Today was a very frustrating day. Our mechanic promised us yesterday that he would be done by noon today, but when he hadn’t shown up by 10:30, we knew he wouldn’t be done by noon. I headed to the service office to find out what was going on and met another guy who had worked on our boat last week. I talked to him about how I was ready to scream and yell and he explained that the general manager of the marina had suffered a heart attack on Monday and was going to have quadruple bypass surgery, the service manager was out with a broken rib, and two or three guys had called in sick today. He reminded me that you catch more bees with honey than screams so I went to the service dept. and politely asked if they knew when Michael might be coming back to work on our boat. Turns out he was in the shop finishing up some work on our engine cover and he was back on our boat with it 15 minutes later – I’m glad I didn’t get obnoxious with anyone. He put a couple of things back together and by then it was time for lunch. At that point we were still hopeful we would be able to leave tomorrow.

While Michael was at lunch, we took the boat to the fuel dock to get the holding tank pumped out. Rich decided to take the boat out a little ways to make sure all the instruments were working properly. We quickly discovered that the depth finder, speedometer, and autopilot were not coming up -@*%($# was all we could say. We didn’t want to leave if those things weren’t functioning, but we didn’t want to stay at this marina any longer either. Back to the slip and Michael was there to finish up. We told him about the problems with the instruments and he said he would see if he could get ahold of the electronics guy. At that point I was so frustrated I was ready to cry. Rich said it was like the song “Hotel California” – you can check out whenever you want, but you can never leave. I was feeling like we were going to have to change our address to Iuka MS and our boat would turn into a floating condo.

We’ve been here so long the leaves on the trees are beginning to turn.

Eventually the electronics guy and two others showed up – one guy left after half an hour, but the other two guys kept going through all the electrical systems, battery chargers, and anything else they could think of. We were sure there was going to be some major part that would need to be ordered and would take days to get in. We were ready to drown our troubles in adult beverages (it had to be 5 o’clock somewhere) because at that point it was cold, it was raining, we had no car to be able to get away, and it seemed like we were going to be stuck for who knows how long.

While the guys worked, Rich and I snacked on a regional cheese spread. In the Midwest we eat bar cheese spread – down here it’s pimento cheese spread.

Finally, about 6 o’clock they decided that the new AIS transponder that had been installed yesterday was causing the problem. As soon as they unplugged it, everything was working the way it should. Fortunately it isn’t something we absolutely need to continue the trip, so we’re going to leave tomorrow and get it figured out when we leave the boat to go home for Thanksgiving.

As my father would say, “God willin’ and the creek don’t rise”, we’ll be out of here tomorrow morning and in Fulton MS by mid-afternoon!