Saturday, January 25, 2020

Georgetown, Exuma, Bahamas
23.30.235N
75.45.748W

Well, it’s official; we’ve been here a month.  AND finally progress!  

This morning after listening to the anchorage news, I asked Dale to turn on the generator so that I could do another load of laundry.  Being Dale, if the generator is on, so is everything that it can possibly run; i.e. ice maker, battery charger, and of course, my washer.  I put in a load and lo and behold it started to work.  When it started to hang up, I asked Dale to turn off everything but the washer.  My theory was maybe we were using too much power in everything else causing a “brown out” for my washer.  I was instructed that one thing doesn’t have anything to do with another.  But-it started working again. And, it continued throughout the all the wash cycles.  Wahoo, while I was on a roll, why not do it again?  This time, I couldn’t even get it to fill with water.  The Tinker in Chief took over.  Consult the manual-dodge the lightning strikes-because men don’t read the manual first.  First one thing, then another.  Finally, I suggested that we turn the whole thing off.  Maybe it only works once a day.  I’ll try again tomorrow. 

About mid-morning, Dale got a call from the UPS representative asking where we were located.  We found out that she was the delivery person and if he could make it to town, she had his package.  Dale assured her that although we were on a boat out in the anchorage, he could be there in 10 minutes.  We dropped that dink in the water so fast, it sent out a tidal wave.  Then Dale took off like a shot!  He was back in short order yelling well before he reached the boat that it was Christmastime!  Our watermaker part had arrived. 

When he took it out of the box, it looked exactly like the one we had.  The manufacturer had told us that our part wasn’t available right then but that they would send us one that could be used in its place.  Dale set about measuring, this way, then that, and kept repeating, “it’s the same”.  So he installed it.  The long and short of it is, it appears to be the same unit.  Not just the pump needed but the main guts of the system itself.  He plans on speaking with the representative before trying to start it on Monday as all of the oil leaked out in the shipping process.  As I understand it, many times, the priming oil that it’s sent with is different than the normal oil and is used during a settling in process for a period of hours before you change it to the normal kind.  (I don’t know; it’s just what I was told and you know how he gets when he’s in his teacher mode.)  In any event, he wants to make sure before he tries starting it up that he’s using the right kind of oil. 

Now, if we can just get that sail part in!