August 8-9, 2018 Car Rental errands

Wednesday

Enterprise picked me up shortly after 8:00 am, love that service.  Our first stop was Jamestown Distributors.  Dave has ordered parts from them before, so it was interesting to go to their place.  After lots of research, Dave decided to get 2 isolation transformers.  More on that later. 

 Next we drove to the west side of Narragansett Bay to look at a few marinas.  We want to be at a marina when Dave’s mom visits us.  Many of the marinas are full people that have slips for the summer and can't take "transients" like us.  We settled on Wickford Marina  and made a reservation for the week she will be here.  We had lunch at a pizza/sub shop that was a local chain, Piezonies.  I would recommend it.

We also hit a hardware store to refill 2 propane tanks.  Dave checked with a Mercury dealer to get a part.  The rubber covering the fuel primer leaks, so you get gasoline on your hand when you use it.  They just sold their last one, but will have one by Friday.    We’ll just get it next week.  Next stop, West Marine.  They were holding a grill for us.  Our old one rusted to pieces.  Salt water will do that to everything.  

Our last stop was a Walmart for groceries.  Dave was in the mood for ice cream.  We didn’t see anything easy to pull into on the way.  So we ended up at a Ruby Tuesday’s near the Walmart.  That helped us make it though, since we were pretty tired by now.  

Back at the dinghy, Dave broke down boxes as I packaged groceries in heavy bags.  We took the groceries in the first load.  I stayed on board to start stowing the groceries.  Dave went back to shore by himself for the propane, grill and 2 galvanic isolators.  Whew! A marathon car rental day.  

Thursday

I returned the rental car right away this morning.  After I got back, we moved the boat across the bay to an anchorage.  Then I took the dinghy in to do 2 more loads of laundry.  

Dave had a rebuilt booster pump for the water maker that he put in today.  It leaked worse than the one he was replacing.  He did some research for a new one and found one at Jamestown Distributors.  He ordered it online and they said they had one in stock, so he put down that he would pick it up on Friday.  We checked out the distance and it looked like 3 miles.  That’s more than we care to walk these days-6 miles round trip.  There is a place in town that rents electric bicycles for $30 for 2 hours.  That was a possibility.  But we decided to get a car again for Friday and pick up the Mercury part, too.  Enterprise wouldn’t let me do the one day rental online because the Bristol store is closed on Saturday.  I decided to call them in the morning and find out our options. Always a challenge.

Fun to watch the sailing class near our anchorage.  Didn't have that option growing up in South Dakota.