We're not so much waiting for parts as waiting for help. But it's the same kind of delay. Waiting and Hoping. And thinking and praying and planing and dreaming.

Today we drove a few hundred yards from the dock to the repair slip.

The shaft fitting leaked so badly that the bilge pump ran six times in the space of about an hour. Sitting still — engine idling — out of gear — the water was dribbling in. We've got a fairly serious situation below the waterline on Red Ranger.

We're hoping that this yard lives up to it's reputation as a place that can get things done quickly. The service manager seemed to know what he was talking about.

We're very pissed off that our previous yard took two months to not look at it. They only made an effort during last few days we were there. And that was a very grudging effort driven by the deadline pressure of "now or never."

So. With them, it's never. We're reluctant to go back.

We hate paying for this second haul-out to fix the problem. We're tempted to send the haul-out portion of our bill from AYB to the previous boatyard to have them cover it. They failed to do the work in a timely fashion, they should pay for that failure. A loss of revenue clearly isn't an incentive for them.

The good news is that it's a very short walk to Great Bridge.

There's a JoAnn's fabrics. CA could restock some supplies for Floating Leaf Tiny Quilts.

And she bought a second sewing machine. A five pound mini machine that is much easier for tiny quilts than the massive SailRite LZ1.

Now she can put bindings on the tiny quilts quickly and accurately.

A nice thing to have now that we have some quiet days of hanging around, waiting.