Work went slowly today. Bud and I worked last night and this morning to clean the sides of the bilge and replace the bilge pump switch one more time. This morning, before we could put the new switch back in place, the bottle jack the mechanic had under the engine fell into the bilge. The engine was still securely blocked up, but I called into the office to let the mechanic know we didn't have anything to use to get the jack out. When I called he explained that he wasn't sure if or when he would be able to get to the boat today, as another mechanic got hurt on the job yesterday and he had to help on that job. I told him we were unable to finish the bilge pump switch installation until the jack was retrieved from the bilge. He came out a bit later and stayed long enough to get the jack and a piece of wood out of the bilge. He brought the bell housing back with him with the new seal in place. The latest discovery in our litany of installation errors is that the damaged seal had not only been forced in with a sharp instrument, it had been installed backwards! After the mechanic left Bud got the new bilge pump switch back in place in the bilge.

We got cleaned up then and our friends Ed and Karin from Passages came over for lunch. While we were eating Bob, the Yanmar tech who had inspected the original installation, called. He had come from down to Vero Beach for something else and was going to stop and see the job. I told him to go ahead and check out the job, the boat was open. We'd left Fuzzy aboard so I told him to watch out the dog didn't bite him. Having met Fuzzy, he laughed. Ed, Karin, Bud and I had just walked back from lunch as Bob was getting ready to leave, so he stopped and talked to us. He said the job looked good so far. He also told us he'd written up the engine mounts as incorrect, but St. Augustine Marine Center chose not to correct them.

Later in the afternoon Bud and I went to the regular Thursday afternoon happy hour get together held at this marina. We met some nice people (as we always do at gatherings of cruisers) including a couple who had also gone to the Bahamas for the first time last year, had gone as far south as Long Island, like we did, and came back up via Eleuthera and the Abacos like we did. We must have crossed paths at some point.

Anyway, with the days break in the work the mechanic now estimates that work will be finished on Monday and the sea trial will be on Tuesday. The clock is ticking...