On the Road ...

It was wonderful to get on the road.  While we enjoy St. Augustine, 9 weeks there was just beginning to be too much. 

Our first night on the ICW we spent off the channel at the old SeaRay Plant.  Come morning we were greeted by a fabulous sunrise as we continued our journey.

Our next big stop would be Vero Beach.  There we were expecting parts for the port engine.  Unfortunately, we discovered issues with both the fresh water pump and the heat exchanger and we needed to change out both. 

While the boat parts were unexpected, the stop in Vero was great.  We rented a car for the weekend and visited friends in Stuart and stopped at some of our favorite shops. 

For the Superbowl, we watched the painful game with the rest of the crew at Vero.  Not only was the game bad, but I was rather disappointed that Calvin Klein opted out of the Superbowl commercials this year.  The 2013 black and white ad is still a favorite of mine. 

With the arrival of boat parts came the boat work.  It was a rather long 3 hours to get all the old stuff out and the new parts installed.  We thought we had it all set, turned the key and proceeded to spray antifreeze all over the engine room.  The problem was a hole for a bolt in the new water pump.  The hole is not used to connect a hose or a fitting it is just there and we did not realize that Yanmar's brilliant engineers opted to not included the bolt on the new pump and thus installed the pump without inserting the bolt and allowing antifreeze to leak everywhere.  As you night imagine, the Captain was not happy and even I, who typically take these things in stride, had to admit that Yanmar got damn cheap with not including the bolt with the new pump.  Obviously the engineers had the eye out for cost reduction and not the consumer on that one as lots of things had to be unconnected before we could access the hole for the stupid bolt.  Fortunately with that complete, all seems to be working magnificently.  Full credit goes to the Captain and zero to Yanmar. 

From here we will begin a series of hops to Miami where we need to make some decisions as to where we are headed this season.  The Bahamas?  The West Coast?  No decisions as yet so stay tuned.

The Admiral