Day 9- By Aaron

Well I decided to take it easy this morning.  I let my work phone ring several times, didn’t answer it and even slept in until 11am.  Then I got up, went to take a nice shower in the fancy hotel.  I took my time getting ready.  Then I hopped a trolley to the post office to mail some work stuff, came back, grabbed my laptop, and went to go work in the lobby of the hotel because the internet isn’t working in the marina portion of the hotel.  Go figure. 

Then after I’m working for a while, all of a sudden my beautiful wife, Vicki, calls me and informs me that there is water on the bathroom floor.  I told her I’d be right there.  So as fast as I could, I got all my stuff together and got back to the boat.  As I’m walking up to the boat, I noticed the back platform of the boat is under the water.  Right then and there, I knew something major was wrong and the boat was starting to sink. 

I jumped on the boat, threw my stuff down, and immediately pulled the back cover and engine covers up.  Water was flooding.  It wasn’t covering the batteries and everything yet, but it was very close.  I turned on the bilge pump manually, and it didn’t work.  Now, the bilge pump is always on auto, so it should always be working if water gets too high.  I ran over to the dockmaster’s office, asked him what could be done.  He made a phone call, and within ten minutes somebody came to see what they could do.  He was a cocky young kid.  He thought it was all funny.  I wanted to tell him where to go, but I tried to keep my cool of course.  He said there was a wire loose.  But, I was so freaked out about the whole situation, that I think when I clicked the bilge pumps  to manual, I didn’t hear anything happen, so I just thought it wasn’t working.  I don’t think the kid touched anything.  I think he just flipped the switch to manual.  I think I was just too freaked out and didn’t realize that it was actually working. 

Then after that another kid showed up, and the two of them basically said that there was nothing they could do right now and that I should turn on the manual bilge switch every thirty minutes to an hour until tomorrow when they could get here sometime to try to do more.  So, of course that just freaked me and my wife out even more. 

But then, all of a sudden, I had a knock on the back of the boat.  This older gentlemen, who works for himself as a boat mechanic (His Company Name is Nautical Necessities (727) 612-1425 and his name is Mike ) told me that one of these two kids called him and said I needed help.  So at least the two kids did something right.  They called somebody else that knows what they are doing.  He immediately grabbed tools and started diving into the boat and tightened up the shaft seals.  Then he looked at the bilge pump, he even crawled down into the engine compartment, made sure it wasn’t leaking, kind of looked what he would need to fix the rest, and now he will be back sometime between 10am and 11am tomorrow morning.

I’m starting to think that I’m cursed with this boat.  Let’s hope he can get this stuff fixed out tomorrow, and my wife won’t be freaked out for one damn day.  I already told her tomorrow morning when he comes, disappear, go shopping, go to yoga, do something to make yourself smile and I’ll deal with everything.