Hanging out in Marsh Harbour

Since Cathy & Dino left last week, we have been hanging out at Mangoes in Marsh Harbour doing boat chores and boat repairs.  It seems like everyone in the marina is doing the same thing.  It is very hard to get a mechanic to do the work in the boat yards, they have very few mechanics available to assist you with your projects, so most of the work is a do it yourself project and some projects are bigger than others.  Our project this week has been the generator.  We have an Onon Generator with a messed up impeller, so first Brad changed the impeller but then the second one broke into pieces after trying to run the generator a couple times.  No water running through the water pump, so we took a hose and pushed water through it to see if there was any obstruction and it did flow out of the side of the boat.  But now we have water in the bilge so I am thinking that some of the water did backflow into the bilge so now the bilge alarm has gone off several times, seems like one problem leads to another sometimes. Anyway Brad has been working like a dog for the last several days to try to fix the generator without avail.  This mornig we have finally have a mechanic here that can hopefully help us diagnosis the problem and get the generator working again.  So far he looks competent, I am crossing my fingers that it is an easy fix and we don't need another part like a water pump, which we would have to wait another couple of weeks to get, not to mention pay twice as much for in the Bahamas, they have an 80% duty charge for things brought in from the US, unless you can prove it will be used for propellion or something else, I don't remember right now.  Anyway, repairing boats in exotic places is definately part of the cruising life.  I guess we had better get use to it if we plan to keep cruising.  Brad is right when he says that if we were in the US then he would just make a call and someone would come to the boat and fix it right away.  Of course we would be paying for it, but at least Brad would not have to become a mechanic.  He is doing an excellent job, learning so much about the boat and how it works, but it has not been without stress and worry.  I try to help as much as possible but with such tight spaces to work in, it is mostly a one man job. The guy that is here today did at one point work for Moorings so he should be pretty good.  So far, so good.  If we can get the boat fixed today then maybe we could do something else today besides work, like maybe going snorkelling at Mermaids.