Huzzah!

At exactly 16h30 today the final wire was cable tied and we tested the engine with alternator and two gauge stations, one at the binnacle and one at the nav station and all worked according to design specs. Yoki Yanmar is installed and commissioned. All we are waiting for now is the new prop and some manuals that Lew Grimm, the marina owner promised. I must admit that for a while there we were beginning to doubt that it would ever be installed and finished, and even now there remains the small flea that the guy that promised Lew the prop in a couple of days is now saying that it’ll be about five weeks. There were a couple of other boat owners within hearing range when we got that piece of news and the ensuing discussion basically blamed it on the failing US economy. Apparently the Just In Time (JIT) methodologies that everyone has gone into fails when there is no line of credit from the banks and becomes Not In Time (NIT). Oh well. There are much worse places to be stuck. I might have to delay my trip back to Halifax with the car a couple of weeks and we will defiantly be pushing for distance when we depart to get to Gloucester in time to meet our pal Mike for the last leg of our trip home. If we do have to stay longer we will be able to get some things done on the job list that we were looking at delaying and maybe see some more of the sites.

Barb has been working on the cockpit splash cloths and has the actual cloths done and has been cutting out the letters to spell out NELLEKE on them. She miscalculated the amount of letter material that she would need so has been making up what she calls Frankeletters from the scraps. They are going to look great.

She also finished varnishing the new bookcase in the middle cabin. Tomorrow, after we have let the varnish have a good dry we will load in the books.

I have the aft chain locker finished except for the deck pipe install, but that should be relatively easy. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post the chain locker bulkhead will make a great support for a shelf to hold the generator.

The weather today has been gorgeous but we are going to pay for it with more rain tomorrow and Saturday. At least the temperatures are going up.

We had a fellow cruiser in last night for tea. He hails from Virginia Beach and has cruised much of the same areas as have we. He is also quite knowledgeable about the Yanmar engine and gave us a lot of things to think about and to make sure that we comply with in order to maintain our new power plant. He is in because he was having some problems with his generator and had to have it pulled so he can fight with the manufacturer. I guess we aren’t the only one who have been having issues. I hate to say it but that is good to hear.