An interesting day
'Sarf & West mate, Sarf & West'
Pete Bernfeld
Wed 27 Jun 2012 04:45
The other hull is in reasonable nick having not been scraped along a reef, so John is just going to polish it.
I went shopping with Martin this morning. Now he's never going to qualify as my 'new best mate', but he did save me some money
I have no idea what a genuine Volvo engine oil filter and fuel filter would cost, but a set that fitted from an auto dealer was F$20. That's about £7 or US$10. Almost 'cheap as chips', so I brought five sets. two sets for the oil change now, one set for New Caledonia and a spare. The mathematically astute amongst you will have already computed the bill as F$100. However the magic word 'discount', produced a bill of...F$45.
Next up was the extra fuel filtering system that I had had installed. The original filters were Racor 20-T filters and I can't remember how much they cost, but they weren't cheap. Here they were priced at F$85 each and we needed four. Martin said 'too much', what else have you got? That produced an American made filter, which with 'no receipt squire' came to F$48. However if I brought seven the price came down to F$40 each. Both fuel tanks have been underwater and flushed out with fresh water. I brought the seven.
We discussed money. No payment yet, but the engines will be ready for a test run tomorrow. Installing each engine will be (eventually) F$120 each. He might be a slow worker, but that's not a bad price because he's taken about three days per engine to get them into the engine bays, bolt them in and connect everything else up.
As far as the engine damage is concerned, he now says that the rocker-arm exhaust is bent, one push rod is bent and on the rocker-arm inlet the thread has gone on the end of the arm where a 'knob' used to be. (Where is it now?). I'm still not clear as to exactly how we can run this engine, but he now says that he can get the work done locally. Anybody got any comments? I will get a price from Volvo UK but I know now that I can't afford it.
I rang Arun the Electrician. 'On my way to hospital to be connected up to a drip bro.'
Now I've had the enthralling experience of having caught malaria twice. The first time in Indonesia and I spent I think three days in hospital in Singapore, might have been four, on a drip. In Nigeria, I had a massive shot of something in the arse (no comments please) and after sleeping for 24 hours I was OK. He arrived back last Thursday with malaria and was immediately treated here. Hmmm. I will ring him tonight, but if he can't come tomorrow or guarantee on Friday then that's his lot.
To add to life's little pleasures I've also come down with 'the lurgy'. Dry cough, headache and a bit of a spit now and then. Same as I had about a month ago. I lived through that and I'll live through this, don't have time to be ill.
Almost finished the eBook detective story, by this weekend I'll be editing, proof reading and formatting. Then a 'dry run' converting it to Kindle format to see what it looks like, and hopefully next week, AT ANCHOR, I'll upload it to Amazon. After that, well who knows? I'm not expecting to become the next self-published literary sensation and I'm sure I won't be disappointed!
John the illustrator has the final list of 'small illustrations' to do for Tim. I'll put the book together once he's finished, edit my bits again and get it off to Emma the Agent. In the meantime John (keen type) has already started some rough sketches for our next joint project, 'The Tale of Trembling Tim Turpin' ©
Talk about burning the candle at both ends and in the middle, it'll be nice not to be writing at 0300!
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http://www.peterbernfeld.com