Another 48 Hours

   I'm not sure if I (Don) was Eddie Murphy or Nick Nolte in Carl and I's two-man production of this 1990 classic, but either way it was a blur.
   So this trip seems to have cemented what will now be considered standard operating procedure for the next few visits to the boat.

• First - have someone tell you you need to pay an unreasonable sum of money (we are learning that this is very important to the boating world, the metaphorical guard house to the gated community). 
• Second - realize that there is a far simpler task that must be attended to before even beginning what we came to do. 
• Third - realize we are quite uncertain on how to sort out this simpler task. 
• And finally Fourth - get suspicious looks and questioned as to whether we are supposed to be on the dock, let alone a boat.

   The first step stings, and is one of two major factors to our wanting to get the boat the hell out of Sausalito ASAP (the other being seasonal rough seas in Dec). We have no photos of this as it is truly something we would like to forget.
   Now for the idiot twins in full swing. The second step, in this case, was to hook up shore power. A theoretically simple thing that should have been handled in 15 minutes max. Over the next three hours we managed to to get things going.  It started with a trip to the boat's old slip to recover our left behind shore power cable. Once there, we realize the broker's directions of "it will be the only empty slip" is not going to cut it. So we do what any reasonable person would do---start opening dock lockers. This of course led to suspicious looks and the eventual "Can I help you?". After sorting out that we were not looting the place, the harbor master told us of her time spent in the pacific islands. So then one more quick lap between the broker and the old slip and we have our shore power cable and 30 to 50 amp adapter.
   I'll let the photos tell this next part, but the gist is that we spent two hours running back forth to West Marine for an adapter we didn't need.

Carl realizing the adapter we already own doesn't work.

Of course we didn't bring the cable to measure, so here's hoping the one we bought works!

Crap! It's the wrong one & the shop closes in 5 minutes!

Drive! You filthy idiot!

We somehow managed to get  the man to re-open the shop & swap out our part.

Hey look, it's still wrong! Dammit! Oh wait, what's this other outlet over here? It looks like the cable will plug in without any adapter.......Schmucks.

    So once that debacle was over, we realized we had no clue as to which of the many unlabeled switches switches us from house power (batteries) to shore power (plugged in). Not a fun project after the sun goes down. One headlamp and 30 minutes later, we had lights.

1/3 of of our time in Sausalito spent.................and we have lights.

Now for what we came to do---Cleaning! Oh wait I meant dinner.

Carl post Indian food

Ok, now cleaning.

After an hour or two we managed to free up a lot of the storage space in the aft cabin. Yes that is a dot matrix printer,  yes it weighed a ton, and yes it was slimy (you were going to ask, right?)

 Time to check the lights.

Aldebaran lookin' mean

So one very cold night's sleep later and it's back to work.

Oh wait, first we need to return that adapter we didn't need

And now a lot of reaching into dark places and finding slimy things

Crap, crap, and more crap. Although to be fair there is quite a bit of good stuff too

This is 1/2 to 1/3 of what we threw out.

Another cold night's sleep (but not as cold) and we have a few hours to finish the inventory and meet a friend of Carl's for brunch before getting on a plane home. So we rip through inventory and the one or two remaining corners of the boat. Now we have about an hour and a half to get changed (we haven't yet done this on this trip) and then have breakfast with Carl's friend.

en route

A quick pack between rental car return and terminal

Desperate for a shower

  So in that end we got a ton of garbage off the boat and have a very long list of good stuff still on the boat. And while I don't think I'm much of an Eddie Murphy, Carl is definitely Nick Nolte.