Wednesday, January 4, 2012 Life in the Boatyard

Today was a “running around” kind of day today. We bounced around from place to place after I located and wrote down directions for the various stops we had to make. First stop was to a local Yanmar dealer to get a spare key for the boat. I’d originally ordered one on-line from Torrenson Marine back home after googling Yanmar dealers and spotting a familiar name. Well 6 days after ordering the key, they emailed me back saying I was out of their delivery area and would have to find another Yanmar Dealer. Nice to let me know…a week later… I guess. Glad we weren’t in a hurry or anything… I figured that it would be here yesterday in the mail. Anyhow, I found another Yanmar dealer not far from us that had the key so… $10 for the key and I saved $11 in shipping cost so it was actually a good thing that Torrenson wouldn’t ship to Florida :) Next up – GTO wire for the SSB… We went to several electrical supply places and a Marine Electric shop and after several recommendations, which didn’t pan out, someone recommended we try Radio Shack. The guy there decided to give Wayne a speel on how he just doesn’t understand how all these guys that spend millions (???) on these big mega yachts can’t just go to a marine electrician to get their parts… why do they want to spend their money on parts that aren’t made for saltwater and why are they such tightwads… yadda, yadda, yadda…” I was in the back of the store looking at wireless stuff and gadgets and then decided that I didn’t much want anything from here. First, we have a small sailboat that while it might be worth a million bucks to me in my heart, wouldn’t fetch close to $100,000 or maybe $50,000 let alone $1,000,000.00 Who is this guy to get off lecturing a prospective customer? Anyhow after a few more trips we finally found the GTO15 wire at Flamingo Sign. They make neon signs and a host of other type of signs there. I actually wouldn’t mind working there, it looks like a neat place to use graphic skills…

Next it was Sam’s Club for some provisions, then Walmart for a few items, and I think we’re both zonked from running around today. Tomorrow is supposed to be warmer so it’ll be back to boatwork.