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