Strong winds the first night at Willoughby Bay helped set the anchor so well that it took us more than one hour to dislodge it from the thick mud at the bottom of that anchorage. We moved a short distance to Portsmouth, where we docked between the monohull Mañana and the multihull Today, perhaps a reflection of their respective cruising speeds. While waiting for the brackets we went through a long list of things to fix, maintain and improve (including long overdue items of personal maintenance I will spare you the details of). Stuff seems to break or fail at a faster rate we can fix them, but at least we feel we made a dent in that list.
I changed the port engine’s oil and filter, this time using far fewer paper towels and latex gloves. Not exactly an achievement given the amount I used the first time, but it definitely counts as progress. When I’m down there in the tight, dirty and smelly engine room fiddling with an arcane contraption of metal, tubes, fluids and wires is when I miss my days as a software engineer, but it’s mostly because back then I knew what I was doing.
Waiting for parts is not very adventurous, so there’s not much else to report from the front. We have no complaints regarding the lack of excitement, except that the chilly mornings remind us that we’d better be making progress towards lower latitudes.
A significant number of readers requested a map with our route. (Significant number is an euphemism for one, although, with my readership, any number above zero is significant). Yielding to popular demand I added a link: click on map at the top of this page.
Breaking news!!!
I was about to submit this post, with some doubts after Kathy reviewed it and found it dull, when things got suddenly exciting. In the wrong way. Or rather, in the usual way: the brackets are doing it again, in the most impossible plot! I’m going to change the title of this blog from Cruising Adventures to Alternator Brackets Misadventures.
Here’s the new episode: since they finally shipped the new brackets, I had been obsessively following the package progress on the UPS tracking page, to the point of checking in Google Maps how far away they were. Bound Brook, NJ, 344 miles. Edison, NJ, 337 miles. Last night they were almost here, in Richmond, VA, 97 miles away. Early this morning the page said it was in the delivery truck! We even filled up the water tanks because it was possible we could get out of here early afternoon. I kept refreshing the UPS page waiting for that gratifying “delivered” message before going to the marina office to pick the package up. Instead, what I got was the following horrifying message: “Your package was damaged in transit. All merchandise discarded.” No, I’m not making that one up. We are talking about two pieces made of steel, this time half an inch thick. The whole point was to make them virtually indestructible, and I’m sure they were. I’ll reveal exactly what happened in my next post to give you time to come up with a plausible story explaining how the package could have gotten damaged to the point that the UPS guys deemed the contents unrecoverable. I dare you.
For now, it’s back to waiting. At least we’ll get to follow the elections with no distractions. Tremendous!
You have time enough to write your new hit, “ups broke my brackets”
I found exciting a daily break from work to see life in Water World, and funny too!! Thank you for that. Did not find any map though, should I worry about my limited technological knowledge?
Primo, a significant number of people (more than one this time) has had trouble finding the map. If you read the post by means of an email update, you won’t see the map there. The link (“map”) is in the web page (nandu.world) at the top, right corner.
They lost it. No question about it. Ask Chris…he used to be a postman. You’re quite the comedian Juan. I am enjoying your blog. Have Cat show you my most recent posts on FB regarding Trump. A fun way to kill some time.
No, they didn’t lose it. I know exactly what happened and will reveal it later, but I assure you that UPS did intentionally discard the package. I updated my post to make that more clear. I’d bet not even the best fiction writer would have come up with the actual story (which is amazingly simple… just keeping the suspense).
Juan, I was wandering where my weekly post was. I was thinking that perhaps I had not renewed my annual subscrition. (Do you offer good deals on lifetime subscriptions?). My two cents on brackets. I once had a couple of heavy metal drawer rails rip through the end of their not so hard hard plastic package and then rip through a poorly sealed cardboard UPS box and disappear during shipment. I thought they had been stolen until I examined the ripped inner package and rthe remaing screws.