February 10

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February 10, 2007
Oceanside Marina
Key West, Florida

The saga of the deceased transmission continues…

After moving heaven and earth to wire money to American Diesel for “next day shipping," the transmissions were to have been sent Thursday, February 1. Ole called to verify they had been shipped, and was told that “the freight forwarder did not feel like driving 80 miles to pick up just two transmissions, and besides, they were short on drivers.” We were assured they would indeed be shipped on Friday. A call Friday afternoon verified that the freight forwarder had, indeed, picked them up on Friday, but wouldn’t be actually shipping them until Monday.

There was much swearing in Norwegian.

A call to the freight forwarder on Monday indicated they would be in Key West on Wednesday. A call Wednesday morning revealed they had missed the Wednesday truck from Miami to Key West, and would arrive here Friday, February 8.

There was much swearing in both Norwegian and English, and very little romance.

During the wait for the transmissions, Ole worked up drawings to construct steel blocks to lift the engines the required 2-3/8” and had said blocks manufactured.

Wednesday, February 6, we moved back over to Oceanside so Ole could work with a mechanic to disassemble both transmissions and begin the process of raising both engines. All of the prep work was done by Friday morning, and, blessed be, the transmissions actually arrived about 1:00 pm. Ole and Mike the Mechanic worked like champs and by 5:00 pm Friday, both transmissions were “hung.”

As of noon today, February 10, with work by James and Mark and Ole, it actually looked like we could get to sea trials by Monday morning, move back over to Safe Harbor, and prepare to leave Key West as early as Wednesday!!!

Then, it all went horribly wrong. As he was ready to install the oil coolers after lunch, Ole found they were not brand spanking new like the cute little Twin Discs they belonged to – they were used! Not only that, when he pulled out the plugs, water came out, there was green stuff and rust around the screw threads, and much swearing in Norwegian, English, and some other unrecognizable language.

Now, to my way of thinking, when you drop 9 or 10 boat units on a vendor for new transmissions, one assumes that all of the bits, pieces, and parts are also new. And, of course, nobody at the vendor side works on Saturday. We'll see how it goes when we call American Diesel on Monday.

Psychologically speaking, I wonder if I take on the multilingual swearing, Ole can get freed up to remain optimistic about leaving next week? He tells me that he can put the used oil coolers on to test the transmissions, get the alignment perfect, call the vendor on Monday to have them UPS new oil coolers overnight to us, turn a few screws on Tuesday, and take off Thursday or Friday. Hmmm. We’ll see.

On the social front, we've had a few visitors while we've been "stuck" in Key West. Al and Jan Furtado, friends from the Pompano Beach Power Squadron, felt we needed cheering up, so they drove down on Sunday the 4th, sat on the back deck with us in the rain, and helped us demolish a plate of hors d'ouvres and a gin & tonic. They were kind enough to take us out to dinner, and on a run to the grocery store.

Our buddy Spiff arrived in his beautiful 46’ Fisher “Ruthy L” on Thursday, with Brendan, Kim, and Trevor from Riverview Marina as delivery crew.

We had some Sopranos Family Cookbook “Sunday gravy,” a couple of rounds of Mojitos and a couple of bottles of wine, then it was off to play for the evening, to Kelly’s Irish Pub on Duval Street and Captain Tony’s, the oldest bar in Key West. Man, it’s too bad we’re not 30 anymore. One o’clock in the morning is about our limit. It's hell to get old!

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