Not the best place to be stuck (though we aren’t actually stuck now, we can leave when we’re ready) but other than have a good mechanic here and showers a 1/2 mile off, up a hill, through the woods and mosquitoes, it’s ok.  We have fresh water and electricity.  I’m taking advantage of that.

As it turns out, we have two water tanks.  I think I mentioned that before.  One of the tanks is on the port side and has a separate valve to control its flow into the water system.  It was off and I hadn’t found it yet, and didn’t KNOW it was off.

When we arrived I was looking over plumbing and locating things I still needed to find.  As it turns out, when I opened the valve (not thinking about what might be in the tank) I contaminated the water supply with antifreeze.

Stony Point Marina didn’t do ANYTHING to the boat without specifically pointing it out.  Zincs was my first real issue with them.  Then duct tape on the shut off.  Now this.  I’m sure now I’ll find other things.  Commissioning should have involved flushing the water system and filling it, should have involved checking and topping off the oil, coolant, transmission and making sure belts were right and things were going to go well.

They didn’t do anything of the sort.  If you’re a power boater up in that area, you might have good service, but I strongly recommend against sail-boaters using the place.  Even for storage.  I think the manager is a jerk after charging me for duct tape (he didn’t tell me that’s what it was) and just being an all-around slimy guy.

There was one young man there, I want to say his name was Darryl maybe, who was helpful and nice, offered advice.  Eric, their yard manager and mechanic was the one that had to have used the duct tape.

Avoid the place.

Back to Summit North.  You’re more than a mile from ANYTHING here.  It’s a 1/2 mile to walk from the office to the road and there is a small store up the road (No, I haven’t walked it, but have had people tell me how far it was).  The next closest stuff is several miles away.

There is a restaurant here called “Aqua Sol” which was ok.  But they are like a high end place for boaters.  Kind of expensive.  Beer isn’t bad but the food… well, the burger was ok.  I guess JoAnne’s food was decent, service was so-so, but it was expensive.  And there’s nothing else.

I feel like I’m back out at Schriever, AFB inside the restricted compound, one place to choose from at high prices because you’re in a captive audience.

Internet service here works up by the main office.  No in doors place to be.  Internet at the Aqua Sol doesn’t work and they made an excuse about the fire wall blocking the public/free stuff and “nothing they can do about it”.

T-mobile service is limited here.  Internet connections through my phone are limited because I can’t get a good signal.  So, they get a 1 on service.

The mechanic, Mike, of Total Boatworks was helpful and when he looked in the engine, in 30 seconds he said, “Found your problem”, and pointed out some kinks in hoses I’d not seen or would even recognize as being a problem.  Remember, I’m used to cars and trucks, I’m NO mechanic but can pick my way through an engine slowly if given time and not under stress.

The hoses in a car or truck are rarely if ever a problem until they split open. Some of the hoses had holes being worn into them from vibration.  We replaced them all, put some anti-chaffing around others, added some missing nuts and bolts, changed the oil, added coolant, added an overflow for the coolant, rerouted the shifter cable, rerouted the exhaust water flow so the hoses weren’t kinked up and in general cleaned up all the loose and vibrating parts.

I have one big job to do, to cut a bracket away from the engine block, which is being hit and vibrated on by the block.  I just need to cut away a corner…. not an easy proposition, but he said he didn’t want to do it and charge me hours of work for it.

The engine is running much cooler now, and in fact using the laser heat gun he had showed me it was running cooler than it had before.  Simple stuff.  I hope that’s all that was causing the issues now.

We were going to leave today, but we need to do laundry and I need to rearrange a few things on the boat to redistribute some of the weight a little further back in the boat, and manage the forward compartment better.  Right now we have it crammed full of stuff and no real place to put it, and of course no place for a visitor to sleep either.

It will be a few weeks before we’d be ready for visitors, but then the family members who might visit are in the middle of doing their own things at the moment and probably won’t come out for at least a few more months.  Which is ok.  We’re still learning anyway and I don’t want to stress them out!

Last night we were up by the office visiting the rest rooms and checking the bulletin board and I ran into a couple who were just coming back from Baltimore and heading home.  We got to talking and she asked us how they were treating us in the marina and I gave her the “ambivalent” answer.  So she checked on our “condition” – that is she started asking me questions of if we needed a ride into town to get food, how was our fresh food supply, etc.

They were very nice and at the end of it she offered us some strawberries which I kept refusing to take, finally she thrust them into my wife’s hands and said, “Please take them”.  It was a very heartfelt response to us “not having fun”, completely unnecessary, but very, very sweet of her.  It’s not like we’re indigent or something.

But, they were the best strawberries I’ve ever had walking down the docks back to the boat.

So for today that leaves laundry, boat cleaning, paying the mechanic and probably one more long, hot shower today….