March 17, 2000 -- Fridays

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!