August 29, 2008.

It was a bit overcast today with some scattered showers so we pretty much worked inside the boat. I replaced a faulty valve in the forward head while Christy started sewing us some new curtains for the salon.

The valances that they sell for your home are just the right length to be used as curtains on all of our ports. So Christy spent a few hours sewing up a way to hang them from our existing curtain rods. She did a great job although I did hear more swearing than I’ve ever heard in my life. I think she was even making some of those words up but I was afraid to ask her as I was trying to be as small as possible.

After she was done sewing I decided to make a new grill cover to replace the one that had blown away during the hoolie in Solomon’s Island. We were pleased with the result and now I won’t feel like I’m walking around with my fly open having an uncovered grill.

Last night Jeff & Tessa dropped in on their way home from their boat. They’ve been trying to get a repair made on their boat for quite some time now. The marina had been working on their boat for them and had inadvertently drilled a hole through the hull into the recess that houses the center board. The hole is in a tough spot to get too and the marina has tried a series of Mickey Mouse repairs in an effort to fix it.

This has involved making what they consider to be a repair, and then taking the boat over to the water and dunking it in to see if it still leaks. Kinda like a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. It’s been dunked three times now and the water still comes gushing in each time. So understandably Jeff & Tessa are pretty frustrated and they were here to try and reconcile the situation by having the shop agree to make a very involved, but correct repair.

It seems that the people in the shop are more concerned with pointing fingers at each other over whose fault it is, rather than making the repair. Eventually it was agreed that the more involved repair would be the next course of action. So after their meeting they stopped in to decompress and visit a bit before the ride home. We had a great time visiting with yet another interesting couple that we’ve met on our journey. Speaking of interesting, check out their website, www.evason.com and if you ever have a chance to see them perform, jump on it!

Speaking of last night. I’ve shut off the shore power cable the last 2 nights so that we’ve just been running off the ships batteries. So at night with little or no wind turning the wind generator we’ve been able to see how much power we’ve been using with both refrigerators running. It’s been a shockingly low 33 amps per night. That’s pretty darned good; I realize that the temperature has been a little cooler lately and we’re not using an anchor light (since we’re on the hard) but all things considered that’s a real nice number to see.