Maine

Wednesday 8 August: Boothbay Harbor. Not the greatest of sleep last night. Jet lag playing games with us. We are having breakfast before 7am, unheard of!
Then it’s dinghy in the water from the front deck, outboard on and we head ashore to collect all our deliveries from Bristol Marina. In the yard, we meet Eric, the manager, and he tells us 100 yachts from New York Yacht Club will be here this weekend for a rally. We hope to be gone by then.
We collect our many items which only just fit into the dinghy – Volvo parts, 15 gallons of engine oil, tools, an iPhone, planing fins for the outboard, a stainless prop, new gas fittings, pilot books and many more. We spend the rest of the day finding places for it all on board, only going ashore again for a quick excursion to the hardware store. It’s hard to think it’s the height of midsummer activity here as we focus on our chores.
Now that we have lots of needed parts, we also have a long list of jobs that was waiting on them. First job is to cut a hole for the air conditioner air intake. Glen had cut a round hole previously but at the last second the saw jumped and scratched the wood badly. So we now have a nice square teak vent to fit, covering both the round hole and scratches! It fits nicely so the first coat of varnish goes on too.
In the evening Glen puts the finishing touches to the generator. While he is there he takes all the covers off and does a general inspection. He notices a gap where the exhaust manifold joints the exhaust elbow and decides to tighten the bolts which secure it. Bad move! 2 of the 4 bolts simply pull out of their threads in the manifold casting, clearly there is major corrosion. This joint could therefore come apart at any moment. A good catch but obviously very annoying that we have yet another major issue with the generator. It’s only done 370 hours. We guess those first 8 years of not doing much are now kicking in. Engines need to work, especially ones with salt water passing through them.
Later in the evening we watch the movie Deepwater Horizon. The film about the oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. That firmly puts our generator woes into perspective. We end up in bed at the normal time tonight. Hopefully that’s jet lag over.
We are finding it a little tough to get back into being on board. We are not exactly full of joy. It almost feels like returning to work after a good holiday, let’s hope we get our mojo back soon.