Life is good here in Ft. Pierce but we are all
anxious to head for the Bahamas. The day to day happenings
at the marina is certainly interesting. A couple of days ago, the
pile driver boat came to move one of our pilings. They were
polite, quick, and clean. They spent most of the morning
moving or replacing pilings. Very kewl to watch!
SV Moony's engine was installed this Friday and Saturday.
Everything looked good for a sea trial on next Monday and then we would
be 'outta here' Moony was towed to Cracker Boy Boat Yard where the
crane lowered the rebuilt Perkins engine into her engine compartment.
Finally, Moony's luck has changed (or has it?).
We don't believe it, but we are here on
Super Bowl Sunday. Denise and Wolfgang are learning American
football for the first time. We are all rooting for Pittsburgh. Our
happy hour waitress
(Beth) reserved us a space close to the TV. By half time, we were
feeling no
pain. By game's end, we were struggling to find the boat (not really).
Pittsburgh
won, Moony had a motor, and we were on our way!
Monday was the day for Moony's sea trial.
Wolfgang started the engine and it ran beautifully for an
hour and twenty minutes. Then the motor stopped by
itself with lots of noise. A call to the Diesel Shop brought
two mechanics the next day. Basically, the engine blew
up. We would find out later that the camshaft broke and
the cylinder head was damaged. The problem centered
around a defective head gasket. Time to take Moony back
to Cracker Boy's and have the engine taken out again.
Time is running out!
Wolfgang and Bob continued their daily trek to
to the Diesel Shop. We are getting pretty skilled riding the
courtesy bikes from the marina to the shop. They checked the
engine out thoroughly and found out that only the head, valves,
and cam shaft were destroyed. The rest of the engine looked
OK. Fortunately, the owner of the Diesel Shop found the
replacement parts and volunteered to cover all the costs! An
island of good news in a sea of bad.
Monday was also Nancy's (SV Dances with
Dragons) birthday and she and Wayne invited us to the
marina restaurant for dinner. By now we were aware that
Wayne was in a lot of pain. He apparently pinched a nerve while
working on an oil rig in the North Sea. He is not a happy camper
as he can't do much in week 5.
Friday, we went back to Enterprise to rent
our weekly PT Cruiser. We know all of the Enterprise on a first
name basis as this was the 5th week in a row that we rented a car.
We headed for the Lake Worth
to talk to the immigration folks. Wolfgang and Denise needed
to confirm the checkout procedure and to find out what their
options were if the boat repair is delayed further. The INS
guy was very helpful and now we know where they could check
out.
Couple of weeks ago, we were washing the deck and
some water found its way to our navigation computer. Yep, you guessed
it. We lost a second computer on this trip. Bob said "enough is enough!
I am going to buy a 'toy'". So off he went and bought a little Garmin
chartplotter, and the XM Wx weather module. As he brought all of his
toys back from West Marine, Ann turned the computer on and it worked!
Now we had a 'toy' and a working computer. Not bad!