More Bad News...

For about the last week, we hung out down in Palm Beach, out of the way of the boat and mechanics. You'd think it would be relaxing, but most of the time we were waiting on an update on the boat. On Sunday, the kids were playing in the pool and Moose kicked Bear, so she shoved his head away and slammed his top, front permanent teeth into the side of the pool. Around here we say gravity wins, but this event proved that cement wins. One tooth was obviously chipped and another showed cracks when a light was shining on it. He wasn't in pain, wasn't bleeding, and was still able to eat and drink whatever he wanted. Still, a trip to the local pediatric dentist was on our agenda for Monday. Thankfully, they had a cancelation and fit us in for x-rays and a quick "band-aid" on the chipped tooth. No numbing or medications needed for the procedure. If you look closely, you can see the repair, but otherwise it was a decent cosmetic fix.

First tooth on the left (number 7 for all you dental people out there) was obviously chipped. To the right (#8), if you look closely, you can see the diagonal craze line. The bandaid was placed on #7 and the dentist wasn't concerned about #8 at all. We will check in with our pediatric dentist in August.

Monday afternoon, we returned to the boat. We scheduled our second round of 'rona tests, a second vet appointment, and did some last minute pickups of Amazon purchases for Tuesday, with hopes of doing our sea trial on Wednesday and crossing on Thursday or Friday during the nice weather window. All indications and conversations were showing this would be the case, as the mechanics had our engine almost back together. Around 1600 on Tuesday, Ben's phone rang and it was the mechanic who had been working on putting the head back on the engine. Ben said, "What kind of bad news?" and all of our hearts sank anticipating what was being said and what it all meant.

They figured out the camshaft is broken in half. What does that mean? I'm not sure, but the solution is that the boat has to get hauled out at a shipyard a few miles away so they can replace the whole engine. This process is intriguing to me, because when I think about the size of the engine and the size of the doorways and stairwells in our boat, I'm not sure I can envision how this will work without tearing the top off our boat. Some of you may remember that the engines are under each of the beds in both hulls, so this means taking the engine out of the "engine room" under the bed, out the narrow door, to the galley (kitchen), up the stairs to the settee on the main level, then up another set of stairs and out a narrow doorway to the helm. Ben said they'd have a crane to take it out and have to construct it carefully so that it will make it out of the boat, but they will also have to take the engine apart in several pieces to make it all fit. This whole process could take 2 weeks to complete.

My brain went to- where are we going to stay? Is this the end of our summer? Should we drive home? Maybe we should fly home and then fly back in a week or two. Disney isn't that far from here, would that be more cost-effective than flying or driving home for a week? Do I need to go get groceries or do we eat the food that we prepped for the trip? Talking this through with my sister, I said, "What kind of summer will this be if we are trapped in Florida for all 2 months?!" She laughed at me and said, "First world problems," which put me in my place. We are so fortunate to be able to do this, that so many people only dream of doing. 

The kids understood the severity of the situation and started telling us about all of the other ways we could have fun in Florida, without being on our boat. Their ideas range from Disney World to Legoland, from water parks to the beach, from SeaWorld to numerous other fun day-long excursions. I love their positivity, despite being let down.

Still having several projects to complete, Ben has continued to work hard every day on the boat. He's installed things, fixed things, repaired things... all of which I have no knowledge of, but I know he is feeling productive checking these things off his list. I am grateful he has the drive and the know-how to do it all.  

...and yes, Dad, I hear everything you're saying about the Boat Curse and all of the "I told you so"s.