Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Day 330. Road trip

We spent the morning getting cleaned up for a road trip to the big city--Silverdale.  Showers all around so we would look our best--WOW!  What excitement.

But first, we had to wait for our package from Sailrite with the new material and supplies to redo some areas of the canvas on Zephyr.  After a drive around Port Townsend--no luck so back to the marina to wait.  While waiting, I worked on our car--changing the air filter and refilling the radiator.  Our car isn't set to run at sea level so it runs a bit rough while we are here.

Once that was done, I went in search of UPS and found them downtown.  Got the box and headed back to Zephyr.   27 pounds of new stuff to "play" with.

The reason for the "road trip" was two fold.  Boaters World has filed for bankruptcy and we wanted to see if they had anything we might be able to use at a decent price.  The second reason was as always--Costco.

We got to Boater's World and saw big banners out front announcing their "Going out of business sale".  WOW--a whole 10% off on most things!!  When we pulled into the parking lot, we were the only people there--no other customers.  When we walked in, we saw two sales people talking to each other off to the side--no acknowledgment that we were there--no "hi--how are you doing", no nothing.  They never approached us the entire time we were in the store.  The biggest problem is that they cater to power boaters--not sailors.  We found very little of interest.  About the only thing we were interested in was the urethane paint we wanted for our new spinnaker pole.  With the discount--20% on paint, it would bring it down to the same price as what we could get it for every day at Fisheries Supply.  We would simply save the freight.  At check out, we told them that we were sales tax exempt since we were from Colorado--8.5% sales tax.  He said that since they were in receivership, that didn't count as far as they were concerned--Hey-- that's state law.  If you're from Colorado, you don't have t0 pay sales tax on goods and supplies.  Tracy told him to just keep what we were going to buy and out we went.  We'll get what we need some where else.  

Off to Safeway for some heavy duty gloves that they don't carry here in Port Townsend.  A quick stop at WalMart and then over to the Port of Brownsville Marina to make sure no mail had come in for us since we had left(nope).  On to dinner at Red Robin and then off to Costco.

It didn't take long as we had a list but we still toured the aisles just to make sure we had everything we needed.  Back to the car and off to  WalMart to pick up a copy of the new James Bond movie.  They have it cheaper than Costco--go figure.  The power of WalMart grows if they can beat Costco.

We were home by just after 7pm and got settled in for the night.

As to our transmission, we did find out that the folks at Great Lakes Power acknowledged that they had "fixed it" and that it has already left to come back to us.  Our principal contact was still out so we still have no idea what they will pay for as to the re installation of the equipment.  Hopefully we will find out sometime today so we can get on with our lives.  If it takes as long to get back here as it took to get there, it should be here by next Wednesday and in by next Thursday.  Time will tell.

Meanwhile, it's raining with the forecast of better weather as the day progresses.  There's a reason it so green in Washington state.

The "new" freezer area is now down to 2 degrees and the frig area in at 30 degrees.  Drawing 2.8 amps instead of 5.8 the old unit used to maintain a temperature no where near this cold.

Have a great day everyone and stay tuned for the continuing story of "The Transmission Of Our Lives"!




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