Day 31-The Good and the Bad

Each day bring new surprises.  Ours came this afternoon when Hugh(boat supplier) got back with our new batteries.  Went up to inspect and make arrangements to get them to the boat.  He'd brought the wrong batteries--again!!!  This time they weren't even from the right manufacturer.  We'd specified Trojan Batteries as everyone we had talked to had told us good thing about them.  He arrived with batteries from a company called Deka.  Never heard of them.  He(Hugh) said he had ordered the right ones but the supplier didn't.  Yeah--right.  Not only that, but he ordered the wrong type.  The ones that came in require a different type of charging system than what is on Zephyr.  We're not ready to spend money replacing a perfectly good charging system on top of the batteries.  Not sure where we go from here.  Probably have to try again tomorrow.  Get specific from Trojans web site.  Another weeks delay.  It takes that long to get them from his supplier. 

With the deck fitting for the waste tank replaced, we took Zephyr over to the pump out station to get her cleaned out.  Boy, what excitement!!  Took a while to get the vacuum system on the dock to start it pumping but once it did, it went smoothly. We refilled the tank four more times with water from a hose on the dock and pumped and pumped.  Now it's nice and clean.  Now comes the fiberglass repairs and repairs of the waste pump system.  Boy what fun I have to look forward to.  We put the boat back in the slip with the bow facing in instead of out. In Winter, the bow should face South and in the Summer, North.  With the change in seasons, the normal wind changes its direction from North to South in Summer and out of the South in the Winter.  We'd been set up for Winter winds since September.  Now we are ready for Summer winds. 

We'd planned on practicing docking this afternoon but the steering sounded strange--sort of a cranking sound.  Should be nice and quiet.  I'd emailed Bill(previous owner) and he wrote back with explicit instructions on how to do it.   Can't tell you how great it is to have him there as a tremendous font of knowledge of Zephyrs systems.  If you're reading this Bill, thanks. We will be working on it tomorrow.

This morning started out early.  At 6:35, we heard a person coming on board our boat.    Walking around on deck and then getting off.  A few seconds later, he came back and put something back on deck.  Tracy saw him out the stern port lights.  I got dressed and took off to find out what was up.  He was a fisherman on another boat.  Apparently they were having a problem getting their boat started and needed some gasoline to prime their engine.  Since I had a gasoline tank on my deck, well heck it was right there in the open, so it was fair game.  What he did not realized was that it was full of Diesel. It was the tank that I used for filling the filters during the filter change.   Must have come as a surprise.  He returned it after finding out it was diesel.  By the time I got out of the boat, he had left to get his own gas.  I spoke to him upon his return.  Didn't really seem to care  about what he had done.  Just gave me a blank stare and went back to the engine.  It really was an eye opener about what will will leave on deck from here on out.

Tomorrow, the fiberglass fun begins and I'm really looking forward to working on the pump to the forward head tank.    Yeah right!!