Putting out fires

Taking advantage of our extra time between charters, Rebecca and I moved One Love onto the dock a day earlier than we had initially planned in order to give us more time to clean and prepare for the guests that are scheduled to arrive today. It’s a good thing that we did too. Although we had intended to spend all that extra time cleaning, we had to put out several fires (metaphorically speaking, not real fires).

The first issue that surfaced almost immediately after docking is that our inverter stopped functioning. Some of you may recall that this same problem occurred back in November. While not a critical piece of kit, the inverter is helpful for certain tasks requiring AC (alternating current, not air conditioning) that we don’t feel warrant us firing up the generator. As with last time, Budget Marine is looking after us and will be sending us a new unit to replace the damaged one. Purchasing the inverter from Budget, while it cost us a couple hundred more than we saw it being sold for in the US, ranks up there as one of the best buying decisions that we have made. Thanks, Budget!

A second issue that surfaced is our salon AC unit stopped working (this time AC does mean air conditioning). Fortunately we have a good friend in the refrigeration business on speed dial and she dropped by to solve the problem in short order. St. Thomas is going to be losing a real gem when she and her husband leave the work force here and return to cruising in another month. Thanks, Jaime!

The third issue related to our USVI internet service. Up to this point we have been using our Sprint iPhone as a hotspot to connect our guests to the internet here. Unfortunately, Sprint seems to have their own mystery way of measuring data usage which does not equal what our iPhone registers. Because of that, they regularly cut us off long before I think they should. That is not acceptable so yesterday we punted them to the curb. There is another service provider here called Choice and like many of our friends on the island, we picked up one of their modems. It’s working great so far and in fact, I’m connected to it right now. No thanks to Sprint!

In addition to all of that, Rebecca and I still put in a half day cleaning and by half day, I mean 12 hours! One Love is looking great and before our guests arrive this afternoon, she’ll be spotless. I even let my OC cleaning tendencies take over a bit yesterday, running around the boat with a Magic Eraser. One needs to be really careful with those things as they clean so well, they make spots that you haven’t scrubbed look dirty!