With the very long holiday weekend over ( 5 days starting last Friday) and with the washing machine now just humming along, pumping out load after load of clean clothes, I decided to rent a car and start pushing on the various service related items on my To Do List.

For just $30, I was able to rent a small car and then, with Mary Margaret’s help, removed the outboard engine from the dinghy and put it on a beach towel that covered the back seat of the rental car. Soon I was on my way over to Philipsburg and the boat yard at Bobby’s Marina. This is where I had it repaired for the same problem I am having again: leaking gear oil. After talking with Eric, the manager of the boat yard, I am expecting a call tomorrow with his inspection results.

To be able to get his call, I next went over to the UTS store and waited in line for over an hour to reactivate my local SIM card and top it off. Now armed with a cell phone that works in Sint Maarten, I drove back to Simpson Bay and went to the Ace Hardware store. While in the USVI we had become infected with some ants that just will not die. We have visions of them coming for us in the night and carrying off our beds and dropping us overboard in a mutiny. This time, I bought a different type of ant trap since the first type, along with boric acid sprinkled all around Leu Cat, has not worked.

Since it was now in the middle of the lunch hour, I returned to Leu Cat because past experience had indicated that most service shops close for lunch or, at least, the people that I wish to talk to in each shop, are out to lunch. Once at Leu Cat, I enjoy my own lunch and placed the 12 ant traps around the boat. Heh, heh, heh, I now have visions of the ant mutiny being repelled!

After relishing the thought of an ant-free boat, I returned to the rental car and made my stops at each of the three service centers: one for the Yanmar engine, one for sail track, and one for the dirty sine wave issue with my generator. Since it was the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, after a 5 day holiday, I was not surprised that all of the technicians I need would not be available until early to mid-next week. At least I now have appointments that I can track and pester people about when the technicians don’t show.

The rest of the afternoon and into the evening was spend on Skype having the HP service center removing 6 months of viruses off of my new computer. One of the problems of sailing to new places and logging onto new Internet systems is that it opens you up to new virus attacks. Even though I have anti-virus protection, some always seem to get through and I had noticed that my computer was getting s-l-o-w-e-r and s-l-o-w-e-r. As I write, it is back to its normal self and I am a bit happier too! Whoo Hoo!. Just another day in the life of a cruiser…