December 3, 2008.

As the good doctor in Young Frankenstein said….It is alive! There was good news and bad news though. The good news is that the transmission and new V drive are installed. After the mechanic was done with his part of the job he left the boat so I could start the re assembly of my part of this deal. I worked all afternoon and finished up just in time for dinner.

The next morning the mechanic came to the boat and we started her up to see where we stood. The boat started right up after a month of sitting. The transmission worked as it should and all the temperatures looked good.

We put the transmission in reverse and let the boat run at cruising RPM’s for 2 hours while tied securely in her slip. No problems, no leaks, all temps normal so it was time to take her for a ride. The mechanic came with us for the test drive and all seems to be well.

So once we arrived back at the marina we signed off on the job and I went about the work of reinstalling the generator. I wanted to wait until we were sure that everything was okay before I started messing with the generator again. I started right after lunch and after a few hours everything was once again ship shape.

Now for the bad news. We weren’t able to slip away without paying. Ouch.

I can’t say enough good things about Deaton’s Yacht Service. The only difficult part for us was that the mechanic who was assigned to us was also the Tow Boat US captain for the area. It was very frustrating to have the mechanic making headway on our job only to be called away by some dipshit in a sailboat who’d run aground. Damn boaters.

On one occasion he was called away by a guy who called up on the VHF and said that he had dragged anchor and his keel was banging on the bottom. Then he says that he’s going to shore but he’ll take his handheld with him so please hail him on the VHF when the tow boat arrives. Christy and I were following along on the radio and couldn’t believe that someone would leave their boat while it was aground.

The mechanic left the dock before 1500 hours and didn’t return to the marina until 2100. When we saw him the next day he told us that the guys boat was on a mooring in his own backyard and he felt that it had dragged so he wanted the tow boat to drag his boat and his mooring out to deeper water. These are the kinds of dipshits that were keeping our work from getting completed.

As the plan stands for now we’re planning on leaving Oriental early on Friday and going out the inlet at Beaufort. We’ve got a 212 mile trip to Charleston scheduled. The winds are supposed to cooperate but we’ll have to see how it goes.