Day 115 Joan's Revenge?

With all that has been going on for the past month, we think a better name for Zephyr is "Joan's Revenge"(Tracys mother).  It almost seems that each day the boatyard comes up with something new that needs replacing.  Today was the VHF antenna.  They had told us the other day that it was undersized for off shore duty.  The range isn't big enough.  We told them to just put it back on and we would deal with it later as we have three handheld radios to supplement the built in radio.  Today they come and tell us the the antenna is"burned out".  They aren't sure why, just that it won't function any more and need to be replaced.  Add that on to a month with the electrician still shaking his head each day and we just know that Joan is looking "up" at us from where she is and making sure we don't get to enjoy ourselves.  We've told people for years that this was our plan once she passed away.  We don't think to many people believed us. 

Our new transmission came in late yesterday afternoon.  It has been painted and is ready for installation.  With luck, they will get to it next week.   They are currently installing a engine on another boat called Zephyr that came in a day before us.  The owner of that boat isn't staying onboard so we get a bit of preferential treatment.  They expect to take about a day to get it(the transmission) in and all aligned.  Let's try three days.  Nothing in this yard happens in one day. 

Our electrician is still going strong.  Both alternators have now been installed and aligned so they will run true.  Apparently, they were at an angle to the engine and it caused some wear and tear on the bearings and the fan belts.   He has wired in the battery monitor that we had sent back for inspection and repair.  There was nothing wrong with it so back it went with lots of new wires attached.  He's planning on working on the ground wires next week that attach to the engine.  After that, who knows.  We've given the yard a "drop dead" date of September 8th as the last day for any installation.  We want to be in the water and ready to do testing on all the new circuits and the transmission, not to mention the rigging.

Our rigger cut several holes in Zephyrs cabin today so that "pad eyes"(rings mounted to the deck that will hold the new running rigging) can be installed with backing plates.  The last thing you want is for them to pull out when under the strain of the sails.  They go in next week.  The great thing is that in cutting holes in Zephyr, he found several areas that had been dead space that can be opened up to give us more storage.  There is a huge area above the workbench that will be a great addition for storage.  

We spent the morning at Safeway catching up on emails and researching the web for more equipment.  Tracy is trying to find a  tour company to get us to Victoria so we can see a special garden there next weekend as that may be our last weekend here, other than the wood boat show weekend.  

We had lunch at the restaurant(Silverwater) that the boat yard had given us the gift certificate to.  Nice place but they got both our orders wrong.  Tracy got the wrong item and I didn't get everything I ordered.  The best part is that when we gave them the gift certificate, they gave us cash back instead of simply logging how much we had used and use the rest on another visit.  We had checked with them a few days ago about using the certificate and there was no problem with us using only a portion of it.  We don't understand why they did it that way.  It would have been better for them to have us come back and use it rather than giving us cash back.  Now, we can eat elsewhere.

This afternoon, it was nice and sunny so I started back on polishing the hull.  Some of the stains were stubborn so I didn't quite get done.  About 8 feet to go.  Tomorrow, we can install the new lettering on the stern so Zephyr will be back to being herself.  I'd taken a shower earlier today and now I'm back to my dirty self.  I've got lots of blue dust from cleaning the hull.  I'll be back in the shower stall tomorrow after the hull is done.  It's nice to feel clean sometimes.