May 13, 2015 Friday the 13th in Lake Worth

One more night!
This morning, I met the shuttle to go to UPS and West Marine.  The shuttle wasn’t busy, so the driver just waited for me.  Great service for tips only.  I mailed off our tax info.  Then I bought another chair for our cockpit. 

Before I caught the shuttle, I got to talk to my "coffee girlfriends" in Rapid City.  They meet on Friday mornings and called to say good-bye.  Last Sat I called one of them thinking it was Friday.  They got quite the laugh about that.  So nice to stay in touch.

I had planned to do one more load of laundry before leaving and had it ready to go.  So when I returned to the boat, Dave was on his way to the laundromat.  The female driver and I thought he was the best husband.  I set a timer for 30 minutes to move it to the dryer.  When I was leaving with coins to move the laundry, Dave said “oh, I didn’t start the laundry.  Someone else had a load in already.”  He did say something to me when I said I was starting a timer, but there was some miscommunication there somewhere.  The washer was still in use, so I walked down to the main office where there were 2 machines of each washer/dryer.  I settled our bill with the marina and sat with the laptop until everything was done.  Dave didn’t realize there were more machines. 

I met a nice couple that had just arrived.  They were headed to the Bahamas, too.  I found out that they had circumnavigated the world in their sailboat.  When I returned to the boat, I was telling Dave about them.  I couldn’t remember the word circumnavigate.   I kept wanting to say super navigate, but knew that was wrong.  Dave said he thought super navigate was when you put on a cape and stood on the bow :)

We planned to leave about 1:00.  But Dave decided he wanted one more part from West Marine for peace of mind.  He called the shuttle, but had to leave a message and # a couple times.  He didn’t hear back from them after an hour.  He called the marina office for a taxi number and got an answering machine there, too.  Second call to office, he got a taxi number.  He was just calling the taxi when the shuttle called him back.  By now it was 2:30.

The shuttle took him to West Marine and even waited to bring him back.  He called West Marine before leaving to be sure they had what he wanted.  When he arrived, it wasn’t the right part.  He couldn’t believe he made the trip there when it was obvious it wan’t what he asked for.  The store said, well, you can return it if it doesn’t work.  When, in July?  He knew it wouldn’t work.  Dave has had the feeling several times in the past that they know they don’t have exactly what you want, but they try to get you into the store anyway. 

Dave had heard of another boat store in the area called Boat Owner’s Warehouse.  It was 5-10 miles from here.  But if they had what he wanted, he would take a taxi (shuttle only goes within a mile or so).  When Dave explained that he wanted to be sure they had the part before he took a taxi there, the guy on the line said he goes right by our marina on his way home and would drop it off for us.  Wow, not that’s service.  Overall, it’s going to cost us about $100 extra because we are spending another night in the marina.  But there is no price on “peace of mind” :)  Oh yeah, the part was an extra impeller for the outboard motor.  We haven’t used the Mercury motor since May or June 2014.  Dave ran it, and it was OK, but the impellers have been bad on everything else we let set for a while.  We will really want to use that outboard in the Bahamas.  And who knows if we’d find what we needed there.

It was now about 4:00.  So we walked to the marina office, paid for another night and picked up some cold beer.   The marina has a discount for slips and fuel if you are a Boat US member, which we are.  So Dave asked for the Boat US discount on the beer.  The marina manager thought that deserved at least 2 free can coozies.  We sat on a bench near the water’s edge and watched the boats go by, and saw a few bikinis.

 After the part was delivered, we went back to the Thai restaurant near the marian for dinner.  They had a dish Dave was curios to try called a Thousand Year Old Egg.  It had the texture of a hard boiled egg but it was black with an odd outside surface. 2 eggs were cut in quarters and served with ground pork with basil and mint.  It was very tasty.  I had the red curry, which was very good too.  They serve complimentary edamame with their meals.  Fun place. 

TOMORROW WE ARE LEAVING THIS MARINA AND HEADING TO THE BAHAMAS!!!