The Frolicers: Finishing the Face Lift

Ahh! a very nice dinner!

Our new mattress has arrived!

With water and food low we left St. John and sailed back to St. Thomas. There, the first order of business was to fill up the fuel and water at Yacht Haven and then anchor in our normal spot amongst the Pirates to dinghy in and go provisions shopping. Ahhh! We made arrangements to put in at Crown Bay Marina and have our new mattress delivered. Sleeping on boat cushions finally got old. While there we stopped by the mail and wow! the water maker parts were in.

There are some interesting boats in Honeymoon Bay

Feeling much more secure we headed to Honeymoon Bay as friends told us it was a great place for cruisers. The beach always has something going on. We anchored in 30 ft. of water, not Carl’s favorite depth. He donned SCUBA gear to set the anchor which had gone down on it’s side. We arrived on Wed. and went in for Bingo on the beach. The beach is anchored by two bars, Joe’s and Heidi’s at either end. In between is a covered deck for Yoga and a concrete pavilion. Besides Bingo on Wed’s there is Pizza nite on Fri’s, Candle Lite dinner at Heidi’s on Sat., Pot Luck on Sunday afternoons and Movie nite on Mon’s, with Yoga thrown in on Wed. morning. The Island itself offers interesting hiking and exploring both above and below the water.

Carl installs the new boat horn

With all these activities we still had to finish the work. Water needed to be made and the flooring put down. In finishing the water maker, Carl discovered the booster pump already installed in the boat was 24volt not 12V and it was causing the water maker to suck air as not enough water was going thru so a trip to Budget and a new 12V booster pump and the water maker is now making lots of water. While this was going on of course lots of water ended up in the bilge and upon trying to pump it out, discovered the bilge pump was broken, but we got lucky and the people at Budget found the $25.00 part saving us $300.00 for a new one-----more Champaign for me!!

New pressure vessels in and working

Now that the water maker was working and the bilge pump pumping we focused on the floor. We had to remove the table and nav. stool and the cabinet we had temporarily put in. Our neighbor on Sandy Annie, Joe, had put in a floor last summer so he gave us lots of good advice. It took one and a half days of solid work to lay, Carl doing the cutting and Leslie making the templates. It came out beautiful and is so much more appealing than the scarred, bleached floor of before.