Marsh Harbor Marina and the Great White (5 March - 11 March)

There I was, face to face with a 17 foot great white shark. He made his run, opening those enormous jaws, and coming straight at me with sharp-as-razor teeth designed for no other purpose than to tear hunks of flesh from his living prey. I would have been that prey had I not had the presence of mind to swivel my hips to the left, deftly dodging his bite. Not good enough, huh? Ok, how about this: there I was, face to face with a 47 foot giant squid …  Ok, maybe that isn’t quite true either, but it has been a kind of slow week and I was trying to grab your attention. Did it work?
(Author's note: I really tried to download  more pictures, but they are taking soooooo long, I decided to publish without all of the pix. MB)

Actually, several things happened this week – many of them important to us, but maybe not very interesting to you. First, the home inspection contingency has been lifted from our sales contract and we are one step closer to selling our house! The only contingency remaining is the appraisal; the bank wants to make sure the house is worth what they are lending, so they are having an appraisal done. After that’s finished, all we have to do is keep the buyer alive long enough to close. That may be more of an issue than you might think, because for several days, I wanted to kill him.

Now our house is getting old and we expected some items to come out of the home inspection that needed to be repaired. But the list he gave us had thirty items on it. It was certainly the longest list I had ever seen and even the longest our realtor had ever seen. I will admit that some of them were important. The house needed some electrical work, for example. Some of the items, though, were pretty silly. For instance, they wanted us to add a string to the light in the laundry room. Come on guys. For that item I thought we should offer them a cash settlement of 35 cents so they could buy their own string and match it to the other décor in the laundry room, or, because I was feeling generous, maybe even 70 cents so they could buy a spare. Add a string … good heavens! But the one that really got me was for the garage. Apparently a squirrel has taken up residence in our garage. Now the fact that they wanted us to get him out was understandable, but they also wanted us “to seal the garage so no other animals can get in.”  “So no animals can get in?” Come on guys, mice can get in even the newest, most tightly sealed houses – and squirrels, my lord, I guess they have heard nothing about the Great Malcolm Court Squirrel Wars of the 1990’s when Ann tried everything to keep squirrels out of the bird feeders! “Seal the house,” my eye! In the end, we pretended to be political liberals and threw money at the problem; the whole list is now theirs, but the money to fix (at least some it) is ours.

 (Excuse me while I take a couple of deep cleansing breaths. In with the good air, out with the bad; in with the good air, out with the bad. !) Ok, I am better now. Anyway, we just made reservations to go back to Virginia for closing on April 9^th. Yes, we probably could have closed with scanned and faxed paperwork plus a notary or two. But you know what? We just wanted to go back to make sure everything goes as it should – and to celebrate. We’ll be leaving just a few days after Tim and Carrie’s visit, so we will meet them at home for Easter. By the time we get back to Marsh Harbor, it will be time to start packing and getting the boat ready for the return trip.

The other piece of very exciting news is that we may have fixed our head problem. I say “may” because, as I think I mentioned in our last posting, the second head was acting up. It is, of course, possible that something went wrong with both heads independently within a few days of one another, but that would be quite a coincidence – and when on the job, we sanitation engineers don’t believe in coincidences, we look for patterns. The last time we had a problem like this was in North Fort Myers. If you look at North Fort Myers, you will see that it is on a major fresh water river. I have already explained in some detail how our Lectra San heads work. The most likely problem we are told, is either not enough salt in the water or insufficient electricity in the system (caused, e.g. by dirty electrodes). We eventually figured out that in North Fort Myers, we had too much fresh water in the system (because of the river) and not enough salt. Now there is not a fresh water river anywhere near our marina, but patterns is patterns and, when you are grasping at straws, you will call anything a possible solution. We went to the store and bought extra salt and started flushing with an ounce of salt. You know what? Head number two is now behaving normally, and head number one appears to have stabilized (i.e. we still have a yellow flashing light, but no red flashing light). We are holding figuratively our breath (and hoping we don’t have to do so literally), and using our salt. We still have the number of the repairman in West Palm Beach, but it looks like we may make it until then!

