Day 15- By Aaron

We are starting a new day, hoping things will look up.  As I woke up this morning, the mechanic for the air conditioner showed up right on time.  I will say, I don’t  think he’s doing anything super special, unfortunately.  I was told there is a cracked lid on the filter, and supposedly this cracked lid which I could tell somebody actually tried to fix it before and patch it will something years ago but I was told that because it’s cracked it’s sucking air into the system and causing it not to work properly.  I did ask the mechanic bluntly, “So you’re telling me, once we replace this cap, or should I say cover, that the air conditioning unit will work properly. “  He said, “Yes, it will.” 

Now we have many different people from the live aboard page on Facebook that told us to check different things and I made the mechanic check those different things.  So, thank you for your suggestions and help.  Supposedly the part will be in on Thursday.  Until then we’re still using the probably air unit I got from Home Depot. 

One good thing that this same mechanic did was that he found out that lever for the bilge pump was too low.  He took a whole two minutes to fix that and the red warning light has not come on since, just the green automatic light stays on like it’s supposed to.  So that’s a little bit of good news.  Because of that, I was able to tell the other mechanic that was going to come today that he didn’t need to come and I was able to save a few bucks. 

I discovered that the way we installed the portable air conditioner on the boat, even though it's blowing out very hard, water can pour in when it's down pouring.  It started raining today and pouring down very hard for about thirty minutes.  I sat in the boat, cringing, thinking that I should go outside and put something, even my hands over the hole so water didn't pour in and burn out the motor on what little air conditioning we had.  Luckily, nothing went wrong.  But, for some major preventative maintenance, I was lucky enough to go to Home Depot and get a dryer vent.  Our friend, Peggy, took us to Home Depot today to get a dryer vent that would normally be on the outside of your house.   I will install it tomorrow as it's not supposed to rain anymore tonight or tomorrow.  But being that the part for the air conditioner is not supposed to get here for two days, and we all know that could be longer, I don't want to take any chances. 

Now I've decided tomorrow I'm going to call the best mechanic of our journey, Pete, from Hudson, because he told me that he was going to visit friends down here in a couple of weeks.  He told me that he would be happy to try and help us while we are down here. 

On a other happy note, my wonderful wife got me the massage which was freaking awesome and helped me relax a lot today.  Then tonight, we took a walk downtown St Pete and went to a place for Taco Tuesday.  Then we came back to the boat. 

Now of course, in the back of my mind, I’m still thinking that I have to get the sensors fixed and the rubber valve for the oil before we ever move this boat again.  I know we are always on a time frame.  I try not to mention this to my wonderful wife and make her worry because I know I will get it taken care of, just like I always get everything done one way or another.  Just sometimes things are hard and sometimes they’re not.  But, I will say, my wife always finds a way to make me smile and I love her.