No Boat Travel
We woke to 58 degree weather expecting a high of 65. As the weatherman said on the 6:00 news ... "To folks in Michigan, that's downright balmy"!
With cool weather, Clark and I spent the day in the engine room working on the alternator project. Since this project has been underway for over a month, I decided to add a couple of pictures to the blog to demonstrate the complexity of the work. Besides disassembling alternators to remove the internal regulators and rewire for external regulators, Clark had to mount and wire the regulators and a centerfielder to coordinate the workings of the alternators.
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| First Clark took apart each of the two alternators to remove the internal regulator to allow for external regulators |
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| Next he wired each alternator to the house batteries |
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| Then he ran wire to connect the alternators to the centerfielder. |
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| Here is Clark running wires for the alternator project. (The 3 boxes in the upper left corner with the red and white wires is the finished product.) |
After finishing the wiring we revved up the engines and took measurements. Everything looked good.
Saturday 12/30/2017
No Boat Travel.
A week ago Clark loaned four tools (screwdriver, vice grips, open-end wrench, and pliers) to the owner of a neighboring boat. The boat owner and his wife were visiting from California. Their boat is for sale, and when they stopped by to check on it, they found a problem and needed to do some maintenance work. Since they just flew in to visit relatives, they had no tools of their own.
Because Clark wanted to test his alternator work and run water under the boat for maintenance, he told the lender of the tools to leave the tools on the steps near our boat when finished with them. After an hour out on the boat, we returned at 4:30 to find nobody on the boat being repaired and no tools on the step. Hmmmph? We looked for the boat owners the next day, but they never came around. Eventually, since he had their boat card, Clark called and left a voicemail. They did not call back. At that point, I wrote the tools off as gone forever.
A couple of days later, on Christmas day, Clark called them again, and this time surprisingly, they answered the phone. Almost the first thing they asked Clark was, "Did you find the tools on the step?" and were shocked when he said, "No, no tools on step." They said they left the tools on the step, as agreed, at 4:00 with a note gripped in the vice grips saying thank you for the use of the tools. So, in the 30 minutes between when they left the tools and we returned from our boat run, the tools had disappeared.
The marina is secured to prevent people coming onto marina grounds, so Clark speculated that maybe a passing boater saw the tools sitting there and helped themselves to an early Christmas present. Even so, he did not give up his quest to solve the mystery of the missing tools. The marina office checked lost and found and then suggested he talk to security to see if they had any insight into their disappearance. Neither of the security staff had an answer as they had not covered our dock until 5:00 - after the disappearance occurred.
Yesterday, a full week from the day the tools disappeared, we got a new lead. Clark once again took a trip to the marina office to pick up packages and mentioned his disappointment that the tools had "taken a walk". While chatting, Tony, one of the marina staff, suggested that Clark call the marina assistant, Doug, to see if he had any thoughts on what might have happened to the tools. Clark called Doug when he got back to the boat.
Amazingly, Doug did know the whereabouts of the tools since he was the one who had taken them. The note the tool borrowers attached to the tools said, "Thank you for the loan of the tools". Doug read that to mean that the tools had been borrowed from the marina and left there to be returned to the marina.
Since it was late in the day when they spoke on the phone, Doug told Clark to come by the North dock the next day. When Clark arrived there this morning and looked through the toolbox, he found all four of his missing tools. Yay - mystery solved! With the long-lost tools safely tucked away in our toolbox where they belonged, we walked over to the Saturday Farmer's Market to stock up on some fresh produce and blueberry scones. We had a big day planned for the rest of the day and wanted to check out the market before the day got busy.
Last Saturday Clark's cousin, Dawn, planned to visit us but became sick. With the plan to go to the farmer's market, she came to see us today instead. As timing turned out, we had other visitors today as well. Kenny and Jeanne, boating friends on Daybreak, contacted us and said they would be in the area today. By the time we had collected all our visitors, it was already 12:30, so we ended up taking a very quick walk through the market and then heading straight to a restaurant for lunch.
We decided to stroll down Beach Drive to look for a place to eat. The first place we stopped at said it would be a 30-minute wait, so we decided to keep walking. I was somewhat disappointed because I had already decided I wanted to order their quiche of the day. Oh well. As we started walking to look for another place, several of us thought that perhaps it would make sense to put our name on the first restaurant's list in case nothing better turned up in the next 30 minutes. After looking at a couple of disappointing menus, Kenny volunteered to go back to the first restaurant to add our name to their list.
While he was gone, the rest of us found something we thought would work that had a 20 minute wait. No sooner did we put our name in there than Kenny called to say our first choice restaurant was currently clearing a table and could seat us in five minutes. Clark took our name off the second list and we headed back to our first choice, Cassis American Brasserie, at a brisk pace. The quiche was great!
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| Cousin Dawn on Beach Drive in St. Pete, Florida |
After lunch, Dawn said she had to get back home. After saying our farewells to Dawn, the rest of us decided to walk around St. Petersburg. We started with a stop by the sundial for selfies and then strolled along the water to check out the parks.
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| Kenny and Jeanne at the Sundial |
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| Group Selfie at the Sundial |
We ended up walking all the way to Flora Wylie Park to see the sundial located there for comparison purposes.
By the time we got back to the boat, my FitBit showed 15,000 steps or about 7 miles!
For dinner the four of us ate at Frescos which is on the same block as the marina. I was grateful not to have to walk a long distance to the restaurant. Even though we made a reservation for inside dining, when we got there no inside dining was available. They said they had heaters, so reluctantly we agreed to dine outside.
With the weather a windy and chilly 50-something degrees, we did not relish the idea of dining alfresco at Fresco's! The hostess walked us past all the tables with the overhead, radiant heaters and sat us at a non-heated table. When we asked about the promised heater, she pointed to a space heater situated at a nearby table. We felt no heat.
We huddled in our coats trying to make the most of a bad situation. Jeanne and Kenny ordered wine, and I asked for hot tea to warm me up. After ten minutes I asked what happened to my tea. I thought perhaps they went to Publix to buy the tea bags. We noticed some tables by the overhead heat lamps emptying out and mentioned something to our waitress who told us to take our drinks and move. We did! After that we could enjoy our dinner.
Clark lured Kenny back to the boat after dinner with the offer of fruit pie. I asked Clark what berries were in the pie, and he read the label, "Trawberries, Blackberries, Blueberries, Raspberries ...". I said, "What? Wait a minute. What was that first ingredient?" Clark reread the label and said, "Trawberries". "Trawberries??", I asked, "Do you mean Strawberries?" At which point, we all had a good laugh about the new variety of berry none of us had ever heard of - Trawberries!
Before Kenny and Jeanne left, Clark asked if Kenny wanted to see his alternator work. When he dithered, I told Kenny he did not have a choice. He had to go admire Clark's achievement. Of course, once they got in the engine room, they stayed there. Eventually, Jeanne and I had to go and dig them out of there, so Jeanne and Kenny could get on their way.
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