October 08-14, 2000 -- Week Four in Oxford

October 8-14, 2000 -- Week Four in Oxford Today was Mike's day to be lazy. So, while Mike relaxed for the day, I laid the rest of the new flooring for the galley, which consisted mainly of doing all the trim/cut pieces. It was difficult but fun, and the galley certainly looks better for it! On October 9, we fixed the problem with Tink not getting fuel. The amp meter arrived for the alternators, and guess what? After talking with Heart Interface to ensure the shunts came with it, we discovered that they don't. It makes us wonder, "What does it take to get a correct answer from some of these companies?" It's not really a big deal that they don't come with it. It's just that if we had known this we could have ordered them at the same time. On October 10, we started looking to getting underway in the ocean again. In preparation, based on what we learned last year, we changed our water maker pre-filters. The new wiper motor arrived, we installed it, and we now have 3 functioning wipers again. On October 11, we took it easy. On October 12, we took it kind of easy, but did a little bit of work (how is that for an oxymoron?). We received an e-mail from our insurance company, they want a survey. It reminded us that, on the last survey we were told that if we replace the carpet (which was in bad shape at that time) and wallpaper we would increase the value of the boat 10 fold of what was spent on these two items. Since we found teak under all of the wallpaper and have been working to recover that, we decided to see if we could get some cheap carpet fast to replace what's here. We talked with the yard manager and she told us of a carpet place not far from here. She also told us that since we had to wait on them to get parts they should have had; they could wait on us to leave without charging for dockage. We called the carpet place to see if they had anything in stock and were told they did. They told us that they had someone laying carpet not far from us that they would have him stop by to see how much carpet we would need. He came by, took measurements and called the shop to tell them how much was needed. Since all but two rooms are bound, we pulled those sections up and borrowed the yard truck and took them with us to the carpet place. We looked at what they had and selected the only cheaper stuff they had that was not too light (so dirt & stuff would not show as bad). The color is a rusty cranberry or dusty rose actually called Canyon Tile. While we don't really like the color, it will look good with the teak walls & the other colors on the boat, and for a few dollars we will get a better valuation on the boat. On October 13, We pulled up the 'wall to wall' section beside the bunk in the aft stateroom, and removed the tack strips. This section is not going to get carpet since there was teak under it and we are going to recover the teak here. Actually I should say Bryan removed most of it since I was getting a bad sinus headache. After he was done Jeff called us out to see that he had finished putting the rails back on. Yes the damage that insurance is covering is almost completely repaired. We now have all the sections above the waterline done, we will get hauled in West Palm Beach for the below waterline work. After that I took a long nap in main salon, and woke up to see that Bryan had done the same on the other settee. We heard from the carpet folks and they will be here Monday afternoon & Tuesday to get the carpet in. This works out well, since we were not going to head into Annapolis until after the boat show was over. On October 14, I (Bryan) went up the mast (in fact I went up 3 times before I got it, Mike thinks I was having some type of height thing), since Mike has been up the past several times. We installed another radar reflector, this makes two. I (Mike) want to install another one, before we head off shore again. The original one gave a nice return, at least according to several tugs we have talked with off shore. But I want our return to be stronger, in fact the closer we look like a aircraft carrier the better. Of course I don't think we could ever get our return to look like that, but the stronger the better. Then we sanded the teak beside the aft stateroom bunk