As Capt. Tim said yesterday as he stopped by on his was out to escort another sailboat in with fuel problems, "You are where you were meant to be." And that is SO true.

Dennis, the mechanic, came down Tuesday and he and Bill decided it wasn't the fuel pump but instead the fuel shutoff solenoid that was starting to go. A part was ordered, it came in Weds., and Dennis came late Weds. afternoon to do the replacement. That was taken care of and we hope it was the issue. We will know after some more motoring. Say some prayers and keep your fingers crossed.

BUT as he was installing the solenoid he looked down under the engine and there was a 4" thumb size bolt lying there. Oooopppps. It was one of three bolts that hold the engine down on the motor mounts. There are 2 in the back and one in the front - a triangular mounting system. This was the one in the front. In any kind of ugly seaway the motor could have started moving around and ended up breaking from the rear mounts as well. We are not ready to have a huge heavy engine moving around in the boat. Luckily, Dennis could just screw it back in. This, BTW, is the bolt that last winter it took the fellows at Tiger Point a whole half day to put back in. They had a heck of a time getting the engine aligned just right so the bolt would go in. We were ecstatic that with all of our motoring the vibration hadn't caused things to become misaligned.

At 4 the next morning both of us woke up thinking about it and decided that we needed to do something to ensure it didn't work it's way loose again. The rear ones have a lock nut on top so they are good. The location of the forward one doesn't let us put a lock nut on it. We now have another bolt on order (to come in Monday) that is an inch longer; we will then have a hole drilled in the end so we can insert a cotter pin to keep it from falling out. A cotter pin is like a huge hair pin that you put through the hole and then spread the two points so it can't come back out. That we can do in the location where this bolt is.

I torqued my leg on the trip down and strained something on the upper inside of my calf, Spanker's break away collar broke, and Bill used the last of the hydraulic oil spares to top off the hydraulic tank.  The forced lay days have helped my leg get much better, we were able to get 2 new collars sent to us and as well a couple of quarts of fluid to replenish our stores. We have friends in another marina here who have run us around as necessary and with whom we had a really marvelous fish and chips dinner with at Fish Lips restaurant Friday night.

So all in all we "are where we were meant to be."  The weather is not looking good for this week to get either down to Lake Worth (good wind for getting there but bad seas for getting into a wicked inlet) or across to West End (too much north wind for crossing the Gulf Stream and much higher seas than we want to have).  The weather may be more accommodating later this week and into the week-end. As always we will just have to see.

But until tomorrow the weather has been and will be beautiful, we get to watch the cruise ships come and go, the marina is a good one (although at central Florida dockage prices - ouch), Ken (our friend who will be joining us in Nassau) is very understanding about all of this and isn't concerned yet about whether we will be there to meet him, we have good contacts for whatever we need to do or have done, and we have good friends near by. What more could we ask considering the situation. Free dockage?? Dream on!!