On Thursday, we went to Maxwell’s Grocery Store and a few other places to get some provisions. When we came back to the dinghy dock, we got into our dinghy, put the key in the ignition and … nothing. I tried a few more times and hoped it wasn’t the battery, even though I knew it was. Luckily, no more than a hundred yards away was an outboard motor repair facility. When a fellow boater showed up and offered to take us back to our boat, we decided Ann should go back with the provisions and I would stay and try to get the dinghy fixed.  James came out with a couple of tools, opened the motor did some mechanic things and pronounced the battery not only dead, but “bad” as well. Actually, everything he said seemed to make sense so I bought a new battery (with labor that was $188, in case you were wondering). When he got it in, I cranked it and not only did it crank right up, it just sounded a lot better than it ever had.  So, James, wherever you are and whatever you are doing, thank you!

As Ann so delicately puts it below, we have some "big ass" engines.
And I had to drain the oil from both of them!

The other exciting maintenance news of the week is that I changed our engine oil! I know, I know that doesn’t sound too hard. After all, I am sure many of you have changed oil in a car. Well, our Detroit Diesels are not cars. In your car you might have had five quarts or so; we have five gallons of oil in each of our engines. In your car, you could unscrew that little nut at the bottom of your oil pan and let the oil trickle out; in our diesels, we have to suck the old oil out through the dipstick hole using a special tool. In your car you probably had some dirty oil after you got it out; in our diesels we had grungy sludge that didn’t want to come out at all. In short, changing our oil is a dirty, messy, filthy, grimy business.

John doing a bit more than "supervising"
the oil change on Traveling Soul

Lucky for me, I had help. Our friend John, who had done this a few times in the past, was the first one to volunteer. Actually, I am not sure John would agree he volunteered; he might say we bribed him with dinner the following night, or that we told him we wanted him simply to supervise – just before we put him to work on the oil filters. In any event, John’s help was invaluable. In fact, as we were completing this dirty, messy, filthy, grimy task, we identified a few things we could do that might make the task a little less onerous next time. If we can, I will feel a real sense of accomplishment and will tip my hat to John’s suggestions. If not – to hell with it, I will pay someone to do it.

There was a sad part of the week. On Friday, our friend John decided that he was going to head back to the States. As you will remember we met John as we arrived at West End and he has stayed with us almost the whole time. He would sometimes come over for coffee and I would sketch out my upcoming maintenance challenge. Invariably, he would either offer some advice or – more often than not – he would be there to help me do whatever was required. Since I am, what some might kindly call, “maintenance challenged,” John’s help and the confidence he gave me to take on other tasks, is greatly appreciated. We hope to see him this summer up and around the Chesapeake. But whether we do or not, John, “fair winds, following seas and have a bud on me.” (Actually, since John doesn’t drink, maybe I should have said, “SAVE a Bud for me” J)

Our friend John, in m/v Vulcan moving on to better cruising
grounds ... where he has to make his OWN coffee!!

ANN’S NOTES:  It has been a slow week as you can tell from Michael’s writing. I still have the usual tasks to do… grocery shopping, laundry and cooking dinner… all these every day things keep me grounded. The oil change day was interesting…I did a small part…kept the men in paper towels and held a few funnels when asked. We have two…excuse me…big ass engines .That oil was dark and thick…this oil change challenge will take place every 100 hours that we put on the engines…fun…fun…fun !!! Around mid-week after reading two books that week…and the boat was clean…the wash done…I was  having a case  of  ‘marina fever’ sort of like ‘cabin fever’. I decided to learn the exciting game of ….ready for this…YUP…you guessed it…dominos.  A group of people get together every afternoon and hang out in the bar/restaurant and play. I figured what the heck…could be fun and only three people were playing – a perfect time to learn…I would only embarrass myself in front of a few people. I have to admit that I had fun…I caught on quickly and will go back to play next time I am around and need something to do. It was sad to see John leave, he is surely a gentleman and he has really helped us from day one. He is fun to shop with and can keep a conversation going like no one I have met. I am sure we will see him this summer on the Chesapeake …anyway I hope we do and we can share our coffee in the morning once more. We did meet a few new boaters and we always like to exchange stories and ideas. All and all…we are having a wonderful time. I am counting down the days to the arrival of Tim, Carrie, Caylin and Gavin!!! Also our daughter Lisa, married to a very handsome Marine, Dave, will be moving from Cherry Point N.C. to 29 Palms CA in June. We are hoping to see them on our way back up the intracoastal waterway on our way to VA. That is about all from my point of view…thank you for reading our blog…Traveling Soul…OUT