't spend as much time as I wanted to at the Book Exchange; but I did find a number of books that I hadn't been able to find in a long time. We left there with 24 nused books. Next, we decided to stop by the Coca-Cola distributor since the salesman never called us back. Unfortunately, he was already out on sales calls. However, the receptionist offered to page him and make sure he called us. We were happy with that, and headed off to find oil and food. We found the oil at the Boat Owners Warehouse. It wasn't that much more expensive than at an auto parts store. So once we had lunch, we headed back to the boat and unloaded it. You will notice, at no point do I mention putting anything away. That is because we didn't. That would catch up with us. Next, since we had decided to head north for the season we would need solar salt for the treatment plants on our heads. On the way to Publix, the Coke guy called. He suggested that we try Sysco since they have a 'walk up' window. I told him that we would try that; but if that didn't work, we would call him back to set up an account. We diverted to Sysco with no luck. In fact, the receptionist that I spoke to looked at me as if I had two heads when I asked about a 'walk up' window. She informed me that Sysco does not deal direct with the public. So, I immediately called the Coke guy and left a message for him. After that diversion, we continued on to Publix to pick up 100 lbs of solar salt for $15.00! We headed back to the car and emptied it completely since it was about to rain. We managed to get everything on to the boat before it started raining. This was especially good since the blocks of salt were completely uncovered! Since we now had completed most of the running around we needed to do, we called Palm Beach Fountain Services about refilling our CO2 container. They told us to bring the canister in between 4 and 5:00 PM. We had some time, so we started putting away the storm windows. We have no plans to be offshore in any weather that would require them, since we watch our weather windows and only make short offshore hops. As we have determined that we don't need these until the waves reach 10 to 15 feet and we do not plan to leave when the weather is that rough. At 3:30 PM, we left to get the CO2 tank refilled. This was interesting since I was working from memory. We found the place on the first try. They filled our tank for $15.00. We brought the tank back and put it back in place. Once the last of our running around was completed, we headed back to the boat and finished putting our storm windows away

Right after the net, we went to the grocery store to pick up enough supplies to get us through until the meat order we planned to place from Bush Brothers arrived. We had only intended to pick up a few things. We wound up with a full basket! When we arrived back at the boat, I started working on storing what we purchased while Mike started working on a bilge pump that we thought needed to be replaced. The bilge pump was running, but not moving any water. Well, after about an hour of work and a lot of fussing, Mike finally got the old bilge pump out. Mike called me down to help him get the replacement hooked up and in place. We wired everything up and flipped the switch. The pump ran. No water was moved out of our bilge though. I went back to stowing things while Mike worked on the one way valve, the next possible problem area. About an hour later, Mike called me down again because his hands were hurting from working on the one way valve in strange positions. We wound up cutting it out. It wasn't the one way valve. We hooked it back up and the pump still wouldn't work. At this point, we were at a loss as to what the problem could be. We took the rest of the day off. On March 29, first thing in the morning, I ran the Cruiseheimers net. This was the first time in 6 weeks that I was able to do that. It felt good to get back into the swing of things! The net went surprisingly well for being so out of practice! Next, I placed the meat order. Then, with the new access hatch installed on our fly bridge, we were finally able to truly address the washer dryer problem. We found that a little $0.75 washer had worn out on the condensing motor. Unfortunately, we would have to replace the entire motor because of the way it was built. Since our traveler system was apart, we decided to armada and rebed the blocks that our boom and out haul lines used, so we pulled them off. The canvas guy came out and put on the screens for our saloon windows. We could feel a temperature change right away. Finally, We noticed that the aft stateroom bilge pump was on. We checked it out and found the pump was air locked. Simply turning the pump off and back on freed the air lock and the pump worked fine. This gave me the idea to put some water down the forward bilge exit. We put a hose in the thru-hull turned it on and ran it until water started coming out. Then, I headed inside and flipped on the bilge pump. It worked! Apparently it was also air locked! 6 hours of work, down the drain!

We made contact with Henri and Anne this morning; they had an engine seize up in Georgetown, We had been worried about them since yesterday when we talked with M/V Aurora and he told us about their troubles. He told us that they where headed into Ft. Lauardale, this really concerned us with the strong currents and other boat traffic it would not be a place we would dare go with limited control. Anyway we made contact through Sherrett who was traveling with them back to the US. He called Sea Flat on the VHF and then Henri came up on the SSB. After talking with them we found out they where headed into Lake Worth, where we are. We offered to talk to the yard to find out if they could do anything and to gather cost information for them. After they arrived, they anchored, then called us on the VHF. We arranged to get together around 2:30 of 3:00 PM. They came over and told us about their 30 hour trip back from Nassau, and how their boat handles or does not handle with an engine down. We then went in search of Service manager so they could discuss their problem with him. He was tied up so we asked him to stop by the boat when he was free. They told us about the fantastic times they had and Anne told us about the many things they wanted to do, but never had the chance to get to, like snorkeling as she was never in the water above her knees. They also told us about a couple of tense time when they, along with several other boats ended up anchored or moored on a Lee Shore with 3-5 foot swells after some strong winds changed directions on them. They will be back over in the morning to meet with the service manager after he talks with the diesel shop about their problem. It was great seeing them again, but we would rather see them still in the Bahamas without engine problems! Since we still had some time left, we decided to investigate a problem with our aft head. The reset button doesn't work. We pulled off the control panel and saw massive corrosion on the circuit board. We ordered a new panel, it should be here in a day or so. We saw that the new motor had arrived for the washer dryer, so we installed that. It worked! We now have a washer dryer again! The little plumber guy came to look at our raw water wash down pump. Turns out that it was the valve seat in the faucet that was the problem all along! It was a fifteen minute repair and our wash down system worked again!

Joe had asked us yesterday what time he could start working on our engine gauges. After some discussion, we settled on 6:30 AM. It came awfully early! He arrived right on time and set to working on our gauges. By midmorning, he had wired the port side lower helm. The gauges worked well! We were extremely excited. After reviewing our upper helm, we discovered that we would have to pop open the upper helm to correct some wiring problems. With the upper helm wiring exposed, Joe wired up the upper helm in fairly short order. Then he started on the starboard side. That was when everything went to hell. With both sets of gauges wired up, neither would work. There was either a problem with one of our gauges or with the wiring harness. We spent some time discussing possible courses of action and finally decided to get a new wiring harness. If everything worked, then we knew it was the harness, if not, then we knew it was one of the gauges, as one bad gauge can cause all of them to fail, just like cheap x-mas lights! During the day, we helped Henri and Anne move their boat into a slip. I was on the boat while Mike brought their dinghy back to the dock, then met us at their slip to handle lines. The dockmaster was in a tug to help act as 'bow thruster' for them in the event of a problem. There were one or two tense moments and then the boat was in its slip and tied up securely. Before we left, we invited Henry and Anne to dinner. They arrived about 6:00 PM. We had wonderful evening and time flew as we swapped additional stories of our adventures. Well, their adventures at sea and our adventures with boat yards!