Hanging Out and Maintenance Day in Port Salerno

Day 3: February 26, 2015

We had a wonderful night’s sleep but as usual, I was awake and up at 5:00.  I can’t seem to get past that magic hour. 



And a total washout. Waiting out a rain delay

We prepared our first “canned food” breakfast.  We had sausage gravy over a tortilla.  We use tortillas is place of bread because it keeps much long without molding.  We had cooked and canned the sausage for the mix probably a month ago; the actual measured flour part of the meal we vacuum packed at about the same time.  We added a bit of powdered milk to simulate the real thing.  All we had to do was add a cup of water to the mix and cook it to the level of gravy.  It Worked!  It was good.

It is really windy today, so much so that we put off raising the mast and bending sails until calmer times.  There are a bunch of other chores we needed to attend to before we could set off so we began by hauling water for our empty storage tank.  The boat has a 30 gallon tank and with the extremely cold temps in Ohio and the fact that 30 gallons weighs over 200 lbs, I put off filling the tank until we get go our destination.  That usually requires us to beg for water at some marina but this time, we are holed up in a boat trailer parking lot so there is no easy access to water.  I stopped a park ranger and asked if there were any hose bibs in the area and he told me that there was one in the rest room building but it required a key.  I had scoped that out and know that I had the proper tools to open the faucet compartment and reluctantly told me that I could do it if I didn’t damage the faucet.

I hauled the 30 gallons of water over the 100 yards from the restroom building to the boat in two 5 gallon plastic water cans.  I think my arms are now ½ inch longer than they were when I left Ohio.

Janine tried to use electric water pump to draw water from the tank, but it didn’t work as designed; not shutting off and building up pressure when she turned off the faucet.  I dug into the pump and plumbing work but could find no problem with the system.  I was concerned that it could be a pump problem.  We figured that we get around the problem by turning on the pump switch every time. 

As I was working around setting up the boat, Janine came up and informed me that there was 6 inched of water in one of our food storage lockers.  It turned out that the supply line to the faucet had frozen and burst was spraying out over our food.  Luckily it was all sealed and nothing there was damages.  HOWEVER, the faucet was obviously installed before the top and bottom of the boat were joined.  To make a long painful story short, we spent the rest of the day chasing parts and replacing the old faucet.  That included 3 trips to Lowes, two trips to the boat manufacturer who luckily is right in Stuart, and visiting three other boat supply houses.  I finally got the water system working at about 8:00 pm.  I still had a very small drip at one of the solderless fittings that will require one more trip to Lowes tomorrow.  More serious modifications will be required when we get back to Ohio.

So!  That was our day.  We did enjoy a good lunch at a really small restaurant called the Whistle Stop.  I had a nice chicken salad wrap and Janine had a bowl of Brunswick stew.  And for our evening dining delight, we had chicken alfredo made with our canned chicken.  It was also good.  This is going to work. 

We were both really tired and bed came willingly at about 9:00.