Good news, bad news...

It seems we have these days often....the joys of living on a boat :)

The good news is Joel from Yamaha Marathon showed up first thing this morning.  That is VERY good news as most people around here are on island time...it could have been today, tomorrow, next week or next month.

The bad news is my boat/living space is tore all to pieces now for who knows how long.  "Take a look around you, Ellen, we're living at the threshold of hell!" (name that movie)  What you cannot see is underneath that sea berth cushion is our life raft, ditch bag, dive gear, fishing gear, and assorted other crap that serves as our shed for storage. Now it has filled the port side salon.  It nearly makes me nuts to not be able to organize it and put it all back in its place.

The good news is literally within seconds Joel announces, "Your fuel pump is the problem."  The bad news is, the fuel pump is the problem!  Once he finally got it off the engine, the thing was so disgusting I heard him say a Cuban "Ewwww"!  He said he would have to try and clean it up before he could even send it to the "lah-bor-ah-tory" to be rebuilt.  Don't know how long it will take to get it back.  My fingers are crossed for maybe a week to ten days (that I have to live with the mess in my salon). The good news is that Joel was in and out in about an hour, and he gave Donnie some good lessons on diesel engine maintenance.  That was VERY good news as the going rate is $100/hour; so we got two for the price of one :)
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Willis was, of course, supervising as usual.  He makes for a good straw boss.

Fueled with his new found knowledge, Donnie tore into the heat exchanger to remove and clean it.  Bessie tends to overheat if she's run hard over 2300 rpms after a time.  Donnie discovered why- there was a huge calcium deposit in the salt water intake.  It looked like a petrified bone when he got it out.  You can see you-know-who was intently watching Cap'n. Dern cat.

I was sitting in the cockpit while Donnie was on the dock cleaning the heat exchanger, and I heard this huge splash next to me. Well, hello, Mr. Crane :)

Willis heard him, too.  He's afraid of birds bigger than him. Scaredy cat.

I managed to get laundry done, the head cleaned, and the floors swept, and Donnie made good progress on Bessie.  We capped off a pretty successful day with our friends, Dan and Biddi, at Taco Tuesday over at the Hurricane.  THAT was the good news to end our day on :)