April 29, 2012.

We arrived late Wednesday so we spent Thursday morning sleeping in. And it was wonderful. On Thursday I walked down to the job and told em' we were back. It was good to see everyone again and to see what changes had taken place in my absence. Most impressive was an awesome brand new travel lift. After a short visit I borrowed one of the company trucks and did some running around.

Christy and I knocked off a bunch of niggling tasks from the to do list. We went to the eye doctor and had her glasses repaired. We picked up some propane, groceries, hit West Marine and we stopped in and rented a mailbox at one of those places. Once back at the boat I gathered up my tools and loaded them into the truck for the trip down to the shop.

On Friday I started work again. I was surprised that the first boat I was assigned was one of the last boats I touched before leaving. In the fall I installed a bunch of new Alpenglow lights and when I went to tackle a few small electrical problems I found that the water in the bilge was actually showing 13 DC volts. Thats never good but it was time for us to head south so the boat was passed to colleague.

After contacting the owner it came to light that the boat had spent some unexpected time on the bottom of the bay. And since the boat is not a submarine this voyage to the bottom of the sea was very bad for pretty much all of the boats systems. Once refloated another marina did a complete rewiring of the boat. It turns out that its not as easy as it looks because they really did a crappy job.

During the course of the winter Karl removed and replaced various wiring and terminal ends throughout the boat. He also dealt with several “wires to nowhere” that were randomly left here and there. He gave me a quick walk through of what still needed to be done and I spent the day finishing things up.

This weekend the First Annual Spring Boat Show was held here in Annapolis. The show is really small; only filling Ego Alley with boats and a few dozen vendors. We heard that it was $10 per person to attend the show so we decided to head over. Imagine my surprise when we got there that they expected US to pay THEM. I figured since the show was so small that THEY ought to pay US 10 bucks apiece to attend their sad little show. I thought they should pay us this year, maybe next year we'd do it for free and after that as the show got to be more enticing they might be justified in charging admission. I can guarantee that if they had done things my way there would have been a much better turn out and descriptions of the show like “underwhelming” wouldn't be floating around.

So instead of walking through the boat show we did boat chores. Prism Polish on the Stainless and Aluma-Guard on the aluminum. Next weekend I'll clean the ICW mustache from the waterline and the Veranda should be almost presentable.