Our Lake Life: Let there be light!!

Well, our intention working on the boat last night was the truest example of "things that happen during mercury retrograde!" We got to the storage place where we keep Firefly and our lock was gone, replaced by another. I called the guy and he forgot that he told us it was okay to move into our new larger garage. For the last two months, I paid the bill online and noticed that the price didn't go up. I just thought he'd get around to it and bill me the difference... NOPE, he plum forgot! So they cut our lock off and couldn't find anything with our info to call us (much rectify this) and put a new lock on it until someone (us) called about it.

So once we got that resolved, another hour had gone by. When you're doing the work "after work", there's not a lot of time in the evening to do it.

The "Good port"

We unloaded all the tools and parts, including the new switch panel and new battery. My main reason for the work was to continue on the new port installation, but when we pull the 2nd port out of the box (stupid me, I opened the one, liked it, happy with it, never even thought to open up and look at the 2nd one.) It was a different type altogether!

The "BAD port"

I purchased the ports on ebay, to save a little $$, ya know? Well... the warehouse screwed up and sent us the mismatched set. So by the time I called today and sorted it out, turns out they have sold out of the shiny stainless steel ones and only have the ugly black plastic/chrome ones!

They were nice about it, admitted their mistake and offered a full refund and return shipping on them. We had to choose a slightly different shape (which although changes the character of the boat from squinty eye sandpiper bird to a bit more wide-eyed sparrow look (sic)) but it's all shiny stainless and cost twice as much for brand new ports still in their plastic. They (ebay seller) took the hit and are sending those out ASAP for the same price including shipping.

The replacement "new" oval ports

This is what it would have looked like

This is what it will look like with the replacement oval ports

This is the ports that were originally installed on Firefly

Removed

Old bedding cleaned up

Taped off and ready to cut...but wait..what? Read above!

So that was resolved today, but last night, disappointed that we couldn't do the work we intended to do, we set to working on removing the busted compass and installing the electrical upgrades. My biggest fear was that the wiring was toast and the lights were all burned out (PITA to get to them too!).... But alas, some luck was with us, they all worked just fine!

Now if we can just get the ports in and a few other things done, like the companionway cover that Stacey is custom designing and sewing and some organization bins in the bow, we'll be ready to take this puppy to the lake again!