NEWSFLASH!!!

We aint goin' nowhere!
Well, not this weekend, anyhoo.
Waz had made an appointment with the Marine Electrician to come by the boat at around 10am this morning (friday). He still wasnt here at 10.30am, so Waz texted and asked where he was. Who is this, was the reply!! So we filled the guy in on who we were and that we had made an appointment etc. Waz said he finally turned up around 1pm!
Meanwhile, in our efforts to get a diver in to take a look at our girl's bottom (yes, you can do that legally with a boat:) ), Waz finally called a guy who was recommended by our pump out guys. Our diver (cant remember his name) is from belgium, married a Houston girl and now lives here in Santa Fe (suburb of Houston, not New Mexico!). They met on the internet (yes, I have a habit of finding out all this stuff:) ) and bingo, three years later, he is here diving under boats for a living, enjoying his own piece of the land with two horses, a wife, a house and a truck you could take off-road if the mood took ya!
Anyhoo...he was here to take a look at our Zincs, which we thought might need changing out. We had bought new ones in anticipation of that need, but he said they still had enough on them to last us till florida. Phew! one less thing to change out.
While down there, he said we had a lot of barnacles on one of the outlets and intakes, so we asked him to chip those off, which he did. He recommends that we take her out of the water in Florida for a 'bottom job' (clean and scrape) , so it looks like we have our Christmas plans already set for us!

He didnt know what to charge us. Hmmmm...I asked him what his hourly rate was. He said he didnt go anywhere near an hour, but I had to pay him the minimum, coz he came a ways to do the job for us. Most people here charge $70 just for the call out, then $70 travel per hour PLUS hourly time on top of that. This is Marine hours, we are talking about. Do they differ from other hours? You betcha! lol.

Lets get back to the electrician, shall wel...
Greg came once before to take a look at something just after we moved onto the boat. This time it is the start batteries which didnt recharge when we were underway...instead, the indicator showed the power from them dropping. Bummer! We dont want to get underway and find that we cant start the engines. Well, we have back-up, but it would still be foolish to go somewhere without starter batteries.
Three of the four were dead! No wonder they werent registering on the dial!
Im thinking, at this stage, that this is yet again something that has never been changed since the boat first went in the water in 1999. Well, I guess they have done 14 yrs well, then. I might be making excused at this stage, but it is yet another expense to take care of.
We are going to get Greg to give us a quote on new batteries, and Waz is checking the prices online, already.

Another reason we aint goin' nowhere...(texas speak!) is because  Elite Diesel is coming in on Monday morning, 8am, to take part of the hose off the Genset to change it out per our instructions. this is after the Genset fiasco.
I went by their office this morning to pick up the new raw water pump, and to show them the e-mail we had from the hose folks in Florida who said all the hoses should be changed out, no question. Elite want to just change part of it closest to the Genset.
Our man in Florida told us no question that hose should be changed out promptly. I did have that discussion with Tommy, the foreman at Elite, but he wasnt willing to change the whole hose. We will take a damned good look at it when they get here on monday morning. Waz will be down in that engine room with him. This is 16 ft of black hose, so I imagine it will be challenging to see what is good and what is bad.

Meanwhile....I have been helping to take care of Katie who has had right shoulder surgery on tuesday morning. She is NOT a good patient:) She is a bit like me when it comes to being 'down'..she is hard to keep there. The pain has helped her remember that it might be too soon to go back to work on saturday, and she has listened to her hubby (Dean) and me in that respect.
I need to go back to their yacht shortly and take some food and drugs. She also wanted a haircut, but we have been having torrential rain this afternoon, and though there is blue sky right now, it is deceiving.

Warren just came back onto the boat to tell me  that Greg has cleaned up the connections on three of the house batteries, and hopes that will help them recharge properly. One is definitely dead, so Waz is now on the phone getting some quotes for batteries. Greg wont be back until Tuesday, so we arent going anywhere before Wednesday, by the look of it.

I went grocery shopping finally...and I have a load of washing in. I had intended to get everything ready to depart for the weekend, so timing has been put out a bit. Not to worry...we dont have to be anywhere till christmas, so we have lots of leeway.
Well, Im off to get the washing from the machine and hang the sheets.
Then, off to Katie's.
Ciao for now.