Clark walked up to the marina office today and came back carrying a rather big box for what we expected it to contain. Inside the box he found another well-taped box plus our mail from our mail-forwarding service. Inside the second box, he found a tube of grease he ordered for a grease gun. Since we planned on going shopping today, we added "buy a grease gun" to the shopping list.
Adding the item to the shopping list turned out to be a lot easier than finding one that met Clark's needs. We looked in Home Depot, Advanced Auto Parts, Walmart, and Harbor Freight Tools. The problem is that Clark needs to use only 2 grams of grease on the Aquadrive thrust bearing. None of the grease guns we found allowed a means to determine the quantity of grease being deployed. Clark even considered buying a food scale and weighing the 2 grams, but the food scale we found in Home Depot did not measure such a small amount.
Besides our failed search for the grease gun, we did lots of other shopping and managed to spread funds around to help the local economy. I needed, or in some cases wanted, to buy items at Home Depot, Advanced Auto Parts, Walmart, Walgreens, and Publix. Clark needed items from Home Depot and West Marine. Needless to say we did a great job filling up the trunk of the car with all our purchases. We left the boat at 11:30, found our car still in the parking lot where we left it a week ago, and ended up spending the rest of the day shopping.
We finally got back to the boat just before 6:00 whereby Clark built a short hose from the piece parts he bought at Home Depot and West Marine and immediately started working on repairing the air conditioner in the pilot house that starts but then shuts down. As he worked on that project, I busied myself putting away the groceries and goodies I purchased at the various stores.
Clark called for my assistance regularly while I tried to store my purchases, The air conditioner units (we have three in the boat) are under the floor in the guest stateroom. Once in that compartment, besides being awkward, it is a nuisance for him to climb in and out as his shoes get wet and dirty from the floor, and he has to keep wiping them off. He needed me to find and deliver tools, turn on and off breakers and A/C units on demand, and carry away buckets and buckets of black, smelly water that came out of the pilot house unit as he flushed the hoses.
Ben, on the sailboat next to us, made a comment about "... the black mystery substance being dumped into the water". Heaven only knows what he thought I was pouring over the side of the boat. I explained that it was dirty water from the A/C hoses, and that seemed to satisfy him. He even asked if we needed help working on the A/C. A generous offer, but other than carrying the buckets of stinky water, I could not think of anything that he would be needed to do.
Every time I popped out of the pilot house door to dump yet another bucket of dirty water, Ben was there on his boat ready to chat. I had to keep putting him on hold when Clark yelled another request or I had to return the bucket for another go around. I learned that Ben spends most of his time sailing the Abacos and just earned his captain's license. I am guessing that he and the woman, whom I believe is his girlfriend, are around 30 or so. He said he spent three weeks on dry land to get his captain's license, and it nearly drove him insane.
The good news for the day, besides my well-supplied boat, is that the pilot house air conditioner appears to be fixed. Flushing the filth out of the hoses and making sure no air remained lodged in them seems to have done the trick. I will keep my fingers crossed and hope that I do not have to carry any more buckets of yick for a good long time.
I pulled "a Clark" tonight and while running back and forth with buckets, tools, and whatever, I managed to capture the sunset of the day. The camera never does them justice, but I do like the reflection.
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| Sunset seen from the docks at Vero Beach City Marina |
With Clark busy in the bilge and me busy being a "go fer", dinner did not get started until quite late. Eventually, I told Clark that if I did not get to cook and eat soon, he would be scraping me off the floor. We finally dined on board around 8:00 or so. After dinner he took off to do email and paperwork. He never rests!
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