Day 3- Electrical Shakedown at Sandestin, Standard Mile 240

The day started with welcome showers, a hearty breakfast, and a call to the Treasure Island Marine Repair Service, which confirmed that a technician familiar with the Beneteau 321 had been assigned and should be at the boat in the afternoon. Roger and Gerry proceeded to unload Roger's carefully prepared sequential lazerette stowage plan, whose only flaw is that Randy Chance never abides by the planned sequence, this being a case in point. After exposing the batteries, Roger and Gerry began to troubleshoot in hope the problem could be corrected before lunch and the need for a mechanic avoided. Partial success was achieved and Gerry's enthusiasm for getting underway was dampened when Roger's superior age and knowledge resulted in cooler heads prevailing. Good thing since the mechanic, James Bell, whose father lives on Soldier's Creek in Perdido Beach, turned out to be a jewel who quickly found another problem of which we were totally unaware. James also confirmed that our analysis was correct and resolved most of the problems but proceeded to repair/improve several other issues we brought up when we saw how competent he truly was. We can heartily recommend James Bell of the Treasure Island Marine repair service to anyone having boat problems in the Sandestin area. After lifting our glasses to a successful day we proceeded to have a pizza ashore and retired early in anticipation of getting underway at first light for Panama City; electrical shakedown hopefully completed, navigation shakedown still in progress. Stay tuned!