This morning while Mark took Daisy ashore for her walk, I wrote a blog entry about how we are leaving for Bimini on Saturday and tomorrow we’ll move over to the No Name Harbor anchorage to be closer to the ocean for an early morning departure.  Before I had a chance to upload that entry, I had to delete it.  Yesterday, I cancelled my iPad cellular plan, told AT&T to put my iPhone “on vacation” until the middle of May, and called a marina in Bimini to make reservations for Saturday night.  You’d think by now I’d know not to make plans until the anchor is up, the line is off the mooring ball, or we have left the dock.

When Mark and Daisy returned to the boat this morning, Mark was rowing the dinghy.  The motor had stopped on his way back to the boat. He started to work on fixing it and soon discovered that the dinghy motor needs a new carburetor.  Easier said than done.  Locally, we can get one by January 10.  That’s two weeks from now. He talked to someone in Miami who could possibly rebuild it, but Mark couldn’t understand his English.  That is a problem in Miami at many places of business. 

It’s getting very difficult not to get depressed.  Along with the money we have spent in the last month on unexpected repairs, we are now down from six months to a possible five months in the Bahamas, and the time is dwindling quickly.  I guess we are sort of fortunate that we are at a relatively inexpensive mooring field.  As long as the wind is under 15 kts, there is an hourly boat shuttle here, so we can get ashore with Daisy as needed between 8 and 5 if the dinghy motor dies.  Mark was able to get the motor running temporarily, but it won’t be reliable and we can’t go to the Bahamas and try to order a carburetor there when it eventually stops working for good.  Living on a boat, your dinghy is your car.  You can’t leave home without it.

It’s almost impossible to talk to someone on a boat who isn’t fixing something.  (“Everything on your boat is broken....you just don’t know it yet.”)  We’re used to that.  However, this time every repair is to some part of the boat that has to be fixed before we can go to the Bahamas.  In fact, in each case we were stuck where we were until the part was purchased and the repair made.  We have incurred marina and mooring field fees we hadn’t planned to pay.  Life was so much easier plugged into shore power at Sunset Bay Marina, but little did we know that parts of the boat were waiting to raise their ugly heads and say “gotcha!”  Nice that they spread it out, one repair at a time so just as we thought all was well, it wasn’t.

A bit of good news is that Mark figured out why the generator wasn’t charging the batteries.  A 110 switch in the cabinet pictured at the left was “inadvertently turned off.”  Mark thinks that the screwdrivers hanging on the door somehow flipped the switch when the door was shut.  At least that is his story and he’s sticking to it.  

Update:  Mark just ordered a carburetor and with “express shipping” it will be here in three days.  Of course that is three “business days” which means it will go out tomorrow and will be here Tuesday. Oh, that’s right.  Tuesday is New Years Day so make that Wednesday, if it goes out tomorrow.  I think the next weather window is forecasted for the middle of next week, so perhaps (crossing fingers and toes) we’ll use that one.  Or not.......