Sun, Mon & Tuesday – 16^th, 17^th & 18^th June

Not a lot got done generally on Sunday, although David and Candy did arrive in the late afternoon and David had another fruitless attempt to ease the lever off the single lever control. This really is stuck fast due to the reaction between the stainless and aluminium parts. On Monday Aric (correct spelling) arrived with some rather more serious looking equipment and his efforts had the expected outcome of snapping the seized lever clean off and so that was that!  Off to West Marine to order a new control unit which they promised would arrive on Tuesday morning…..

The sail makers called to say that they would be with us on Wednesday, not Tuesday or Monday  – actually they texted this information as they knew full well that we were going to be seriously unimpressed.

But David was available for the bulk of Monday and so we set about completing the installation of the boom brake and re-positioning two of the dorade protectors as part of this same modification. The good news is that by 1800 hours this job was complete and suddenly the list is looking a good deal shorter.

The US Postal Service was still in a spin and had emailed us two new tracking updates that showed that the parcel was now in a loop, being sorted and then missent repeatedly, so Sarah hopped on one of the marina’s bicycles and pedalled into the village to the nearest office of the US Postal Service.  Here she showed the man a copy of our latest email of the tracking and he wandered off announcing that there wasn’t anything he could do – but he was then overheard on a phone contacting the Capitol Heights sorting office and putting them straight about the problem and he returned with a big smile and promised Sarah that the parcel would be delivered tomorrow, to David at his marina address, nearby (Tuesday).

On Tuesday morning things began to look better except that West Marine seemed to have lost their delivery van which was two hours overdue……. And the USPS do not deliver to David’s marina until 1230 hours so we hauled David up the mast to fix the mountings on the radar dome now that we had finally got some replacement bushes. Then West Marine called to say that the new control unit had arrived, so we rushed round to collect it and it is of course dramatically different from the one we had before , so lots of cutting and modifying needs to be done! Then the marina where David is moored called to say that they had just had the package delivered, so cue general celebrations and David headed off for his lunch and to collect the parcel containing the much needed new tap.

You might think that we were on the home leg now, but…… somebody really does not want us to get this all completed because at 1300 hours the heavens opened and another huge electrical storm hit the town and we heard that the entire State of Maryland was on a flash flood warning with the torrential rain expected to continue until 1800 hours.  Sarah was at the supermarket  in a car driven by a member of the marina staff and David was at his boat and neither of them had any intention of venturing out into the deluge. So there was the final frustration of knowing the tap I could be fitting inside – out of the rain, was just one mile away now, but not much help really!

Sarah returned in the rain and together we brought the shopping from the car park (past a car fast disappearing in the rising water levels) as she really could not sit in their offices for a further hour or two. The rain eased later and David appeared and put in an hour’s work on replacing the control unit and then I finally was able to unpack and fit the new tap that has taken three weeks to get here.

Poor Sarah was now feeling rather under the weather and so she took some much deserved time off to have a snooze.

So will the sail turn up tomorrow and all be well?  Who knows but we are not bubbling over with confidence.