We made the trip to Marsh Harbour, but went to the Marsh Harbour Boatyard first, which meant a two-hour detour, as you can’t sail directly to one from the other. At the boatyard, CJ’s Welding looked at our damaged davits and said they could repair them for $500-$600. While we were there, we checked with the boatyard itself about getting a “short-haul”, where the boat is picked up out of the water and held suspended while work is done on her bottom, and then returned to the water. The haul will be $330, and pressure washing the bottom will be $90. As our bottom is fouled with barnacles and algae, it is slowing the boat down, costing us perhaps as much as one knot in speed. Cleaning it will save us money, and has to be done at some time anyway, especially if we sell the boat any time soon. While it is hauled, we intend to seal the escape hatches with silicone sealant and put some new zincs on the propeller shafts.

We then sailed around several cays that block a more direct path to Marsh Harbour proper. After anchoring, we went through the dog-and-pony show of getting the outboard (80 lbs.) back off its stern mount and back onto the dinghy, as we don’t feel safe towing the dinghy with the motor on it. It will be nice when we can once again simply lift the whole thing up in the davits without straining my bad lumbar discs every time. Then, as it was after 5 PM, we settled in for the night, planning our foray into town for the next morning.

The town isn’t really all that large, but certainly offers much more in the way of parts, supplies, and services. We discovered four different auto parts stores, and were able to get some spare belts for the Balmar alternator, including one Dayco Top Cog belt, which Balmar said will not shred like the Yanmar (Mitsubishi) belts. We’ll see. The Batelco (phone company) office didn’t have a wifi connection available as they have on several other cays, saying it was “down”. We were directed to a deli with a wifi connection - it was no longer in business. We gave up on that, but found a few items we needed besides the belts at a very well-stocked hardware store (Standard Hardware), did a little food shopping at the only remaining supermarket, and located a barber shop. Shirley had offered to cut my hair for me, but I was a bit nervous about that, as it has been many years since she used to cut her boys’ hair. I should have let her. For twelve bucks, the guy gave me a clipper cut that she could have easily done with our Oster clippers (bought for trimming my beard.) And maybe I wouldn’t now have this cowlick sticking up . . .

We had an uneventful trip back to Man-O-War Cay, running the port engine this time, since I had belts ready if one shredded. So far, so good. The next day, that evening actually, we ran our diesel generator, which is relatively new (around eight hundred hours) only to have it break down. The Kubota engine runs just fine, but the Phasor generator it runs stopped working, and wouldn’t put out the proper voltage or amperage. We found a fellow on Man-O-War who is supposed to be competent to repair boat electrical systems (he seemed fairly knowledgeable), and he believes the regulator is defunct. It is a solid-state device sealed in resin which appears to be in perfect condition - no obvious burned areas, melted resin or parts, etc. But, per this fellow it is the only thing that could be wrong to give the problems the generator displays. He says he spoke to the folks back at the factory, and they concur. Bad news: a replacement is $800-$900. I didn’t ask if that included the shipping costs and the tariff that the Bahamas government puts on boat repair parts that are “imported” into the islands. Jerry, the repairman, says he thinks it is possible that the unit might still be under warranty, but I doubt that. I told him that, if it turns out the company will not replace the regulator at their own cost, we just can’t afford it right now. We’ll have to get it repaired when we get back to the States.

Are you seeing a pattern here? Am I simply so incompetent that I cannot touch a boat system without breaking it, or is the boat jinxed? At this point Shirley and I have pretty much given up. If we could go back to last November, before we bought the boat, I would refuse the boat - even if it was offered to us for free. Even with a budget of $200,000 to spend on repairs and upgrades instead of purchasing, easily able to pay someone else to fix what needed to be fixed, I would turn it down. It would be like owning a nifty sports car that was in the shop all of the time. It just has not brought us enough joy or fun to be worth the headaches and hassles we have endured. Yes, I would still rather be here than working at the Roseburg VA, but I would much rather have bought a new truck and trailer and be touring the Southwest instead of struggling with a boat that keeps breaking.

We have pretty much decided that, when we get back to the States, we will contact our broker and see if he thinks we can sell this boat. We paid $160,000 for it, have put over $30,000 in new equipment and repairs into it, but we both feel that we would be happy to walk away with $120,000 if we could do it right away, and not have to live on the boat for months while trying to sell it. We’ll see what the broker says. This certainly is not the best economic climate to sell, and we might not be able to at this time, but perhaps if we “give it away” we can do it.

Sorry to sound full of “doom and gloom”, like a quitter, but we are too old to be suffering with these problems when we should be enjoying ourselves. Let some twenty- or thirty-year-olds buy themselves a cheap boat that they can work on and we’ll do the RV thing instead. This is a rather expensive lesson for us, but we can’t see continuing to struggle with this boat when we could be relaxing somewhere, even if it is just an RV park in St. George, Utah. We want off of this evil merry-go-round ride.